Good morning, it’s FRIDAY. Enough said.
Holy 60+ degrees yesterday!
It was glorious. And also highly disconcerting. I’m not going to lie, I could get used to this, but please do not interpret that as an endorsement of climate change. It is most certainly not. Maybe I should just move to Hawaii and call it a day.
So two important things to import today.
- It’s National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day. I have to confess that I never participated in this when I worked in offices where people engaged in the annual ugly holiday (we’re very PC, don’t you know?) apparel contest. Nor did I tend to participate in the cookie exchange or the dessert buffet. I guess I’m really a Scrooge at heart.
Bah Humbug.
I also didn’t know that the modern day tradition of the sporting of ugly sweaters actually has its roots in none other than Bill Cosby, who used to wear all manner of ugly knitwear – it was kind of a hallmark – as Bill Huxtable on The Cosby Show.
That sort of ruins it for me, given the history of Mr. Cosby since his halcyon days. OH, and did you know he’s back in the news? I haven’t following this story as closely as I might. But apparently, there have been developments of late.
2) On a happier – and much sweeter – note, it’s also National Maple Syrup Day.
And just like so many other things, maple syrup is in short supply these days. So much so that the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (QMSP) – the so-called Opec of maple syrup – has released about 22m kg from its emergency larder, nearly half the total in reserve.
That’s the most released from the reserve in a single season since 2008 and amounts to about half of the entire stockpile.
I happen to be a big maple syrup fan. I like it more than straight sugar, for certain, but also more than honey, to be honest. BUT, if given a choice, I would definitely choose cinnamon sugar – as a flavor – over anything else. Snickerdoodle for the win. Boom.
We’re not quite going to get into the 60s again today, but it is still going to be warmer than usual – in the high 40s and flirting with 50, to be exact – and mostly sunny. Let’s not talk about Saturday, shall we?
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden warned that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is going to spread more rapidly in the United States and that a winter of severe illness and death awaits the unvaccinated.
“We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated – for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm,” he said. “If you’re vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death.”
Still uncertain is how serious the consequences of Omicron will be, as much remains unknown about the variant, including how likely it is to cause severe disease.
The Biden administration filed two emergency applications in the Supreme Court, asking the justices to revive a requirement that health care workers at hospitals that receive federal money be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
A CDC advisory panel recommended Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines over Johnson & Johnson’s shot for adults 18 and over, after dozens of people developed a rare blood clot condition following J&J vaccination, all of them hospitalized and nine died.
Pfizer and BioNTech SE say they have asked U.S. regulators to fully approve their Covid-19 vaccine for adolescents ages 12 to 15.
Jobless claims were higher than expected last week after previously hitting their lowest level since 1969, the Labor Department reported.
Initial filings for unemployment insurance for the week ended Dec. 11 totaled 206,000, above the 195,000 Dow Jones estimate and a gain of 18,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised 188,000.
Biden bestowed the Medal of Honor, the most prestigious decoration in the US military, to three Army soldiers – including the first black serviceman to receive the decoration since the Vietnam War.
Biden signed the bill raising the debt limit ceiling that passed Congress earlier this week, according to the White House.
Vice President Kamala Harris said that she and Biden have never discussed whether he plans to run for re-election and that it isn’t a topic she thinks about as they near the end of their first year in office.
The Biden administration relaxed restrictions around an abortion pill that had prevented women from getting the medication without first making in-person visits to pick up the prescriptions at medical offices.
Biden indicated that he and Democrats likely will not meet their goal of passing his roughly $2 trillion social spending bill by the end of the year, saying it would be finished over the next “days and weeks” while the focus turns to other things.
The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, decided that a section in the spending bill granting legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants must be dropped from the legislation.
MacDonough said the third and most recent immigration plan put forward by Democrats doesn’t meet the rules for what can be included in a budget measure bypassing the Senate’s filibuster.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters he was “disappointed” upon hearing the news. “We’re considering what options remain,” the Illinois Democrat said.
