Good morning, it’s Thursday, and it’s Veteran’s Day.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (November) in 1918, a temporary peace – otherwise known as an armistice – was signed, bringing WW I to an end.
Technically speaking, WW I, AKA the “Great War,” was ended Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. But the fighting ceased six months earlier on this day.
A year later, President Woodrow Wilson announced that the day would be known as Armistice Day.
It wasn’t until 1954 that Congress decided to change the name to Veteran’s Day, opting to recognize all veterans – including those who had fought in the Korean War and WWII.
There were subsequently a few more changes to this federal holiday, which was moved to the fourth Monday in November in 1968, thanks to the signing of the Uniform Holiday Bill, which was intended to ensure three-day weekends for federal holidays. (The idea was to encourage travel and recreational spending, thereby boosting the economy).
But a number of states didn’t agree with the switch, and kept celebrating the holidays on their original days anyway.
The first Veteran’s Day commemorated until the new law occurred in 1971, which generated a lot of confusion – so much so, that President Gerald Ford signed legislation in 1975 moving the holiday back to its original 11/11 date, starting in 1978. And that’s where we have been ever since, marking this day on 11/11 no matter where that happens to fall on the calendar.
Interestingly, this day is also the birthday of George Patton, the famous WW II general. He was born in 1885.
As of April 2021, there were 19 million living U.S. veterans who have served in at least one armed conflict, 11 percent of whom are women. That’s about 10 percent of the overall population, as the number of people with military experience in this country has been steadily declining.
The last living U.S. WW I veteran, Frank Buckles, died in February 2011 at the age of 110. (He was only 16 when he enlisted, having lied about his age).
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 240,329 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II were alive in 2021. Gulf War vets make up the largest share of all U.S. veterans, having surpassed the Vietnam-era numbers in 2016.
Veterans have a higher incidence of certain kinds of cancer, are more likely to suffer from substance misuse, be homeless, or take their own lives than non-veterans.
It’s a good day to thank those who served our country, making sacrifices to do so.
It’s also a good day for parades, if you happen to live in an area that will be having one. Albany’s parade is back, after last year’s COVID-19 related limitations. It will be partly sunny (more overcast as the day goes on) with temperatures in the high 50s.
In the headlines…
The U.S. and China announced a joint agreement to “enhance ambition” on climate change, saying they would work together to do more to cut emissions this decade while China committed for the first time to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
The world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters said they would take “enhanced climate actions” to meet the central goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Some observers hoped the announcement, which came as a surprise to many, might inject needed energy into lackluster negotiations at this week’s Glasgow climate summit, although the terms weren’t particularly aggressive.
The Biden administration’s ambitious agenda to stem global warming calls for a shift away from fossil fuels. Yet due to rising oil prices, he wants the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase production to ease shortages and lower prices.
Biden will sign the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law during a ceremony at the White House on Monday, according to the White House.
As soon as 2026, automakers would be required to equip cars with technology geared toward preventing drunken or impaired driving under a key provision of the trillion-dollar infrastructure package that awaits Biden’s signature.
Biden took the infrastructure deal on the road, highlighting the effect of the bill on supply chains and acknowledging Americans’ concerns about rising prices hours after new inflation statistics revealed consumer prices are surging more than in 30 years.
The 13 Republican lawmakers who broke with their party to support a $1 trillion bipartisan public works bill have drawn anger and threats from their colleagues and constituents.
Biden’s next political nightmare is inflation, a force that can destroy family budgets and political careers and is being driven by domestic and global factors tough for a president to quickly fix.
White House officials are scrambling to show Americans that they’re paying close attention to rising prices after federal data released yesterday showed inflation rising far above expectations in October.
Biden conceded that inflation is at a three-decade high because “people have more money now” as a result of his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus legislation, recognizing a central point made by people who are arguing against a nearly $2 trillion sequel.
Prices have risen the most in the South and the Midwest.
The top federal income-tax bracket threshold in 2022 will climb by nearly $20,000 next year for married couples, and that 37% rate will apply to income above $647,850, the IRS said as it implemented automatic tax-code updates to reflect faster inflation in 2021.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia slammed a key argument from the Biden administration that inflation would be temporary. His comments cast doubt on the near-term passage of the Democratic social-spending plan.
