Friday, where have you been all my life?
After a dreary few days, we’re heading into a spate of really nice – if unusually hot for this time of year – mostly dry, and partly sunny weather. I’m talking 90-plus degrees (I know I keep harping on this, but my mind is really blown…hello, climate change?!)
Anyway, today will be partly cloudy with temperatures in the low 80s. And you know what that kind of weather is perfect for?
CYCLING.
It’s National Bike to Work Day, which falls toward the tail end of Bike to Work Week (May 16-22), which comes during National Bike Month, which started way back in 1956.
Did you know that 40 percent of all trips undertaken in the U.S. are less than two miles in length? And why walk that when you can ride?
This explains the explosion of bike sharing programs, which seem to be popping up all over the place; according to one online stat I saw, more than 1,000 cities around the world have them now, with at least 60 of those in the US.
Perhaps the best known and most successful of these is New York City’s Citi Bike, which launched in 2013. Just two years later, it had ballooned to provide 10 million rides per year.
In 2019, New Yorkers broke a record with 90,000 Citi Bike rides in a single day, and a few weeks later, surpassed that record with 100,000 rides in the same time frame.
The fact that the price of gas is going through the roof, and that people living in urban areas (like New York City) might feel some trepidation about taking public transportation – either due to safety or health reasons – has made commuting by bike an even more attractive option.
Plus, if you’re only going into work a few days a week, you don’t have to worry about paying for a parking spot, or a commuter pass, or what have you, if you are able to ride instead of drive. (Of course, I do realize there’s a weather factor here…but I have seen a few hearty souls riding in the dead of winter, bundled up against the elements).
Also, there are more electric bikes on the market these days, which has helped make cycling even more accessible to people of all athletic abilities.
I wanted to do a little bit here about the history of the bicycle and who invented it…but of course, like so many good things in life, it has a very complicated history. Suffice it to say that the precursors of today’s two-wheelers did not looking anything like what we’re used to. In fact, the first bikes had four wheels.
If you have time, I highly recommend going down this rabbit hole, which will tell you all about something I did not, until this very moment, know exited: The Leonardo da Vinci Bicycle Hoax.
There’s a movie in there somewhere, I just know it.
Anywho…it’s a nice day to get out there on two wheels, or three, or even four if that’s what floats your…bike. (See what I did there?) And since we’ve dispensed with the weather already, let’s get right into the main attraction.
In today’s news…
Everywhere you go in Washington, people are wondering the same thing: Will Joe Biden, who will be 81 in 2024, run for reelection?
Biden’s approval rating among Hispanic Americans has plummeted to 26%, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.
Biden will begin his five-day Asia trip with a visit to a Samsung semiconductor plant today, a stop meant to demonstrate the growing cooperation between the U.S. and South Korea on technology and other issues.
Russia was fortifying its control over parts of southeast Ukraine this week at the same time that the Kremlin appeared to be purging senior commanders deemed responsible for failing to capture more of Ukraine
Russia says it has sent 900 Ukrainian soldiers to a former prison colony in a Russia-controlled part of Donetsk.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine is likely to continue throughout the summer and possibly beyond, despite signs that parts of the country are returning to some normalcy, Ukraine’s presidential advisor Oleksii Arestovych said.
The Senate passed a nearly $40 billion military and economic aid package to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, sending the bill to President Biden’s desk and bringing America’s commitment to almost $54 billion.
The 86-11 vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan, with all Democrats and most Republicans voting yes. The Republicans who opposed the bill cited its price tag and misgivings about long-term involvement in funding a foreign war.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) said his Kentucky colleague Sen. Rand Paul (R), who vocally opposed the $40 billion Ukraine aid package, represented “a tiny percentage” of Senate Republicans.
Five countries’ attorneys general vocalized their support for international probes and prosecutions into war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.
Biden vowed to speed Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, seeking to redraw the map of Europe to the West’s advantage less than three months after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia began his invasion of Ukraine.
“The bottom line is simple, quite straightforward: Finland and Sweden make NATO stronger,” Biden said. “Not just because of their capacity but because of their strong, strong democracies.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned a law passed by Oklahoma lawmakers that would ban abortions with very limited exceptions.
Applications for US state unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week to the highest level since January, led by increased filings in Kentucky and California.
