Good morning, it’s Friday. Let’s not tax ourselves too much. Let’s keep it simple and sweet…like vanilla ice cream.
Because today is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day. (See what I did there?) Vanilla is, not surprisingly, the default flavor for ice cream, and the most prevalent of all the flavors.
At a time when the world is all madness and there is such a thing as mac and cheese ice cream, (which, by the way, I hear is good but I refuse to try), sometimes you just want to get back to basics, you know?
The third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, has been credited with introducing ice cream to this country, but that is, according to no less an authority than the Monticello website, “demonstrably false.”
However, Jefferson “likely helped to popularize ice cream in this country when he served it at the President’s House in Washington,” the site proclaims. You can also still replicate his favorite recipe for the sweet treat in the comfort of your own kitchen, though you do need an ice cream maker, which is something that not all of us have on hand.
In case you’re curious about the age-old vanilla vs. chocolate question, the International Ice Cream Association puts vanilla at the top of the charts as first choice of 29 percent of ice-cream eaters, followed by chocolate (8.9 percent), butter pecan (5.3 percent), and strawberry (5.3 percent).
I’m a chocolate gal myself, as regular readers of this site know. But vanilla with things mixed into it…I wouldn’t say no to that – especially if the mix ins involved peanut butter AND chocolate. Now, we’re talking.
Today is also Pioneer Day, celebrated each year in Utah to commemorate the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. If you happen to be in Utah tomorrow, there are a whole slew of events for you to participate in. Otherwise, well, you might you have to stick to vanilla ice cream.
On this day in 2011, British jazz-pop sensation Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London flat from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27.
Weather-wise today, we MIGHT see a stray shower or thunderstorm. Otherwise, there will be a mix of sun and clouds, with temperatures in the mid-70s.
Oh, and be forewarned…today’s Google Doodle is a serious time suck.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden announced new sanctions targeting a top Cuban military official and a unit of the government’s repressive state security apparatus, which he said was responsible for the brutal crackdown on historic protests across the island this month.
The sanctions target Alvaro Lopez Miera, the head of the armed forces in Cuba, and the Cuban Ministry of the Interior’s Special National Brigade, known as the “black berets,” for their involvement in the crackdown after historic protests in more than 40 cities.
Biden celebrated what he called “a day of hope” yesterday before signing the VOCA Fix to Sustain the Crime Victims Fund Act of 2021, a bipartisan bill that aims to provide assistance for crime victims, including counseling expenses, medical bills and lost wages.
The bill adds a new revenue stream for the Crime Victims Fund, which was established when Biden was a senator in 1984 to support victim services, specifically by directing funds collected from deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements.
A quiet divide between Biden and the leaders of the voting rights movement burst into the open, as 150 organizations urged him to use his political mettle to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a GOP wave of balloting restrictions.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has approved a $778 billion defense policy bill, adding nearly $25 billion more to the defense budget than the Biden administration requested.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week from the lowest point of the pandemic, even as the job market appears to be rebounding on the strength of a reopened economy.
The Labor Department said jobless claims increased to 419,000, the most in two months, from 368,000 the previous week. The number of first-time applications, which generally tracks layoffs, has fallen steadily since topping 900,000 in early January.
In recent weeks about half of states have acted to end enhanced and extended unemployment benefits. The end of pandemic programs in Texas drove the latest decrease.
Continuing claims, meanwhile, fell to 3.236 million filings in the week ending July 10, but were above the 3.1 million consensus. Continuing claims were at their lowest level since March 21, 2020.
The Covid-19 pandemic required more Americans to work from home, but it also meant more workers were multitasking, doing their jobs while taking care of their families.
Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger sees the global semiconductor shortage potentially stretching into 2023, adding a leading industry voice to the growing view that the chip-supply disruptions hitting companies and consumers won’t wane soon.
Continued strong demand pushed the median U.S. home price to a record high in June, though the national house-buying frenzy cooled slightly as supply ticked higher.
A panel of health experts advising the U.S. government on vaccines expressed preliminary support for giving Covid-19 boosters to immunocompromised people, but said they were waiting for regulatory action before making a formal recommendation.
The vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and death, but they are not a golden shield against the coronavirus.
The director of the CDC struck a new tone of urgency about the coronavirus pandemic, warning that the U.S. is “not out of the woods yet” and is again at “another pivotal point in this pandemic” as the highly infectious Delta variant proliferates.
A Houston hospital has its first case of the lambda variant of the coronavirus, but public health experts say it’s too soon to tell if the variant will rise to the same level of concern as the delta variant currently raging across unvaccinated communities in the U.S.
Top Biden health officials and some White House officials are holding preliminary conversations on revising mask recommendations for vaccinated Americans as the Delta variant spreads throughout the U.S.
Forty percent of this week’s coronavirus cases came from the states of Florida, Texas and Missouri, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said.
Breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommon, experts said, and those that cause serious illness, hospitalization or death even more so.
House Republican leaders and doctors gathered for a news conference ostensibly to urge Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, but used the event to attack Democrats who they said, without proof, had dissembled about the origins of the virus.
The NFL has added an additional COVID-19 vaccination incentive for players, threatening forfeits and the loss of game checks if an outbreak among unvaccinated players causes an unresolvable disruption in the regular-season schedule.
