Good Tuesday morning from what feels like the coldest place on earth.
As I write this, it’s a whopping 5 degrees. And the thermometer isn’t expected to budge much throughout the day, perhaps breaking into the low double digits. Yippee.
At least there will be a lot of sunshine. But it will feel downright freezing.
The reality is that this really far from the coldest place on earth, which is, according to the interwebs: Antarctica, specifically the Eastern Antarctic Plateau, where it is suggested that air temperatures could be around -94°C, or maybe even lower.
In terms of the coldest places in the U.S., they’re both in Alaska, (which is not, of course, in the contiguous lower 48):
- Denali, formerly known as Mount McKinley, with an average temperature of around -10°C that can go as low as as -83.4°C when one factors in the wind chill;
- Prospect Creek, a village that was built as a settlement for workers of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the late 1970s, but is now practically deserted.
I guess when one think comparatively, double digits is downright WARM. I mean, I won’t be jumping into any bodies of water or anything, but at least you can go outside safely – as long as you’re properly attired – and not risk immediate frostbite.
I did spend much of yesterday morning sliding around in my driveway while trying to walk a very confused dog, and then chipping my car our of a solid block of ice.
Ah, upstate, how I loathe thee in the winter sometimes.
Now that we’ve gotten the obvious (in terms of talking about the weather) out of the way, it’s time to get down to brass tacks.
Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, which lands during the second week of National Human Trafficking Prevention and Awareness Month.
Human trafficking is considered a modern form of slavery, and the estimated number of people in modern-day slavery around the worlds is 40.3 million, according to the 31:8 project, a nonprofit based in North Dakota that educates, advocates and raises awareness in order to prevent human trafficking.
(The name is derived from Proverbs 31:8, which exhorts us to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all those who are destitute”).
Human trafficking is a $150 billion worldwide industry, and in 2017, an estimated one out of seven endangered runaways reported were likely sex trafficking victims. And this is not a “somewhere else problem”, as it’s estimated that 600,000 to 800,000 people in the U.S. are trafficked annually.
Human trafficking generally involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain labor or sex. Traffickers use violence, manipulation, or false promises to lure their victims, who usually experience physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse, as well as isolation from their friends, family, and the outside world in general.
To learn more about New York’s human trafficking laws, and efforts to combat what is a very difficult crime to detect because victims are often hidden from the public view, click here. Also, if you suspect human trafficking and want to report it, you can call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733.
We already got the weather out of the way at the top of this morning missive, so let’s get right to work.
In the headlines…
A coalition of voting rights groups in Georgia announced that they will not attend events surrounding President Joe Biden’s expected visit to Atlanta today because he doesn’t have a clear plan to advance voting rights legislation.
Biden will begin an effort to weaken rules that allow a minority group of senators to kill proposed laws, arguing democracy is in peril unless new voting-rights legislation passes, the White House said.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will speak on the grounds of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College from the Atlanta University Center Consortium.
The Biden administration yesterday deployed top officials to Capitol Hill in a bid to lock in wavering Senate Democrats against a GOP push for sanctions on a Russian gas pipeline.
Former aides to Sen. Joe Manchin who are now lobbyists are scoring big, influential clients as their ex-boss battles Biden’s agenda.
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said he would resign from the central bank on Friday, two weeks before his term on the central bank’s board is set to end.
His resignation follows questions raised over financial transactions he conducted at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The Fed announced Clarida’s resignation on the eve of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s Senate confirmation hearing.
Powell, the Federal Reserve chair whom Biden has nominated for a second four-year term, is set to tell senators today that central bankers will use their economic tools to keep inflation — which has been high — from becoming entrenched.
The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 has surpassed last winter’s peak, underscoring the severity of the threat the virus continues to pose as the extremely contagious Omicron variant tears through the United States.
The United States reported 1.35 million new coronavirus infections yesterday, according to a Reuters tally, the highest daily total for any country in the world as the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans to avoid travel to Canada, citing “very high” levels of the coronavirus.
The agency has also urged unvaccinated people to avoid travel to 54 additional nations, including Mexico — by far the top international destination for U.S. citizens last year, according to federal data.
The first stage of the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate for employees at large companies began yesterday. But without word from the Supreme Court on pending challenges, some state leaders were left to take matters into their own hands.
