Good morning, it’s Tuesday and we can’t deny it any longer…summer is over. Fall is here. All hail the autumnal season in its cooler temperatures, colorful leaves, pumpkin spice, apple everything splendor.
Hopefully everyone got their last hurrah on over the holiday weekend and are now ready to buckle down and get serious – and there’s plenty to be serious about, given the state of the world these days.
Also, for those who celebrate – Happy New Year! I’m speaking, of course, of the year 5782, which is being celebrated by Jews across the globe. Rosh Hashanah, which literally translates into “head of the year,” started last night at sundown and lasts through sundown tomorrow.
It’s a time of inner reflection and atonement, though the big day of atonement – Yom Kippur, which requires a sundown-to-sundown fast – doesn’t come around until Sept. 15, so we have a little time to prepare ourselves, though the Jewish High Holidays are awfully early this year and definitely caught me unawares.
On Rosh Hashanah, it is traditional to eat apples and honey – for a “sweet” new year – and also other delicacies like honey cake, brisket and tzimmes, which is delicious, for the record. (Don’t knock it until you try it).
Another tradition, which I have always loved and am sad I won’t be participating in this year, is Tashlich, during wish Jews throw bread crumbs into a naturally running body of water as a means of symbolically casting away their sins – again, all about preparing for the annual review during which one either gets inscribed in the Book of Life, or…well, let’s not think about that right now.
I have to confess that thanks to the ongoing rise of the Delta variant, I don’t feel comfortable sitting in synagogue for hours on end right now – not even being fully vaccinated and wearing a mask while social distancing. If anyone knows of some good outdoor services that will be held within a reasonable driving distance from Albany, please let me know.
The weather has taken a distinctly fall-like turn. We’ll have partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-70s.
In the headlines…
The shocking cross-country devastation wrought by Hurricane Ida is set to play a starring role in Washington D.C. in the coming weeks as President Biden seeks to push his infrastructure bills through Congress.
As residents scrambled to clean up and assess damage from catastrophic flash floods, Biden prepared to visit hard-hit areas in New York and New Jersey, where he will confront political ferment growing over the climate-driven disaster.
Biden will visit Manville, in north-central New Jersey, where a banquet hall and several homes exploded as a result of storm damage, and the borough of Queens, in New York City, where several people drowned inside their basement apartments.
Biden has added New York to the list of major disaster areas from last week’s Hurricane Ida devastation, freeing up federal funding to help areas affected by the storm.
Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams likened Biden’s coming visit to New York City to assess devastation from Tropical Storm Ida to President Jimmy Carter’s history-making trip to the South Bronx to witness the blight that plagued it in the 1970s.
New York suffered at least $50 million in damage from Hurricane Ida, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul.
After delivery workers braved flooded NYC during the remnants of Hurricane Ida, advocates are calling for better conditions.
New York City’s Department of Buildings said that five of the six houses in which New Yorkers were killed by last Wednesday’s flood were illegally converted cellar or basement apartments.
To mark Labor Day, Hochul signed a package of legislation pertaining to the state’s workforce.
The governor began her Labor Day briefing in Buffalo by quoting notable labor author Samuel Gompers, the first and longest-serving president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Expanded unemployment benefits that have kept millions of Americans afloat during the pandemic expired yesterday, setting up an abrupt cutoff of assistance to 7.5 million people as the Delta variant rattles the pandemic recovery.
Federal lawmakers, who extended the three pandemic programs in December and March, are not expected to renew them again.
An estimated 7.5 million people will be affected, according to calculations by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. An additional 2.1 million unemployed people will lose the $300 per week federal supplement.
New York will not pay to extend COVID-19 unemployment benefits for the 1.6 million state residents receiving them now that relayed federal programs have expired, Hochul said.
Restaurateurs are hopeful that the end of enhanced COVID-19 unemployment benefits will push New Yorkers to get back to work.
The New York State Department of Labor is continuing efforts to help New Yorkers find jobs, the governor noted.
Hochul’s choice to head the new cannabis control board is a half-baked idea, because the appointee, former Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright, has zero experience dealing with the marijuana industry, according to Sen. Diane Savino.
Hochul has been in office for less than two weeks, but she has already appointed many of the first-string players in what she calls her “dream team” – and most of those top appointments look like her in more ways than one.
Alphonso David has been fired as president of the Human Rights Campaign after his role in assisting disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s attempted rebound from sexual harassment allegations was detailed in a report.
David, the head of the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, had defiantly tweeted that he will not resign over his role in Cuomo’s attempts at damage control amid a sexual harassment scandal.
David said two of the organization’s board chairs told him their investigation into his role advising Cuomo during the scandal had been completed and found no wrongdoing by him, but he was asked to step down anyway because he had become a “distraction.”
“I have the support of too many of our employees, board members, and stakeholders to walk away quietly into the night. I am not resigning,” David said.
The entire Time’s Up board, including Shonda Rhimes and Eva Longoria, are now stepping down — just over a week after the CEO resigned for her role in the Cuomo sexual harassment scandal.
The organization announced on Saturday that “members of the existing board will be stepping aside over the next 30 days” to make way for a “new and reconstituted board.”
