Good morning, it’s Thursday.
It’s Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, which focuses on atonement and repentance.
Traditionally, Jews observe this day with a sundown to sundown fast (it started last night), during which they engage in contemplation, confession of wrongdoings, and prayer, and seek reconciliation with G-d.
It is believed that your fate for the coming year, which was decided on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is sealed on this day in the Book of Life. The best and simplest explanation I’ve seen yet:
“The fully righteous are inscribed (in the Book of Life) for the year, the wholly evil are not inscribed and the rest of us need to work to make amends and make sure we have more good deeds than bad, if we want to be sealed for another year of life.” – Rabbi Andrea London, Temple Beth Emet, Evanston, Illinois.
This is not, for the record, a celebration or a happy holiday, so it’s inappropriate to wish someone a “Happy Yom Kippur.”
Instead, one might say “have an easy fast,” or the customary greeting, “G’mar chatima tova” – which translated into “may you be sealed in the Book of Life.”
Since this is a somber day and a day when many of us are trying not to think about food (or drink, for that matter), I’m going to keep things on the short side.
After the intense storms we saw last night, it should be a fairly quiet day, weather-wise, with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s. There MIGHT be a stray shower or thunderstorm about. You’ve been warned.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden announced a new working group with Britain and Australia to share advanced technologies — including the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines — in a thinly veiled bid to counter China.
This comes after Biden’s decision not to call Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison during the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan sparked concern about the status of the longtime alliance.
Biden said he has “great confidence” in Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s leadership after being asked about assertions leveled in a new book about Milley’s actions in the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A growing number of Republican lawmakers want Milley ousted over revelations that he sought to block former President Trump from launching military or nuclear strikes in his turbulent final days in the White House.
Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, one of the most influential moderate Democrats in the House, announced she cannot support Biden’s cornerstone $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act as it is now written.
A proposal by congressional Democrats to increase federal cigarette and cigar taxes, while introducing new vape levies, would not break Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on households earning less than $400,000 a year, according to the White House.
Pope Francis said Catholic bishops must minister with “compassion and tenderness,” not condemnation, to politicians who support abortion rights and warned that clerics shouldn’t let politics enter into questions about receiving Communion.
Francis was asked en route home from Slovakia about the debate in the U.S. church about whether Biden and other politicians should be denied Communion because of their stances on abortion.
Francis said he was puzzled why so many people, including some cardinals in Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, have refused to get inoculated against COVID-19.
Even in the College of Cardinals, there are some negationists,” Francis said, noting that one of them, “poor guy,” had been hospitalized with the virus. That was an apparent reference to U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke.
A week before Biden’s booster plan is to roll out, scientists are at odds about whether extra coronavirus shots are needed and for whom.
Wading into an acrimonious debate over booster doses, researchers in Israel reported that a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine can prevent both infections and severe illness in adults older than 60 for at least 12 days.
The FDA offered the first public look at Pfizer’s application for a booster coronavirus shot, two days before an outside advisory committee of experts is scheduled to meet to recommend whether or not the agency should approve the company’s request.
The FDA said vaccines cleared in the U.S. currently provide sufficient protection against severe disease and death from Covid-19 without additional doses, potentially complicating the Biden administration’s deliberations over the need for booster shots.
Biden met with with executives from some of the country’s biggest companies, including Disney, Microsoft and Walgreens, to discuss his sweeping COVID-19 vaccine mandate announced last week.
Biden called the results of California’s recall vote “a resounding win” for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically citing the state’s strong vaccine requirements.
Newsom’s win could provide a model for other Democrats to solidify their footing ahead of midterm elections next year and the Virginia governor contest this year that present challenges for the party.
After the rapper Nicki Minaj questioned the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine in a post on Twitter this week, the White House confirmed that it had offered her a call with a doctor to answer questions about the safety of the vaccine.
Arizona’s attorney general filed the first lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s new mandate for most U.S. workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, calling the upcoming emergency rule an unconstitutional exercise of “unbridled power.”
A new online tool helps people calculate their risk of getting COVID-19 based on specific scenarios.
Wendy Williams has tested positive for COVID-19 and her eponymous talk show’s season 13 premiere has been delayed until next month.
As school districts across the country reopen, some state officials are voicing concern about the vulnerability of children as the highly contagious coronavirus Delta variant takes aim at the unvaccinated.
Health officials are investigating a cluster of at least 16 Covid cases linked to an electronic music festival earlier this month on Randalls Island in New York City and urging everyone who attended the event to get tested.
After months of delay, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has agreed to reimburse New York City’s public hospital system almost $1 billion for its expenses treating patients during the city’s brutal first wave of Covid-19 in 2020.
The MTA plans to extend a $500,000 death benefit to its employees who die of COVID-related causes through the end of 2021, a senior authority official said. But the benefit will remain unavailable to those who decline to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut officials can’t play nice in talks over how to divide up federal COVID mass transit relief money — so they’re asking the feds to referee.
New York City’s largest municipal labor union launched a full-court press against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s order to return to work, after a state Supreme Court granted it and other unions a temporary restraining order on the implementation of vaccine mandates.
