Good Thursday morning.
I have to things to discuss today, which are only sort of related. I think the connection, albeit ever so slightly tenuous, can be made, however. You see what you think.
Let’s start here: It’s World Wildlife Day, proclaimed as such by the UN at its 2013 General Assembly to celebrate and raise awareness about the world’s wild animals and plants.
Here’s something to add to the list of things that keep you up at night:
According to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, more than 8,400 species of wild fauna and flora are critically endangered, and close to 30,000 more are understood to be endangered or vulnerable.
Based on the aforementioned numbers, it can be extrapolated that more than million species are threatened with extinction.
If you’re one of those “so what’s in it for me?” people…we are ALL interconnected – every living thing on this planet, from moss to moth to mouse to monkey – in some way depends on every other thing. We desperately need to preserve the world’s biodiversity in order to maintain a healthy planet.
And you know what? We’re screwing up royally in this department.
Just last September, 23 species were taken off the endangered list because they were determined to be extinct. Let’s put that in perspective: Prior to that moment, in the 50 years since the Endangered Species Act was created, only eleven species – ELEVEN – were declared extinct, which, by the way, means they are fully gone and never to return.
There is a glimmer of hope to offset this really depressing news, as 10 species have been removed from the endangered list thanks to herculean efforts to preserve and protect them. Still, the ratio is awfully lopsided. Not good.
And here’s where the day’s second point comes in: We’re at the tail end of National Invasive Species Awareness Week, which runs from feb. 28 to March 4.
This week was launched in 2010 by a broad coalition of organizations that wanted to sound the alarm about the damage done to the economy, the environment, and human health by non-native plants, animals, pathogens, and microorganisms operating outside their normal habitat range. They can be found on land or in water.
It is estimated that 50,000 species of plants and animals in the United States ALONE are non-native, and 5,000 are deemed invasive because of the ecological damages they cause.
How do they spread? Well, mainly as a result of human activity. You know, like people who buy an exotic pet because it’s cute when it’s little, but then it grows up and it’s no longer so cute – and it eats a lot – so what do you do? Free it somewhere. NO ACTUALLY DO NOT DO THAT!!!! Please. Just don’t.
Also please wash your watercraft before transferring them from one waterbody to another. It’s not hard. I mean, yes, it takes some extra time. But think about all the good you’re doing for mankind – and the earth.
Off my soapbox now. It’s too damn early for this.
We are back to frigid temperatures in the 20s today, but at least skies will be more or less clear.
In the headlines…
Russian forces seized the first major Ukrainian city in their onslaught, the strategic southern port of Kherson, as they stepped up bombardment of civilian targets across the country, laid siege to other cities — including Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
In a videotaped address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to keep up the resistance. He vowed that the invaders would have “not one quiet moment” and described Russian soldiers as “confused children who have been used.”
Russia’s relentless bombardment of residential areas across Ukraine has so far forced more than one million refugees to flee the country, according to the United Nations, as fierce fighting continues into its second week.
For the first time, the Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed a substantial number of casualties in Ukraine, announcing that 498 Russian troops have died and 1,597 more have been injured.
U.S. officials are preparing to expand sanctions against Russian oligarchs in efforts to ramp up pressure on Russia as its invasion of Ukraine enters its second week.
A Western intelligence report said senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials in early February not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, according to senior Biden administration officials and a European official.
A member of Ukraine’s parliament called President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech “a total disappointment”, as she called for a no-fly zone to protect her country from Russian airstrikes.
As many as 15,000 people, the city’s mayor said, most of them women and children, have taken up residence in Kyiv’s subway system to escape the grim conditions in the city as Russian forces bear down.
A top adviser to Mayor Eric Adams made his living as a legal and real estate consultant for the very type of Russian oligarchs whose luxury Manhattan properties are now the subject of potential seizure by the U.S. government following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
GOP Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman wants Long Islanders to donate guns so he can ship them to Ukraine for use in the ongoing conflict with Russia.
New York City’s Police Pension fund will divest its securities investments issued by Russian companies, following a slew of state and federal sanctions boycotting Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine.
War and politics are complicating the efforts of the two biggest polluters in history — the United States and Europe — to slow down global warming, just as scientists warn of intensifying hazards.
Former President Trump may have committed a crime in his effort to keep the 2020 presidential election results from being certified, the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol said in a court filing.
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in the filing.
The committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president.
Trump’s onetime trade adviser Peter Navarro did not appear for his scheduled deposition yesterday with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, citing executive privilege issues.
Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he would propose a quarter-percentage point rate increase at the central bank’s meeting in two weeks amid high inflation, strong economic demand and a tight labor market.
More than a month after the Covid-19 Omicron surge peaked and began to decline, the staffing crisis at many hospitals across the country is still running high. A shortage of nurses and other staff means fewer beds are available for patients.
Women, and particularly pregnant women, have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic in the Americas, and countries in the region need to give women’s health higher priority, World Health Organization officials said.
Almost two years after the director of the CDC called for 100,000 contact tracers to contain the coronavirus, it. said this week that it no longer recommends universal case investigation and contact tracing.
New Orleans will drop multiple COVID-19 restrictions as Carnival season, which attracts revelers from around the country, comes to an end.
