Good Tuesday morning.
Water. It accounts for up to 60 percent of the human body (73 percent of the heart and brain alone). About 71 percent of the Earth is covered with water, with the oceans holding the lion’s share – just shy of 97 percent – of that.
We can live only three days without water, on average, with death by dehydration occurring less than that in hot weather, and definitely no more than 5 or 6 days. (Apparently, for what it’s worth, sounds like something really worth avoiding).
Have I made my point yet? Water is REALLY important. The world would shrivel and die without it.
The uses of water are many – aside from merely drinking it, of course – washing clothes and bodies (especially HANDS), agriculture, recreation. Without clean water, the likelihood that one will contract a serious illness raises exponentially.
Globally, 2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water services, 3.6 billion don’t have safely managed sanitation services, and 2.3 billion do not have access to a hand-washing facility with water and soap in their homes.
If you haven’t guessed it already, today is World Water Day, held on this date every year since 1993 to celebrate H2O and raise awareness of the 2 billion people living without access to safe, clean, agua.
The theme of this year’s World Water Day is “Groundwater – Making The Invisible Visible.”
I had no idea, but almost all of the nation’s freshwater resources – about 95 percent – is groundwater, which can stay beneath the earth for hundreds of years OR come to the surface to fill rivers, streams, ponds, swamps, etc. It also provides more than 50 billion gallons a day to support the U.S. agricultural economy.
Many areas of the country are experiencing ground water depletion, as a result of overuse.
Globally, there’s an estimated 2.78 million trillion gallons of groundwater – about 30.1 percent of the world’s freshwater. Of the total 349 billion gallons of freshwater the U.S. draws each day, groundwater is estimated to be 79.6 billion gallons, or 26 percent.
A good way to celebrate this day is to practice conservation:
Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth, take a shorter shower – or no shower at all, we all wash far too much for the good of our skin and our hair in modern times – use a reusable water bottle instead of plastic.
It will be mostly sunny today, with temperatures in the low 50s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden issued an urgent warning to American business leaders, telling them to strengthen their companies’ cyber defenses immediately.
Speaking at the Business Roundtable Quarterly Meeting in Washington, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to use cyber attacks as a form of retaliation against the United States for its actions to counter Russia’s incursion on Ukraine.
Biden confirmed Russia’s use of hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, warning Putin’s “back is against the wall,” which means he could resort to using more severe tactics as the war stretches into another week.
Besieged cities across Ukraine were bracing for intensifying Russian attacks as Biden renewed his warning that Russia may be gearing up to use chemical or biological weapons.
Russian attacks struck Kyiv, Odessa and other locations across Ukraine as Moscow appears to be shifting its battle plan to compel Ukraine to relinquish claims to its southern and eastern territory.
Biden will thank Poland’s president for the country’s efforts to shelter Ukrainian refugees as part of his trip this week to Europe as Russian forces bear down in a nearly-month old invasion.
Former “Dancing with the Stars” pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy has returned to Poland to help aid Ukrainian refugees after expressing guilt for leaving the region.
A court in Moscow banned Facebook and Instagram for “extremist activity.”
A super-yacht likely owned by Russian oligarch Dmitrievich Pumpyansky was seized when it docked in Gibraltar.
Soccer legend David Beckham has handed over his Instagram account to a Ukrainian doctor in order to showcase the “amazing work” being done by doctors and nurses in the country during the ongoing Russian invasion.
Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres wants the FBI to investigate the Cold War-era high-rise in New York that’s home to some of the Kremlin’s most powerful diplomats in light of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson vowed to defend the “grand experiment of American democracy” as she launched a historic bid to be the first black woman on the nation’s highest judicial bench.
“I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath,” Jackson said.
Senate Republicans offered a preview of their questions for Jackson as her confirmation hearings kicked off, including her sentencing record, her representation of Guantanamo detainees and her views on the size of the Supreme Court.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham attacked Jackson as a tool of the far-left, but vowed to give her a fair hearing to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. “It won’t be a circus,” he said.
The Supreme Court declined to hear a discrimination case involving a lawyer who was denied a job opportunity with a Christian legal clinic because of his sexual orientation.
Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the decision not to hear the case at this stage. But said that “the day may soon come” when the court needs to confront the issue the case presents.
Rescue workers searched a remote mountain valley in southern China for any survivors in the crash of a passenger plane carrying 132 people that plunged more than 20,000 feet in just over a minute.
No survivors have been found so far, a state broadcaster said today, the morning after yesterday’s crash.
The Boeing 737-800 crashed near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region while flying from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial center of Guangzhou on the east coast. It ignited a fire big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images.
Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said that the central bank was prepared to more quickly withdraw support from the economy if doing so proved necessary to bring rapid inflation under control.
“If we think it’s appropriate to raise [by a half point] at a meeting or meetings, we will do so,” Powell said during a moderated discussion after a speech before the National Association for Business Economics in Washington, D.C.
