Good Monday morning. I have two diametrically opposed openers for you today.
First, it’s the start of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which is a festival of giving thanks for many things – the fall harvest, shelter – and also commemorates the biblical story of the Jews’ escape from Egypt when they wandered in the desert for 40 years, living in temporary hut-like structures.
Sukkot is also known as the “Festival of Tabernacles” and the “Feast of Booths.”
The most noticeable thing about the celebration of Sukkot is that observant Jews will build one of these structures – called a sukkah, usually of metal or wooden walls, which must be open to the air and have a roof, usually of branches and leaves, through which one can see the sky.
Once the sukkah is completed, Jews then eat their meals there throughout the entirety of the holiday, which lasts through Monday, Sept. 27 this year. (In some countries where it’s warmer at this time of year, people also sleep in the sukkah).
Another notable ritual (unless it’s Shabbat) is to take four types of plant material: an etrog (a citron fruit), a palm branch, a myrtle branch, and a willow branch (all three together are called the “lulav”), and “rejoice with them”, as per Leviticus 23: 39-40, which generally entails waving them or shaking them about.
There’s actually a method to the waving/shaking, too. The lulav is held in the right hand, the etrog is held in the left, and the two should be touching one another.
One should stand facing east and hold this duo out in front of the body and shake three times. This procedure is repeated three more times – once to the right, once to the left, and once over the shoulder – to cover all directions, (north, south, east and west), while reciting the appropriate blessing.
And here’s the second thing, at the complete other end of the spectrum – it’s National Pepperoni Pizza Day. (Pepperoni, of course, is not kosher, hence the polar opposites here).
Pepperoni pizza is the second most popular type of pizza in the U.S., coming in behind the gold standard, plain cheese. And it also originated here, as opposed to Italy, and reportedly first appeared in New Haven, CT, which is apparently known for its high-quality pizza. (Sorry, NYC, I’m just telling it like I read it).
Pepperoni is not my pizza of choice. I don’t like how pockets of hot oil pool in the curved-up slices and lurk there as potential roof-of-mouth burning bombs. I prefer pizza bianca, also known as white pizza, with veggies, personally. Sausage is also good. And mushroom. And sometimes, if I’m in the mood, anchovy. Yep. Love ’em.
We’re in for another beautiful day, with temperatures in the mid-70s and mostly sunny skies.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden faces a series of headaches big and small going into the United Nations’ annual summit in New York City.
Biden is scheduled to address the General Assembly for the first time as president tomorrow, planning to appear in person after last year’s virtual gathering.
France stepped up its opposition to an agreement the U.S. crafted with Australia and the U.K., criticizing the Biden administration’s failure to keep allies apprised of sweeping policy initiatives after the pact led to the loss of a lucrative French submarine deal.
No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks.
The fate of Biden’s economic agenda rests largely on Speaker Nancy Pelosi navigating deep Democratic rifts and the minefield of promises she’s made to keep the party’s moderate and progressive wings moving toward her goal.
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is privately saying he thinks Congress should take a “strategic pause” until 2022 before voting on Biden’s $3.5 trillion social-spending package.
Manchin’s new timeline — if he insists on it — would disrupt the plans by Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to vote on the budget reconciliation package this month.
Manchin, who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is already a crucial swing vote in the Democrats’ sweeping budget bill. But he will also write the details of its climate change program.
A partisan fight over raising the borrowing limit is expected to ratchet up this week, with Democrats moving ahead with a vote despite GOP opposition, raising doubts about whether Congress will take action before the federal government runs out of cash.
The Senate parliamentarian ruled against a plan to legalize undocumented immigrants in the U.S. through a budget bill, dealing a significant, if not fatal, blow to an effort Democrats viewed as their best chance to place millions on a pathway to citizenship.
Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough wrote in her ruling, “Changing the law to clear the way to (Legal Permanent Resident) status is tremendous and enduring policy change that dwarfs its budgetary impact.”
Democrats are next expected to pitch a backup plan that would provide a similar pathway to citizenship, but probably not cover as many people, according to sources familiar with the talks. But the ruling released Sunday is an ominous sign for its chances.
Biden made it clear that he backs the effort to include a pathway to citizenship in the reconciliation package and he expects Democrats to offer a new proposal for the Senate parliamentarian to consider.
