Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and it’s still hot.
The heat advisory is still in effect, too, and will be through this evening. The heat index values (how it feels to be outside, remember) will be somewhere in the range of 100.
All the standard protocols remain in effect. Most important: Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. After all, your body is supposedly around 70 percent water, more or less – although it turns out that depends on a number of factors, including age.
The old saw about “drying up” as one ages? Turns out it’s actually true. Bummer.
Although a hot breakfast might be the last thing on your mind when you wake up to this kind of heat, it’s National Waffle Iron Day. (Not to be confused with World Waffle Day, or International Waffle Day, if you prefer, which is March 25).
So this is a day that celebrates the equipment one needs to make a waffle, not the waffle itself. No matter, you really can’t have one without the other. I happen to be on Team Waffle, myself, as opposed to Team Pancake. Nooks and crannies to hold melted butter and syrup over a big soggy lump of dough on a plate? Yes, please.
Anyway, says the interwebs:
Waffle irons got their start in the 14th century in the Low Countries. Even the earliest designs that were used over an open fire would have elaborate designs such as coats of arms and religious symbols.
The U.S. first patent for a waffle iron was submitted in 1869, by a guy named Cornelius Swarthout. In 1911, General Electric produced a prototype electric waffle iron, which was made available to the general public in 1918.
Oh, and that widely told story about the waffle iron and the first Nike sneaker sole? Apparently, it’s true. And the original sold for a large sum to a guy who collects rare sneakers.
Today is also the birthday of iconic Mexican artist Pedro Linares López. (If he were alive, he would be 115, but he passed in 1992). The Google Doodle is celebrating his colorful and fanciful work. Check it out.
It’s 74 degrees as I write this. The dog is not happy. Yesterday, he sat down in the street – on the hot asphalt, no less! – and refused to go any further. Carry me back to the air conditioning, servant, he seemed to be saying.
And so, I did, of course. Yes, he’s spoiled rotten, and no, I am not ashamed. He will live his best doggy life while he’s around, if I have anything to say about it.
There might be thunderstorms again this evening, so be on the lookout for that. Also, as hot as it is here, it’s still even hotter out in the Pacific Northwest, where record0high temperatures have been recorded.
FWIW, it’s the 17th anniversary of the death of the late, great actress Katharine Hepburn.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden planned to spend a peaceful weekend at Camp David – but instead, he spent two days working to salvage the bipartisan infrastructure plan he had imperiled with a stray comment to reporters as he celebrated the announcement of the deal.
Biden’s weekend airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria are rankling Democrats frustrated by his decision to sidestep Congress — a dynamic that promises to fuel the party’s long-running push to rein in presidential war powers.
Biden sought to assure Israel that he would not tolerate a nuclear Iran as he met with outgoing Israeli President Reuven Rivlin amid a major shakeup in Israeli politics and growing angst in Tel Aviv over the U.S. effort to reenter the Iran nuclear deal.
Biden and his White House are planning a slate of travel and events this weekend to celebrate his administration’s progress combating the pandemic, though the country fell short of his July 4 vaccination goal.
The president is set to visit La Crosse today, according to an official schedule released from The White House. This is Biden’s scheduled trip to western Wisconsin where he plans to highlight the benefits of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework.
Three scientific studies released yesterday offered fresh evidence that widely used vaccines will continue to protect people against the coronavirus for long periods, possibly for years, and can be adapted to fortify the immune system still further if needed.
A study published in the medical journal Nature found reason to believe people inoculated with the mRNA vaccines might not need booster shots if the COVID virus doesn’t evolve and adapt to the inoculations recently invented to kill it.
A third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford generated a strong immune response in clinical trial volunteers, Oxford researchers reported.
Many young adults are forgoing Covid vaccines for a complex mix of reasons. Health officials are racing to find ways to change their minds.
WHO officials, concerned about the easing of precautions meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus even as the most contagious variant has emerged, have urged even fully vaccinated people to continue wearing masks.
The more-transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus is surging across Africa, the continent with the least vaccines and weakest healthcare systems.