Republican billionaire Ken Langone says he plans to host a fundraiser for Manchin after the conservative West Virginia Democrat blocked key elements of Biden’s agenda.
A federal judge declined to delay tomorrow’s deadline for the National Archives to begin handing over Trump administration documents to the House January 6 Select Committee.
A former New Jersey gym owner who was the first to plead guilty to assaulting a police officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was sentenced to 41 months in prison, the most severe punishment given so far to any of the more than 650 people charged in the riot.
Prince Harry said he warned Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey that his social-media platform was allowing a coup to be staged ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
A new surge of Covid-19 cases is expected to start hitting the United States around Thanksgiving just as the holiday season begins, public health experts are warning.
Ten states filed a lawsuit to block the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for health care workers, after a court decision that temporarily halted the broader U.S. requirement that workers of all large employers be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing.
A federal judge ruled that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) ban on mask mandates in schools violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a decision that Texas’ attorney general quickly pledged to challenge.
A Minnesota Vikings player was rushed to an emergency room after experiencing shortness of breath from Covid-19, according to Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer.
Actor Matthew McConaughey is clarifying his stance on COVID-19 vaccine mandates for kids.
McConaughey, who is contemplating a run for governor in Texas, revealed Tuesday that he opposes vaccine mandates for kids, prompting the U.S. surgeon general to remind parents that “Covid is not harmless in our children.”
“Early on, this whole thing got politicized,” he said of the pandemic’s masking directives. “I thought that should’ve been a quick easy mandate. It’s a mask, it’s not the vaccine.” McConaughey blamed “both sides,” the political right and left, for exaggerating.
Once the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, New York City can now boast of having the lowest COVID-19 positivity rate of any region in the Empire State, according to state Health Department data.
The Western New York region now has one of the highest seven-day averages for positive COVID-19 cases in the state at 6.6 percent. The statewide average is 2.7 percent.
The office of state AG Letitia James released transcripts of interviews with ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, and other witnesses in the sprawling four-month investigation that led to Cuomo’s resignation.
Cuomo was every inch his combative self as he fought for his political life in a July interview with investigators with the New York State attorney general’s office.
“The concept of you as the resolution to the conflict as an independent reviewer is bizarre to me and raises ethical and legal questions,” he told his questioners. “The way you, then, have conducted the review itself I believe raises ethical and legal questions.”
The ex-governor conceded to investigators that he made many of the comments that led to sexual harassment accusations against him, but he downplayed their significance and said some of them were taken out of context. “I don’t have regrets,” he said.
Cuomo said he wanted female staffers to defend him against sexual harassment allegations — claiming that’s what Biden got when facing accusations of his own during the 2020 election.
In an attempt to discredit one of the investigators in his sexual assault inquiry, Cuomo referred to Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, as his questioner’s “rabbi.”
Cuomo expected his state police drivers to get him to places “very quickly” — and at speeds of up to 80 mph on Manhattan’s FDR Drive, according to the female trooper who accused him of sexual harassment.
Cuomo sparred with investigators over the meaning of the worlds “girlfriend,” “date” and “butt.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement that “these transcripts include questionable redactions, and raise even more questions about key omissions made during this slanted process, which reeks of prosecutorial misconduct.”
The impeachment investigation into Cuomo is expected to take a substantial step next week when the members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee are to review a report put together by the group’s outside law firm.
“The investigation included interviews with 165 witnesses, along with the review of hundreds of thousands of documents, recordings, messages, memos, transcripts and other materials,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Charle Lavine.
Governor Kathy Hochul is urging New York City employers to bring their workers back now, after a new survey showed the majority of people are still working remotely.
Manhattan’s office buildings are still largely empty 20 months into the pandemic — and a survey published yesterday suggests they’ll stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Help is headed to the vibrant lower Manhattan neighborhood of Chinatown, which was hit hard by the pandemic, in the form of a $20 million community revitalization award, Hochul said.
