Good morning, it’s Friday. Yesterday, I accidentally said on Twitter that it was Tuesday. Imagine how relieved I was to be corrected and realize we were, in fact, closer to the end of the week than the beginning.
Phew.
Since the pandemic skewed my sense of time, I’ve had difficulty keeping track of the days. Working from home also contributes to that challenge, as one day tends to blend into the next.
I did NOT have the added complication of mind-altering substances…but that’s a good segue into the fact that today is National Drink Wine Day. (Helpful that it falls on a Friday).
I’ve not been able to track down the history of this particular commemoration, but it apparently was launched to “spread the love and health benefits of wine.”
Back when I still drank wine – or any other alcohol, for that matter – I remember feeling very encouraged by the news that wine was, in fact, good for you. Like all good things, however, wine is best enjoyed in moderation – at least if you’re consuming it with an eye toward how it can do good things for your body.
You can obtain the same health benefits that you might glean from the occasional glass of wine – namely antioxidants, compounds that prevent cellular damage caused by inflammation and oxidative stress – you can also get by simply consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
Grapes (unfermented, that is) contain resveratrol, which has been shown to potentially help prevent damage to blood vessels, reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) and prevent blood clots. It may also have some downsides, research shows.
If you do choose to go the wine route, however, you should know that grapes have high levels of polyphenols – antioxidants that have been shown to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, and red grapes are even higher levels of antioxidants than white varieties, and so red wine trumps white in terms of its anti-inflammatory capabilities.
Wine might also improve your mental and heart health, promote longevity and encourage the growth of healthy gut bacteria.
The problem, of course, is that excessive consumption of alcohol is bad for you. Close to 88,000 people die in the U.S. every year due to overconsumption of alcohol. And if you imbibe too much, you raise your risk of all sorts of nasties – from certain cancers to diabetes and heart disease.
For healthy adults, the recommended daily consumption of alcohol is:
- Up to one drink a day for women of all ages.
- Up to one drink a day for men older than age 65.
- Up to two drinks a day for men age 65 and younger.
And, if you do drink, please do so responsibly, and don’t drink and drive. Drunk driving causes more than 10,000 deaths a year.
I hope you got outside to enjoy the mild, albeit rather windy, weather that we had yesterday. I went for a delightful run. There’s a wind advisory in effect through 9 a.m. this morning. Today will be slightly less warm, with temperatures in the mid-40s. The wind will continue, with occasional gusts over 40 mph.
In the headlines…
The Senate passed a short-term government funding bill, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk hours before a shutdown deadline.
The measure, which passed with a 65-27 vote, will keep the government running through March 11. Congress had to approve a spending plan before the end of the day today.
Yet as with virtually all must-pass bills, politics hitched a ride. Before passage, conservatives forced votes on amendments including on one of the year’s hot-button issues, COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They were defeated mostly along party lines.
Lawmakers are also working to lock in a broader full-year spending package, but have said they need more time to finish and, as a result, needed a short-term funding extension to avert a shutdown at the end of the week.
The full U.S. Congress will be invited to Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, a year after the invitation list to his address to Congress was radically cut back to 200 due to the pandemic, officials said.
It’s a further step toward normalcy, yet the big annual speech a week from next Tuesday could still turn into a new and disruptive display of national tensions and frustration over trying to move past the pandemic.
A dramatic spike in shelling on the front line between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists raised fears that a conflict that until now has consisted almost entirely of saber-rattling may offer Moscow the kind of pretext the US says it is looking for to invade.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told the United Nations that the US believes Russia may invade Ukraine within days, and challenged Moscow to publicly forswear an attack on its neighbor and withdraw its troops immediately.
“I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one,” Blinken said.
As fears of a Ukraine invasion mount, Biden is set to speak with global allies this afternoon about Russia’s buildup of military troops, in a continued effort to deter Moscow’s hostile advances on its neighbor.
Ex-President Trump and two of his adult children must give depositions in a long-running civil investigation into the family’s business practices, which means the trio could face hours of uncomfortable questioning by investigators in the near future.