A New York City Housing Authority staffer blasted out a wild email chain laden with debunked COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories to agency honchos and dozens of reporters.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a series of universal mask requirements designed to protect New Yorkers against the highly contagious Delta variant and the recent surge in COVID-19 infections statewide.
“People need to start realizing that when you stand and up and say you want to be a public health official in any capacity you have to be healthy yourselves,” Hochul said. “There will be court decisions that we’ll appeal – we’re going to continue appealing those and try to appeal on the merits.”
Effective yesterday, masks are required at child care and day care centers in New York State. They are also now required at state-regulated congregate day programs, like outpatient substance abuse programs, and inpatient facilities.
The requirement applies to State Office of Children and Family Services-licensed and -registered child care centers, home-based group family and family child care programs, after-school child care programs and enrolled legally exempt group programs.
Members of the commission tasked with drawing new legislative boundaries for House seats and the state Senate and Assembly signaled they couldn’t agree on the same set of proposed maps for dividing up New York’s voters, and so released two competing maps.
“We were not able to come to a consensus on a single map,” said Republican co-chair and former state Sen. Jack Martins. “I see our responsibility as a commission as putting aside partisan differences…We tried to, and unfortunately it was for naught.”
With New York slated to lose a seat in its congressional delegation after last year’s census, both parties proposed collapsing a district upstate, where the population has declined, but differed on how to do so.
The website for New York’s bipartisan commission on redistricting crashed as it released two dueling U.S. Congressional maps, one proposed by Republican members and the other by Democrats.
Hochul reaffirmed her commitment to healthcare worker COVID-19 vaccine mandates after one federal judge and health professionals sued New York State.
Hochul is already thinking about the upcoming holiday season, urging people to gather and have fun – if they’re vaccinated.
Hochul said she “literally” doesn’t know the former judge she appointed to the state’s ethics panel — who turned around and cast the deciding vote to let her disgraced predecessor keep $5.1 million from his controversial book deal.
Hochul defended her appointment of Acting JCOPE Chair James Dering, who previously worked for former Gov. Cuomo, which critics said sent the wrong message.
Hochul announced that New York’s revenue is expected to be $2.1 billion higher in each of the next four years, and budget gaps for the 2024-2025 fiscal year will be reduced by nearly $2 billion.
De Blasio and top administration officials attempted to shift focus on the crisis at Rikers Island to Hochul and the state court system, urging the governor to sign into law a bill that would reduce the types of parole violations people are incarcerated for.
Hochul said that even though Rikers is a city-run jail complex, the problems at the much-maligned facility could rise to the level of state intervention.
City officials moved to persuade Rikers Island officers to show up for work. Department of Correction investigators delivered suspension notices to the homes of roughly 20 AWOL officers.
In a win for more than one million New York City renters, a federal judge dismissed the final two of five landlord-brought lawsuits seeking to undo sweeping rent reforms passed by the state Legislature in 2019.
A GoFundMe fundraising page created to support the family of Kyle Van De Water, an Army veteran and former congressional candidate who died unexpectedly last week, has raised almost $27,000 in donations since the page went live on Sept. 9.
Britain’s High Court agreed to intervene in a sexual assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew, clearing the way for him to answer a legal claim in the United States that he sexually abused a minor while a guest of Jeffrey Epstein.
Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s hard-charging music director, announced that he would leave his post at the end of the 2023-24 season, saying that the pandemic had made him rethink his life and priorities.
The Empire State Building once symbolized an urban way of working, and the city’s resilience. In the pandemic’s second year, the future of the world’s most famous skyscraper is in doubt.
A man dining with his date at the swanky celebrity hangout Philippe on Manhattan’s East Side was shot in the leg during a brazen robbery in the outdoor seating area, police sources said.
A construction company owner was sentenced to prison and paid $100,000 in partial restitution to homebuyers, business owners and lenders he defrauded out of more than $1 million.
The New York State Writers Institute announced this year’s state author and state poet: writer Ayad Akhtar and poet Willie Perdomo.
A once-popular roller skating rink in Ulster County could be sold to the Town of Rochester.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand held a hearing in Washington on modernizing the federal dairy pricing system.
WNYT has announced their new weekday morning team.
With talk of a $1.4 billion price tag for a new Bills stadium in Orchard Park and taxpayers covering part of that figure, some are now pressing for the powers that be in Albany to bring those discussions out into the open for the public.
Olympic gymnasts McKayla Maroney and Simone Biles ripped the FBI and the Justice Department in Senate testimony for how FBI agents mishandled abuse allegations against Larry Nassar and made false statements in the fallout from the botched investigation.
Biles broke down in tears while explaining to a Senate committee that she doesn’t want any more young people to experience the suffering she endured from Larry Nassar, the former national team doctor.
FBI agents failed to respond with the “seriousness and urgency” required after first hearing reports about Nassar’s abuse in the summer of 2015, according to a recent report published by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.
An ABC News staffer claimed the network retaliated against her after she filed a complaint early this year alleging that she was sexually assaulted by Michael Corn, who was then her boss as the top producer of “Good Morning America.”
A SpaceX rocket lifted off last night from a launchpad at Kennedy Space CEnter, carrying four Americans on an adventure to orbit the Earth for three days that will be like no other.
