Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to the first day of fall!
You could be forgiven for thinking that the season was already upon us, since there have been pumpkin space lattes, Halloween decorations and apple cider everything available in various stores for weeks now. But officially speaking the autumn equinox will occur at 3:21 p.m. today.
What does that mean? Well,, sadly, we are now seeing just over 12 hours of daylight, and have reached the halfway point between our longest and shortest days of the year.
This is not, technically speaking, a daylong astronomical event, but rather a moment in time when the sun appears directly over the Earth’s equator before crossing into the Southern Hemisphere. It’s one of only two days a year when we experience exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness.
Though the days have actually been getting shorter since the summer solstice in June, earlier sunsets become quite noticeable near the fall equinox, when daylight vanishes at it fastest pace of the year.
After this, we’ll have more dark than light until spring rolls around.
This is sort of a bummer, I know. I am choosing not to dwell on it, but rather to think about happy things, like hikes in the woods as the leaves change and the smell of woodsmoke in the air and the ability to wear cozy sweaters but not freeze my butt off.
The fall foliage report is up, though there’s no real action to report as of yet.
Also, it’s not going to feel terribly fall-like today, with temperatures flirting with 80 degrees. Skies will be cloudy, and there’s a chance of rain showers.
Oh, one last thing…want to feel old? Today is the 27th anniversary of the series debut of “Friends”, which premiered on this date on NBC in 1994 and ran through May 6, 2004. Please pass the Geritol.
For the record, I was never a big fan. I mean I watched the show sometimes, but I wasn’t obsessed. Maybe it’s because I knew that there was no way that group of people could have afforded that apartment in Manhattan? Or maybe because I knew my thick, curly hair would never ever lend itself to “The Rachel.”
In the headlines…
In his first address to the United Nations, President Joe Biden urged global cooperation through “a decisive decade for our world”.
Biden kicked off his speech by acknowledging the worldwide impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change.
“Our security, our prosperity and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view as never before,” Biden said, insisting the U.S. and its Western allies would remain vital partners. But he made scant mention of the global discord his own actions have stirred.
The president detailed his vision for leading the United States into a new era of diplomacy as he sought to reassure allies – some freshly skeptical – he was moving past the “America First” era of foreign policy.
Biden played down the chances of brokering a post-Brexit free trade deal with the UK, as he held talks with Boris Johnson at the White House.
The Taliban have nominated an ambassador to represent Afghanistan at the United Nations, U.N. officials said, injecting a new twist into what was already a delicate diplomatic quandary in the global organization.
Brazil’s Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga tested positive for COVID-19 hours after attending the UN General Assembly in the Big Apple, government officials said. He will now quarantine in the city for the next 14 days.
The Biden administration is expressing horror over recent images that appear to show US Border Patrol agents on horseback confronting migrants along the Rio Grande.
Vice President Kamala Harris said she was “deeply troubled” by images of Border Patrol officers attacking desperate Haitian migrants at the southern border – and called for an investigation.
“We’ll get it under control,” Biden told reporters during his visit to the United Nations when he was asked about images from the border that have prompted outrage in recent days.
The House passed a bill that would both prevent a government shutdown and suspend the debt limit in a step toward preventing possible economic calamity.
The chamber approved the plan in a 220-211 vote. All Democrats voted for it and all Republicans opposed it. As the bill heads to the Senate, Republicans are threatening to block it.
Persistent divisions among Democrats over the size of their climate and social-welfare plan are threatening to derail much of Biden’s agenda, as progressives signal that they could block passage of a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package next week.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer renewed his call for Biden to forgive $50,000 in student debt for all borrowers though executive action.
Days before lawyers allied with Donald Trump gave a news conference promoting election conspiracy theories, his campaign had determined that many of those claims were false, court filings reveal.
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed to an average of more than 1,900 a day for the first time since early March, with experts saying the virus is preying largely on a distinct group: 71 million unvaccinated Americans.
