Good morning, welcome to the middle of the week, AKA Hump Day, which is actually not a moniker I prefer.
Let’s just say it’s Wednesday and leave it at that.
It’s also National Doctors Day, which was first observed in 1933, marking the anniversary of the first use of ether anesthesia by Dr. Crawford W. Long. It was officially made a national day of celebration by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Specifically, Long was an American surgeon and pharmacist who was best known for his first use of inhaled sulfuric ether as an anesthetic. He received his MD from UPenn, did an internship in New York, and then returned to his native rural Georgia, where he took over a Jackson County medical practice.
Long used ether for the first time during a surgery to remove a tumor from the neck of a patient on this date in 1842. (Prior to that, doctors had used hypnotism to get patients’ to relax, which worked to ease their minds, but didn’t do anything to block their physical pain).
He basically just put the ether on a cloth and had the patient inhale it – pretty rudimentary, and, to be honest, cringe inducing for the hypochondriac/surgery-fear freaks like myself.
Nevertheless, the technique was apparently quite successful, and Long used it in everything from amputations (gulp!) to childbirth (double gulp!). He he believed to have been the country’s first obstetric anesthetist, and in 1845, had his wife inhale ether while she was giving birth to one of the couple’s 12 children.
Though he had been employing this approach for some time, Long didn’t immediately publish his findings, and as a result, actually got into a fight with a colleague, a Boston dentist named William T. Morton, who claimed to have pioneered it in 1846.
Long actually never received credit for his discoveries and pioneering techniques during his lifetime. In fact, it wasn’t until 1879 – a year after his death – the National Eclectic Medical Association formally declared that he was the official discoverer of anesthesia.
If you’re even in Jefferson, Georgia, you can visit the Crawford Long Museum and learn much more about his life and work.
It’s getting steadily warmed, which is nice. Today will be in the mid-40s, with partly cloudy to entirely cloudy skies. I’ll take it.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that makes lynching a federal hate crime, acknowledging how racial violence has left a lasting scar on the nation and asserting that these crimes are not a relic of a bygone era.
“I just signed into law the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime for the first time in American history,” Biden said. “Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.”
“To the family of Emmett Till…thank you for never giving up,” Biden said during the bill’s Rose Garden signing ceremony. “We remain in awe of your courage to find purpose through your pain.”
The Russian military said that it had “drastically” reduced its activity near the Ukraine capital of Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv as talks with Ukraine aimed at ending the war entered the “practical” stage.
Russia and Ukraine held face-to-face talks yesterday in Turkey as the United Nations pressed for a cease-fire in Russia’s brutal invasion. The talks took place in the Turkish presidential office in Istanbul and lasted more than three hours.
Moscow said overnight that it will scale back its military activity near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv, but the Pentagon has cautioned it’s not a retreat. Russia previously did not followed through with similar pledges.
Retreat is hardly surrender, and others cautioned that the progress made doesn’t mean that Russia is ready for serious discussions on ending the war. That would require a better outcome for President Vladimir Putin to sell at home as a victory.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Russia’s movement of troops away from Kyiv appeared to be minimal, and numerous explosions were heard in the city last night.
Former President Trump called on Putin to release dirt on the president’s son Hunter Biden during an interview published yesterday.
In an interview with JustTheNews, Trump pushed an unproven claim about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Russia, and asked Putin to release any information that he might have about the situation.
In making his claims, Trump cited the findings of a controversial, highly politicized investigation by Senate Republicans into the Bidens, which was published just weeks before the 2020 election and produced little new evidence of wrongdoing.
A Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities has gained steam in recent months, with a flurry of witnesses providing testimony to federal investigators and more expected to provide interviews in the coming weeks.
New details from White House documents provided to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol assault show a 7-hour gap in records of calls made by the former president on the day of the riot.
The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 – from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. – means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol.
The gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi minced no words in her description of the actions of Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying the conservative activist “participat(ed) in a coup” to illegally keep Trump in power.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on Justice Thomas to step down from the Supreme Court over conflicts involving his wife’s backing Trump’s illegal effort to overturn his election loss.
Officials from the United States, Russia, China and Pakistan are scheduled to meet in China this week to discuss Afghanistan, according to the State Department and the Chinese foreign embassy.
Biden and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, after talks at the White House, urged North Korea to halt its ballistic missile launches and return to negotiations over its weapons programs.
Kyle Rittenhouse is complaining that Biden ignored his request to meet after the teenager says he was unfairly linked to white supremacists during the 2020 presidential election.
Job openings last month remained near record levels, and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions increased, the Labor Department said.
The data, released serve as indicators of how much demand there is for workers in the U.S. economy and the extent to which employers are struggling with labor shortages months after the economy began recovering from the pandemic’s worst damage.
There were about 11.3 million job openings in February, essentially the same as the month before and down a little from a record in December, though the number of hires overall edged up by 263,000 last month, to about 6.7 million.
The FDA cleared fourth Covid vaccine doses for older adults, amid uncertainty over whether an even more contagious version of omicron will cause another wave of infections in the U.S. as it has in Europe and China.
Boosters of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines have been cleared for adults 50 and older — and now, many people in that group are wondering whether to get that dose now or later.
Experts pointed out that the limited research so far supports a fourth shot only for those older than 65 or who have underlying conditions that put them at high risk.
People in the U.S. might need another Covid booster shot this fall as public health experts expect immunity from the vaccines to wane and transmission of the virus to increase during colder months, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official said.
The more contagious omicron subvariant, BA.2, is now the dominant version of Covid-19 in the U.S., according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week.
