Good Thursday morning. Welcome to the last day of September.
On this day in 1938 Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France signed the infamous Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany, averting the outbreak of war – albeit temporarily.
This marked the height of “appeasement” – the term most often used to describe the British response to the Hitler’s rise throughout the 1930s.
Basically, it refers to a policy of one-sided concessions to an aggressor state – often at the expense of third parties – with nothing offered in return except promises of better behavior in the future.
Prime minister Neville Chamberlain hoped that going this route it would bring a quicker end to the crisis created in Europe. (He was, of course, wrong, and we ended up in WWII instead).
In September 1939, 53 German army divisions invaded Poland despite British and French threats to intervene on the nation’s behalf, and Chamberlain called for a British declaration of war.
Also, today is the anniversary of the 1955 death of American actor and icon of cool James Dean, a symbol of the confused, restless, and idealistic youth of the 1950s. Dean died in an automobile crash as he drove to a car rally in Salinas, California.
It’s National Chewing Gun Day. Did you know that humans have been chewing gum for more than 5,000 years?! Of course, back in the day, we were using tree sap, but the concept was still the same – chewing on a substance to stave off hunger or freshen breath.
We’ll have a bit of sun this morning, giving way to cloudy skies in the afternoon, with temperatures in the low 60s.
In the headlines…
Democrats prepared legislation to avert a government shutdown this week, but they were desperately trying to salvage President Biden’s domestic agenda as conservative-leaning holdouts dug in against an ambitious $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate bill.
The House passed a bill to suspend the U.S. debt ceiling as the country barrels toward a first-ever default with no clear solution in sight. Republicans will sink the plan in the Senate.
Two Democrats and one Republican crossed their parties in the House in the vote to suspend the country’s debt limit, as tensions run high on both sides of the aisle with less than a month to go until the nation is expected to default on its debt.
A vote on Biden’s infrastructure bill, which is supposed to take place today, is highly uncertain at best, with tensions escalating across the Democratic party as Senate centrists once again remained mum on passing their party’s broader spending plan.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so far has stuck to her plan to bring the infrastructure bill up for a vote today, saying she was taking it “one hour at a time,” though she opened the door to further delay if talks don’t progress.
Pelosi told reporters that Democrats will not use budget reconciliation to raise the federal debt ceiling, raising doubts over whether Congress will find a way to avert potential economic disaster.
The White House is aware of growing frustration with the pandemic as Biden faces a trust deficit regarding his COVID-19 response for the first time of his presidency.
A small band of longtime AIDS activists, fed up with what they regard as Biden’s failure to scale up coronavirus vaccine manufacturing for global use, deposited a fake mountain of bones outside the home of Ron Klain, his chief of staff.
The International Olympic Committee released a preliminary set of health protocols for the upcoming Winter Games in Beijing that suggested the next Olympics could be the most extraordinarily restricted large-scale sporting event since the start of the pandemic.
Symptoms of COVID-19 persist or recur months after diagnosis for more than a third of all people who get the illness, a new study finds, potentially pushing the number of so-called long COVID cases higher than previously thought.
The study revealed revealed that one in three survivors suffered symptoms three to six months after getting infected, suffering from breathing problems, abdominal symptoms, change of bowel habit and diarrhea, fatigue, pain, anxiety and depression.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its strongest guidance to date urging pregnant women to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
The guidance comes as more than a quarter million cases of Covid in pregnant women have been reported, 22,000 of whom were hospitalized.
Doctors and pharmacies are rapidly signing up patients for Covid-19 booster shots, many without requiring proof of eligibility under standards that federal officials set last week.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is leaning toward authorizing half-dose booster shots of the Moderna Inc. coronavirus vaccine, satisfied that it’s effective in shoring up protection.
YouTube said it would remove content that falsely alleges approved vaccines are dangerous and cause severe health effects, expanding the video platform’s efforts to curb Covid-19 misinformation to other vaccines.
New COVID cases and deaths continue to decline globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday in its weekly epidemiological update.
On Tuesday, “Aladdin” held its first performance since Broadway closed for the pandemic. Yesterday, the show was canceled because of several positive coronavirus tests.