The Italian government announced that it would require people to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test in order to participate in certain social activities, including indoor dining, visiting museums and attending shows.
Tokyo hit another six-month high in new COVID-19 cases yesterday, one day before the Olympics begin, as worries grow of a worsening of infections during the Games.
New York state has sent out just $117,000 in coronavirus pandemic rent relief money to help bail out struggling landlords and tenants as of yesterday, and lawmakers say that is far too little.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city will host five large-scale concerts next month and urged people from near and far to flock to the Big Apple for the “unforgettable” events — despite the troubling uptick in coronavirus cases due to the delta variant.
New York City’s hotels are starting to fill up and tourism activities are coming back, indicating that “something great is happening” post-pandemic, de Blasio said, ascribing the bounce back to out-of-town patrons flocking to the Big Apple for its dining.
A threat to punish Gov. Andrew Cuomo over an aide’s tweet through “severe repercussions” on his impeachment investigation raises serious “constitutional concerns,” one of Cuomo’s outside lawyers told the head of the probe.
Paul Fishman, a lawyer representing Cuomo’s office, penned a letter to Assemblyman Charles Lavine defending senior Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.
Cuomo signed legislation raising the age of consent to be married in New York State to 18.
More than two dozen Democratic state senators sent a letter to Biden and Cuomo this week calling for them to declare a state of emergency in the U.S. and New York to fight the skyrocketing overdose epidemic.
The father of the Bronx Democratic Party chairman, state Sen. Jamaal Bailey, is on the payroll of the patronage-laden Board of Elections, in another high-profile example of ties between the embattled agency and lawmakers with the power to reform it.
De Blasio is over three months late appointing members to an advisory board established to review street vendor activity just as illegal peddlers have taken over whole sections of The Bronx, Manhattan and Queens.
Democratic NYC mayoral nominee Eric Adams’ key aides include three longtime advisers, his campaign manager and a Brooklyn power broker.
Adams’ top aide, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, doubled her salary during the mayoral primary race by working both for his campaign and at her taxpayer-funded job.
A New York City man who served 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit was officially cleared of the charges in the first successful wrongful conviction case on Staten Island.
Grant Williams, whose conviction was overturned yesterday, told people in prison that they would one day see that he was innocent. “And today’s that day,” he said.
Anti-gun trafficking units directed by the Justice Department formally launched in New York and four other cities, as officials work to combat a pandemic wave of shootings that has unnerved the nation.
A New York police sergeant was charged with attacking two handcuffed suspects in separate arrests, punching one in the face when he was in a cell and kneeling on the back of another who was shouting “I can’t breathe” from a subway station floor.
Jimmy Haber, the restaurateur behind BLT Prime and BLT Steak, has hooked up with Toast, a Colorado-based cannabis company, to help him open marijuana lounges in the Big Apple.
A historic register of Jewish burial records from the modern-day Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca is among artifacts that have been recovered as part of a seizure by authorities in New York who plan to return the objects to their communities of origin.
Skidmore College announced that it will mandate COVID-19 vaccines for all students and staff for the fall semester.
The DEC issued an emergency authorization to help communities in Delaware, Montgomery, Otsego, Rensselaer, and Schoharie counties recover from last week’s severe storms and flash flooding.
A nonprofit developer has agreed to pay more in property taxes on a proposed apartment and commercial project as the City of Troy descends further into an affordable housing crisis.
Nauman Hussain, the operator of the company that owned the limousine that crashed here on Oct. 6, 2018, killing 20 people, is scheduled for a possible guilty plea on Sept. 2, Schoharie County court officials said.
Just outside the Thomas O’Brien Academy of Science and Technology in Albany sits the beginning of one of the largest public works projects in the city in decades – a $45 million effort to reduce the amount of raw waste that enters the Hudson during heavy rains.
The fox that attacked a woman jogging along a Saratoga Springs trail last week has tested positive for rabies.
Tracy Metzger is stepping down from the Albany Industrial Development Agency and Capital Resource Corp. after more than eight years on both economic development boards, including serving as chair since 2014.
GlobalFoundries is spending $1 billion to add capacity at its $15 billion computer chip manufacturing plant in Malta. The company will construct a second multibillion-dollar factory next door.
A new $25 million, 74-unit apartment and mixed use project on Albany’s Central Avenue has been completed, said the developers and officials who backed the state-supported project.
Albany County Legislature chairman Andrew Joyce is hoping to keep remote meetings as an option.
The idea of a universal basic income has grown increasingly popular over the past few years, and now, 100 lucky Ulster County residents will get to experience what it’s like to get $500 monthly payments, no strings attached.
The websites of several major U.S. companies were temporarily down for many users yesterday in a widespread internet outage.
Today brings what is usually a celebratory highlight of any Olympic Games, the opening ceremony. The pageantry, speeches and the athlete parade will play out as usual, but very likely without the zest and excitement of a typical Olympics.
NBC will have a live morning broadcast of the ceremony starting at 6:55 a.m Eastern time, marking the first time the network has ever had a live morning broadcast of the event.
Greg Knapp, the Jets assistant coach who was hit by a car while riding his bicycle over the weekend, died yesterday from his injuries at the age of 58.
New Orleans police are investigating a fire that took place at a mansion owned by Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z as possible arson.
Kanye West debuted his 10th studio album, “Donda,” at a live listening party last night in Atlanta.
