Good morning, welcome to the middle of the week, AKA Wednesday.
I’m not sure how I made it this far, to be totally honest.
You all know how much I love animal content. I’ll be leaning into that 100 percent today, though not with dogs.
It’s International Heritage Breeds Week. What does that mean? Well, let’s start from the top: What is a heritage breed?
From what I can glean by reading a number of different definitions, a heritage breed has been around for a very long time and is sometimes referred to as a “traditional” breed, and was developed in a specific place and for a specific purpose – like to be able to withstand and even thrive in certain extreme climates – or to maximize certain traits.
Heritage breeds were developed using natural breeding (read: no artificial insemination, for example). They don’t do well on large-scale farms, which are the predominant element in today’s big agriculture sector, so they are often in danger of extinction. Also, they are beneficial because they provide genetic variety, which is good for longevity.
Consider this: Currently, only 14 breeds provide 90 percent of animal products in the world’s food supply. That is downright scary.
Also, heritage breeds that are naturally raised are free of steroids, preservatives or other chemicals, so their meat and products (milk, eggs etc.) are considered healthier to consume. They’re also not mass produced, so the process of raising them is easier on the environment than large factory farms. BUT they are slower to grow, and therefore more expensive to produce.
According to the Livestock Conservancy, which I must confess I did not know existed until I started researching this post, one domesticated livestock breed a MONTH is lost to extinction around the world. How is this possible?!
The USDA does not recognize the term “heritage” or certify breeds that officially fall under that umbrella. Generally, the term applies to a variety of cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, donkeys, several types of fowl, and rabbits.
If you happen to be a farmer, it looks like a good day to be outside – actually, for anyone. It will be slightly warmer with highs in the low 70s, and lots of sunshine.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden did not hesitate to call the deadly mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, an act of domestic terrorism, condemning the racist ideology of the suspected shooter.”
“What happened here is simple, straightforward terrorism,” he said. “Terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group.”
Here’s the full transcript of Biden’s Buffalo speech.
As Biden delivered his emotional speech denouncing the attack that killed 10 people in a quiet neighborhood as a racist act of terror, many Black residents of that area said that the address would ultimately mean little without further action.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden met with families of the shooting victims, who ranged from 32 to 86 years old.
After visiting the outdoor memorial by the Tops Markets on Buffalo’s Jefferson Avenue, Biden’s motorcade arrived at Delavan-Grider, where the president consoled a grieving community.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre blasted unnamed public figures for pushing the racist so-called “replacement theory,” saying they “should be ashamed of themselves.”
About 30 minutes before he launched what investigators said was a long-planned massacre at a Buffalo supermarket, Payton S. Gendron invited a small group of people to review his plans online. None of them appear to have alerted law enforcement.
Gendron’s online diary entries, dating from November 2021 to the night before the shooting, along with an accompanying 180-page document, chronicle his descent into a shadowy, isolated world of swirling conspiracies, paranoia and violence.
Three years after a mass shooting in New Zealand was live-streamed online, the spread the alleged Buffalo shooter’s footage shows how social-media platforms still struggle to keep their platforms from being used to broadcast violent, extremist videos.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, of Brooklyn, said that they were still waiting for any Republican leader to come forward and denounce the “replacement theory” which led to the mass shooting at Buffalo.
The US is in the middle of a great gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 and spiked sharply in the past three years.
Licensed gun makers built 11.3 million firearms in 2020, a 187% increase over the number they made in 2000, according to a new federal report that details the significant growth in gun manufacturing in the U.S.
New York lawmakers are reviewing options to strengthen the state’s already muscular gun laws, with Gov. Kathy Hochul expected to unveil a package as soon as today aimed at shoring up remaining weaknesses in the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre.
Legislators in the final days of the scheduled session are reportedly considering whether to make it mandatory to report a “red flag” if someone makes a violent threat that could pose an extreme risk to themselves or others.
A House intelligence subcommittee yesterday held the first congressional hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years.
U.S. defense officials released videos of unidentified flying objects during the first Congressional hearing on the subject in more than half a century.
Americans continued to pump money into the U.S. economy in April, with increased retail spending offering the latest sign consumers are driving demand at stores and manufacturers despite the pinch from high inflation.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell emphasized his resolve to get inflation down, saying he will back interest rate increases until prices start falling back toward a healthy level.
“Restoring price stability is an unconditional need. It is something we have to do,” Powell said in an interview during The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival. “There could be some pain involved.”
