Good TUESDAY morning. (I’m going to have to keep reminding myself of that all week)..
Welcome to summer, unofficially speaking.
Technically, it’s the 73rd day of spring, and summer won’t start for another 21 days. That’s when the Summer Solstice will occur, the North Pole will be tilted toward the sun at the highest degree of an angle and locations in the Northern Hemisphere will experience their longest hours of daylight.
And it’s all downhill from there, as we start losing minutes of the day. But let’s not think about that, shall we?
Let’s reflect on what a gorgeous Memorial Day weekend Mother Nature delivered. Sunday and Monday were truly fantastic. I hope you had a relaxing and/or action-packed holiday.
As for today, it’s World No Tobacco Day, which was created in 1987 by member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise awareness of the harms caused by tobacco products to people, public health, communities and the environment.
Despite compelling, well researched and widely-available evidence regarding the many health hazards of tobacco products that have been accumulated over the past 70 years, smoking remains a leading cause of death worldwide.
According to the WHO, tobacco usage is one of the world’s leading causes of premature death, accounting for more than 8 million fatalities and costing the global economy $1.4 trillion annually.
Good news: Rates of smoking have declined across the globe.
Bad news: The decline in people picking up the habit remains unequal, falling more significantly (more than 40 percent) in some higher-income countries, and by a whopping 70 percent in Brazil, while remaining largely unchanged in low-to-middle-income countries – particularly in Asia, where more than half of all men continue to smoke.
Women, apparently, have gotten the message that lighting up is bad for your health. Men consume tobacco almost five times more than women across the globe, the WHO estimates.
And smoking remains one of the leading causes of preventable death here in the U.S., resulting in nearly one of very five deaths annually, according to the CDC.
The theme of this year’s World Tobacco Day is “Protect the Environment,” and it highlights the damage that tobacco, throughout its lifecycle, harms the planet as well as the people on it.
If you are a smoker, there’s no time like the present to stop, to improve your overall health and reduce your risk of heart and lung disease, cancer and any number of other ailments. You’ll add years to your life AND improve your sense of taste and smell.
For resources on how to kick the habit, click here, here, and here.
Or, you could call the New York State Smokers’ Quitline at 1-866-NY-QUITS (1-866-697-8487) or visit www.nysmokefree.com. You can access free starter kits of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), if you’re eligible. This service is free and confidential.
For those of you who are still on vacation, you’ve got a great day for water-related activities on tap. The rest of us will only look out the window and dream.
There will be intermittent sun and clouds and it will be HOT with highs in the low 90s (some records could be broken). Remember to stay hydrated.
In the headlines…
More than 30 people lost their lives from gun violence around the country over a blood-spattered Memorial Day weekend.
President Joe Biden said the 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, “was never absolute,” adding: “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the 2nd Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weaponry.”
Biden took aim at 9mm handguns, appearing to suggest that the “high-caliber weapons” ought to be banned.
For the second time in less than two weeks, Biden on Sunday touched down in an American community consumed by grief, embracing survivors, laying a bouquet and consoling families of victims of another mass shooting.
Biden told a local lawmaker while visiting Uvalde that the federal government may provide resources to raze Robb Elementary School, where 19 children and two teachers were shot and killed earlier this week.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a move to freeze the sale and transfer of handguns in the country as part of a strict gun control proposal introduced by his government yesterday.
Most owners of what Canada calls “military-style assault weapons” would be required to turn over their firearms to a government buyback program under the legislation, which would tighten the country’s already stringent control of firearms.
The first wakes for the 21 victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting were held yesterday, as families began the excruciating task of laying their little loved ones to rest.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was heckled by mourners Sunday during a visit to the Texas school where 19 children and two teachers were killed.
As the criticism of the police response to last week’s Texas school shooting deepens, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin now says that local law enforcement has not misled anyone and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s claims that he was lied to are “not true.”
Uvalde officials have canceled tonight’s planned City Council meeting where a local police chief — under fire for his handling of last week’s deadly school shooting — was set to be sworn in as a new member.
The National Rifle Association’s board of directors reelected its controversial leader Wayne LaPierre as CEO yesterday at its annual meeting in Houston, barely a week after a mass shooting in the state that left 19 children and two adults dead.
