Good Tuesday morning.
Here’s something everyone can get behind (I hope): It’s the International Day of Peace (AKA World Peace Day), which coincides with the opening day of the annual sessions of the UN General Assembly.
Beginning in 2002, this day marked not only a time to discuss how to promote and maintain peace among all peoples but also a 24-hour period of global ceasefire and non-violence for groups in active combat.
The theme of this year’s World Peace Day is “Recovering Better for an Equitable And Sustainable World.” Says the UN:
“In 2021, as we heal from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are inspired to think creatively and collectively about how to help everyone recover better, how to build resilience, and how to transform our world into one that is more equal, more just, equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and healthier.”
“…The pandemic has been accompanied by a surge in stigma, discrimination, and hatred, which only cost more lives instead of saving them: the virus attacks all without caring about where we are from or what we believe in. Confronting this common enemy of humankind, we must be reminded that we are not each other’s enemy. To be able to recover from the devastation of the pandemic, we must make peace with one another.”
Amen.
I’m not sure what more there is to say, really.
To observe this day, the Peace Bell is rung at UN Headquarters. The bell is made from coins donated by children from all continents except Africa. It was a gift from the UN Association of Japan, as “a reminder of the human cost of war”; the inscription on its side reads, “Long live absolute world peace”.
Also worth noting: it’s World Gratitude Day.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a hard time feeling grateful of late. Things are just so…complicated and depressing. But I have it a heck of a lot better than so many others.
It’s a good time to try to put things in perspective, and try to be thankful for the things I do have – food, shelter, a loving family, an amazing dog…I mean, a REALLY AMAZING DOG!! What more is there?
Another reason to be grateful: Another good weather day is on tap, with a mix of sun and clouds and temperatures in the mid-70s.
In the headlines…
U.S. stocks began the week deeply in the red as investors continued to flock to the sidelines in September amid several emerging risks for the market.
The S&P 500 fell 1.7% to 4,357.73, posting its worst daily performance since May 12, as investors nervously eyed the potential ripple effects of the default of a major Chinese real estate company, as well as ongoing debates over the debt limit in Washington.
The punishing selloff accelerated midday, sending the Dow down as much as 972 points at its low of the session, before the blue-chip gauge pared some losses.
When President Joe Biden mounts the iconic green marble rostrum inside the hall of the United Nations General Assembly on today, he will face an audience skeptical he really is as different from his predecessor as he likes to claim.
The White House sees the speech to the UN general assembly as a chance to reclaim the global initiative and convince UN member states that “America is back”, as Biden promised when he took office.
Biden will speak about the importance of not entering a new Cold War with China, Russia or other countries.
He will reiterate pledges he made during his campaign to renew U.S. engagement with international institutions and to improve the nation’s standing in the world, according to a senior administration official.
More than 50 percent of registered Latino voters in Texas say they disapprove of the job Biden has done as over 12,600 immigrants remain under the Del Rio International Bridge along the southern Texas border and the ongoing immigration crisis rages on.
The Biden administration announced an interagency plan to deal with the effects of frequent extreme heat waves caused by global warming.
The Biden administration wants to nearly double the number of refugees admitted to the United States to 125,000 in the upcoming fiscal year starting on Oct. 1 in keeping with a campaign promise, according to a statement from the State Department.
Biden’s decision is unlikely to affect two groups most recently in the news: tens of thousands of people from Kabul fleeing the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and more than 15,000 Haitians in a makeshift camp under a bridge at the southern border.
Democrats will pair a stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded through December with an extension of the borrowing limit through the end of 2022, increasing pressure on Republicans to support legislation needed to avert a fiscal catastrophe.
Several progressive groups are launching a $2 million campaign to pressure Republican lawmakers up for reelection in key states to back Biden’s agenda.
The Biden administration is opening an effort across federal agencies to address the health impacts from heat, including the first ever labor standard aimed at protecting workers from extreme heat.
The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to reaffirm Roe v. Wade when it hears a case challenging Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law, arguing another decision would uphold an unconstitutional law and undermine a doctrine that gives power to precedents.
A man in Arkansas and another in Illinois filed what appeared to be the first legal actions under a strict new abortion law in Texas that is enforced by ordinary citizens, regardless of where they live.
Covid-19 is officially the most deadly outbreak in recent American history, surpassing the estimated U.S. fatalities from the 1918 influenza pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Covid-19 infections have continued to increase “exponentially” among children across the US, and now account for nearly 26% of all cases reported nationwide, according to data published yesterday.
The Biden administration will lift travel restrictions starting in November for foreigners who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, reopening the country to thousands of people.
The halt to the 18-month ban on travel from 33 countries, including members of the European Union, China, Iran, South Africa, Brazil and India, will help rejuvenate a U.S. tourism industry that was left crippled by the pandemic.