Much of the Biden administration’s vaccination mandate for larger employers went into effect yesterday despite the possibility the Supreme Court could halt the rule as it considers a legal challenge to it.
A half dozen former health policy makers, including some members of Biden’s transition team, told NBC News the Biden administration needs an urgent reset on its Covid strategy or the White House could rapidly lose credibility with the public.
Private insurers will have to cover the cost of eight at-home coronavirus tests per member per month starting on Saturday, the Biden administration said.
The new requirement means that most consumers with private health insurance can buy at-home tests online or in stores and have them paid for at the time of purchase or get reimbursed by submitting a claim to their insurer.
High levels of T-cells from common cold coronaviruses can provide protection against COVID-19, an Imperial College London study published yesterday has found, which could inform approaches for second-generation vaccines.
An omicron-specific Covid vaccine will be ready by March but some experts warn it could be “too late” due to the variant’s highly transmissible nature.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said two doses of the company’s vaccine may not provide strong protection against infection from the omicron Covid variant, and the original shots have also lost some of their efficacy at preventing hospitalization.
The Covid-19 Omicron variant’s spread among U.S. factory workers is slowing operations and stretching staff for manufacturers, leading some to consider unconventional, and sometimes expensive, solutions to keep operating.
Rising numbers of nurses and other critical healthcare workers are calling in sick across the U.S. due to Covid-19, forcing hospitals to cut capacity just as the Omicron variant sends them more patients, industry officials say.
The omicron COVID variant continued to pummel New York State’s hospitals yesterday, but emerging data signal the strain is beginning to loosen its grip.
New coronavirus cases leaped nearly 62% in New York in the week ending Sunday, as 595,095 cases were reported and many communities outside New York City faced skyrocketing infections that strained the health care system.
Glens Falls Hospital will impose temporary visitation restrictions starting tomorrow amid high community spread of COVID-19.
A handful of FDNY firefighters are still waging war against the Big Apple’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, claiming in a new lawsuit that the exemption process is “rigged” after only three out of 1,700 applicants were excused from getting the jab.
Potential Republican challengers stepped up their demands for Gov. Kathy Hochul to oust Manhattan’s new district attorney — calling his progressive prosecution policies “crazy” and her silence amid the controversy “cowardly.”
The Partnership for New York City, the Big Apple’s largest business advocacy organization, will meet with progressive Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to voice their concerns over details of his stay-out-of-jail free card for criminals.
Bragg suggested that NYPD’s top cop misread his controversial memo to prosecutors about downgrading certain felonies and no longer seeking bail or prison time in most cases.
Long Island’s five Democratic state senators are endorsing Hochul for election rather than backing challenger Rep. Tom Suozzi.
Hochul said she intends to sustain most of the community-based state funding to combat gun violence while expanding resources for law enforcement and local governments join the fight.
The 17 people killed in a Bronx fire this week all died from inhaling smoke that poured through a single malfunctioning door and billowed to the top of the 19-story building, New York City officials said.
Hospitals desperately worked to save the lives of more than a dozen people critically injured by smoke in the fire, while the investigation focused on a door that should have closed automatically but did not.
Several kids as young as 4 and 5 years old were among the fatal victims of the fire, while other children injured in the horror remained hospitalized, including two babies, according to authorities.
Mayor Eric Adams says the medical examiner has modified the death toll from the Bronx fire to 17 people – nine adults and eight children. The number was reported Sunday to be 19.
The dad in the Bronx apartment where the deadly blaze began acknowledged that he apparently pushed the front door back so far trying to save his daughter that it got stuck.
Rep. Ritchie Torres announced a federal, state and local task force to examine residential building fire safety standards — including enforcement of the local law mandating self-closing doors he championed in the City Council.
“We do have a law, as it was mentioned, that it should close automatically,” Adams said. “There may have been a maintenance issue with this door, and that’s going to be part of the ongoing investigation.”
The marshals have also been examining a malfunctioning space heater, which was oil filled. That type of model has an electric component that heats the oil.
An examination of city records shows several complaints and violations at the Bronx building over the years, though most had been resolved.
City inspectors previously repeatedly cited The Bronx high-rise for failing to maintain its self-closing apartment doors — a key defense against rapidly spreading blazes.
Twin Parks North West opened in the early 1970s to tremendous fanfare, a progressive experiment by New York State at the time that was meant to reimagine modern subsidized affordable housing in a square-mile area of New York City.