According to the World Health Organization, BA.2 is also the main cause of Covid-19 globally, out-muscling two other Omicron lineages, BA.1 and BA 1.1, to become the dominant strain. Since its takeover, international case counts have been rising again.
A group of 21 states filed a lawsuit that seeks to stop the Biden administration from requiring travelers in the U.S. to wear masks on airplanes, trains, taxis, buses and other forms of public transit.
Leading experts are sounding the alarm about a prevalence of long Covid in the Black community and a lack of access to treatment.
As a spike in COVID cases struck central New York and tallies crept upward in the five boroughs, officials urged New Yorkers to remain attentive to the stubborn virus threat, and to help lift lagging booster shot rates.
Gov. Kathy Hochul wants Congress to pass additional COVID-19 federal funding that would go toward preparation for future variants and ensure an adequate supply of testing and vaccines, according to a letter she sent to NY House members.
New York lawmakers are considering bills meant to crack down on COVID-19 pandemic-related price gouging and fraud.
Nine people are under arrest after protests grew out of hand at the state Capitol over Hochul’s proposed changes to the state’s bail reform policies.
The question of whether to revisit bail reforms has consumed the political conversations around crime for months, overshadowing negotiations over the state budget as the April 1 deadline approaches. Here is a look at some key issues and questions.
Syracuse DA Bill Fitzpatrick, a Republican, expressed support for Hochul’s bail reform plan.
Any sign of budget deals were scarce as lawmakers seemingly joked they didn’t bring enough clothes to last them through the weekend of remaining in Albany.
Housing activists are again sounding the alarm as the New York state budget deadline approaches. They argue that thousands of face eviction and foreclosure as both moratoria have expired, and even more New Yorkers are currently homeless.
Four months after New York banned the slaughter of thoroughbred and standardbred race horses for human or animal consumption, lawmakers central to the change are considering protecting other breeds.
Two decades after its passage, state officials are considering a significant expansion of Kendra’s Law after a similar tragedy has added to already heightened concerns over public safety.
A deal to replace New York’s much-criticized ethics commission is taking shape in the final days of state budget talks.
The $850 million, taxpayer-funded deal to build a $1.4 billion stadium for the Buffalo Bills is not only a touchdown for upstate fans of star quarterback Josh Allen — it’s also a big win for the firm of Hochul’s husband, Delaware North.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi is waging a blitz aimed at convincing New Yorkers they’ll get soaked by Hochul’s plan for an $850 million government subsidy for a new Buffalo Bills stadium.
State Senate Finance Committee Chair Liz Krueger and Assemblymember Ron Kim hosted a Zoom briefing to express their firm opposition to the stadium deal.
“I fundamentally believe that transparency in economic development deals should be our first priority,” Krueger (D-Manhattan) said. “These stadium deals keep blowing up in our faces, but we don’t learn from them.”
New York State received a long-delayed $564.8 million payment of casino revenues from the Seneca Nation of Indians – money that Hochul said she sees as the majority of the state’s contribution to a new Buffalo Bills stadium.
The NFL passed a rule change to ensure that both teams would possess the ball at least once in overtime of postseason games, after Kansas City won a divisional round playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, who were not given a chance to score in overtime.
With the return of earmarks, members of Congress from New York scored hundreds of millions of dollars for projects back home as part of the $1.5 trillion federal budget signed into law this month.
A pair of Republican lawmakers demanded that Mayor Eric Adams rehire city workers fired because of the vaccine mandate, after he announced a shot requirement exemption for New York City-based professional athletes and performers.
Adams doubled down on his decision to clear homeless encampments across the Big Apple, insisting that city shelters are safe despite years of complaints about dangerous conditions.
Adams said his administration is aiming to clear all street encampments belonging to unhoused New Yorkers within a two-week period.
Adams announced that the city has added 350 additional safe haven beds for homeless New Yorkers since January — but he continued to catch heat over his separate policy of removing homeless encampments, which critics have called too heavy handed.
Adams renewed his call for an end to working from home policies, arguing remote work was partly to blame for “draining” the five boroughs’ economy.
Adams defended his get-tough approach to crime in the subway, likening it to the necessity of eating vegetables.
A new report urges officials to support New York City’s most vulnerable business owners, at a time when jobs lost to the pandemic may take years to return.
Nine hardhats died in building-related incidents across the five boroughs in 2021, prompting a crackdown that resulted in nearly 1,500 stop-work orders just as New York was recovering from a pandemic, according to a new report.
Edward B. Scharfenberger, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, responded to the release of former Bishop Howard J. Hubbard’s pre-trial deposition in which he acknowledged the diocese systematically covered up instances of child sexual abuse.
Fallout continued from the University at Albany’s acknowledgment that men’s basketball coach Dwayne Killings was under investigation for an alleged incident before a road game in late November.
The day after the Mechanicville Board of Education unanimously voted on a settlement to end the employment of its superintendent, Bruce Potter said he regrets having to leave.
Regent Beverly L. Ouderkirk, who represented much of the North Country on the state Board of Regents, has died at age 82.
Two days after Chris Rock mocked her shaved head and her husband rushed the Oscars stage to slap him in her defense, the “Red Table Talk” host, Jada Pinkett Smith, issued her first public comments without ever mentioning the viral incident.
Whoopi Goldberg, a member the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ board of governors, said that Will Smith would face “consequences” for slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars on Sunday because “nobody is OK with what happened.”
By studying the relationship between gene variants and alcohol consumption, scientists found no real cardiac benefit to drinking, even modestly.
