And, just like that…it’s August. I can feel summer galloping to an all-too-rapid end. It’s a bummer.
Adding insult to injury, it’s also Monday. But time waits for no hu(man), and so good morning. Let’s get to it.
If you missed yesterday’s Google Doodle, it’s worth going back for a look; it celebrated the “Turkana Human,” which is more commonly known as “Turkana Boy” – the most complete early human skeleton ever found, changed scientific understanding about early human beings, as it was an uniquely complete skeleton that walked upright.
Turkana Boy was discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu, a legendary Kenyan fossil collector who was part of a team led by paleontologist Richard Leakey, and was about 1.5 to 1.6 million years old.
To take the edge off the fact that the workweek is starting up again, (except for those of you who might be enjoying a well-earned summer vacation), today is National Ice Cream Sandwich Day.
This creamy treat is believed to have originated right here in New York – New York City, to be exact, where a pushcart salesman allegedly invented it in 1899. The version we know today, however, was reportedly created in Pennsylvania.
There are all sorts of ice cream sandwiches, but the traditional kind with the chocolate wafer that melts off on your fingers is manufactured by Hood, which sells more than 9,000 cases a week (about 100,000 sandwiches) during the peak season.
The most ice cream sandwiches are consumed during the month of July, and Eastern Seaboard consumes almost 50% of all ice cream sandwiches in the country.
The traditional version has vanilla ice cream, but apparently now there’s a limited edition “unicorn confetti” flavor, too.
For those of you who prefer a higher-end version of the ice cream sandwich, the Chipwich was invented in 1978 by Richard LaMotta, who died in 2010. I have to confess that I haven’t had one of these in a very long time, but as I recall, they were very good.
Ice cream sandwiches are best consumed, in my humble opinion, when it’s very hot out and you have to struggle to decide whether you want to make the treat last and risk getting it all over yourself while it melts or eat it very quickly and flirt with brain freeze.
Unfortunately, the weather has been not very ice cream sandwich-condusive of late – more like fall than summer, to be honest. Today, we’ll see partly cloud skies and temperatures in the mid70s.
In the headlines…
The U.S. Senate has finalized the text of its $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — a top legislative priority for President Joe Biden — is more than 2,700-pages long.
Now that the text is complete, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer submitted it as the substitute amendment, making it the base of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. This allows the Senate to begin on what could be a days-long amendment process.
“Given how bipartisan the bill is, and how much work has already been put in to get the details right, I believe the Senate can quickly process relevant amendments and pass this bill in a matter of days,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Senators and staff labored behind the scenes for days to write the massive bill. It was supposed to be ready Friday, but by yesterday even more glitches were caught and changes made.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed Democratic leadership for allowing the nation’s eviction moratorium to expire and said the White House wasn’t being “forthright” about its desire for Congress to act until it was too late.
Lawmakers said they were blindsided by Biden’s inaction as the moratorium deadline neared, some furious that he called on Congress to protect renters. The rare division between the president and his party carried potential lasting political ramifications.
With the country’s eviction moratorium over as of midnight Saturday, landlords should step up efforts to get federal relief, White House economic adviser Brian Deese said.
An estimated 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, some as soon as today.
The potentially widespread displacement of low-income renters looks poised to hit Southern states particularly hard.
Kosovo’s president this weekend awarded a medal to Biden’s late son, Beau, for his service in building the country’s justice system after war ended more than two decades ago.
Biden announced that he was appointing Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father who drew then-candidate Donald Trump’s ire when he spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Trump has $102 million in political cash he can wield as the GOP eyes retaking majorities in Congress next year, according to filings made Saturday night with the Federal Election Commission.
Hundreds of scientists and policy experts left the government during the Trump administration. The jobs remain unfilled nearly six months into Biden’s term, slowing his climate agenda.
The Biden administration’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said he didn’t believe the U.S. would return to lockdowns but warned that “things are going to get worse” as a more contagious variant of the coronavirus has led to a surge of new cases.
“I don’t think we’re going to see lockdowns,” Fauci said. “I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country, not enough to crush the outbreak, but I believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter.”
Growing numbers of people are getting vaccinated in areas hit hard by the Delta variant, offering a glimmer of hope but still falling far short of what is needed to fight Covid-19, public-health officials say.
Influential public sector unions are pushing back on a new vaccination requirement for federal workers in a rare split with the Biden administration.
A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida yesterday broke a previous record for hospitalizations, as the number of patients admitted because of COVID-19 once again broke through the 10,000-person threshold.
An analysis by British academics says that they believe it is “almost certain” that a SARS-Cov-2 variant will emerge that “leads to current vaccine failure.” SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes Covid-19.
Provincetown, Mass., the quirky community at the tip of Cape Cod, thought it was safe to return to pre-pandemic partying. It wasn’t.
About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated against the coronavirus with four of them ending up in the hospital, according to new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Actress Sharon Stone says she was “threatened” with losing work for insisting that everyone working on her next project be fully vaccinated from the coronavirus.
A survey of data from 10 states shows that more than one million doses have gone to waste since the nation began administering Covid-19 vaccines in December.
Stunned business executives are struggling to adjust to the rapidly shifting environment caused by Covid-19′s delta variant, rocked by a cascade of evolving mask and vaccine recommendations from federal, state, and local officials.
Companies across the U.S. economy are raising pay to recruit workers in a tight labor market, increases that are rippling through firms and prompting employers to rethink pay for existing staffers.
Retired NFL fullback Anthony Sherman lashed out against the NFL’s training camp policy of using wristbands to indicate COVID-19 vaccination status to racial segregation.