Just three states – Texas, Georgia and Alabama – collectively racked up a third of U.S. COVID deaths last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
World Health Organization officials repeated their protests against Covid-19 booster shots for the general public, even as the U.S. readies this week to authorize their distribution across a wide swath of America.
Johnson & Johnson released new data showing a booster dose of its vaccine given two months after the one-shot vaccine provides 94% protection against moderate-to-severe COVID-19 symptoms.
Plus, the company said, adding a booster dose to a single shot of the vaccine raised immunity even more, and should also protect people strongly against infection.
Biden is betting on millions more rapid, at-home tests to help curb the latest deadly wave of Covid-19, but tests have disappeared from pharmacy shelves in many parts of the U.S., and manufacturers warn it will take them weeks to ramp up production.
Six top manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine “are fueling an unprecedented human rights crisis through their refusal to waive intellectual property rights and share vaccine technology”, Amnesty International said in a report.
With his country badly lagging in Covid vaccinations, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines railed against the world’s affluent countries at the United Nations, accusing them of hoarding vaccines while the poor “wait for trickles.”
India slammed the U.K.’s decision to exclude vaccinated Indian travelers from its new travel guidelines, calling it “discriminatory” and warning of reciprocal measures.
A man claiming to be a part of an organized crime group threatened a “bloodbath” at a covid vaccination center in Tokyo this weekend, and did so in a decidedly Japanese way: via fax, with a cover page titled “Death Threat.”
George Holliday, the man who shot the infamous video of Los Angeles Police Department officers beating Rodney King more than 30 years ago, has died of Covid-19 at the age of 61, according to his longtime friend.
An Idaho nurse who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, and encouraged her family to do the same, even after her COVID-infected mother went into a coma, has died, according to her brother.
Schools across the country are searching for a less disruptive way to minimize risk beyond sending students home to quarantine as the wait continues for emergency use authorization for the COVID vaccine for children.
After spiking sharply for much of the summer, new cases of Covid-19 in New York have started to plateau in recent weeks. Hospitalizations are also beginning to flatten.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced 120 new pop-up vaccination sites will take place across New York over the next 12 weeks as part of a campaign to boost vaccination rates among New Yorkers ages 12 to 17.
Over the next 12 weeks, the State Department of Health will be working with localities, community-based organizations and healthcare centers on-the-ground to establish these new sites in all regions of the state.
“I’m appealing to people personally but I’m also hitting the road,” said Hochul, who announced the latest escalation in her #Vaxtoschool campaign in Brooklyn yesterday morning. “We are making it easy on you.”
A former state Department of Labor employee pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to using her position to fraudulently reap $314,168 in unemployment insurance benefits intended to help out-of-work New Yorkers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hochul is cutting off all taxpayer funding for legal bills racked up by aides to disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo as several investigations continue.
An email sent by Hochul counsel Elizabeth Fine on Sept. 2 to law firms representing former aides to Cuomo, stated the governor’s office is reviewing the legal basis for approving the payment of past attorney fees.
Hochul, who replaced Cuomo on Aug. 24, recently terminated about 20 Cuomo appointees from various posts, sources said. Those who were let go were not as high-profile and not associated with the harassment investigation.
Cuomo’s attorney Rita Glavin has launched a new attack against the credibility of the state attorney general and some of the women whose sexual harassment allegations led to his resignation.
Hochul apparently sought to do her predecessor one better by increasing a $3 billion environmental bond act proposal to $4 billion as the matter is scheduled to go before voters in November 2022.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other House Democrats from New York called on NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Hochul Tuesday to release all inmates held on Rikers Island, citing a long-running pattern of “human right violations” at the jail.
The demand followed the 11th death reported at Rikers Island this year. The city’s Department of Correction said an inmate died Sunday at the jail after reporting he did not feel well and was taken to the infirmary.
De Blasio pledged to hire private security guards to pick up the slack on Rikers Island amid continued staff shortages in the Correction Department ranks — even though a decades-old law appears to bar the city from outsourcing jail jobs.