The rate of black New York City residents hospitalized during the omicron surge was more than two times higher than for white residents, a Health Department study found.
For the first time since schools reopened during the pandemic, public school students across the state entered homerooms, gymnasiums and class without masks.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis asked a group of high school students to remove their masks during a recent speech, where he also accused those Tampa-area teens of engaging in “COVID theater.”
The chief executive of a popular brewery in Brooklyn, who attracted wide criticism last month when he called coronavirus vaccine mandates a “crime against humanity” and drew comparisons to the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany, is leaving his post.
Notorious “Soho grifter” Anna Sorokin claims she caught the coronavirus in January after Immigration and Customs Enforcement refused to give her a booster shot.
The coronavirus pandemic has likely killed the traditional schedule of commuting to the office for work five days a week, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said: “It may never be a five-day week again.”
Hochul announced she is setting in motion a process to “permanently” allow bars and restaurants to serve to-go booze — a silver lining for New Yorkers recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Century-old restrictions that have no basis in reality anymore” forbid restaurants and bars from selling to-go drinks, which gained popularity during the pandemic, Hochul said.
The state’s so-called “Less Is More Act” took effect this week, but lawyers for dozens being detained for parole violations said in a court filing that the state corrections department was disregarding parts of it.
Ninety-one Rikers Island detainees jailed on parole violations have been denied in-person court hearings required by a new state law, defense lawyers say.
Rudy Giuliani challenged Adams to use his “political capital” by publicly challenging Hochul to tighten up the state’s controversial “no cash” bail law.
New York City subway crimes skyrocketed by more than 200% this past week compared to the same time in 2021, after several reports of heinous attacks in the transit system and despite Adams’s crackdown efforts.
A 28-year-old Manhattan resident originally from Florida went on an apparent hate-crime spree in Manhattan earlier this week, assaulting seven Asian women over a two-hour span, cops said.
There was no indication that the assailant knew any of the seven victims, two of whom were treated at local hospitals.
The man who allegedly smeared his own feces on a straphanger’s face was freed without bail on a fresh set of hate crime charges.
A veteran New York City police sergeant pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges stemming from attacks on handcuffed men who had provoked him during two separate arrests, officials said.
For all of the alarms that have been sounded over rising violence and disorder on Rikers Island, two cases raise an astonishing prospect: that levels of brutality experienced by detainees over the past year might have been even worse than previously known.
Schools Chancellor David Banks gave a searing critique of the NYC Department of Education in an address yesterday, and vowed to jolt the nation’s largest school system out of a $38 billion malaise.
Banks vowed to reverse what he called the betrayal of New York City’s public school students by breaking up bureaucracy, getting the city’s hundreds of thousands of low-income students on a path to the middle class and promoting healthy living in schools.
Banks shared his vision for public schools across the Big Apple while dropping a major bombshell: 120,000 families have left the public school system in the past five years.
Banks highlighted policies that mark a change from the previous administration, including on controversial topics like expanding the number of safety officers patrolling hallways, scaling up the gifted and talented program, and embracing charter schools.
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer demanded that Adams and Hochul start cracking down on high-speed, app-based delivery services like JOKR, Buyk and Fridge, businesses she claims are violating the city’s zoning laws and possibly state liquor license requirements.
The now ex-boss of the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission allegedly went off on an expletive-laden tirade last month, warning one staffer “I will f–king come for you” and predicting the spectacle would “be on the New York Post in the morning.”
City officials want to install 100 raised crosswalks every year as part of a larger effort to redesign dangerous intersections.
The National Labor Relations Board has approved a union election at a second Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, opening a new front in the growing challenges to the company’s labor model.
Workers at an REI store in New York City voted to unionize, creating the only union at the outdoor-equipment and apparel retailer. The vote, which took place at the store, was 88 to 14.
Broadway’s Cort Theater, which has been known as such since it opened in 1912, will soon be renamed for the venerable actor James Earl Jones, the Shubert Organization announced.
Circumventing a law designed to close a so-called LLC loophole, donors to candidates across the state – including Hochul – are using multiple companies to give far over the $5,000 cap.
Petitioning season began this week, as hundreds of political candidates across the state started gathering signatures to qualify for the ballot in June primary elections.
A bill backed by two Democratic state lawmakers is meant to ease the path for candidates to qualify for the ballot while also making it easier for candidates to be rejected if they fail to attract enough support through the petitioning process.
A judge tossed out New York Attorney General Letitia James’ bid to break up the National Rifle Association, while allowing much of the remainder of her lawsuit to go forward.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen said the AG’s case against the pro-gun lobbying group paints “a grim story of greed, self-dealing, and lax financial oversight” — but not one that warrants “the corporate death penalty.”
A JetBlue pilot was yanked out of a cockpit minutes before takeoff from the Buffalo Airport and found to have a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit to fly.
The pilot, James Clifton, 52, was taken into custody by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority police, who notified the federal authorities and released him to JetBlue security personnel, according to the transportation authority.
The New York State Athletic Trainers’ Association and the Brain Injury Association of New York teamed up to support bills to require further education requirements for athletic trainers in New York and update concussion management and response protocols.
On the same day the National Museum of Racing announced its 2022 Hall of Fame finalists, the museum’s board president said that trainer Bob Baffert will retain his spot in the gallery of champions.