The ruling came just three days after a court filing by the attorney general, Letitia James, in the same matter revealed that Trump’s longtime accounting firm had cut ties with him and had essentially retracted a decade’s worth of his financial statements.
New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron also rejected an attempt to freeze the work of James, who is investigating whether Trump misled lenders, insurers or others in his family business’ financial statements.
John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who worked with Trump, has turned over thousands of pages of emails to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection but is withholding thousands of others, according to a court filing.
The U.S. Department of Education has announced it will cancel the student loans of nearly 16,000 borrowers who attended certain for-profit schools, including DeVry University. The relief comes out to $415 million in total.
New weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose last week, ending a three-week streak of improvements.
Figures released by the Labor Department show that applications for the week ended Feb. 12 rose to 248,000 from an upwardly revised 225,000 a week earlier, missing the 219,000 forecast by Refinitiv analysts.
Yet the four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, fell by 10,500 to 243,250. It was the second straight week of declines after rising for five straight weeks as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spread.
Though the Biden administration says it’s running out of money to combat the COVID-19 virus and need more to continue vaccination and testing, lawmakers aren’t eager to spend big — again — on a pandemic many would just as soon declare over.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the House Democratic campaign organization, warned members of his party against “falling in love” with COVID-19 restrictions as many states start scrapping mask mandates.
The BA.2 virus – a subvariant of Omicron – isn’t just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease and appears capable of thwarting some of the key weapons we have against Covid-19, new research suggests.
An HIV variant that is more virulent and transmissible has been discovered in the Netherlands, where it apparently has been circulating for decades, demonstrating viruses do not necessary evolve to become milder, according to new research.
With daily new Covid-19 cases falling, restrictions easing and the strongest consumer finances in recent history, Americans are emerging from the pandemic eager to splurge on everything from travel and sports events to restaurants, cruises and theme parks.
Transplant recipients, cancer patients and millions of other Americans with risk factors feel ignored and abandoned as their neighbors, and their government, seek a return to normal, post-COVID lives.
A 53,000-person anime convention in New York City in late November was not an omicron superspreader event, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) investigation found.
This past Sunday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wasn’t a leading scientific voice on the pandemic — he was another worried parent whose young daughter had just tested positive for COVID.
Although new federal data suggests that the effectiveness of booster shots wanes after about four months, the Biden administration is not planning to recommend fourth doses of the coronavirus vaccine anytime soon.
California health authorities unveiled a “next phase” pandemic playbook for the most populous U.S. state that will treat the coronavirus as a manageable risk that “will remain with us for some time, if not forever,” rather than an emergency.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State said that he will eliminate the state’s mask mandates, including for schools, next month as Covid hospitalizations and case numbers continue to drop.
A group of US trucker convoys — inspired by the weeks-long demonstrations north of the border — are joining protests against COVID-19 restrictions and mandates in several cities.
The US Supreme Court announced that it will review a legal challenge to New York City’s vaccine mandate from a group of public school teachers, less than a week after Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected the appeal.
The C.E.O. and co-founder of a popular brewery in Brooklyn came under fire this week for describing coronavirus vaccine mandates as a “crime against humanity” and drawing comparisons to the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany.
Six months after Kathy Hochul suddenly became New York’s first female governor, the Democratic Convention showcased just how much the political dynamics of the state had changed as she easily secured her party’s endorsement in her race for a full term.
The Buffalo Democrat captured 86% of the delegates’ vote at the party’s state convention in Manhattan. She is the first woman gubernatorial nominee in state history.
Hochul made the case for a united Democratic Party to combat attacks by Republicans. But a protest that broke out during her speech undermined the message, and so did the fact that she still faces two primary challengers.
Both of Hochul’s primary opponents, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Rep. Tom Suozzi, plan to go the petition route — a complex and costly avenue for an underdog campaign.
Hillary Clinton knocked Trump, Sarah Palin, Fox News and Facebook while speaking to New York state Democrats amid speculation she might try a third bid for the White House and controversy surrounding the Durham probe.
“It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get,” Clinton said, drawing laughs as she delivered the keynote speech at the convention.
In endorsing Hochul’s campaign for a full term as governor, Clinton brought up her name just five times — while invoking Trump three times, and the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol and Fox News twice each.