Despite the spread of the highly-contagious delta coronavirus variant, Ireland is betting on “vaccine passes” to fully reopen its bars and restaurants.
The White House has teamed up with TikTok stars to counter vaccine misinformation, while some states are paying “local micro influencers” for pro-vaccine campaigns.
Health officials have expressed concern over a simultaneous rise in Delta infections and cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., a highly contagious, seasonal flulike illness that is more likely to affect children and older adults.
Ammunition is reportedly flying off of shelves across the country as anxious Americans — who purchased a record number of firearms during the pandemic — lock and load up in response to social unrest and an increase in violence.
New York had more than 3,000 people test positive for COVID-19 Friday, the highest one-day total and first time over that threshold since early May, in just the latest consequence of the delta variant’s rapid spread.
People with compromised immune systems and the unvaccinated make up a high percentage of patients who end up in the hospital in New York.
The Capital Region had the highest test positivity rate, when measured on a seven-day average, at 3.31 percent.
Four Capital Region counties now have coronavirus transmission rates considered high enough for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend indoor mask-wearing by all.
Cornell University is reinstating its mask requirement at its Ithaca and Geneva campuses.
Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, just might be the biggest wild card in the still-young race to run against Cuomo or another Democratic nominee in 2022.
The woman who accused Cuomo of groping her at the Executive Mansion last year informed her attorney that she would be willing to take a polygraph lie-detector examination, and that she would also like the governor to submit to one as well.
The state Department of Health is lawyering up amid multiple investigations into Cuomo’s alleged mishandling of New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Developers, landlords, building lenders and other industry associates pumped nearly $500,000 into Cuomo’s re-election coffers over the past six months.
Sandra Lee, 55, made her first red carpet appearance since her breakup with Cuomo and subsequent breast reconstruction surgery in Italy on Saturday. She said she’s having the “best summer of my life.”
Michael Henry, a Republican commercial litigation lawyer, is seeking to take on Democratic incumbent Letitia James in the race for state attorney general next year.
Brad Lander, a City Councilman poised to become comptroller after winning the Democratic primary, was once a staunch supporter of Israel, but declared his approval for the ice cream company’s controversial decision to stop selling in the West Bank.
Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams decried weekend violence that terrified a Queens neighborhood and repeated calls for a federal partnership to fight guns and gangs.
Adams is calling for the creation of a new joint task force with federal and state authorities to combat surging city gang violence.
“The people who were shot here were not members of gangs, for the most part,” Adams said. “They were ordinary New Yorkers. That is a mass shooting.”
Adams, who says he’s running against the far-left socialist “movement” led by Ocasio-Cortez, will actually face off against a socialist foe in the general election.
Adams once again distanced himself from his party’s left-leaning flank, declaring the United States is not a “socialist country.”
“This is a country that believes in giving people the opportunities (so) that they will be able to succeed and excel in this country.” Adams said.
Democratic Socialist “bogeyman” Tiffany Cabán, a City Council candidate, is extending a peace offering to Adams after he declared war on her far-left movement.
Retired priest and former New York City Councilman Louis Gigante was slapped with a lawsuit that accused him of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old boy in the 1970s in a Bible study course.
A set of railroad tracks abandoned a half-century ago may be key to speeding up commutes for tens of thousands of Queens residents — but a report published by an advocacy group suggests the MTA has no interest in moving the project forward.
Three top NYPD execs are collecting hefty pensions from their time on the force in addition to six-figure salaries for their current civilian roles — including the man tasked with keeping cops honest, Internal Affairs boss Joseph Reznick.
A 40-year-old man was held 291 days past his prison release date because state officials couldn’t find housing to treat his bipolar and depressive disorders, a lawsuit claims. He was one of an unknown number of mentally ill New York prisoners in the same situation.
The Buffalo Bills are considering a move to Austin, TX as a leverage play to help get public funding for a new, $1.5 billion stadium.
The proposed merger of SEFCU and CAP COM would, at $8 billion, place the combined organization in the nation’s top 30 credit unions and one of the top five in New York state.
Resident and community groups in the South End of Albany are fighting to save the iconic shape of the Lincoln Park Pool as the city weighs how to replace it.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany engaged in a decades-long cover-up of chronic child sexual abuse committed by its priests by employing practices described in a recent statement from ex-Bishop Howard Hubbard, who ran the diocese from 1977 to 2014.
Gymnast MyKayla Skinner almost went home after failing to qualify for any individual events at the Tokyo Olympics. Yesterday, she won a silver medal.
“GO @mykaylaskinner2016 I’m so freaking proud of you,” Simone Biles wrote in an Instagram Story after her Team USA peer claimed silver in the individual vault competition.
Newly crowned women’s gymnastics all-around champ Suni Lee competed in the uneven bars final, adding a bronze medal to her Olympics hardware collection
Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi has one of the more heartwarming moments of the 2020 Toyko Games when the two high jumpers decided to share the gold medal instead of having a jump off to declare a single winner.
Tokyo Games organizers said they are investigating after a group of athletes were found drinking alcohol in the Olympic village this week, violating measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
A Belarusian sprinter said that she was under the protection of the Japanese police after her country’s Olympic Committee tried, but failed, to forcibly send her home after she criticized her coaches for registering her for the wrong event.
Averill Park’s Rudy Winkler has earned a spot in the Olympic hammer throw finals Wednesday.
DaBaby’s scheduled performance at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago was canceled after the rapper made homophobic comments that other music artists condemned.
