Good morning, it’s Friday.
We are coming to the end of Be Nice to New Jersey Week. Yes, such a thing actually exists. Our Garden State neighbors take more than their fair share of heat, and are the butt of far too many jokes…as, regular watchers of Saturday Night Live can attest.
Most recently, the show made fun of New Jersey for prioritizing smokers to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, (which was, whether you agree with it or not, a recommendation made by the CDC due to the high number of pre-existing conditions among habitual smokers), and also made what strikes me as an oddly timed joke about needles on the beach.
Apparently, the Jersey joke thing actually dates back to the 17th Century, before the state even existed formally, when the areas was promised to two people who split it in half.
It fell to someone in the Lone Star State – namely Lauren Barnett, editor of Lone Star Publications of Humor in Texas – to take pity on New Jersey and declare a week-long holiday in 1985 to highlight all it has to offer.
And that really is quite a lot. I mean, just think of all the diners! I, personally, am a big fan of diners. And Jersey has some of the best. (Sorry, New York, but it’s true).
Also, pork roll. Probably this is triggering for some people. I’ve never had it myself, but I’m told by those who love it that it is ambrosial. I’m just going to have to trust them on that one.
If it seems a little early for pork roll, perhaps you’d prefer to start your day off on a sweeter note? Well, you’re in luck because it’s National Sugar Cookie Day.
The sugar cookie is believed to have originated in the mid-1700s in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where German Protestant settlers created a round, crumbly and buttery cookie that came to be known as the Nazareth Cookie.
Today, of course, sugar cookies often serve as the base for highly decorated concoctions loaded with colorful icing. I prefer mine plain, but you do you.
It’s starting to feel a little like Groundhog Day as far as the weather is concerned, but we’re in for another stretch of rain, with showers in the morning and scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. Temperatures will be in the high 70s and the humidity will be in the 90s. The weekend is looking fairly dry, though neither terribly warm nor sunny.
Hello? Summer? Where did you go? Whatever we need collectively to offend you, please let me apologize on behalf of all of us. Come back, OK? I understand this is all Elsa’s fault, but she’s reportedly moving very fast.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden delivered a vehement defense of his decision to end the war in Afghanistan, insisting no amount of sustained American presence there could resolve the country’s own intractable problems.
“Let me ask those who want us to stay: How many more?” Biden said in remarks in the East Room of the White House. “How many thousands more American daughters and sons are you willing to risk? And how long would you have them stay?”
Biden said that the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan is on track to end on Aug. 31, adding that his administration would move thousands of potentially endangered Afghan interpreters out of the country next month.
Biden’s frustrations with Afghanistan boiled over more than a decade ago, and they never again eased.
The White House is scheduled to issue an executive order today to promote competition throughout the U.S. economy in the most ambitious effort in generations to reduce the stranglehold of monopolies and concentrated markets in major industries.
Biden will issue a forthcoming executive order that calls on the Federal Trade Commission to adopt rules to curtail worker non-compete agreements, part of a broader set of executive actions aimed at increasing competition in the marketplace.
The Biden administration will push regulators to confront consolidation and perceived anticompetitive pricing in the ocean shipping and railroad industries as part of a broad effort to blunt the power of big business to dominate industries.
Advocates for marijuana legalization are expressing disappointment and frustration with the Biden administration’s response to Sha’Carri Richardson’s disqualification from the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Most people in the United States believe that Biden administration officials, and not the president himself, are directing the country’s agenda and policy, according to a national poll.
As the highly transmissible delta Covid variant continues to spread rapidly across the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, scientists and other health experts warn that indoor mask mandates and other public health measures will likely return this fall.
Pfizer and BioNTech announced they are developing a Covid-19 booster shot intended to target the delta variant as concerns rise about the highly transmissible strain that is already the dominant form of the disease in the United States.
In their news release, Pfizer and BioNTech also reported promising results from studies of people who received a third dose of the original vaccine, but the companies did not provide the data.
COVID-19 vaccine booster shots are not yet necessary, multiple federal agencies insisted.