Grief and anger over two horrific mass shootings in Texas and New York only ten days apart has stirred an old debate: Would disseminating graphic images of the results of gun violence jolt the nation’s gridlocked leadership into action?
Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton says it is “mind-boggling” how much Texas authorities mishandled last week’s school massacre.
After a string of Democratic failures on marquee issues, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to give bipartisan gun talks time is a test of the Senate — and of democracy itself.
Vice President Kamala Harris called for an assault weapons ban Saturday, saying that in the wake of two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society.”
“As I’ve said countless times, we are not sitting around waiting to figure out what the solution looks like. You know, we’re not looking for a vaccine,” Harris said in Buffalo after attending the funeral for a victim of a mass shooting there earlier this month.
The funeral was for 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield — the oldest of the 10 people killed in the attack two weeks ago, and the last of the victims to be laid to rest.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was arrested in California over he weekend and charged with drunk driving.
Paul Pelosi, 82, was nabbed just before midnight in Napa County, CA and charged with one count of driving under the influence and another for driving with a blood alcohol content level of 0.08 or higher, according to a sheriff’s office online booking report.
Speaker Pelosi, a Democrat, has not addressed the arrest publicly. On Sunday, she delivered a commencement address at Brown University. A spokesperson said she was not with her husband at the time of the incident.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will meet Biden today at the White House, where she said she expects to discuss ongoing U.S. engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
European Union leaders reached a deal late yesterday on a sixth sanction package that would include a partial oil embargo against Russia after resolving an objection from Hungary.
During a marathon meeting in Brussels, the EU members agreed to an embargo that covers Russian oil transported by sea, allowing a temporary exemption for imports delivered by pipeline.
The deal bans Russian oil imports arriving by sea by the end of the year, which will cut off two-thirds of the bloc’s total imports and cost the Kremlin billions of dollars a year.
The ban applies “maximum pressure on Russia to end the war,” the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, said on Twitter.
An explosion rocked the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol early yesterday, sending plumes of smoke into the sky just outside the office of the pro-Kremlin head of the region, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials.
Biden said that the US won’t supply Ukraine with long-range rocket systems that can hit Russian territory.
Tens of thousands people across the U.S. had their Memorial Day weekend plans come to a screeching halt after weather disruptions and staffing issues forced airlines to cancel hundreds of flights and delay thousands more.
Biden said the Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation and vowed not to seek “to influence its decisions inappropriately” ahead of a meeting with the central bank chief today.
The meeting will be the first since Biden renominated Powell to lead the central bank and comes weeks after his confirmation for a second term by the Senate.
Biden on Memorial Day visited the grave of his son Beau Biden, a former major in the Delaware Army National Guard, who died seven years ago Monday.
Many Americans hoped this would be the first normal summer after two years of Covid-19 disruptions. A chronic labor shortage means it probably won’t be.
The U.S. is seeing an average of more than 100,000 reported new COVID cases across the country every day. That’s nearly double the rate a month ago and four times higher than this time last year. And the real number of cases is likely much higher than that.
The persistence of COVID-19 means yearly vaccine booster shots could be in store for everyone, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser, said.
Paxlovid, the Covid-19 treatment from Pfizer Inc., has become the leading pandemic pill prescribed in the U.S., as supplies have improved and its availability at pharmacies widened.
Shanghai authorities say they will take some major steps tomorrow toward reopening China’s largest city after a two-month COVID-19 lockdown that has throttled the national economy and largely bottled up millions of people in their homes.
Some NYC companies are taking more drastic measures to make the return to work appealing: picking up their offices and relocating them closer to where their employees live.
New York politicians — including Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul — joined military officials to commemorate Memorial Day Monday at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum for the first time since 2019.
Adams declared that the city is staring down its own “Pearl Harbor moment” as it strives to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hochul also stopped by the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan to honor those who died in the attacks and the countless others who have died from 9/11-related illnesses.
During an address at Rehoboth Open Bible Church in Brooklyn, Hochul vowed to continue to push for stricter gun-control laws while noting that she is using state police to bust people who transport illegal guns to the Empire State.
Gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi, a Long Island congressman, is hitting Hochul where it hurts in a new campaign ad targeting her past stance on guns in the wake of two horrific mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas that have rocked the nation.
Hochul has widened her already formidable fund-raising lead over both Democratic and Republican rivals, scooping up millions from lobbyists, wealthy New Yorkers and special interest groups with a stake in policy outcomes in Albany.