The Delta coronavirus variant is now the third-most common in California, new data show, underscoring the danger of the highly contagious strain to people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Australia faced a grim and anxiety-inducing challenge yesterday: simultaneous outbreaks of the coronavirus in several parts of the country, most notably in Sydney, fueled by the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant.
A half-dozen partygoers at a “super-spreader” event in Australia were the only attendees spared a COVID-19 infection. Why? They were the only ones in attendance who’d been vaccinated.
Hong Kong has banned passenger flights from the United Kingdom, citing concerns over a “recent rebound” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Delta variant, a strain of Covid-19 believed to be more transmissible and dangerous than others, is likely to break out in some U.S. communities, a health expert said.
The U.S. Department of Justice expects to spend years investigating fraud cases involving billions of dollars in aid that was intended to help small businesses stay afloat and keep their workers employed, a top federal prosecutor in New York said.
Rescue crews kept tunneling into the rubble of a collapsed condo tower yesterday, in their fifth day of trying to find survivors at a site where no one has been found alive since Thursday.
The president of the Champlain South Towers condo association told residents in April their building was in desperate disrepair and urged them to pay the $15 million in assessments needed to fix structural problems.
The developers of the collapsed Surfside condominium tower worked around local building codes by adding a penthouse that wasn’t part of the original plan, a review of town building records shows.
The careful effort to preserve some of the belongings of the people who had lived in the tower is one of many ways that rescue officials are acknowledging that the daunting, and sometimes harrowing, technical challenges they face are only part of their job.
In a stunning setback to regulators’ efforts to break up Facebook, a federal judge threw out antitrust lawsuits brought against the company by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states.
Facebook closed above $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time yesterday.
The rulings also seemed a good sign for the three other tech giants currently under government scrutiny.
After permission to sell alcoholic drinks to-go expired last week, some New York state lawmakers are pushing for a special session to pass a measure extending the practice and act on other items.
Manhattan Criminal Court reopened its doors yesterday, once again allowing masked-up New Yorkers to appear before a judge in person upon their arrest.
The number of sign-ups for New York City’s expanded summer enrichment program for K-12 students has surpassed a previous estimate of 200,000 students, as schools prepare to focus less on learning gaps and more on transitioning to in-person learning.
New York’s Republicans have informally anointed U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, a four-term member of Congress from Long Island’s Suffolk County, as their pick to run for governor next year, when Andrew Cuomo may be running for a fourth term.
Meeting in Albany, the chairs of county Republican Party organizations gave Zeldin 85 percent of the vote, an expected result as top New York Republicans rallied around the Long Island congressman.
The vote is nonbinding and does not automatically make Zeldin the nominee. But it does demonstrate his strength even 17 months before the election.
Zeldin said he has so far seen “the hunger, the passion, the emotion” from voters to stop Cuomo from a fourth four-year term. “Our opponent is weakened and flawed,” he said of the Democratic governor.
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino earned the vote of his county party chair, which accounts for 5 percent of the vote. Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew, did not gain a vote, based on results announced by GOP Party Chair Nick Langworthy.
Some of Cuomo’s most reliable political contributors — including unions, wealthy executives and Democratic Party officials — say they still plan to give money to his expected campaign for a fourth term in office.
A vehicle driving Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul was involved in an accident last week in Dutchess County. A New York State Police vehicle was transporting Hochul when the vehicle rear-ended a car in the Town of Hyde Park around 5:45 p.m.
Cuomo’s administration has imposed an “unreasonable” delay on an office relocation plan for the state Board of Elections that’s left the agency pleading with Albany’s legislative leaders for help.
The number of Child Victims Act cases filed in New York has jumped to more than 6,000 as the deadline to file civil accusations draws near.
Democratic state Sen. Todd Kaminsky formally launched his campaign for Nassau County district attorney, signaling the potential departure of a key lawmaker who represents Long Island in Albany.
Andrew Yang said that he has accepted Eric Adams as the winner of the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, deeming any other outcome all but impossible even as New Yorkers await the ranked-choice voting process to play out this week.