“We are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed,” the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint statement.
Both foreign and local sports fans are now barred from attending Tokyo-area Olympic events as COVID-19 cases tick up in the city and the highly transmissible delta variant continues to spread.
It’s the latest setback for the Summer Olympics that have already been delayed for a year and racked up high costs for postponement. The state of emergency will begin Monday and run through Aug. 22. The games are scheduled July 23 to Aug. 8.
Africa has just had its “worst pandemic week ever,” the World Health Organization said. The continent is short of vaccines, and the virus is sickening its young people and overwhelming its already fragile health care systems.
The European Union has reopened to visitors from the United States, but the traffic has not been two-way. There are few clues as to when that will change.
Children are at extremely slim risk of dying from Covid-19, according to some of the most comprehensive studies to date, which indicate the threat might be even lower than previously thought.
Covid-19 infections in California are on the rise, as public health officials in the U.S. west warn that the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus is fast gaining ground.
At least seventeen people, including fifteen Colombians and two American citizens, were detained in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haitian officials said as they paraded the suspects before the news media.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo pleaded with inoculation-hesitant New Yorkers to get their COVID-19 shots, telling them that the vaccine is the only readily available safeguard against another severe coronavirus outbreak.
Cuomo called it a “tremendous personal benefit” to have led New York state amid the coronavirus crisis — during which he scored $5.1 million for his pandemic memoir.
Cuomo is stepping down as the head of the National Governor’s Association, handing off the leadership post to Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.
Chelsea Handler is over her Cuomo crush.
Democratic NYC mayoral nominee Eric Adams clarified remarks he made a day earlier about Cuomo’s announcement declaring gun violence a state of emergency, saying he didn’t intend them as a criticism of the governor.
“When I said ‘about time,’ it was not a criticism of Governor Cuomo; it was a criticism of our country,” Adams said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
If he takes over the reins at City Hall as expected next year, Adams should be willing to take an adversarial stance against Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in his first extensive public remarks on the Brooklyn borough president’s primary victory.
Adams, New York City’s Democratic nominee for mayor, said he has already met with police union heads to reset the relationship between the mayor and the force amid a spike in violence.
Cuomo’s four-year state of emergency for the MTA is officially over after his executive order quietly expired on June 28.
It was a constant refrain for the two leading female candidates running for mayor of New York City: The city has had 109 mayors, and all of them were men. It was finally time for a woman. But, not this time.
The Council, meanwhile, is poised to be one of the most progressive in the city’s history, with a diversity that mirrors the city it represents.
The race for City Council speaker has been quietly underway for months, but with the primary results decided, the jockeying now begins in earnest.
Former Democratic Queens Borough President candidate Elizabeth Crowley has called out incumbent Donovan Richards as a “Trump-like” bully after he called her a racist in a crude tweet celebrating his apparent photo-finish victory.
The city’s Board of Elections has asked federal and state officials to investigate whether a City Council candidate on Staten Island ran an illegal ballot-harvesting and forgery operation in last month’s primary – including registering dead people to vote for him.
Councilman Brad Lander, the city’s next comptroller after winning the Democratic primary, backed the current office holder’s effort to force de Blasio to restore normal checks on City Hall spending, which have been suspended since the pandemic began.
A construction group asked de Blasio to lift “confusing” mask requirements for vaccinated hard hats to give them relief amid the heat, prompting the city’s building department to relax face covering guidance in accordance with state and federal regulations
Highways across the city were overwhelmed with water, as rains ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa shut down the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx.
More than a dozen people were rescued from a flooded highway in the Bronx, and more rain was expected overnight as Tropical Storm Elsa hit.
The water was waist-deep at the W. 157th St. subway station in Washington Heights — but that wasn’t enough to deter one woman who became a local Twitter star as she waded through a passageway toward the southbound train platform.
The quest to build a permanent stadium for Major League Soccer team New York City FC has hit another delay, more than six years after the club’s first official game.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nydia Velazquez called on Biden to double the funding he’s proposed to fix public housing during a tour of a Brooklyn NYCHA complex which highlighted the long-standing problems they’re seeking to remedy.