The legislative session is scheduled to end on Thursday, and Hochul and the Legislature hope to accomplish several major issues, including further protecting abortion rights and more gun safety measures.
While there are just three scheduled days left in the session, lawmakers are not expected to conclude until well into the weekend.
The MTA and union officials are asking New York state lawmakers to pass a bill that would protect more transit workers from assaults before the legislative session ends.
New congressional lines have put two stalwart Manhattan Democrats – Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney – on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary. Barney Greengrass is staying neutral.
Queens Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky said that she will run in District 11 in the upcoming election cycle, rather than District 16, which she has represented since 1999, while Sen. John Liu will run in District 16, not District 11, his current seat.
State Senator James Skoufis, a Democrat of the current 39th District in the lower Hudson Valley, says he will run for re-election in the new 42nd District, now represented by GOP Sen. Mike Martucci.
A Rikers Island inmate was found dead in his cell Saturday — the sixth person in custody to die this year in New York City’s jail system.
Queens Democratic Councilman Robert Holden wants to create an 11-person commission to look at the cost of overhauling the island’s notorious jail facility in favor of a more humane modernized complex.
Someone apparently armed with a power saw broke into a Brooklyn church and walked off with the solid-gold, bejeweled tabernacle worth $2 million, the police said.
Video posted online shows crowds fleeing in terror as panic swept through Barclays Center over a false report of a shooting early Sunday, leaving more than a dozen people injured. Tennis star Noami Osaka was caught up in the mayhem.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson are teaming up to help hundreds of low-income New Yorkers who have been dragged into eviction court proceedings without legal representation.
Former Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright is suing NYC for $10 million, claiming he was “mentally devastated” after being “falsely” arrested last year for leaving the scene of an accident, and threatened while spending a day in jail.
Jonathan Cervas, a former bartender from Las Vegas, radically redrew New York’s House district lines, forcing some Democratic incumbents to scramble for new seats. He’s the state’s unexpected power broker.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited a church for the second week in a row Sunday to talk about mass shootings and demand stronger action from government.
The imminent demise of JCOPE leaves an ethics inquiry into whether Cuomo violated the law by using state employees to assist in the production of his lucrative pandemic book in limbo.
The NYC Sanitation Department has a resident artist.
When heat waves hit, everyone suffers. But the pain will not be shared equally throughout New York City. Lower income neighborhoods are where climate inequality will hurt the most.
A UAlbany student died after a New Jersey man who had two prior drunk driving convictions was allegedly drunk on the Northway when he slammed his speeding Tesla into the back of her Honda Civic, sending it into a guide rail where it caught fire.
A history of incarceration may increase suicide attempts, particularly for women who were incarcerated at a young age, according to a new study from the University at Albany School of Public Health.
After a dip in 2020, the NYRA’s revenues bounced back last year, boosted by a return of in-person attendance at race tracks, record betting and a deal with Fox Sports, financial statements show. Part of the boost came from one-time revenue and cost savings.
Many out-of-state residents appear to have gotten discounted in-state SUNY tuition due to lax policies, an audit found.
The former Ann Lee Home will be demolished and turned into a shovel-ready site for a developer.
The city of Troy is seeking state approval to sink 200 geothermal wells in Riverfront Park to create a $12 million heating and cooling system for downtown businesses, nonprofits and residences to cut carbon emissions and lower utility costs.
A student at Hadley-Luzerne schools has been suspended for the rest of the school year after posting “a threat on social media referencing plans to do harm when school resumes on Tuesday,” according to a letter posted by Superintendent Beecher Baker.
No, that was not a coyote chasing ducks in the fountain on the Empire State Plaza. It was a dog.
Manhattanhenge is upon us. It can produce, when the weather cooperates, four of the most striking sunsets of the year in New York City.
A man apparently protesting climate change threw pastry or cake at the Mona Lisa and smeared the glass covering the iconic painting at the Louvre. Nothing was damaged.
The protestor was disguised as an old woman and used a wheelchair to get close to the Mona Lisa.
“Top Gun: Maverick”, the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 hit, opened to a blockbuster $156 million in the U.S. and Canada over the long Memorial Day weekend, a box-office record for the holiday and a career-best debut for its star, Tom Cruise.