The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol doesn’t plan to call former President Donald Trump and is “unlikely” to call former Vice President Mike Pence, either.
Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a businessman and longtime friend who acted as an informal adviser to Trump, sought money from the UAE in early 2017 for an investment fund that would seek to boost Trump’s agenda and to benefit from his policies, prosecutors said.
A Michigan judge has pre-emptively blocked enforcement of a 1931 law that would ban abortions in almost all cases if the Supreme Court takes an expected step to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
House Democrats proposed an emergency funding bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration $28 million to address a nationwide infant formula shortage.
Two children in Tennessee were recently hospitalized because their families could not find the specific formula they need during a nationwide shortage that has grown more acute over the past month, sending parents frantically searching for interim solutions.
Nestlé said it would fly extra baby formula into the U.S. from Switzerland and the Netherlands as the Gerber owner looks to accelerate deliveries to alleviate a severe shortage across the U.S.
After weeks of trying to hammer out a peace deal, negotiators for Russia and Ukraine appear further apart than at any other point in the nearly three-month-long war, with the talks having collapsed in a thicket of public recriminations.
Mariupol appeared on the verge of falling to the Russians as Ukraine moved to abandon the steel plant where hundreds of its fighters had held out for months under relentless bombardment in the last bastion of resistance in the devastated city.
Hundreds of die-hard Ukrainian soldiers who had made a last stand against Russian forces from a hulking Mariupol steel mill faced an uncertain future under Kremlin custody after Ukraine’s military ordered them to surrender.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has doubled down on his opposition to Sweden and Finland joining the NATO alliance, a move that would be historic for the two Nordic countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A military analyst on one of Russian stateTV’s most popular networks left fellow panelists in stunned silence when he said the conflict in Ukraine was deteriorating for Russia, giving an honest assessment that is virtually banished from the official airwaves.
The US Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization for a booster dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 at least five months after completion of the primary vaccine series.
A federal court’s Covid protocols barring spectators from watching a man’s trial on a firearms charge in Oakland, Calif., violated his right to a public trial, an appeals court ruled this week in overturning his conviction.
Eric Clapton, 77, who has railed against lockdowns and vaccines, has tested positive for COVID-19.
Apple, in a blow to its efforts to restore normalcy to its operations, has suspended its requirement that employees return to the office this month for at least three days a week because of a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
Shanghai health officials said they brought the city’s Covid outbreak under control, after a nearly two-month lockdown that disrupted access to food and medicine, stoked widespread public outrage and brought China’s financial center to a standstill.
Due to the Omicron surge and other factors, in the first three months of the year, Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest after the United States and China, shrank at an annualized rate of 1 percent, government data showed.
The pandemic has supercharged the decline in America’s public school system in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed. All together, the country’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020.
Mayor Eric Adams upgraded New York City’s COVID-19 alert status to high on Tuesday due to a surge in people testing positive and being hospitalized for the virus.
The announcement was triggered by a color-coded alert system that the city introduced in March. But so far, the system has had little impact on the city’s disease control strategy or the public’s perception.
Century 21, the discount department store chain thrown into financial ruin after COVID-19 shutdowns, will return to the city next spring, the company announced.
Adams is begging the city’s business leaders, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, to ride the subway to work. Adams is pushing to bring people back to New York offices after years of working from home.
“We’re telling our corporate leaders: ‘Hey, get on the train!’” Adams said in an interview with the Financial Times. “We need to advertise that New York is back.”
Hochul’s campaign released a new television ad, “At Stake,” that focuses on the governor’s efforts to protect abortion rights.
A legal stink over the price of a marijuana merger that had allegedly gotten an improper nudge from Hochul has been settled — with the acquirer forking over some extra green.
Newly redrawn congressional and state Senate maps upended New York’s electoral landscape and have prompted some lawmakers to reconsider their political futures.
Newly drawn congressional maps have led some House members to quickly lay claim to certain districts, even if it means challenging fellow incumbents.
Rep. Mondaire Jones lashed out at fellow Democrat, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, after Maloney set up a primary battle between the two incumbents forced by redistricting shifts.
“Sean Patrick Maloney did not even give me a heads up before he went on Twitter to make that announcement,” Jones said. “And I think that tells you everything you need to know about Sean Patrick Maloney.”