Starting in early November, foreign nationals will be allowed to fly into the U.S. if they are fully vaccinated and able to show proof of vaccination prior to boarding a U.S.-bound flight, White House Covid coordinator Jeffrey Zients said.
Biden will urge other vaccine-producing countries to balance their domestic needs with a renewed focus on manufacturing and distributing doses to poor nations in desperate need of them.
The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine has been shown to be safe and highly effective in young children aged 5 to 11 years, the companies announced early yesterday morning.
These are the first such results released for this age group for a US Covid-19 vaccine, and the data has not yet been peer-reviewed or published. Pfizer said it plans to submit to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization soon.
The FDA could soon authorize a Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for young children, experts said — a development that offers hope in the midst of a dangerous time in the pandemic for kids, who account for a quarter of all cases reported last week.
It remains to be seen how widely the vaccine will be accepted for the younger group. Uptake among older children has lagged, and polling indicates reservations among a significant chunk of parents.
CVS, one of the biggest U.S. providers of Covid-19 tests and vaccines, is racing to hire thousands of workers as staffing shortages prompt stores to close drive-through lanes and at times turn away customers seeking shots.
Australian Olympic gold medalist Madi Wilson revealed that she’s been hospitalized with COVID-19.
“I feel extremely unlucky but I do believe this is a huge wake up call, Covid is a serious thing and when it comes it hits very hard,” Wilson said on Instagram. “I’d be stupid not to say I wasn’t scared.”
Meteorologist Karl Bohnak, long a fixture on the Michigan weather-prediction scene, has opted out of his job at NBC affiliate WLUC-TV rather than get a coronavirus vaccine.
Eric Clapton performed for a COVID-free crowd in New Orleans, after saying in July that he felt “honour bound” not to perform in venues that required COVID vaccinations.
All D.C. schools workers will need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by November, Mayor Muriel Bowser said, removing the option to submit to regular testing.
College presidents fighting Covid-19 outbreaks in many Republican-controlled states are pushing to enact campus vaccine mandates but are running into a problem: lawmaker resistance.
Parents who oppose New York’s regulations requiring children to wear masks in schools and on buses filed a federal lawsuit against state health Commissioner Howard Zucker, asserting the rules are a violation of their children’s First Amendment rights.
Thousands of nurses and other medical professionals across New York could lose their jobs next week when a state mandate requiring them to be vaccinated for coronavirus is scheduled to be enforced, worsening am existing staffing crisis.
New details have emerged surrounding a viral video that showed a scuffle between tourists and a hostess at a New York City restaurant over a vaccine requirement.
As they struggle to recruit workers, many restaurant owners are raising pay. But some are trying to go deeper, to make their business fairer and more humane.
NYC is moving to make a variation of its Open Restaurants program permanent, but some neighborhood advocates oppose the move.
New coronavirus cases in New York rose 19% over the past week, state and federal records showed. The state reported 37,939 new cases, up from 31,981 new cases the previous week.
The state Health Department has been made aware of 66,217 laboratory-confirmed breakthrough COVID cases in fully vaccinated New Yorkers ages 12 or older. This equates to .6% of those fully vaccinated over the age of 12.
Former President Trump’s family business and its longtime chief financial officer are tentatively scheduled to go on trial for tax crimes at the end of next summer.
That time frame would overlap with the closing stretch of the 2022 midterm campaign season, potentially influencing races where Trump’s presence could loom large.
Allen Weisselberg – the former Trump Organization CFO charged by Manhattan prosecutors for an alleged tax evasion scheme – is expecting that more indictments will be filed in the case after tax documents were found in an alleged co-conspirator’s basement.
A lawyer for Trump says that prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office haven’t spoken to him since indicting the former president’s namesake company in July.
A conservative lawyer working with Trump’s legal team tried to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence that he could overturn the election results on January 6 when Congress counted the Electoral College votes by throwing out electors from seven states.
A push to revisit the results of the 2020 presidential election is underway or being called for in at least nine counties Trump won by more than 24 points.
Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams fleshed out his plan to attack New York’s housing crisis, outlining a blueprint that would convert distressed outer-borough hotels into some 25,000 rooms of supportive housing.
“The combination of Covid-19, the economic downturn, and the problems we’re having with housing is presenting us with a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Adams said. “We can use this moment and find one solution to solve a multitude of problems.”
Adams didn’t respond to a Department of Buildings complaint about an illegal conversion at his Brooklyn townhouse and failed to list the property as his residence on federal tax filings — even though he was eligible for significant deductions, documents show.
Amended personal income tax documents Adams released following his June 22 primary victory clash with his claim that he uses the building’s ground floor as his residence — reporting zero days living at the property.
Adams said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” dress is the wrong message for New York City while acknowledging he and the left-wing member of Congress are broadly aligned in their humble backgrounds and preferred outcomes.
Adams told an advocacy group this month that he would halt a de Blasio administration plan to transfer school safety duties from the NYPD to the Department of Education,
Manhattan Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez wants to give non-US citizens the right to vote in New York City — and if you don’t like it, he says, you can move.