AG James has not officially endorsed Hochul in the governor’s race, and mentioned her only in passing in her convention speech.
Suozzi said he spurned a request from Clinton that he drop his challenge to Hochul, because he feels “so strongly that the country is in a lot of trouble.”
Suozzi is making a big play for the Latino vote in his bid for governor, announcing that former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer will serve as his campaign chairman.
New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Andrew Giuliani blasted Hochul as “Crime Wave Kathy” and falsely accused Hillary Clinton of “spying” on Trump Tower on Thursday in an appearance outside the convention in Manhattan.
The State Police investigator who said Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed and inappropriately touched her has filed a federal lawsuit against Cuomo, former Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa and the State Police.
The filing of the suit was a reminder that Cuomo still faces potential legal jeopardy over the events that hastened his resignation last August.
The woman, who filed the suit in Brooklyn Federal Court anonymously as “Trooper 1,” claimed that the governor “violated” her numerous times after she was transferred to the elite Protective Service Unit in January 2018.
The trooper claims DeRosa was active in protecting Cuomo, who has consistently denied all claims of illegal activity.
James on Thursday fired back at Cuomo’s attacks on her office’s bombshell August report, saying that she will not “be bullied.”
Understanding what makes Mayor Eric Adams tick can be a fool’s errand. He’s complex and unpredictable, and often seems like a walking contradiction.
Adams called for a return to normality in America’s largest city in response to a dramatic fall in Omicron coronavirus cases.
Adams defended his proposal to cut nearly $20 million in funding for the program, lamenting the current iteration of the green initiative as “broken” and mostly “symbolic” in nature.
Adams called for an “immediate redeployment” department-wide of cops on desk duty as the NYPD tries to stem the Big Apple’s soaring gun violence.
Adams’ first effort to clean up the city’s increasingly dangerous subway system will involve squads of school nurses and outreach workers joined by cops to convince homeless people and the mentally ill to accept help.
Adams named non-profit executive-turned-politician Zach Iscol — the scion of a cellphone fortune — as the new head of the Big Apple’s emergency management division.
The City Council’s two committees overseeing zoning and land use endorsed the city’s plan to make outdoor dining permanent.
Families in some of the city’s top school districts are leaving the Department of Education at an alarming clip, according to state data.
A global insurance giant bilked the MTA out of as much as half a million dollars by charging for overtime during hours explicitly prohibited in its contract, the agency’s Inspector General said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees from the city and Long Island are on a hunger strike at the Orange County Jail over alleged poor conditions and mistreatment by guards.
New York’s cannabis market is set to make a major leap with state lawmakers granting final approval to a bill that would authorize adult-use licenses for the cultivation and processing of cannabis in the state by hemp growers.
In the wake of online threats to publicly identify litigants anonymously suing imprisoned NXIVM leader Keith Raniere, a federal judge ordered three of Raniere’s co-defendants in the civil case to cease all contact with the plaintiffs.
Friends have put together a GoFundMe campaign to support Ken Screven, a retired television reporter known for decades of deep-voiced news reports delivered at the Albany CBS affiliate, who is fighting to get back on his feet after a fall.
Neighbors living around Saratoga Hospital have won a legal appeal to stop the hospital from building a three-building office complex amid their homes.
Filming for HBO Max’s reboot of “Pretty Little Liars” began Tuesday at the Schenectady Armory.
New research published in Science found that almost half of bald and golden eagles in the U.S. have lead poisoning, with eagles surveyed across 38 states over a period of eight years.
Kamilia Valieva slipped and fell during her free skate en route to a fourth-place finish in women’s single skating, failing to capture what would’ve been her second presumptive gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said he said the “tremendous coldness” of her entourage toward the 15-year-old Russian skater, who is embroiled in a doping controversy that has overwhelmed the competition’s focus.
Eileen Gu snapped up another gold medal for Team China at the freestyle skiing halfpipe event, capping off the 18-year-old’s first Olympics with three medals (two golds and a silver) and cementing herself as the belle of the Games in the host country.
Speed skater Brittany Bowe of the United States claimed the first individual medal of her career with a bronze