The Food and Drug Administration announced that it would convene a meeting of its outside advisory panel on vaccines to discuss the U.S. Covid booster strategy on April 6.
The Food and Drug Administration is ratcheting up a wide range of facility inspections that were delayed by travel pauses after the pandemic began.
As of yesterday, about a quarter of eligible adults were still not fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
People who had covid-19 were at greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes within a year than those who managed to avoid the coronavirus, according to a large review of patient records released yesterday.
The celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has said it is good that the Covid-19 pandemic wiped the slate clean of “crap” restaurants.
The omicron subvariant BA.2 is continuing to gain ground in the U.S., according to Covid-19 tests sequenced over the last two weeks.
Top New York State officials said that health officials did not anticipate that the Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus known as BA.2 would spur a serious spike in cases in the state.
“We’ve learned a lot. We know how to handle this. We are not in alarmist mode,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “We are not panicking over this. We’re just watching the numbers.”
The new subvariant now accounts for about 42% of COVID-19 cases in New York State, but there’s no reason for New Yorkers to be overly alarmed by its spread.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office has recovered over $40,000 from one venue that canceled and failed to return deposits to couples whose weddings were canceled due to COVID.
It took years for state lawmakers to pass minimum staffing requirements for New York’s nursing homes last May. But just as those rules were supposed to take effect on January 1st, Hochul decided to give long-term care facilities some leeway.
AG James and union leaders called for stronger protections and better wages for nursing home workers who served on the front lines throughout the COVID crisis.
Hochul and the state Legislature have plans to significantly increase spending on child care and to make more families eligible for subsidies.
Hochul confirmed recent reports that she is including a 10-point plan to change bail reforms in her revised budget proposal, indicating that the memo was presented to top state lawmakers as her stance on a slew of criminal justice-related matters.
“It’s not accurate that was leaked from our office,” she insisted. “We’ve been very clear about that because we’ve been working on this for a long time.” More here.
Hochul’s bail reform plan is going over poorly with the left flank of the state Legislature, with one Assembly member, Latrice Walker, a Brooklyn Democrat, saying she’s prepared to go on a hunger strike to prevent it from coming to fruition.
Hochul says the state-funded creation of over 800 new jobs will not only boost the Western New York economy, but also protect the U.S. from attacks both physical and financial.
State Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs filed a complaint with the state Board of Elections, arguing that a nonprofit has violated state law by not disclosing the donors behind a barrage of ads attacking Hochul.
Opponents of what is becoming the state’s best-known and most-controversial crypto-mining facility have enlisted a Columbia University research institute to help explain why environmental officials should not renew its current air emissions permit.
Earlier this month, Hochul introduced plans to reform the way that state agencies respond to Freedom of Information Law requests by developing a system to expedite the completion of inquiries for public records.
New York City’s district attorneys should go back to prosecuting people who commit subway fare evasion, Mayor Eric Adams said.
The number of homeless people sleeping on New York’s streets and subways is higher than city officials estimate — and the shabby state of the city’s shelters is in part to blame, said a report published by the Coalition for the Homeless.
A “bureaucratic nightmare” has left 2,500 city-funded apartments for homeless New Yorkers who need mental health care and other social services open — enough units to house every person living on the streets or in the subways.
Adams praised the NYPD’s new anti-gun unit for making 31 gun arrests in six days — while also addressing pressing civil liberties concerns by vowing to make officers’ body cam footage available to police watchdogs like the Legal Aid Society.
As he campaigned for mayor, Adams vowed to back plans to close Rikers Island’s jail complex and replace it with four smaller, more humane lockups. But after nearly three months leading America’s largest city, he’s already at a challenging crossroads.
A Rikers Island inmate choked to death recently on an orange — and there was no correction officer patrolling the floor to render aid or call for help
Adams declared March 20 to be MeatOut Day, signing the official declaration at the beginning of the month to make NYC the latest to join the MeatOut initiative to promote plant-based eating in cities throughout the US.
The city’s Department of Education is determined to attract families to the public school system — but is bracing for the reality if it can’t.
Brooklyn’s staunchly anti-car Borough President Antonio Reynoso copped to driving with an expired registration and parking with an expired city-issued parking permit.
Nights in the Big Apple are once again booming into the wee hours as droves of revelers return to their old stomping grounds in full force.
Donald Trump and kids Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. filed new court papers continuing to argue that they shouldn’t be forced to give testimony as part of a probe into the Trump Organizations’ business dealings.
Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara wants to eliminate Thruway tolls in the summer months – June, July, and August – to mitigate inflation and rising gas prices.
The City of Schenectady has applied for $1.75 million in federal coronavirus relief money to bolster internet connectivity in underserved neighborhoods, Mayor Gary McCarthy announced.
The Capital Region’s two largest universities will receive nearly $1 million each in the 2022 federal budget to advance key research facilities, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Spectrum cable service is raising several of its fees next month, with the cost for most consumers increasing about $5, according to the company.
