Good Thursday morning.
In like a lion, out like a lamb they say…that’s March, right? But maybe Mother Nature is getting a jump on things? Because yesterday’s wind was off the hook, with gusts of over 40 mph.
Thirty-one days until Spring, officially speaking. And we are really going to get a sneak peak today, with temperatures scheduled to be in the mid-50s. Hallelujah! Skies will be cloudy and the wind will die down sometime in the late morning.
One drawback of the warm-up – all that ice and snow that’s still around will be starting to melt, and that means we’re in a flood watch through Friday.
Hopefully, however, the warmed weather puts you in a warmer mood, which would be a good way to set the stage for the fact that today is Random Acts of Kindness Day.
Let’s face it, the pandemic has made us all a little crankier and edgier than usual, and also all that isolation and staying away from one another left us a little rusty when it comes to the being nice department. (Maybe I’m just speaking from personal experience?)
The day started in 1995 in Denver, Colorado by a nonprofit organization called (what else?) The Random Acts Of Kindness Foundation. The event spread to New Zealand nine years later, and observance has become increasingly widespread since then.
The idea here is that even the smallest nice gesture – paying for someone else’s coffee in the Starbuck’s line, or letting someone into traffic before you, or even simply smiling at a stranger (assuming you’re not on mass transit or other location where masks are still required indoors) – can multiply and lead to positive outcomes.
If you want to get technical about it, the philosophy behind this day is altruism, which is selfless concern for the welfare of others.
Maybe doing nice things just because that’s a nice thing to do doesn’t move you.
So consider this: By doing nice things for others, you’re also helping yourself. Studies show that being kind can improve your own emotional wellbeing. But don’t take my word for it, look here:
“A 2019 study in The Journal of Social Psychology found that people who performed kindness activities for seven days saw a boost in happiness. The degree to which their happiness increased was directly tied to the number of acts of kindness they performed.”
Yep. Doing something for someone else can boost your own levels of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, all of which are connected to mood and happiness elevation. What’s more, you ca simultaneously reduce the stress hormone cortisol AND strengthen your ties to the community around you.
Hell, do it enough and you might even live longer, and be less anxious and less depressed while you’re at it. Win-win.
Today’s Google Doodle is worth a look, it celebrates the 94th birthday of Dr. Michiaki Takahashi, a Japanese virologist who created the vaccine that is now used to protect millions of children all over the world from chicken pox. (He died in 2013).
And since we already dispensed with the weather, let’s get right to the good stuff….the news.
In the headlines…
President Biden has rejected ex-President Trump’s request to shield White House visitor logs from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including appointments for individuals granted entry to the White House complex that day.
In a letter to the National Archives, White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden considered Trump’s claim that because he was president on Jan. 6, the records should remain private, but decided it was “not in the best interest of the United States” to do so.
Trump, rattled by news that his longtime accountants had declared that years of his financial statements were not reliable, issued a statement of self-defense with new claims about his wealth. These, too, did not add up.
Former New York Observer editor Ken Kurson pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors, resolving a yearslong legal saga that included being pardoned by Trump.
Eric Trump has blasted the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine as “stripping the freedoms in this country,” opening a potential rift with his famous vaccine supporting father.
There’s a growing sense among Democrats that it’s time for a change of course at the White House — whether that means new strategy or new staffers.
Senate absences and last-minute talks over barring funding for drug paraphernalia are slowing down government funding talks, pushing lawmakers within 48 hours of the shutdown deadline.
Senate leaders are racing to land a deal that would thwart a government shutdown by appeasing a Republican blockade before funding runs out Friday night.
The three leading contenders to be Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court are turning to trusted hands to help navigate one of Washington’s most grueling and stage-managed processes.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Steve Dickson, who was nominated by Trump, announced that he will step down as administrator of the agency on March 31.
Russia is continuing its military buildup around Ukraine, Western officials said, even as Moscow announced it had begun drawing down some troops and released footage of tanks and armored personnel carriers departing Crimea.
Tensions over Ukraine abruptly ratcheted up as Western officials accused Russia of lying about whether it had really begun pulling back troops from the Ukrainian border.