After-school programs in New York City are scaling back their hours or canceling services altogether after the city’s Department of Education nearly tripled a fee that providers had to pay to use school facilities.
New York City officials unveiled a post-pandemic recovery plan that includes a “mosaic” curriculum to standardize English and math instruction across all 1,600 city schools.
New York City school police responded to more than 12,000 incidents between July 2016 and June 2020 involving children in emotional distress, at times handcuffing students as young as 5 years old, data released last month shows.
New York State Senator Anna Kaplan, who fled anti-Semitic violence in her home country of Iran in 1978, received a “vile piece of hate mail using well-known white supremacist, anti-Semitic hate speech” on June 22.
New York plans to explore the potential role of green hydrogen as part of the State’s comprehensive decarbonization strategy.
The Capital Region could soon see the start of five major infrastructure projects.
Tammis Groft, who has worked at the Albany Institute of History & Art for 45 years, became chief curator in 1987 and has run the museum for the past eight years, is retiring. She will stay on until a successor as executive director is hired.
Entrepreneurs Lisa and Ed Mitzen and their new foundation, Business For Good, are closing in on a deal to purchase Hattie’s Restaurant in Saratoga Springs and Hattie’s Chicken Shack in Wilton from Beth and Jasper Alexander.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Albany is contesting attempts by two financial institutions to recoup most or all of $17 million in assets seized by the government from Michael Mann, who swindled Pioneer Bank and others out of more than $100 million.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by former University at Albany women’s tennis players and their coach that accused the college of gender and age discrimination, and demanded restoration of the team.
Trinity Health, the parent company for Saint Peters Health Partners, announced the system will require all colleagues, clinical staff, contractors, and those conducting business in its facilities to get vaccinated against COVID-19 effective immediately.
Shake Shack and Chick-fil-A are among the new restaurants that will be included in the renovations of New York State Thruway service areas.
The owners of Crossgates Mall and the town have won an appeal that overturns an earlier lower court decision that had put on hold plans for a new Costco warehouse-style store and a 222-unit apartment complex next to the existing mall.
Albany County is preparing to pay more than $1 million to settle two separate lawsuits, including a second payment over allegations of brutality at the county jail.
Singer R. Kelly hasn’t seen a shred of documents in the sex-trafficking case against him, one of his lawyers claimed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Michael Avenatti was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for trying to extort Nike Inc. for more than $20 million, capping the public downfall of a celebrity lawyer whose star turn as Stormy Daniels’s pugnacious lawyer ended in criminal charges.
A civil jury in U.S. District Court cleared a former state correction officer of the allegation he planted a weapon on an inmate in Auburn Correctional Facility in 2016.
Former President Donald Trump reportedly scored more than $10,000 in May for housing Secret Service agents at his plush golf resort in the heart of New Jersey’s horse country.
Trump golfed in New Jersey with New York gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Giuliani.
Under fire for approving a questionable drug for all Alzheimer’s patients, the FDA greatly narrowed its previous recommendation and is now suggesting that only those with mild memory or thinking problems should receive it.
Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old from New Orleans, Louisiana, won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee, becoming the first African American contestant to win in 93 editions of the competition.
According to Zaila, even though she practiced for the competition seven hours a day, spelling is just her side hobby. She’s also a basketball prodigy.
A tiny Leonardo da Vinci sketch sold at Christie’s for £8.9 million with fees, or about $12.2 million, a record price for a Leonardo drawing at auction.
Madonna is the latest among many celebrities who have showed their vocal support for Britney Spears amid her bid to end her father’s conservatorship.
Britney Spears shouldn’t be forced to fund beefed-up security for her temporary conservator amid the wave of “dangerous rhetoric” targeting people involved in the pop star’s conservatorship, her dad Jamie Spears says.
Heinz Ketchup Canada has launched an online petition to make hot dogs and buns to come in equal packs.
