It’s Wednesday, and it’s already almost the end of June. Why does summer speed by so quickly, while winter seems to drag on forever? This is one of the great mysteries of the universe.
Another great mystery: Where are the tropics? We toss around the word “tropical” with some regularity, but did you know that there’s actually a hard and fast definition regarding where, exactly this region is?
Technically speaking, the tropics lie roughly in the middle of the globe, between the latitude lines of the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. They include the Equator and parts of North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
Another definition: Everywhere on the planet that is a subsolar point, meaning the sun is directly overhead at least once in a solar year. Cool fact: The maximum latitudes of the tropics have the same value, positive and negative.
The tropics, which are generally hotter and wetter than elsewhere since they’re not actually impacted by the solar seasons, make up about 40 percent of the Earth’s surface area and contain 36 percent of its landmass. It’s also home to about 40 percent of the world’s population – a figure expected to grow to 50 percent (including two-thirds of the world’s children) by 2050.
It is possible to be located within the tropics and NOT have what is generally thought of as a tropical climate. The Sahara comes to mind, as does the Australian Outback.
Needless to say, the tropics are home to an immensely diverse array of flora and fauna, and thus are incredibly important to the health and welfare of the entire planet. And, of course, they are threatened, thanks to the ever-increasingly presence of, and pressures caused by, humans.
On June 14, 2016, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution designating today – June 29 – as International Day of the Tropics, marking the anniversary of the first “State of the Tropics Report,” launched by Myanmar’s Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, in 2014.
Apparently, life in the tropics is getting better, but challenges remain, including increasing pressures on the environment, poverty, poor health, substandard education outcomes and general governance issues.
It’s going to feel downright tropical, by upstate standards, as the temperature continues its upward climb. We’ll be reaching into the low 80s today, with mostly sunny skies. And Friday, which I know a lot of folks are planning to take off to get a jump on the July 4th holiday weekend, is going to be even hotter, with temperatures in the mid-90s. A good boat day, for sure.
In the headlines…
The first White House aide to testify publicly before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack said ex-President Donald Trump knew supporters were armed and threatening violence, urged them to march to the Capitol and sought to join them there.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who served under White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, delivered stunning testimony, laying bare how unhinged the president behaved during the riot and alleging that a march on the Capitol was planned ahead of time.
Former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann is claiming that a handwritten note regarding a potential statement for Trump to release during the Jan. 6 attack was written by him and not by Hutchinson, as she maintained.
Other aides to Trump were left speechless amid the first half of Hutchinson’s appearance on Capitol Hill, acknowledging that her testimony was “a bombshell” with potentially huge repercussions for Trump.
“I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, and really it felt personal,” Hutchinson said. “I was really saddened as an American. I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol get defaced over a lie.”
President Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership had months to prepare for the fall of Roe v. Wade, and even after a draft ruling was leaked in May, they had weeks to muster concrete plans, so many consider the response thus far painfully inadequate.
“There is no magic bullet,” Biden’s health secretary, Xavier Becerra, said at a morning news conference, “but if there is something we can do, we will find it and we will do it.”
Confidence in Biden has declined sharply around the world since his first year in office, even as global views of the United States continue to improve following record lows under Donald Trump, a recent survey has found.
Procter & Gamble and Target said they would cover travel expenses for employees who can’t access abortions near where they live, joining other companies that have taken the step after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Companies that sell sexual health products and medicines over the internet are shifting their marketing strategies to highlight the availability of mail-order emergency contraception, commonly known as morning-after pills.
A state-by-state legal battle in the wake of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling widened yesterday.
A Harris County judge granted a temporary restraining order to block a pre-Roe v. Wade abortion ban in Texas, signaling a small victory for abortion rights groups.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and State Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a challenge to a 19th century state law banning nearly all abortions.
Gov. Kim Reynolds said she would request that the Iowa courts lift the injunction against the enforcement of Iowa’s fetal heartbeat law.
Gov. Kathy Hochul cruised to an easy victory in yesterday’s Democratic primary election, setting her up to seek a full term in November after taking office last year when a sexual harassment scandal forced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to quit in disgrace.
Hochul — New York’s first female governor — held a 65% to 22% lead over city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams with outgoing Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi trailing both at 13% with 18% of the precincts reporting when the Associated Press called the race.
“Are we going to move New York forward? Or are we going to let the far right extremists drag our state backwards? You tell me,” Hochul said. You know the answer, and there’s only one party that can take us forward. And that’s the Democratic Party.”
Long Island Rep. .Lee Zeldin emerged from the four-way Republican primary for governor as the winner, beating out Andrew Giuliani, the son of Rudy Giuliani, Harry Wilson, and Rob Astorino, according to a race call from The Associated Press.
Zeldin held a roughly 43% to 23% lead over Giuliani with more than 60% of the votes counted. Astorino was in third at 19% and Wilson at 15%.
In a speech to supporters on Long Island, Zeldin promised to break “one-party rule” in Albany, a reference to the Democrats’ domination of both the State Legislature and the governor’s mansion. “Are we ready to fire Kathy Hochul?” he said.
LG Antonio Delgado also won the Democratic primary, scoring a convincing victory over his nearest challenger, Ana María Archila, a longtime activist who had emerged as the left wing’s best chance of winning statewide office this election cycle.
Delgado held a 61% to 25% lead over Archila when AP called he race just before 10 pm. Reyna lagged far behind at 14%.
