It’s Tuesday, which is sort of like Thursday in this short, three-day holiday week, and tomorrow will be faux Friday…and also the biggest party night of the year, but let’s save that for tomorrow, shall we?
So, as for today, it’s a day after my own heart, National Espresso Day. If you happen to live near Dunkin’ Donuts, and really, is there anyone in New York who doesn’t? Unless you’re in the western part of the state, in which case, it’s Tim Horton’s all the way.
Anyway, Dunkin’ has some special officers to mark this day. More on that here, if you’re interested.
It turns out that espresso has nothing to do with the bean or the roast, but rather brewing method, which involves forcing pressurized hot water through finely ground coffee to create a concentrated coffee topped with delicate foam called crema.
If you really want to go down the espresso rabbit hole, you should click on the link that appears in the sentence above. Espresso has its roots in Italy (naturally) in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Its name comes from the word esprimere which means “to express” or “to press out.”
The first espresso machine was patented in 1884 by Angelo Moriondo from Turin. In 1901, Luigi Bezzera, from Milano, patented an improved espresso machine.
I happen to be a huge espresso fan, and I am very, VERY connected to my Nespresso machine, which recently has started to make some scary loud noises. This makes me scared. I cannot be without my espresso and the supply chain issues make me worried that I might have to go without…maybe I should just order a backup now? I might get it sometime in 2023 at the rate we’re going.
It’s worth noting that today is Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan. It’s actually is actually a modern name for an ancient ritual called Niinamesai, in which the Emperor makes the season’s first offering of freshly harvested rice to the gods and then partakes of the rice himself.
Japan’s royal family has been in the U.S. press recently as a result of Princess Mako’s decision to give up her status and her title to marry a commoner for love.
The couple has decamped to New York City where the former princess recently made a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond, and apparently got a little lost…but who among us hasn’t lost our bearings upon coming out of that store…it’s like some kind of time warp in there.
I’m not going to admonish you to get cracking on your Thanksgiving dinner, by the way, because if you’re not already prepping by now you’re a lost cause. Maybe order a pizza instead?
It will be mostly sunny but colder today, with temperatures just barely kissing 40 degrees.
In the headlines…
The White House has said that Joe Biden intends to run for re-election in 2024, a statement that comes amid speculation over his future as the president sees a dip in his approval rating.
Biden will renominate Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, to another four-year term — ensuring policy continuity at a moment of rapid inflation and vast economic uncertainty but potentially angering progressive Democrats.
Powell’s four-year term is up in February, and the President faced a key decision of whether to keep Powell, who was put in the job by a Republican, in the government’s most important economic policy job.
The S&P 500 pared gains and finished lower after news that Biden would nominate Powell for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, paving the way for the continuation of the current policy framework.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said she will vote against Powell to serve another four years as chairman of the Federal Reserve, citing his “failures on regulation, climate and ethics.”
Warren said she’ll support Lael Brainard, whom Biden nominated for the central bank’s No. 2 slot.
Brainard, who has been a Fed governor since 2014, is already part of the Fed’s inner policy circle. But her elevation to vice chair will make her Powell’s closest collaborator on monetary policy matters if she is confirmed by the Senate.
Kyle Rittenhouse slammed Biden for “defaming” his character when the president tweeted out a video suggesting the teen is a white supremacist.
“It’s actual malice, defaming my character for him to say something like that,” Rittenhouse told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson during an hour-long interview that aired last night.
Rittenhouse said he isn’t racist and supports the Black Lives Matter movement. “This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defense,” he told Carlson.
Rep. Claudia Tenney found an unexpected way to make a point about the American justice system following the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal – by quoting a top loyalist for imprisoned NXIVM leader and sex trafficker Keith Raniere.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden landed at Fort Bragg yesterday evening, thanking service members and their families ahead of Thanksgiving.
The president and first lady will return to Nantucket for Thanksgiving this year, continuing a family tradition that they skipped in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Many retail employees will be able to eat turkey with their families this year as merchants from Target to Walmart keep physical locations closed on Thanksgiving Day for at least another year.
Macy’s is auctioning off 10 digital images of its Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, known as NFTs, including a floating firefighter from the 1940s and a gold Macy’s star from the 1970s.
Average U.S. gas prices are beginning to drop just before Thanksgiving, foretelling a potentially lower financial burden for consumers and less pressure for the president.