As the Big Apple battled back from the pandemic, implemented sprawling vaccine requirements, reopened schools, endured epic flooding and contended with a crisis at the Rikers Island jail — the City Council posted its least productive summer in two decades.
Google will spend $2.1 billion to buy a sprawling office building on the NYC Hudson River waterfront, paying one of the largest prices in recent years for a U.S. office building and providing a jolt of optimism to a real estate industry lashed by the pandemic.
Google’s purchase of the 1.3 million-square-foot waterfront property is the latest sign that fears of the office building’s demise look overblown. Vacancy rates across the U.S. are well above pre-pandemic levels and office rents have tumbled.
Luchiano Lewis, 16, pleaded guilty to the stabbing death of Tessa Majors, an 18-year-old Barnard College student, who was found murdered in Morningside Park in 2019. He was charged as an adult.
Lewis told Judge Robert Mandelbaum he didn’t know Majors had been “stabbed, let alone killed” during the robbery until he read it in the news the next day.
Black Lives Matter protesters marched on famed New York diner Carmine’s late Monday — as the owner released new footage of the wild attack on his staff that he insisted had nothing to do with racism.
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa dined at Carmine’s on the Upper West Side to show solidarity with the hostess who was attacked by tourists, allegedly over the city’s vaccine mandate.
Sliwa seized on renewed reports that his Democratic challenger Eric Adams may not live in the Brooklyn brownstone he calls home — but actually resides in a New Jersey apartment he owns with a girlfriend — by visiting his opponent’s Fort Lee co-op.
The Republican and his wife Nancy sat outside next to the host stand at their neighborhood red sauce joint Tuesday evening, and blasted Black Lives Matter protesters who claimed the attack on the 24-year-old employee was provoked by raci
In a Saratoga Springs City Council meeting that limited the number of people attending, more than a dozen Black Lives Matter activists and their allies demanded that charges be dropped against those who participated in a July 14 march.
As four more Black Lives Matter activists awaited arraignment in city court, the regional director of the New York Civil Liberties Union said her organization is monitoring the activities of Saratoga police, which she accused of acting as a “racist organization.”
Two young social and racial justice activists who are facing a warrant for their arrest stemming from an encounter last month with police at an outdoor community function are expected to voluntarily turn themselves in to Schenectady police tomorrow.
State and local officials celebrated the completion of the Renaissance Square Apartments, a $20 million affordable housing development with 55 apartments in Schenectady.
Four College of Saint Rose music professors who were terminated in the college’s most recent round of layoffs are suing the college and Saint Rose President Marcia White for breach of contract.
The Bethlehem Central School District is being sued for child sexual abuse that allegedly took place on a school bus in the 1980s.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro officially announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, kicking off his campaign at a public event at Kesicke Farm in Rhinebeck.
Former U.S. Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert has died at 84. His death was marked by mourning from lawmakers across the political aisle who remembered the Mohawk Valley Republican as a dedicated public servant.
An autopsy confirmed the body found in a Wyoming nation park two days ago was long-missing Gabby Petito, with her shocking death during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend declared a homicide, officials said.
Dr. Brent Blue, Teton County coroner, confirmed the remains found Sunday in Wyoming by law-enforcement officials were Petito’s. “The cause of death remains pending final autopsy results,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.
Petito and boyfriend Brian Laundrie fought over a phone and argued “aggressively” in front of onlookers outside a Utah store last month, a newly surfaced witness statement said.
Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against his niece Mary Trump and the New York Times stemming from explosive news articles about the former president’s taxes and finances.
Willie Garson, the actor who played the beloved character Stanford Blatch in “Sex and the City” and its upcoming reboot, “And Just Like That,” with real-life best friend Sarah Jessica Parker, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 57.
Facebook’s Oversight Board said it is reviewing the company’s practice of holding high-profile users to separate sets of rules, citing apparent inconsistencies in the way the social-media giant makes decisions.
