Good Wednesday morning.
How about a nice dose of irony to kick things off?
Today is National Meatball Day AND National Register Dietician/Nutritionist Day.
Now before you get your back up about the nutritional value – or lack thereof – in meatballs. I am NOT saying that they have no value. They don’t have to be made the traditional way with a mix of meets, egg, cheese, and a binding agent like bread. They can be made of far leaner stuff, like fish, or turkey, or even tofu, or walnuts.
Lots of countries have their own version of the meatball. There’s kofta (Lebanese), for example, (actually more like a meat cylinder than a ball), and kefta (Moroccan), and kofte (Turkish), and also kottbullar (Swedish). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Also, the traditional Italian meatball was actually a first course, pairing them with sauce and pasta is an American invention.
And since we’re on things that are related but different, this seems like a good time to note that while dietitians and nutritionists both help people find the best food-based solutions to their health and lifestyle needs, they actually have different qualifications.
Dietitians must receive certification from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics to practice and can treat specific health conditions – like eating disorders – by providing food recommendations.
Nutritionists can be certified, but might not be. Some states require that, others do not. They also can have areas of specific focus, like sports nutrition, autoimmune conditions, and digestive disorders – just to name a few.
Now that we’ve cleared all that up…let’s keep things short and sweet today so we can get to the good stuff, by which I mean the news and NOT the weather, because we’re in for snow showers that give way to a mix of rain and snow in the afternoon, with temperatures in the mid-30s. Blech.
Oh, and if you really want to feel old: Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Brooklyn-born rapper The Notorious B.I.G., who was gunned down in Los Angeles, Calif. at the age of 24.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden announced his administration is banning Russian oil, natural gas and coal imports to the US in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a step he warned could lead to a spike in gas prices at home.
“They’re going to go up,” Biden said. “Can’t do much right now. Russia is responsible.” The President’s offhand remark is unlikely to soothe Democratic fears of a possible Republican rout in November’s midterm elections.
Officials said Biden had struggled for days over the move amid deep concerns about accelerating the already rapid rise in the price of gasoline.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reportedly would not come to the phone when Biden tried to call them to discuss boosting oil exports to offset price hikes linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the U.A.E.’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan both declined to speak to Biden, as Saudi and Emirati officials have become more vocal in recent weeks in their criticism of American policy in the Gulf.
Biden’s urgent global search for help shutting off Russia’s oil revenues is leading, in some instances, to regimes he once sought to isolate or avoid.
Gov. Kathy Hochul praised Biden’s Russian oil ban – a day after dismissing lawmakers’ plans to provide relief at the pump by temporarily suspending New York’s gas tax.
European oil giants Shell and BP said they were stepping back further from doing business with Russia, with Shell saying it will immediately halt all spot purchase of crude from the country and will phase out its other trading and business dealings.
As Russia continued to bombard cities across Ukraine, attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and displaced millions, the war was exacting an increasing toll beyond the battlefield.
The war in Ukraine has severely hobbled shipping in the Black Sea, with broad consequences for international transport and global supply chains.
Congressional leaders reached a bipartisan deal early this morning providing $13.6 billion to help Ukraine and European allies plus billions more to battle the pandemic as part of an overdue $1.5 trillion measure financing federal agencies for the rest of this year.
Though a tiny portion of the massive bill, the money responding to the Russian blitzkrieg that’s devastated parts of Ukraine and prompted Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II ensured robust bipartisan support for the legislation.
The number of people forced to escape Ukraine has passed a milestone of two million, as the civilian toll of the Russia-Ukraine war mounted along with international efforts to press Putin to halt the Russian offensive.
A defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued an impassioned plea for help to the world, thanking the West for its support and saying his country would not yield to the overwhelming might of the Russian military.
Western allies, having ruled out putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, have been attempting to equip the country’s thinly spread and outmatched military, some of its soldiers fighting without boots.
The Pentagon dismissed Poland’s proposal floated hours earlier to transfer its MiG-29 fighter jets to the United States for delivery to Ukraine.
Some of America’s best-known brands took steps to pull back from Russia yesterday, when Coca-Cola said it would suspend operations in the country and McDonald’s said it was temporarily closing its restaurants.
A woman who led an “I Love Russia” propaganda campaign in the United States as a citizen of both countries was charged with flouting federal law by failing to register as an agent of a foreign government, prosecutors said.
W.N.B.A. champion Brittney Griner has become entangled in a geopolitical quandary. She is believed to be detained in Russia on what customs officials described as drug charges, with little word on her case or her well-being during the war in Ukraine.
Health experts have widely denounced Florida’s decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccinations for children, describing it as “irresponsible”, “reckless” and “dangerous”.
Federal authorities say that they did not know at first what to make of a rare Pokémon trading card that they seized from a Georgia man who had used coronavirus relief money to buy the collectible.
As states roll back masking requirements for students, a new study shows that masks helped cut Covid-19 infections in public K-12 schools that required them in the fall.
As the pandemic enters its third year, a cluster of new studies now show that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, up significantly from before the pandemic.
The WHO offered a more full-throated endorsement of booster shots than it previously had, though it continued to emphasize the importance of increasing access to initial doses in parts of the world that have been left behind in vaccination efforts.