On another Sunday 35 years ago — March 2, 1986 — a trash compactor fire on the 12th floor sent thick plumes of heavy smoke through a vertical shaft into the six floors above, trapping residents and turning hallways black.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fire. Portable space heaters have been linked to about 1,700 residential fires a year, resulting in about 80 deaths and 160 injuries.
The RNC is suing Adams over a new city law allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections.
State lawmakers started the new year with a thumbs down for redistricting maps and made election-related bills their top priority as the legislative session got underway.
Two GOP state Board of Elections member, citing recent criminal investigations involving alleged absentee ballot fraud, issued a statement criticizing Hochul for signing into law two bills they say “are a direct threat to the integrity of the election process.”
Data underpinning contentious debates on the success or failure of New York’s revised bail laws is in question after the state Office of Court Administration temporarily removed the information from its website, due to an error in how the statistics were tabulated.
According to geolocation data, New Yorkers checked their sports betting apps more than 17 million times in the first 36 hours they were live, including 8 million in the five boroughs of New York City.
A coalition of 17 groups, including the New York Housing Conference, is urging the Hochul administration to develop a new five-year housing capital plan for the state.
The New York ISO has submitted market rule changes for consideration by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) which, if accepted, will stimulate the investment needed to meet the state’s decarbonization and renewable investment mandates.
Veteran state Assemblywoman Sandy Galef says she will not seek re-election. The Hudson Valley Democrat has been in the Assembly since 1993. Her current 95th district includes communities in Putnam County and northern Westchester.
Former Peekskill Mayor Andre Rainey, who just completed two successful terms, announced he would run for Galef’s seat.
Assemblymember Diana Richardson will become Deputy Brooklyn Borough President under the new beep, Antonio Reynoso.
The left-leaning Richardson has been known to tangle with members of the Brooklyn Democrat’s establishment faction.
State Sen. John Liu, a key state lawmaker overseeing New York City schools, has introduced legislation that would block the opening of new charter schools in the Empire State, advocates claim.
New York business owners are saving billions of dollars in taxes by using a state-approved system for sidestepping the $10,000 federal cap on state and local tax deductions.
Charlotte Bennett, whose accusations against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo sparked a slew of additional complaints, herself was accused in a 2017 federal lawsuit of having filed a false claim of “non-consensual sexual contact” against a fellow Hamilton College student.
Rich Azzopardi, a longtime spokesman and advisor to Cuomo, has started a public relations firm: Bulldog Strategies.
Federal prosecutors said they are prepared to drop perjury charges against Ghislaine Maxwell to save her victims from having to testify in a second trial.
The Town of Milton employee who admitted to eliminating files off of the town computers in 2019 is back working at Town Hall.
West Side Management LLC, an organization closely aligned with the city’s most prolific developer, Bonacio Construction, has hired former Saratoga Springs Mayor Meg Kelly as its director of operations.
A second Buffalo-area Starbucks location has unionized, the National Labor Relations Board confirmed.
As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it can go in holding ex-President Donald Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.
Members of Congress, police officers and government watchdog groups argued in federal court that Trump was liable for major financial damages for his role in inspiring the Jan. 6 attack, pressing an array of civil suits against the former president.
California would become the first state to provide access to its Medicaid program to all low-income residents, regardless of immigration status, under a proposal unveiled by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Sixteen major U.S. universities, including Yale University, Georgetown University and Northwestern University, are being sued for alleged antitrust violations because of the way they work together to determine financial-aid awards for students.
The federal tax filing season will run from Jan. 24 to April 18 this year, the Internal Revenue Service said, warning in its announcement that staffing shortages and paperwork backlogs could make for a messy and frustrating experience for taxpayers.
Robert Durst, the troubled millionaire scion of an influential New York real-estate dynasty who was convicted of the murder of his longtime friend and was a suspect in another killing and the disappearance of his wife, died yesterday at the age of 78.
Durst’s lawyer Chip Lewis confirmed his death, at the San Joaquin General Hospital, where Durst had been taken for testing. He then went into cardiac arrest and could not be revived.
A death investigation report for comedian and actor Bob Saget was released by Florida’s Orange County Sheriff’s Office. The initial autopsy found no evidence of drug use or foul play.
Betty White died from a stroke she had six days before her Dec. 31 death at age 99, according to her death certificate.