Applications for unemployment benefits rose by 21,000 to 218,000 for the week ending May 14, the Labor Department reported. First-time applications generally track the number of layoffs.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk says he has no current plans to fund a Republican super PAC in the upcoming U.S. elections, including any who oppose Biden in 2024.
The US officially surpassed 1 million known COVID-19 deaths according to a New York Times database, a cataclysmic outcome that only hints at the suffering of millions more Americans who are mourning their parents, children, siblings, friends and colleagues.
North Korea’s COVID-19 outbreak soared to nearly 2 million by yesterday, exactly a week after the officials admitted the country’s very first case.
The CDC recommended a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. Children in this age group who received their last dose at least five months earlier are eligible to receive the additional doses immediately.
Following the recommendation, many of the nation’s doctors, pharmacies and other vaccination sites are expected to begin offering the extra doses to the 28 million U.S. children in the age group.
Moderna Inc.’s leader said it is possible the company would be able to start shipping its Covid-19 vaccine for use in young children as soon as early June, pending a decision by U.S. regulators.
New York state COVID hospitalizations are now nearing 3,000, more than doubling in the last month as an omicron subvariant believed to be the most transmissible strain yet fuels soaring infection rates across the country, health department data shows.
New York City is now logging more than 4,000 cases per day, a figure that is likely much higher because most home tests are not counted in the official tally.
Some health experts have criticized Mayor Eric Adams’ approach and fear that letting the virus spread broadly could hurt the city’s most vulnerable residents. They believe the city should bring back mask and vaccine mandates, though that would be difficult.
Though the city is recommending masks in indoor public settings, it isn’t requiring it as the city’s own guidance – which was introduced by Adams – suggests it should do.
Health officials are investigating a possible case of monkeypox in New York City.
The authorities said little about the patient, who is currently in isolation at Bellevue Hospital, according to a statement from the city health department. The patient arrived to the hospital yesterday, according to one official.
Health experts stress the risk to the public remains low and most people don’t need to be immediately fearful of contracting the illness.
With monkeypox, the world faces a very different situation than in the early days of Covid-19. Monkeypox, unlike SARS-CoV-2, is a known quantity.
The accused gunman in Saturday’s massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo appeared in court yesterday, as some relatives of the 10 people he is accused of killing looked on, and as other families prepared for their loved ones’ funerals.
A grand jury has voted to indict the suspect, Payton Gendron, according to Erie County prosecutors, who announced the vote during a brief hearing in county court. Gendron, 18, would not be formally indicted until the grand jury investigation is complete.
Gendron was silent throughout the proceeding before being remanded and sent back to jail. As he was being led out someone shouted, “Payton, you’re a coward!”
An online chatroom invitation sent shortly before the Buffalo supermarket shooting by alleged gunman Payton Gendron was accepted by 15 users, according to a person with knowledge of the messaging platform Discord’s investigation into the matter.
Relatives of the 10 Black people massacred in Buffalo pleaded with the nation to confront and stop racist violence, their agony pouring out in the tears of a 12-year-old child, hours after Gendron silently faced a murder indictment in court.
People searching on Facebook for footage of the racist shooting rampage may have come across posts with footage of the attack or links to websites promising the gunman’s full video. Interspersed between those posts, they may have also seen a variety of ads.
Gendron didn’t discuss any specific threats and was deemed not to be a danger by mental-health workers after he wrote that he wanted to kill himself and others last year, according to the local district attorney.
Two dozen lawmakers signed a letter sent to the state corrections commissioner urging him to fire an officer at Attica Correctional Facility who allegedly wrote a “vile” post on Facebook about a “clean up” of aisles in the wake of the Buffalo shooting.
In video of a recent campaign stop, GOP gubernatorial Rep. Lee Zeldin calls for repealing New York’s SAFE Act, which expanded gun regulations after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and raises concerns about red flag laws.
State lawmakers want the company employing the husband of Gov. Kathy Hochul to pay its workers more, or risk losing any chance at lucrative contracts in the new Buffalo Bills stadium that she foisted on state and local taxpayers to the tune of $850 million.
Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries hopes to pressure New York’s court-appointed special master to change congressional maps that split historically Black communities.