Biden hopes to announce his decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve today during a speech at the White House, but the timing of such a move is still contingent on other nations finalizing their agreements.
Biden mourned the lives lost in a deadly incident at a Wisconsin holiday parade, calling the violence a tragedy that has left a community struggling to understand what has happened.
Darrell Brooks, 39, who is accused of barreling a maroon SUV into celebratory crowds at a Wisconsin Christmas parade Sunday, killing at least five people, will be hit with five counts of first-degree homicide, according to police.
Brooks had been arrested time and again since he was a teenager, accused of battery and domestic abuse and resisting the police. Earlier this month, prosecutors in Milwaukee said, he intentionally ran over a woman he knew with a maroon Ford Escape.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the latest surge in Covid-19 infections is worse than anything Germany has experienced so far and called for tighter restrictions to help check the spread.
Austria went into a major lockdown to try to break the strong fourth wave of Covid, while the German health minister, Jens Spahn, warned that by the end of this winter “just about everyone in Germany will probably be either vaccinated, recovered or dead.”
The Biden administration has no plans to curb future Covid-19 surges using a nationwide lockdown, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said at a briefing.
Even though the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage on, nearly three-quarters of Americans (74 percent) now say their lives have returned to “normal,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
Coronavirus cases are rising once again, disrupting classrooms, overwhelming hospitals and alarming public health officials — even in areas with high vaccination rates — who warn the country is headed for a holiday surge that could leave thousands dead.
Cases are rising again in parts of the country, but more people are traveling, and health officials have largely stopped telling people to skip celebrations.
The White House announced that 95 percent of federal employees have complied with the vaccination mandate ahead of a deadline set by Biden.
Covid-19 cases in children are up 32% from two weeks ago, according to new numbers published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
A Massachusetts judge dismissed all criminal charges that were filed in connection with the COVID-19 outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, which was one of the deadliest in the country.
Anyone who received a Covid vaccine in the early stages of the rollout should register for a booster because “there’s probably more infection happening among the vaccinated population” than the U.S. is monitoring, Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb said.
The Biden administration announced $1.5 billion in funding to help eliminate a shortage of doctors and nurses in underserved communities by providing scholarships and repaying the student loans of providers who work in medically needy areas.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes has tested positive for COVID-19.
Mandatory mask-wearing is back in Erie County’s restaurants, gyms and other public places, and the county executive is considering much more restrictive measures if Covid-19 hospitalizations increase.
Phase two of the plan would require vaccines to enter indoor dining, bars and entertainment venues. Implementation of this phase would be put in place if COVID-19 case data, case rates and hospitalizations continue to rise even after the mask mandate.
Niagara County will not re-instate a mask mandate at this time, Niagara County Chairman Becky Wydysh announced in a statement.
A Long Island emergency room was forced to close its doors yesterday because of a nursing staff shortage, as a New York state rule took effect that bars unvaccinated medical workers from their jobs.
Crouse Hospital in Syracuse fired 45 employees for refusing to get a state-mandated Covid-19 vaccination after losing their religious exemptions.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is maintaining a healthy lead over her toughest challenger, state Attorney General Tish James, in her bid to win a term in her own right next year, according to a new Data for Progress poll.
James unveiled a multi-point plan for how she would address the COVID-19 pandemic, pledging to use the state’s buying power for more home testing kits, expanding outreach outside major cities and offer $200 to vaccine holdouts to get their shots.
Hochul, who was sworn in as the state’s chief executive in August, tops the field of potential candidates with the support of 36 percent of likely primary voters.
Hochul appointed longtime state official Jeffrey Pearlman to become her administration’s general counsel and appointed Micah Lasher to serve as her director of policy.
Helping fight food insecurity heading into the holidays, Hochul and her staff packed Thanksgiving turkeys with members of the National Guard at the Javits Center yesterday.
Hochul announced the launch of the “DRIve EV Downtown” program that will bring electric vehicle (EV) fast charging stations to downtown areas in New York State that are undergoing revitalization and development efforts.
An eight-month investigation by the state Assembly found “overwhelming evidence” that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo engaged in sexual harassment while in office and abused his power to help produce what would become a $5.1 million pandemic memoir.
You can read the entire 46-page report here.
The report was commissioned in March to dig into a series of claims against Cuomo and might have been the basis for the former governor’s impeachment had he not resigned in August.
The report found that senior staff “attended meetings with agents and publishers, transcribed and drafted portions of the Book, coordinated the production and promotion of the Book, and participated in working sessions to review and finalize the Book.”