The United States sent F-35 fighter jets to Germany to bolster NATO defenses, the Air Force Reserve Command announced.
China’s top leaders have spent days weighing how far Beijing should go to back Russian President Vladimir Putin and how to manage a partnership many call a marriage of convenience as opposed to one of conviction.
Federal Reserve officials at their meeting last month discussed an accelerated timetable for raising interest rates, beginning with an anticipated increase in March amid greater discomfort with high inflation.
Ryan Zinke, the former interior secretary, misused his position and lied to investigators about his involvement in a Montana land deal, repeatedly breaking federal ethics rules, a government watchdog said yesterday.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki attributed the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes to “hateful rhetoric” about COVID-19’s origins.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 927,000 Americans.
With nearly 70,000 people inside Beijing’s “closed loop” taking Covid tests every day, not a single case was detected yesterday, the first day of the Games that was entirely free of new cases.
The police ordered protesters clogging Ottawa’s streets to leave or face criminal charges, appearing to set the stage for a clampdown aimed at ending demonstrations that have roiled the nation’s capital for weeks, and reverberated around the world.
Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine provides an added layer of protection against reinfection for people who have been previously infected with Covid-19, as well as increased immune durability over time, according to two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine.
COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths are all declining and federal health officials could ease guidance on masks soon, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
“We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing when these metrics are better, and then have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.
The idea would be that local communities could relax COVID restrictions, such as indoor masking, based on such factors as ICU bed capacity. Walensky hasn’t offered specifics on what the benchmarks might entail, but hospitalization levels are a key barometer.
Texas is challenging the federal airport mask mandate in court.
A new, large study found that in the year after getting Covid, people were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with psychiatric disorders they hadn’t had than people who didn’t get infected.
Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill into law requiring public schools to allow parents to opt out of mask requirements by March 1.
Philadelphia officials introduced a new tiered system to help determine when COVID-19 mitigation measures can be lifted or reimplemented, if necessary, based on the city’s key virus metrics.
A Manhattan judge says she won’t force a hospital to give an ailing post-COVID-19 patient the controversial drug ivermectin after the man’s wife sued for the non-FDA-approved treatment, according to a new ruling.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has extended the COVID-related state of emergency in New York, which was set to expire Tuesday, through March 16, despite declining coronavirus cases.
“We now have the lowest case rate of any major state, any large state in America,” Hochul said. “That’s something that didn’t happen because we wanted it to, that was as a direct result of strategic policies.”
The New York State Department of Health notified facilities that the booster mandate for all health care workers will take effect on Monday, Feb. 21.
New York’s first female governor, who quickly and quietly assembled a campaign juggernaut, will get the Democratic Party’s backing in her re-election campaign today.
Hillary Clinton plans to introduce Hochul as the party’s new standard-bearer at a convention in Midtown Manhattan.
Clinton responded to special counsel John Durham’s alleging that her 2016 presidential campaign paid for computer research to linkTrump to Russia, calling it a “a fake scandal.”
Hochul’s ambitious plan to promote multi-family housing by Metro North train stations and in single-family neighborhoods has run into a buzzsaw of opposition in Westchester County.
Diana Reyna, a former New York City Council member and ex-deputy Brooklyn borough president, will run alongside Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi as his choice for lieutenant governor.
New York Republicans are reportedly seeking to raise up to $3 million to fight the state’s just enacted Democratic redistricting map that is expected to slash the number of Republican lawmakers in half.
Sixteen Democrats who represent New York in the House of Representatives endorsed state Attorney General Letitia James as she runs for a second full term.
Republican state Sen. Patty Ritchie will not seek re-election this year. She was first elected in 2010 to the 48th Senate District, which covers the eastern shore of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River shoreline.
Internal debates went public as Assemblyman Charles Fall rescinded his endorsement of former Rep. Max Rose’s congressional campaign – because Rose’s team declined to immediately support the state Senate campaign of Fall’s girlfriend, Bianca Rajpersaud.
The state Senate passed legislation this week that would require financial institutions to warn customers about potential romantic scams, AKA the “Tinder Swindler” bill.