The organization asked four board members to remain to help smooth the transition. They are Colleen DeCourcy, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, Ashley Judd and Gabrielle Sulzberger.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo has seen a ratings decline since his brother resigned as governor of New York after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.
The former Marine who allegedly murdered a family of four in Lakeland, Fla., and left an 11-year-old girl in critical condition Sunday was denied bond during his first court appearance.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said that the Justice Department would continue to protect women who seek an abortion in Texas, days after a state law enacting a near-complete ban on the procedure went in effect.
Officials have reached out to federal prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation field offices across Texas to discuss how to enforce the federal law, known as the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, Garland said.
The Satanic Temple is challenging the recently enacted abortion restrictions in Texas, citing religious freedoms.
The Taliban claimed yesterday to have overcome the last pocket of resistance in Afghanistan, releasing images they said showed the conquest of the provincial capital of Panjshir, a region that has held out against the group’s takeover of the country.
About 100 Americans are still in Afghanistan, days after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war-torn country, the White House said.
The Afghan countryside is littered with abandoned and decaying power plants, prisons, schools, factories, office buildings and military bases, according to a watchdog agency, the legacy of the U.S. effort to fund the establishment of a modern Afghan state.
Biden is seeking to press his legislative agenda and redouble efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic after Labor Day but the tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan may cast a long shadow over the fall.
When congressional committees meet this week to begin formally drafting Democrats’ ambitious social policy plan, they will be undertaking the most significant expansion of the nation’s safety net since the war on poverty in the 1960s.
After the Delta variant disrupted plans to reopen after Labor Day, many businesses pushed their targets further out or left them open-ended.
Companies are delaying sending employees back on the road this fall amid another surge in coronavirus cases, dampening the future of business travel yet again.
Actual office occupancy in New York lags behind that of Philadelphia and Chicago, according to August data from Kastle Systems, which analyzes swipe-card entries.
The logistical dance required to make Covid-19 vaccine doses safe for children is among the challenges confronting researchers evaluating inoculations in the youngsters.
Since being discovered in Colombia in January, the mu variant of COVID-19 has spread to nearly four dozen countries and has made its presence known in Hawaii and Alaska. It has so far been found in 49 states – not Nebraska.
Patients who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine soon won’t be welcome inside a South Miami doctor’s office.
From the most respected epidemiologists to public health experts who have navigated past disease panics, from polemicists to political partisans, there are no definitive answers to the central question in American life: Will the pandemic ever end?
A judge ruled that an Ohio hospital cannot be forced to give a patient ivermectin for Covid-19, reversing an earlier decision that ordered it to administer a parasite medication that has not been approved to treat the disease.
The resurgence of COVID-19 this summer and the national debate over vaccine requirements have created a fraught situation for the nation’s first responders, who are dying in larger numbers but pushing back against mandates.
A group of parents has sued the state of Minnesota and Gov. Tim Walz, arguing that allowing schools to operate without mask requirements puts students at risk and violates their constitutional right to an “adequate” education.
Dr. Anthony Fauci says there’s an important step adults can take to protect children who are too young to be vaccinated against Covid-19: Surround them with vaccinated people.
Crowded New York City schools are pulling out all the stops to keep 3 feet of space between students when full in-person classes in just over a week.
Hochul said New York’s battle to beat COVID-19 continues to make progress, but warned “our work is not yet done.”
The Capital Region still has the highest COVID infection rate in the state.
Transit advocates are putting on a full court press to persuade Hochul to derail the $2.1 billion pet project pushed by disgraced predecessor Cuomo — building the controversial “wrong way” AirTrain between LaGuardia airport and eastern Queens.
Amtrak will resume all scheduled service between New York City and the Albany-Rensselear station today along with other services that local trainer passengers rely on, the rail service announced.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4,627 enrolled members of the World Trade Center Health Program have died in the years since the tragedy.
The triumphant comeback of Lower Manhattan after 2001 became a rallying cry for New York City. But due to the pandemic, its offices have emptied out, tourists are gone, and hundreds of retailers have shut down.
Mayor Bill de Blasio did not receive a warm welcome as he visited a Queens neighborhood ravaged by Ida, with local residents painting him as clueless for insisting that the city did the best it could to safeguard against the storm.
A statue will be unveiled this week at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point honoring a group of Black soldiers who helped the U.S. expand westward.
Despite above average rainfall and ongoing fears about the spread of coronavirus, more than 1 million horse racing fans returned to the Saratoga Race Course this summer and set an all-time betting record.
Buffalo Democratic mayoral candidate India Walton says her team is planning to appeal a federal court decision to allow Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown on this November’s ballot.
Walton received the endorsement of state Sen. Sean Ryan, who said “Buffalo needs a leader who will address the critical needs of every neighborhood.”
Cardi B gave birth to her second child.
Michael K. Williams, 54, who famously played righteous stick-up man Omar Little in HBO’s “The Wire,” was found dead in his Brooklyn penthouse apartment.
Williams was found at about 2 p.m. yesterday, according to the New York City Police Department. The death is being investigated as a possible drug overdose, and the city’s medical examiner will determine the cause.