The Biden administration has ceased negotiations about potential payouts to illegal immigrant families separated at the US-Mexico border during the Trump administration after floating payments of up to $450,000 per person.
The NFL and the NFL Players Association have negotiated changes to the league’s COVID-19 protocols, some of which are being put in place immediately and could help teams whose rosters have been decimated this week.
“Effective immediately, all clubs will implement preventative measures that have proven effective: masking regardless of vaccination status, remote or outdoor meetings, eliminating in-person meals, and no outside visitors while on team travel.”
With the holidays fast approaching, are there ways to reduce the financial burden of testing? There are, but they may require both legwork and luck, experts said.
One hundred three Marines have been discharged for refusing to take the COVID vaccine, the Marine Corps said as the military services started to discharge a pool of possibly as many as 30,000 active duty service members who still refuse to be vaccinated.
The U.S. military services have yet to grant any religious exemptions to the Pentagon’s Covid-19 vaccinate mandate, out of at least 12,000 requests from service members, the services said.
Jason Hitch, the reality TV personality who found short-lived love on the second season of “90 Day Fiancé,” has died of COVID-19 at age 45.
A new Columbia University study says the omicron variant of COVID-19 is “markedly resistant” to existing vaccines, antibody treatments and even booster shots may provide only modest protection against infection.
The state of New York reported a massive surge in new COVID positive tests — 18,276 in one day, up more than 40% in one day and the highest single-day total since January 14.
Coronavirus cases are spiking again in New York City, beyond anything seen since last winter, and in much of the United States, where the Delta variant remains by far the dominant version.
New York City’s Covid-19 positivity rate doubled in just three days as the city battles a virus surge ahead of the holidays, Dr. Jay Varma, a top health advisor to Mayor Bill de Blasio, tweeted.
“Um, we’ve never seen this before in #NYC,” he wrote.
Vaccinated New York City residents who had embraced a return to some normalcy are unsettled: “It’s scary — it feels like we’ve been here before.”
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, has tested positive for COVID-19 as cases of the virus continue to skyrocket in the Big Apple. He has mild symptoms and is quarantining at home away from his pregnant wife.
Holiday cheer has turned into COVID-19 fear at the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office, where a coronavirus outbreak hit more than a dozen prosecutors and other staffers a week after an office holiday party.
At least a dozen NYC businesses have temporarily shut this week in response to positive test results among their workers, and others are expected to follow.
New York businesses are grappling with how to comply with a new state requirement that all patrons either show proof of vaccination against Covid-19 or wear masks indoors.
Moulin Rouge! The Musical” was the latest Broadway hit to fall victim to the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the Big Apple – as the show was abruptly canceled last night with fans already in their seats.
Facing the threat of Omicron variant, Gov. Kathy Hochul said her administration would create a portal through which residents could request that coronavirus tests be sent to their homes, and de Blasio announced a six-step plan to combat a winter surge.
With Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths rising, Hochul tried a new approach to get New Yorkers to get vaccinated and mask up: anger.
“It is upon us, the winter surge is in full force and I believe it’s going to get even stronger and more virulent and we are in for a rough ride this winter season,” Hochul said.
New York’s health care workers should be paid more, Hochul said as she previewed her 2022 agenda.
State legislators and immigration advocates want to make the Excluded Workers Fund a permanent part of the state budget.
Hochul said she’ll make no-questions-asked mail voting a top priority in 2022 – even though voters rejected that proposal just last month.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams has named Louis Molina, a former NYPD detective and the current chief of the Las Vegas Department of Public Safety, as the next commissioner for the city’s Department of Correction.
Molina was previously the chief internal monitor and acting assistant commissioner on the Nunez Compliance Unit, named for the lead plaintiff in the original class-action suit against the Correction Department that spurred the appointment of a federal monitor.
During a press conference at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Adams called Rikers Island a “stain on our city.”
Adams warned the inmates on Rikers Island to start behaving because he plans to immediately reverse outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policy against solitary confinement.