As they extensively helped former Cuomo produce a book netting him $5.1 million, some government staff did not feel the assistance was voluntary, according to an investigative report by the state Assembly.
The report corroborates claims by a 12th accuser who said Cuomo forcibly kissed her while touring her flood-damaged home and then sent her signed photos of the visit.
A spokesman for Cuomo said any use of state resources—like a printer—was incidental. He added that some public employees volunteered their time to help write and edit the memoir.
“The Assembly’s report simply parrots the attorney general’s flawed report, failing to engage with the many errors and omissions in the A.G.’s report and her one-sided, biased investigation,” said Rita Glavin, Cuomo’s lawyer.
Recently released testimony from a former high-ranking state health official accuses Cuomo’s office of repeatedly stymieing and undermining the state’s public health experts in the first year of the pandemic.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams blamed “professional” anarchists for the rioting and vandalism in New York City following Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal Friday — insisting these groups infiltrate cities to “create violence.”
“The concealed weapon ruling that’s going to come about is extremely challenging for us,” says Adams. “This is different from a rural county somewhere. And this could have a major impact on our ability to keep our city safe, but we will adjust.”
Adams reacted to viral video of cars doing donuts on the Kosciuszko Bridge, saying New York City would not be “disrespected.”
As Councilman Francisco Moya vies to become the next Council Speaker, he’ll also have to contend with lingering allegations he ran afoul of campaign finance rules when he first ran for Council back in 2017 — a controversy that could imperil his present run.
Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to give banning Central Park horse carriages one final shot before leaving office, revisiting a long-stalled promise that he rode into City Hall on eight years ago.
De Blasio announced that the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs will give the museum $50 million in capital funds, the largest gift in the museum’s nearly 200-year history.
New York City is severing ties with CORE Services Group, one of the largest nonprofit organizations running homeless shelters, citing the charity’s repeated management failures, conflicts of interest and excessive executive salaries.
Steven Banks, the city’s social services commissioner, who has had a mixed record on curbing homelessness, is resigning to do public interest work at a white-shoe law firm.
Banks, who has served as the head of the Department of Social Services since 2014, said that his departure also means he won’t be seeking a job in Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ incoming administration.
A second federal agency is kicking off a civil rights probe into the approval of part of a natural gas pipeline snaking through Brooklyn.
Overseas travelers are back in New York City after the U.S. borders reopened, but many businesses do not expect a major rebound until next year.
Upper East Side residents opposed to a rezoning that would allow the New York Blood Center to expand its headquarters have requested a temporary restraining order over a crucial vote scheduled for today in the City Council.
The daughter of the late Malcolm X was found dead in her Brooklyn home last night, police sources said.
A federal judge has ordered the NYC Correction Department to speed up its backlogged disciplinary system and mete out discipline to hundreds of officers with unresolved cases involving use of force.
The Diocese of Brooklyn has removed a priest from his duties at two Queens churches after he was credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor, diocese officials said.
Prominent Democrats in Congress slammed the city’s five district attorneys for fueling the crisis at Rikers Island by frequently seeking “excessive” cash bail for people accused of nonviolent crimes.
A new report indicates a significant percentage of vulnerable people are fighting to maintain their at-home care workers, with many losing the battle to low wages that persist because of the state’s reluctance to increase pay for aides, advocates say.
A Colonie pharmacy will pay $7,150 to settle the federal government’s allegations that the business recklessly filled ketamine prescriptions for substance abuse patients that were written by two Capital Region doctors.
Developers and public officials celebrated the completion of a new, five-story apartment building Monday where an apartment building declared a public nuisance in 2010 once stood.
Albany County Republican legislators are asking the city of Albany to pay back the county for additional public safety costs that have racked up since the start of the pandemic.
As Warren County hits record numbers of COVID-19 cases, county and health officials are asking the state to provide more resources to help combat the surge – namely by reopening its mass vaccination site.
The House committee investigating the Capitol attack issued five new subpoenas, focusing on ex-President Donald Trump’s allies who helped draw crowds to D.C. before the riot on Jan. 6, including operative Roger Stone and the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D., Miss.) said the committee needs to know who organized, planned, paid for and received funds related to Jan. 6 activities, as well as what communications organizers had with people in the White House and Congress.
Michael Cohen is now a free man — and he plans to keep singing like a canary to authorities investigating Trump.