A report by Princeton University Electoral Innovation Lab found that missteps by the New York City Board of Elections had inadvertently allowed the lab to determine the votes of 378 New Yorkers in the mayoral primary – including Dante de Blasio.
Dante de Blasio ranked Maya Wiley — a high-profile critic of his father — as his top choice for New York City mayor in this summer’s Democratic primary, according to a new study that exposes a glaring flaw in the Board of Elections’ reporting methods.
New York City sued a union representing its jail officers, saying that the staff absenteeism that has led to an ongoing crisis on Rikers Island amounted to an illegal strike that had endangered staff and detainees there alike.
More than one-third of the inmates imprisoned in Rikers Island’s urgent care unit have tested positive for COVID after completing the intake process there, according to the union that represents nurses at the jail complex.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would start weekly coronavirus testing at all public schools starting next week, and relax quarantine rules for unvaccinated students to bring them in line with C.D.C. guidance.
After five weeks of testimony that included several disturbing firsthand accounts of sexual, physical and emotional abuse by R. Kelly, one of the biggest stars in R&B music, prosecutors rested their case.
What did then-New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg really know about the toxic threats posed by the ruins for the World Trade Center, and when did they know it?
How can NYC prepare for the next big storm? Improve drainage. Use plants, tanks and barriers to slow water. But it takes money and cooperation.
A Long Island man was charged with several hate crimes after he picked up Hispanic day laborers at places they were known to gather, drove them to secluded areas and attacked them, the police said.
Federal authorities in New York have arrested a man who they said had posted threats on the internet to kill Luis Abinader, the president of the Dominican Republic, who arrived on Saturday for the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations.
Prosecutors in Manhattan have charged the borough’s top Democrat, former Assemblyman Keith Wright, with dooring a cyclist in Harlem and fleeing the scene, according to court papers.
Two and a half years after then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved “congestion pricing,” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will hold public hearings on the program starting Thursday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul approved construction of two new power transmission lines that will bring more renewable energy to the city and help fight climate change — but some local residents in the path of the projects are worried they could be in harm’s way.
Hochul said the combined undertaking will result in 10,000 jobs — mainly in construction — amounting to 8,600 positions for Clean Path NY, the shorter line, and 1,400 for the Champlain Hudson line.
The lines by the end of the decade should power 2.5 million homes in and around New York City with carbon-free electricity, eliminating the need for numerous existing fossil fuel plants in the area.
Hochul called for the expansion of the NY-Sun Program on the first day of Climate Week.
Hochul plans to do a full “rethinking” of how investigators and ethics bodies are appointed in New York, she said following the resignation of state Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro.
New York’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund has roughly $9 billion in debt, more than double what the state took four years to repay following the Great Recession that ended in 2009.
Two years after receiving a complaint seeking an investigation of New York’s inspector general’s office, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics has never interviewed the former law enforcement official who filed the request.
That’s because the New York Gaming Commission has a list of excluded persons for casino entry that actually excludes no one. The commission lets individual casinos compile their own lists of excluded individuals even as its own list is barren.
Albany High School doesn’t expect to play a football game until Oct. 1, a decision that was prompted by the district’s policy that high-risk fall sports should be canceled unless all student-athletes are fully vaccinated.
People who go to the Albany Capital Center (ACC) might spot a new feature in its lobby, a freestanding Mamava lactation pod.
Only one of the city’s of Saratoga Springs’ seven Republican candidates have responded to the nonprofit’s request to participate in voter forums.
LAX Restaurant & Lounge, open since fall 2013 at 205 Lark St., is being redeveloped as Bar Vegan, which will feature plant-based decor and food as well as all-vegan beer, wine, cider and spirits.
Former MyPayrollHR CEO Michael Mann is scheduled to start serving a 12-year federal prison sentence tomorrow after pleading guilty to a $100 million bank fraud scheme a year ago.
Lawyers for Albany Nanotech founder Alain Kaloyeros and the state have asked that a court-appointed mediator help them settle two intellectual property lawsuits the former physics professor brought against the SUNY and the Research Foundation for SUNY.
Hall of Fame horse trainer Steve Asmussen must pay $610,000 in back pay, damages and penalties following a U.S. Department of Labor investigation that found he underpaid 170 employees at the Saratoga and Belmont race tracks.
FBI agents searched the Florida family home of Gabby Petito’s fiancé a day after authorities found what they believe was the missing Long Island woman’s body in Wyoming.
The Washington Post is expanding its editor ranks as it pushes forward with plans for growth in national and international coverage under its new executive editor, Sally Buzbee.
Robert York, the editor in chief of The NY Daily News, is being replaced on an interim and “as-needed” basis by Andrew Julien, the editor and publisher of The Hartford Courant, who will remain in that job while a search for a permanent editor takes place.