Hochul’s controversial proposal to allow accessory dwelling units by right is not a done deal for Stewart-Cousins.
Chief Judge Janet DiFiore wants the state Legislature to approve her plan to consolidate the state’s sprawling court network, which would condense 11 trial courts into 2 – continuing a reform effort that has been pursued for years.
Mayor Eric Adams used his first executive budget proposal to showcase his intention to curtail some of the city’s free spending — cutting funding to most city agencies and pointedly avoiding an increase in the police budget.
Adams unveiled his $98.5 billion preliminary budget for fiscal 2023 — which includes a slight shrinkage of already massive city spending by $200 million that he claimed will result in more than $2 billion in savings.
Adams decried “decades of inefficiency and wasteful spending” in the past and bragged that he’d “taken the very first steps to turn this city around” with his first budget proposal. “Fiscal discipline will be a hallmark of my administration,” he said.
Thanks to the 3% shave, known as a “Program to Eliminate the Gap” or PEG, Adams’ budget expects to reduce municipal government spending by nearly $2 billion and head count by 10,200 over the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years without any layoffs.
New York City’s force of school safety agents, which currently has more than 1,000 unfilled positions, would be permanently reduced by 560 under Adams’ preliminary budget.
Adams agreed with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver who said it “doesn’t quite make sense” that Nets star Kyrie Irving can’t play at Barclays Center while visiting unvaccinated players can — but cautioned changing the rule might send “the wrong message.”
In an exchange with a Post reporter, Adams claimed that he didn’t intend to paint the city press corps as racist, even though he’d made a point of noting a day earlier that it’s largely white.
Adams has blamed the “drill” rap genre for contributing to the city’s sharp uptick in violence this year – and late Tuesday night, he met with some of those rappers to talk about solutions to the problem.
Adding a “dangerousness” standard to New York’s law that largely ended cash bail requirements for many criminal charges would be too subjective, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said.
The Senate majority leader said Adams was told in no uncertain terms that his plan to amend the state’s bail reform law in a bid to stem the tide of violence in the Big Apple was dead on arrival.
Former Congressman-turned-radio host Anthony Weiner claims that New York City residents “blame” him for Bill de Blasio’s time as mayor of the Big Apple.
Several jurors in Sarah Palin’s defamation case against the New York Times learned before they issued a verdict that the judge planned to reject her claims, though they said it didn’t affect deliberations, according to a court document.
Amazon workers at a facility in Staten Island have reached an agreement with the company to hold a union vote in March, according to union organizers and the company.
New York City’s high school graduation rate continued to tick up last school year — the second consecutive year in which the state eased graduation requirements because of the pandemic, according to state data released yesterday.
Albany’s Bishop Maginn High School will close at the end of the school year in June.
A published comment from Saratoga Springs Public Safety Commissioner James Montagnino is drawing criticism after the newly elected official said “gangster rap” attracts “unsavory characters” to the Spa City.
After firing assistant city attorney Tony Izzo in January, Saratoga Springs Mayor Ron Kim rehired him as a part-time interim attorney for the next six months.
Boosted by higher sales tax revenues, federal American Rescue Plan Act funds and income from grants, Cohoes Mayor Bill Keeler forecast in his State of the City speech that taxpayers would see a third year in a row without a city property tax hike.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation will begin its cleanup of Rickett’s Dry Cleaners, a Superfund site in Ballston Spa, this month.
The Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences raised $14.4 million in its first fundraising campaign, exceeding its $11 million goal.
While the biological father and grandfather of a young girl who allegedly had been taken from her custodial parents appeared in court yesterday, authorities said the child’s biological mother, who is accused of abducting her, may face more charges.
A judge has temporarily blocked the release of actor Bob Saget’s death records and photos at the request of his family.
Mikaela Shiffrin’s nightmarish Beijing Olympics continued today when she tripped on a gate and toppled to the snow in the women’s combined. It was the third race she failed to finish in the last two weeks.
The International Olympic Committee has responded to Sha’Carri Richardson’s claims that there is a double standard at the Beijing Olympics when it pertains to drug testing.