Schumer said that Democrats are “deeply disappointed in the decision” but plan to meet with the Senate parliamentarian in the coming days and pursue other options.
The U.S. closed part of the Texas border and started flying Haitians back to their home country after thousands seeking asylum camped under the international bridge in Del Rio.
Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their country said they won’t be deterred by U.S. plans to send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border after crossing from Mexico.
Haiti migration officials have asked the United States for a “humanitarian moratorium” even as they receive the first returnees from Texas.
Warning of Texas-style laws nationwide, Democrats believe they can use the issue to turn out suburban women in the Virginia governor’s race this fall and the 2022 midterms.
An antiabortion group in Texas says it is looking into a physician’s claim that he defied a state law that recently took effect by performing an abortion on a woman past the sixth week of her pregnancy.
In an opinion essay published in the Washington Post, Alan Braid disclosed that he performed the abortion earlier in September.
The global recovery is slowing as Covid-19 resurges, spurring governments to try to raise vaccination rates in hopes of fueling stronger economic growth.
The average U.S. daily death toll from Covid-19 over the last seven days surpassed 2,000 this weekend, the first time since March 1 that deaths have been so high, according to a New York Times database.
Comic and actor Chris Rock, 56, told his social media followers that he is sick with Covid-19 after a breakthrough infection, and the comedian urged people to get vaccinated.
An FDA panel endorsed emergency approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster shot at least six months following the second dose among people ages 65 and older and those at high risk of occupational exposure and severe COVID-19.
The panel stopped short of justifying boosters for the broader population, even as the dangerous Delta variant of the virus continues to spread.
Top U.S. health officials urged patience on broader approval for booster shots for the coronavirus vaccine.
Americans can expect a decision on COVID vaccines for children in the fall, the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said.
Pfizer has released the list of side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, and they’re pretty similar to the side effects from the second dose.
Federal public health officials are still wrestling with who should get Covid-19 booster shots and when, but that hasn’t stopped some states from moving ahead on their own.
Hundreds of thousands of white flags planted on the National Mall in D.C. honor the more than 670,000 people in the United States who have died from the coronavirus.
Since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, thousands of women in the UK have been saying that their periods have been disrupted, say experts.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves stood by his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, despite having the highest number of deaths per capita from the virus and no statewide vaccine or masking mandate.
While the Delta variant has delayed plans by many U.S. companies to bring employees back to offices en masse, New York City workers who have been trickling into Midtown Manhattan are discovering that many of their favorite haunts have disappeared.
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Times Square Saturday to protest coronavirus vaccine mandate requirements.
New York and New Jersey are in a spat over mass transit funding — and the feds are steering clear. The two neighboring states, along with Connecticut, have $14.2 billion of federal money but can’t agree on how to spend it.
A veteran NYPD officer has died of COVID-19, the latest member of the city police department to succumb to the coronavirus.
After SpaceX completed a historic, private spaceflight on Saturday, CEO Elon Musk took a pot shot at Biden who had yet to remark on the company’s and the civilian flight crew’s accomplishments.
Musk’s Tesla is readying a major upgrade of its driver-assistance software, but the top federal crash investigator says the move might be premature.
New York City should conduct weekly COVID tests for students at all schools with kids under age 12, the United Federation of Teachers said.
If eating out at New York City restaurants wasn’t already different enough during the COVID-19 pandemic, some businesses are going through another change: beefed-up security.
A high school in Boston, Massachusetts was forced to use a party bus equipped with stripper poles to transport students on a field trip, after the ongoing national school bus driver shortage left no other options.
Gov. Kathy Hochul says the state has come up with a plan to address the school bus driver shortage throughout the state.
The plan includes short-term steps to remove barriers and recruit traditional and non-traditional Commercial Driver’s License holders, expand CDL testing opportunities, and enhance processes all designed to get more drivers into school buses.
“Our schools and public health officials have moved mountains to ensure our children receive an in-person education this year, and we are leaving no stone unturned to make sure schools have adequate bus service to bring students to school and back,” Hochul said.
Hochul returned to her alma mater Syracuse University yesterday to give the commencement address to the class of 2020. The ceremony had been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
New York officials are scrambling to address alarming conditions at the Rikers Island jail complex, one of the nation’s largest detention centers. Lawyers and lawmakers say the safety of inmates and officers has never been more imperiled.