Americans can now order a second set of free at-home Covid-19 rapid antigen tests from the federal government.
Hawaii yesterday became the 50th and final state to announce that it will drop its universal indoor mask mandate, as the United States attempts to move on from the once ferocious Omicron wave.
An ongoing legal battle over whether the military can force troops to get vaccinated against COVID-19 has left the Navy with a warship they say they can’t deploy because it is commanded by an officer they cannot fire.
A mainly coal-fueled, post-lockdown economic recovery boosted carbon dioxide emissions by 6% in 2021, the highest increase ever recorded in human history, according to a new report.
Masks are no longer recommended in all 62 counties in New York state, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated mask guidance.
New York’s daily COVID-19 positivity rate has remained under 2% for the past 11 consecutive days. On Sunday, March 6, there were 17 total COVID-19 deaths statewide.
Hochul said that she’s planning to reach a deal on the state budget with leaders from the state Legislature by the time a final spending plan is due at the end of the month.
For now, Hochul is not making any changes to her proposed $216 billion spending plan due to global uncertainty, but said the future-year revenue that projected billions of dollars in budget surplus can’t be counted on.
Hochul announced the groundbreaking for Plug Power’s newest manufacturing facility, located at the Vista Technology Campus in Slingerlands, Albany County.
Black cannabis industry visionaries stood on the state Capitol steps to tell Hochul: “We are watching.” They’re concerned about unraveling of the hard-earned equity provisions in the state’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act enacted last year.
Republican state lawmakers called on Hochul to fund additional, unmet needs to improve New York’s roads and bridges at a time the state is flush with billions of dollars in aid from the federal government.
Mayor Eric Adams called on the state Legislature to make good on Hochul’s promise to extend mayor control, set to expire at the end of June, for four more years.
To mark the end of mask and vaccine mandates in New York, the city’s party-hopping mayor celebrated at a downtown club, taking in Braxton Cook’s sold-out show at the Blue Note with his team.
Nine members of New York’s congressional delegation are urging health-conscious Adams not to ban chocolate milk from being offered in New York City’s public school cafeterias.
A New Jersey teen made a “very clear attempt to drive at a police officer” before cops opened fire on him in the Bronx over the weekend, Adams said.
The teen, Luis Manuel-Monsanto, is now in critical condition at Lincoln Hospital, and the mayor said his actions were akin to a terrorist attack.
Top staffers to Adams are involved in a hyper-local election to challenge a former political rival, four people aware of the situation confirmed — a relatively minor affair for an administration facing a breadth of pandemic-related crises.
NYPD officials are fond of saying the department can fill any key position from its “deep bench” — but Commissioner Keechant Sewell is looking elsewhere for a “confidential advisor,” an online job posting reveals.
A series of brush and trash fires in a wooded area of Central Park that blanketed the Manhattan sky with thick smoke yesterday appeared to have been deliberately set, officials said.
Louis A. Molina, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, was harshly criticized by a jails oversight panel for his agency’s failure to document two brutal beatings that occurred on Rikers Island last year.
Cockroaches in the food and mice crawling on beds. Constant assaults and thefts. Sanctuaries that feel like jail cells. This is what life is like inside three major Big Apple homeless shelters.
A member of the jury that convicted Ghislaine Maxwell of sex trafficking testified that he was sexually abused as a child, despite writing on a jury questionnaire that he wasn’t a victim of sexual abuse.
Juror 50 insisted he had made an “honest mistake” and had withheld the information inadvertently during the jury selection process.
For the purposes of state Election Law, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is considering a run for office. Though he has not formally declared he is running for office, Cuomo has been mounting a public-relations campaign akin to a political one in recent months.
Republicans accused Democrats of using 9/11 “to advance their political agenda” after a group of lawmakers were photographed holding a large sign showing a silhouetted plane labeled “climate change” aimed at the World Trade Center.
One of the Democratic lawmakers, state Sen. Rachel May, apologized for what she called an “unacceptable” image and said she did not look at the banner before her photo was taken at the rally in Albany.
The State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees announced the launch of a “global search” for the public university system’s next permanent chancellor.
Dozens of Rensselaer County workers and others have been served with federal grand jury subpoenas as part of an intensifying FBI investigation that’s examining the filing of absentee ballots in elections over the past two years.
A jury convicted a Texas man of obstruction and other charges for riling up the mob on Jan. 6 last year, confronting police while armed and later threatening his children not to report him, in the first trial related to the U.S. Capitol attack by pro-Trump rioters.
The guilty verdict against Guy Wesley Reffitt came as prosecutors expanded their investigation into the Capitol attack by indicting a former leader of the far-right group the Proud Boys.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol laid out its theory for potential criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the Proud Boys, has been indicted on conspiracy and other charges related to the Jan. 6 attack, the Justice Department said, alleging he developed plans with other members of the extremist group to storm the building that day.
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff who helped Trump spread false claims of voter fraud in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, is facing questions about his own voting record.
Publishing company Gannett provided inaccurate information to advertisers for nine months, misrepresenting where billions of ads were placed, according to researchers who provided their findings exclusively to The Wall Street Journal.