The Board of Elections said it expects to release its first report of ranked-choice results today, running the elimination rounds that pick a winner in the new system.
Adams is nine points ahead in first-choice ballots for New York’s first-ever ranked-choice election. If other ranked-choice elections in the U.S. are any guide, he has a 96 percent chance of emerging as the victor.
At least 1 million New Yorkers — nearly three of ten registered voters — participated in the primary election, a far stronger showing than when the mayor’s job and most City Council seats were last up for grabs.
The New York Police Department is adding dozens of patrol officers in Times Square after two shootings in the area in the past two months in which tourists were hit by stray bullets, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
At a news conference, de Blasio said that he was going to “flood the zone” with police following Sunday’s shooting.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie and Assemblywoman Diana Richardson say they were assaulted and pepper-sprayed by the police during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, and have sued the NYPD.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg got a close-up look at the crumbling state of New York City’s most critical rail link and vowed that the Biden administration was committed to getting a new train tunnel built under the Hudson River.
Lawyers representing the Trump Organization made a last-ditch effort to persuade New York prosecutors not to pursue tax-related charges that could come as soon as this week, arguing the company was being unfairly targeted.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown announced that he will continue his campaign for mayor as a write-in candidate in the general election.
Even though he continued not mentioning India Walton’s name, the mayor took a new approach to the former nurse and community organizer who shocked the city and state’s political establishment with her decisive primary victory.
Brown conceded that remaining absentee votes in the primary would not hand him an eleventh-hour victory in the primary but maintained it is “important that every single vote be counted.”
The husband of Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren appeared in federal court yesterday.
Saratoga Springs officials blamed a recent uptick in violence on the social justice movement and suspects coming to the city from Albany, assistant police Chief John Catone asked neighboring law enforcement and the public to help city police.
The three-way race for Albany’s open 7th Ward council seat is headed to a recount.
The Alive at 5 concert series returns for full audiences at the amphitheater at Jennings Landing on the Corning Preserve this week.
A 29-year-old Catskill woman who had been missing since late March was found safe and living in Maryland.
Firefighters battled flames — and the oppressive heat — when a three-alarm fire destroyed three row houses at the intersection of 24th Street and Broadway in Watervliet yesterday and sent a resident and two Watervliet Arsenal firefighters to the hospital.
The American Red Cross is issuing an urgent call for more blood donors as an unusually high number of traumas, overdoses and emergency room visits paired with lower donor turnout has created a severe blood shortage nationwide.
Josh Rawitch will become president of baseball’s Hall of Fame on Sept. 9 after spending 27 years with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball Advanced Media.
The Kartrite Resort & Indoor Waterpark is finally ready to welcome back guests from its COVID-19 shutdown. The waterpark in Monticello on the campus of Resorts World Catskills will reopen on Thursday, July 1.
Former Minnesota police officer and convicted killer Derek Chauvin is reportedly nearing a plea deal with federal prosecutors.
At a meeting with senior officials with the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York State attorney general’s office, defense lawyers pointed to the harm that the business, the Trump Organization, could face if it were indicted.
Juul Labs Inc. agreed to pay $40 million to the state of North Carolina to settle a lawsuit alleging that the e-cigarette maker had targeted underage users, resolving the first of a string of legal and regulatory challenges facing the once-hot startup.
Tesla Inc. is addressing a safety issue in more than 285,000 passenger vehicles in China—including more than 90% of locally made vehicles sold by the company—associated with their cruise-control system, the country’s market regulator said.
Under pressure to overhaul its vision of amateurism in college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association indicated it would allow athletes in all 50 states to make money from their name, image and likeness as soon as July 1 without forfeiting eligibility.
A transgender woman was crowned Miss Nevada USA at South Point Hotel Casino & Spa on Sunday, a first and historic moment in the pageant’s history. Kataluna Enriquez, 27, will compete for the Miss USA title in November.
Dole recalled some of its cases of fresh blueberries due to a possible cyclospora contamination.