Jeffries is spending tens of thousands of dollars on digital advertising as part of a scorched-earth campaign to try to stop New York’s courts from making the new map final when it is presented by the special master today.
Residents of Saratoga Springs and Amsterdam have mounted a prolific letter writing campaign to urge the “special master” and Steuben County judge drawing the state’s political lines to fold the two cities back into the Capital Region congressional district.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered her full-throated support for Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the party’s campaign arm, who’s come under fire from some Democrats for his potential primary challenge of a Black freshman congressman in a next door district.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the first member of Congress to publicly call for Maloney to step down as House Democrats’ campaign chair if he ends up in a primary with a Democratic colleague.
The DCCC, which Maloney heads, is intensifying efforts to stop the implementation of a draft congressional map that would pit several Democratic incumbents against one another in the midterms and has exacerbated sensitive divisions in the caucus.
A federal lawsuit filed yesterday seeking to combine all of New York’s primaries in August could open the door for ex-governor Andrew Cuomo to take another shot at running for his old office.
Activist-turned-candidate Ana Maria Archila, who is running for LG, said more debates are needed in order to familiarize New Yorkers with the race for the state’s second highest elected office.
Hochul has not yet committed to an official timeline for LG-in-waiting Antonio Delgado to resign from Congress, which would touch off a special election for his House seat.
Hochul told builders, bankers, and others who gathered for an annual affordable housing conference that they have her support, but she didn’t mention the property tax exemption for multifamily developments known as 421-a, which expires next month.
Comptroller Tom DiNapoli took aim at the state Department of Labor for overseeing what was described as a dysfunctional but sprawling workforce development program that is supposed to train New Yorkers for the jobs of today and tomorrow.
Mayor Adams agreed that he was cut from an equally idiosyncratic political cloth as Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman.
Adams criticized the Department of Buildings, echoing previous comments that the agency’s bureaucratic processes stand in the way of projects. He said the agency should “roll out the red carpet” for building professionals.
Adams doubled down in his opposition to putting Rikers Island under the control of federal receiver, arguing that accepting such oversight would open the door to federal control of city services like education and sanitation.
Adams defended his decision to select high-powered attorney Frank Carone as his chief of staff after a recent report outlined new details on the top aide’s former representation of clients that now have business before the city.
Adams announced the confirmation of David Do by the New York City Council as commissioner and chair of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), with no votes against his confirmation.
A long-sought bill that would allow adult survivors of sexual abuse to hold their alleged abusers accountable is on track for approval in Albany.
New York City’s controversial anti-chokehold law — which aims to restrict NYPD use of the kind of chokehold used by a Minneapolis police officer in the 2020 death of George Floyd — was reinstated by a state appeals court.
NYC traffic cameras have to be shut off from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and on weekends because of a state law that was passed 150 miles away in Albany, even though nearly 60 percent of the fatal crashes during the pandemic happened during those hours.
State lawmakers have finalized a deal that would extend and expand New York City’s speed camera program for three years — including keeping them on for 24 hours.
A judge declined to halt the demolition at the Manhattan Detention Complex in Chinatown, at a hearing in a lawsuit brought by two artists whose works there may be moved or demolished.
The New York City Education Department is planning to roll out its own online grading and attendance system to replace a widely-used platform that was hacked earlier this year, exposing the personal information of nearly one million students.
A New York City education panel has approved the same $10 billion school budget proposal it previously rejected, after the Education Department promised to review its funding formula.
The NYC Council voted to beef up enforcement of self-closing doors in apartment buildings and outlaw space heaters that don’t feature an automatic shutoff setting – measures inspired by a catastrophic fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people earlier this year.
Latham fuel cell maker Plug Power has won an order to build the world’s largest green hydrogen plant in Denmark, a huge win for the company, which wants to become the world’s largest supplier of the renewable fuel.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is engaged to her longtime boyfriend Riley Roberts.
A former SpaceX employee said Elon Musk exposed himself to her and propositioned her for sex in 2016. SpaceX paid the woman a $250,000 settlement, which included a nondisclosure agreement, in 2018.
Princeton University’s president has recommended that the school’s board of trustees fire a tenured classics professor, concluding he didn’t cooperate fully in a sexual-misconduct investigation, according to a copy of his letter to the board’s chair.