Hochul on Friday ordered the release of nearly 200 detainees from New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, underscoring the growing alarm about violence and unbridled disorder at the notorious facility.
Hochul joined SEIU 32BJ to highlight recently signed legislation to increase wages for essential service workers with Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin.
Letizia Tagliafierro, the New York State inspector general, resigned on Friday, becoming the latest in a string of high-profile departures from state government as allies and appointees of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo follow him into private life.
The acting inspector general, until Hochul can make her own appointment, will be Chief Deputy Inspector General Robyn Adair.
The state IG’s oversight waned under Cuomo, with the office criticized for a lack of independence and lackluster probes.
They had no luck with Cuomo but now a pair of Schenectady-area lawmakers are asking Hochul for help in restoring pensions for more than 1,000 people who worked at the now-closed St. Clare’s Hospital.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, a staunch conservative from Long Island and the leading Republican candidate in next year’s race for governor in New York, revealed that he was diagnosed with leukemia last year and has been receiving treatment.
Zeldin, 41, told attendees at an Ontario County Republican Party dinner on Friday night that he had been grappling with the diagnosis of early-stage chronic myeloid leukemia since November 2020.
Zeldin’s diagnosis had not been disclosed before this weekend, even as he announced his intentions to run for New York governor. He says his health now is “phenomenal” and he’s in remission.
“Successfully treated early chronic myeloid leukemia is now a chronic disease, which carries a normal life expectancy,” Zeldin’s hematologist, Dr. Jeffrey Vacirca, said in a statement released by Zeldin’s campaign and congressional office.
Wednesday marks 100 days left in office for NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, and between the volatile prison conditions on Rikers Island, slow implementation of a street safety program and anxiety mounting over another powerful storm, his work is cut out for him.
De Blasio’s press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, will be stepping down to start a city-based progressive political consulting firm.
A new mayor means a new boss at the NYPD next year — and she’ll have her hands full dealing with the city’s surging gun violence, cops’ sagging morale and the department’s frayed community relations. Yes, the commissioner will likely be a “she.”
New York City police unions that hold partial control over how their members’ pension money is invested are planning to pull out of a consortium of other city pension funds that Comptroller Scott Stringer credited with augmenting their return on investment.
Schumer pointed to record-breaking cases of West Nile virus cases in NYC this year as evidence mosquito populations are out of control.
Newly appointed Niskayuna police chief Jordan Kochan is well aware of the many challenges ahead of him in a department where morale is low and negative attention has been a focus for the past few months.
Saratoga Springs cyclists are asking city leaders to commit to making room for the bike lanes within the next three years, linking and expanding the current strips of disjoined byways.
East Greenbush residents were vocal in March speaking against the S.A. Dunn Landfill in the neighboring city of Rensselaer. They’ll have another chance to comment at an upcoming public hearing.
Licensed businesses will be allowed to sell marijuana in Ballston, but their customers won’t be able to enjoy their purchase until they leave the store.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro will seek to challenge Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck, for his seat in Congress in 2022, according to paperwork filed by the Republican on Friday.
Human remains believed to belong to Gabrielle (Gabby) Petito, a Florida woman reported missing after her fiancé returned home from a monthslong van trip without her, were found in a national park in Wyoming, the F.B.I. said at a news conference.
“Full forensic identification has not been completed to confirm 100% that we found Gabby, but her family has been notified of this discovery,” said Charles Jones, FBI Denver’s supervisory senior resident agent in Wyoming.
The FBI said the body was found by law enforcement agents who had spent the past two days searching campgrounds. The cause of death has not yet been determined.
Dozens of Florida law enforcement officials began a second day of combing through a 24,000 square-acre wildlife park on the Gulf Coast in search of Brian Laundrie, whose family said they last saw him Tuesday.
“The Crown,” the lush Netflix chronicle of the ups and downs of the British royal family, won the prize for best drama at the 73rd Emmy Awards, propelling the tech giant to its first ever victory in one of television’s biggest prizes.
The Emmys was among the first few award shows to have returned to normal in-person broadcasts since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. At the show, few audiences members wore masks or maintained social distancing.