Walmart said it aims to hire 150,000 workers ahead of the busy holiday shopping season, another sign that retailers are rushing to staff stores and warehouses in a tight U.S. labor market.
One lone state-paid New York judge has refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine, officials said.
In courtrooms from Manhattan to Utica, judges are weighing whether exemptions to the state’s vaccine mandate that would cover thousands of health care workers will be allowed.
Thousands of nurses and other medical personnel who work in state agencies that care for inmates or disabled and mentally ill individuals will not be mandated to receive coronavirus vaccinations or face the loss of their jobs.
Mary Bassett, who won acclaim for leading New York City through a series of health crises, was named as the state’s new health commissioner.
Early in the pandemic, Bassett was one of the authors of an op-ed urging then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to release older and high-risk inmates, as well as those incarcerated for noncriminal parole violations and those nearing release, from jails and prisons.
Bassett is presently the director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and she is also a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
While leading the city’s health department, Bassett worked to close gaps in health care access disparities. She was also at the helm during the city’s response to Ebola in 2014 and multiple Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking to build a formidable financial advantage — at least $10 million in donations by year’s end and as much as an eye-popping $25 million by next summer — to discourage or defeat potential rivals in a potential 2022 primary.
State Attorney General Letitia James made statements at an ABNY breakfast in Manhattan indicating that she is strongly considering a gubernatorial run next year, just a week after offering a less firm stance.
James focused much of her speech on Cuomo, whom she recently helped unseat from office, and how state government should be revamped to better serve New Yorkers.
New York Coalition for Open Government wants Hochul to replace the executive director of the state’s Committee on Open Government and push for structural changes reforms of the committee as she reconfigures her administration.
Six months after New York passed its landmark bill legalizing marijuana for adult use and creating a regulatory framework for the cannabis industry overall, the state is violating the law’s deadline for home cannabis cultivation rules.
Pope Francis named a new bishop to lead the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, ending the 18-year tenure of current Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, weeks after a Vatican investigation cleared him of two accusations of child sexual abuse dating to the 1970s.
Republican mayoral hopeful Curtis Sliwa offered a rare apology for a since-deleted tweet from his campaign that claimed he has gotten more illegal guns off city streets than his Democratic opponent Eric Adams.
Philip Banks, a former NYPD executive who abruptly retired amid a cloud of controversy, is advising Adams on the police department with his expected transition to the mayor of the Big Apple.
An unhinged neighbor allegedly tried to burn down the home of Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez’s elderly mother, forcing Gonzalez to fend off the arsonist and stop him from climbing through a window.
The Times Union name will no longer appear on the Albany County-owned arena in downtown Albany, marking the end of a 15-year relationship.
A bear was caught on camera roaming the village of Colonie early yesterday morning.
A cluster of organizations and businesses have formed the We Are NY Horse Racing coalition to educate New Yorkers about the sport’s contributions to the state’s economy.
NYSEG, an electric and gas utility that serves areas of the Capital Region not served by National Grid, is developing a new computer-based outage prediction system that will use artificial intelligence.
Even though New York’s ban on the use of polystyrene foam in certain kinds of packaging doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, thousands of food service operators, retailers and other businesses are already scrambling to find alternatives.
A House Select Committee has issued 11 subpoenas for documents and testimony from people allegedly involved in planning the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse before supporters of former President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol.
The Biden administration restored protections for migratory birds that were loosened under Trump, a move celebrated by conservationists but expected to exacerbate tensions between the administration and the oil and gas industry.
Corey Lewandowski, a longtime political adviser to Trump, was removed from overseeing a super PAC supporting the ex-president after a donor accused him of making unwanted sexual advances and touching her inappropriately at a dinner in Las Vegas.
Republicans snagged their third win in 13 years in the annual Congressional Baseball Game last night, beating Democrats 13-12 in a back-and-forth affair that featured a rare out-of-the-park home run.
At a hearing yesterday, Judge Brenda Penny granted a petition by Britney Spears’s lawyer, suspending the singer’s father, 69, from his position as overseer of his daughter’s $60 million estate.
Spears’ attorney described her father as a “cruel, toxic and abusive man,” adding: “Britney deserves to wake up tomorrow without her father as her conservator. It is what my client wants, it what my client needs, it is what my client deserves.”