Adams vowed that his new police commissioner will report directly to him as questions mounted about the influence of a former NYPD chief of department in the running for a top role in the new administration.
As PR executive Ronn Torossian cozies up as a confidant to Adams, some Democratic operatives are worried about the closetful of skeletons in his allegedly sketchy past.
De Blasio’s administration has quietly begun moving all detainees in solitary confinement — largely for violent attacks on staff — back into general population, sources say, outraging jail unions and Adams.
Two years after Tessa Majors, an 18-year-old freshman at Barnard College, was fatally stabbed during an evening walk in Morningside Park, a third teenager pleaded guilty in the murder.
Alice M. Greenwald, 69, the president and chief executive of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan, announced that she expects to leave the institution in 2022, after 16 years there.
The New York City Housing Authority is the Big Apple’s worst landlord for the fourth consecutive year, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams announced.
The Juilliard School announced that it had received a $50 million gift that it would use to increase enrollment in the program by 40 percent and to provide full scholarships to all participants.
New York’s attorney general is investigating the death of a 29-year-old man who was badly burned when he was shot with a stun gun after dousing himself with hand sanitizer during an altercation with police officers, officials said.
The AG’s office sent a letter to JCOPE contending it did not issue a valid order this week when it voted to have former Gov. Andrew Cuomo surrender the $5.1 million that he was paid to write a book about his administration’s early handling of the pandemic.
AG Tish James’ general counsel Larry Schimmel sent an opinion letter to JCOPE stating that its order was legally defective because it didn’t first produce an investigative report with findings that Cuomo violated the Public Officers Law.
JCOPE would have to produce an investigative report, outlining which laws were violated and what sums and penalties it was seeking.
Cuomo attorney Jim McGuire: “JCOPE’s actions violated fundamental constitutional rights and flagrantly exceeded its statutory authority. It is not at all surprising that the lawlessness of JCOPE’s latest unlawful action is being recognized as just that.”
A group of gun manufacturers, distributors and retailers filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a New York law that allows the state and people affected by gun violence to sue the industry.
Gun sales in 2021 in New York are pacing to be the second highest on record, following last year’s record number of firearm purchases in the pandemic, as indicated by the volume of background checks reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
An 18-year-old Queensbury High School student died this week of COVID-19, one of a small number of people under age 19 statewide who have died of the disease since the pandemic began in March 2020.
Several Capital Region school districts sent word to their communities that they will be on heightened alert as a result of messages on the popular social media site TikTok that apparently are encouraging teens across the country to carry out gun violence today.
Four College of Saint Rose faculty members who were terminated in a round of layoffs last winter have won their lawsuit against the college and its president, Marcia White.
Primark, an international fashion retailer, is stepping up its U.S. expansion with the announcement of three locations in New York state: City Point in Brooklyn; Roosevelt Field in Garden City, Long Island, and Crossgates Mall.
The Fuze Box, the next iteration of a beloved bar and music venue for the past 35 years, reopened yesterday after stumbling through regulatory hurdles with the State Liquor Authority.
The Albany International Airport has recently added another 16 Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations, bringing the total number there to 16 at five spots around the airport grounds.
The RNC has agreed to cover up to $1.6 million of Donald Trump’s personal legal bills in an unusual arrangement under which the party is paying to defend the former president from ongoing investigations that focus on his private business practices.
A federal judge unraveled a painstakingly negotiated settlement between Purdue Pharma and thousands of state, local and tribal governments that had sued the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin for the company’s role in the opioid epidemic.
Daniel Doctoroff, 63, chief executive of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, said he will step down from his role at the company because he likely has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Peloton has removed a viral ad featuring “Sex and the City” actor Chris Noth after sexual-assault accusations against him were published online.
A judge granted the police access to Alec Baldwin’s smartphone, nearly two months into the investigation around how a gun he was practicing with on the set of the film, “Rust,” fired a live round, killing the movie’s cinematographer and wounding its director.