Maloney’s plans to challenge Jones are raising private concerns from across the party that the DCCC chief has put himself in an inappropriate scenario: leading the party’s midterm strategy while potentially battling a fellow member.
The temptation of a wide-open new seat in Congress thanks to court-ordered redistricting has lured the first of many candidates to declare: Manhattan Sen. Brad Hoylman said he will run in the Democratic primary for the newly drawn 10th congressional district.
The newly open congressional seat in Manhattan and Brooklyn created by the redistricting plan, which has no incumbent, is drawing a large field of potential contenders — and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is considering jumping into the race.
De Blasio told a state lawmaker he plans to run in the new district — the seat entrenched Rep. Nadler is vacating to fight it out with former longtime ally Rep. Maloney in the redrawn NY-12.
Under the proposed maps, Jeffries lives in Yvette Clarke’s district, Grace Meng lives in Tom Suozzi’s district, Nydia Velasquez lives in Nicole Malliotakis’ district, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney are in the same Manhattan district, Maloney lives in Jones’ district, and Jones lives in Jamaal Bowman’s district.
Maloney, 74, said she was stunned when Nadler, 76, put out a statement Monday saying he was running in her district without the courtesy of a phone call. “I’ve never lost an election and I don’t intend to start now,” she said.
Despite the rejection of Democratic-drawn state Senate districts by the courts and accusations of racial discrimination in the newly drawn lines, deputy Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris is confident Democrats will benefit from the special master’s maps.
Adams and top deputies met one on one with some Albany lawmakers yesterday, lobbying for an extension of mayoral control of the city’s school system – although “no consensus” was reached on a final plan.
Adams’ trip to the state capital comes with less than two weeks left in the legislative session. While it appears the mayor may get an extension, time is tight and he may have to accept measures designed to increase parental say in how the schools are run.
In a brief gaggle with reporters following his meetings and before he left to catch a train back downstate, Adams spoke positively of his interactions with state lawmakers.
Adams’ nominee to run the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, David Do, the former head of Washington D.C.’s Department of For-Hire Vehicles, wants to bring self-driving cars to New York.
Adams’ top aide, Frank Carone, is navigating an uncharted path on New York ethics issues.
German financial services giant Allianz agreed to pay a historic $5.8 billion in penalties for the collapse of investment funds that gutted the retirements savings of more than 100,000 people nationwide, including many New York City transit workers.
A state judge ruled that NYC’s Correction Department failed to provide detainees with timely medical care, on the same day that city officials and a federal monitor produced a plan to potentially avoid a federal takeover of the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.
An 11-year-old girl was fatally shot on Monday afternoon when the passenger on a motorized scooter fired at a man running down a sidewalk in the Bronx, the police said, in the latest episode of gun violence against children in New York City.
Christian Cooper’s encounter in Central Park with a white woman who called 911 to falsely accuse him of threatening her spurred a national outcry. Now he is hosting a birding series for National Geographic.
The 50th birthday celebration of The Notorious B.I.G. is going to be a biggie. A tribute is set to take place for the late rap icon, also known as Biggie Smalls, on May 21 — which would’ve been the golden anniversary of the day he was born.
Former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced a $242 million effort to promote clean energy in 10 developing countries.
Voters turned out in force in many Capital Region school districts, and it appears many showed up to reject a new movement that vowed to “take back our schools” – a national phenomenon that saw at least 35 such candidates on local school board ballots.
Private Poestenkill wells that were just under the state’s drinking water standard for PFOA/PFOS contamination will be retested as state and local agencies continue to grapple with determining the source of the pollutants, according to the DEC.
Do you own a barn built before 1946 that needs work? If it has historic importance, it could qualify for a tax credit of 25 percent of the rehabilitation costs.
Nine cultural organizations and the city’s arts commission are collaborating to present about 40 free and ticketed events from June 2 to 5 as part of a promotion called All Together Now: Arts Celebration Weekend in Saratoga.
A registered sex offender has been charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a Rochester-area teenager whose remains were found last week in South Carolina, 13 years after she went missing while on spring break, the authorities said.
Dr. Mehmet Oz was in an extremely tight race with David McCormick in Pennsylvania’s Republican US Senate primary late last night in one of the most closely watched nominating contests of this election cycle.
After many establishment Republicans turned on Madison Cawthorn, voters did likewise. The controversial congressman lost the Republican primary for his U.S. House seat in North Carolina’s 11th District.
Netflix is laying off around 150 employees across the company, CNBC confirmed