A coalition of environmental, civic and social justice groups is joining together to ask Hochul to modernize the state’s Bottle Bill, which has been around in New York for 40 years.
State lawmakers have introduced a bill that would bar hospitals from garnishing wages and taking liens out on the homes of patients with back medical debt after a new report revealed the practice impacts thousands of New Yorkers a year.
New York’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) is compelling municipalities to submit their decisions to opt out of allowing cannabis retailers as soon as possible through an online portal launched yesterday.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams has assembled a transition team that includes the president and CEO of United Way of New York City, the chancellor of the City University of New York, the head of a major labor union and the CFO of Goldman Sachs, he said.
Sheena Wright, Adams’ transition chair who is also president and CEO Of United Way of New York City, said the goal of the transition will be to make sure Adams has the right policies and people in place to execute his vision when he takes office on Jan. 1.
Leaders of the city’s Black Lives Matter movement threatened “riots” and “bloodshed” in the streets if Adams reverses the abolition of the NYPD’s controversial anti-crime units.
Although Adams found common ground during a contentious sit-down with the activists on plans to fight poverty in the black community, he vowed to bring back the Anti-Crime Unit, which was disbanded during widespread police protests last year.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said he thinks bail reform will be the “number one issue” for Adams, as he continued to blast soft-on-crime laws that have kept many criminals out of jail.
As Adams prepares to take office in January, he said he believes many of the answers to problems back in New York City may lie abroad, and indicated he plans to travel abroad as part of his mayoralty.
Adams is the latest New York politician to echo Pete Buttigieg’s claim racism was “built into” America’s infrastructure.
Mayor Bill de Blasio defended himself against an accusation that the $435,000 in debt he owes to a high-powered law firm with business before the city amounts to a bribe, saying the accusation is “absolutely inappropriate” and “unfair.”
Grievances against 21 Queens prosecutors shared publicly online prompted a rebuke from the city, and has led to a lawsuit that raises questions about accountability in the justice system.
A Manhattan jury rejected Parlux Fragrances’ breach of contract lawsuit charging that the Brooklyn-born billionaire Jay-Z failed to promote a celebrity perfume dubbed Gold Jay Z in 2013. The company had sought $67 million in damages.
News that the historic Remington firearms company is moving its headquarters to Georgia has reignited debate over whether New York’s tough gun laws are pushing out such companies.
Albany County officials are reviewing four bids for naming rights to the current Times Union Center.
Ulster County Judge Brian Rounds’ decision to reject bail for Trooper Christopher Baldner in the death of 11-year-old Monica Goods is highly unusual in the modern American judicial system.
A newly opened store at Kenwood Avenue’s Four Corners in Bethlehem was damaged after a pickup truck in reverse careened into it last night, town police said.
Thanks to absentee ballots, Democratic Colonie town board candidate Alvin Gamble has gone from 900 votes down to just two by yesterday afternoon — bringing him closer to becoming the first Black person elected to town office.
The Upstate NY Black Chamber of Commerce and Main Street Alliance sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to urging him to find a path forward for the passage of the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
A Canadian man was sentenced to two years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from the General Electric Co., federal authorities said.
General Electric has extended its deadlines for employees to comply with the federal vaccine mandate.
The fight to unionize Starbucks cafes in New York state’s second-largest city, Buffalo, is escalating as workers expand the number of stores they seek to represent, while the coffee chain steps up its campaign against it.
Kyle Rittenhouse sobbed and gulped for air on the witness stand as he was asked to describe the moments before he shot three men in the aftermath of demonstrations in Kenosha, Wis.
Elon Musk has sold his first block of about $5 million worth of Tesla shares since 2016, exercising some stock options and then selling a portion of that to raise the cash he’ll need to pay taxes on the shares he acquired.
His trust sold more than 3.5 million shares worth over $3.88 billion in a flurry of trades carried out Tuesday and yesterday. Those transactions were not marked as 10b5, meaning they were not scheduled sales.
The chief lighting technician for “Rust” filed a lawsuit against some of the film’s producers, including Alec Baldwin, the film armorer and assistant director, citing negligence over how they handled a loaded gun on the set.