Delgado spoke shortly after 10 p.m. after the polls showed him with a large lead. “This is a fight for our lives. This is a generational fight,” Delgado told supporters in Manhattan about the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
From New York City to Schenectady, numerous long-tenured lawmakers, like Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx, appeared poised to fend off progressive challengers and claim their party’s nomination and move on to the general election in November.
However, political newcomer Sarahana Shrestha scored an election victory for the Democratic party line over 13-term incumbent Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, of Kingston, garnering 7,702 votes to Cahill’s 7,173 vote tally.
Assemblywoman Monique Chandler-Waterman faced a second election fight in as many months against the same opponent with similar results, beating Hercules Reid, a former aide to Mayor Eric Adams in Brooklyn’s 58th Assembly District in East Flatbush.
Hiram Monserrate, an ex-con and perennial New York politician expelled from the state Senate for assaulting his girlfriend, lost his latest comeback bid to win a Queens Assembly seat held by incumbent Jeff Aubry.
State lawmakers have agreed on new gun control legislation they’re set to pass later this week. Under the new law, guns would be banned from hospitals, schools, government buildings, mass transit and places where alcohol is served.
The French National Assembly has elected Yaël Braun-Pivet, 51, as its president, equivalent to a Speaker of the House, in the opening session of its 16th Legislature. Braun-Pivet will be the first woman ever to hold the position.
Braun-Privet vigorously defended the right to abortion and called on the chamber to be “vigilant” about protecting it from reversal.
French president Emmanuel Macron was caught revealing some bad news to President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit, telling him the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) ruler said OPEC’s top oil exporters were already at their production maximum.
White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will ever be able to take back all of the land it has lost to Russia over the past four months of war, even with the heavier and more sophisticated weaponry the US and its allies plan to send.
Biden’s wife, First Lady Jill Biden, and his daughter, Ashley, are the latest prominent U.S. figures to be blacklisted by Russia in retaliation for Washington’s sanctions on Moscow.
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said that Turkey has agreed to support Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership bids, removing a major hurdle to the two countries joining the alliance.
Biden said the discovery of at least 50 dead migrants in a truck in Texas is “horrifying and heartbreaking” and underscores the need to go after criminal trafficking rings.
Three people are in custody following the death of 51 migrants who were among those found in a sweltering tractor trailer.
The use of large trucks to pack together and conceal migrants has been on the rise, a means of maximizing profits for criminal networks and a sign of the increasing desperation of those seeking to enter the country by any means possible.
Biden’s request for $22.5 million in emergency aid to bolster the supply of coronavirus tests, vaccines and treatments, which stalled for months amid objections from both parties, is now the subject of Democratic infighting and finger-pointing on Capitol Hill.
A new COVID wave appears to be starting in New York City, fueled by the strongest subvariant of the omicron strain of coronavirus to date, one of the city’s top epidemiologists said.
Two RPI researchers devised a face mask that not only protects against exposure to germs and viruses such as coronavirus, but also kills pathogens on contact.
Pregnancy-related deaths increased by 33% in 2020 as COVID took over the United States, according to a study published yesterday.
An expert committee recommended that the Food and Drug Administration move to updated coronavirus booster shots targeting some form of the Omicron variant that has dominated for months.
Clinics nationwide will begin offering vaccinations against monkeypox to anyone who may have been exposed to the virus, federal health officials announced. Until now, immunizations were offered only to people with a known exposure.
Two days after Rudy Giuliani claimed a worker had assaulted him at a Staten Island supermarket, the once-vaunted former mayor was spending yesterday morning like many men his age: complaining about his aches and pains.
Mayor Adams said Giuliani should be investigated for filing a false police report after “America’s Mayor” apparently made an exaggerated police report about a spat in Staten Island over the weekend.
Adams chided Giuliani for his “creativity and sensationalism” in claiming he could have been “killed” by the pat on the back he got while campaigning Sunday for his son, Andrew, a GOP gubernatorial candidate.
“To falsely report a crime is a crime,” Adams said. “If that video wasn’t there, then this person would have been charged with punching the former mayor. He’d have been charged with all these offenses that did not materialize.”
“Mayor Adams is an idiot, ’cause I didn’t file a report. Imagine that,” Giuliani retorted. “He wants to prosecute me for filing a false report that I didn’t file. His police department filed the report.”
Adams again defended the arrest of a beloved subway saxophonist, telling reporters that the NYPD acted “appropriately” when they removed him from the Herald Square station.
Adams released “Accessible, Equitable, High-quality, Affordable: A Blueprint for Child Care & Early Childhood Education in New York City,” outlining essential steps to provide high-quality, equitable, and accessible child care for thousands of New York City families.
The 38-page plan calls for helping families access care more easily and expanding services to reach 41,000 more children in high-needs neighborhoods over the next two years. It also focuses on strengthening the workforce who serve NYC’s youngest children.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller is stepping down from the position he’s held for nearly a decade, police officials confirmed.
New York City public pools opened for the season, but the city has had to cancel its free swim lesson program. Meanwhile private programs have long wait lists, some in the hundreds, for increasingly expensive classes.
A new Bronx superintendent left his former post as head of the Newburgh school system after independent investigators found he sexually harassed female subordinates, according to court documents.
New tax data reveal a steep population loss of wealthy residents from New York City in 2020, toward the start of the pandemic. The exodus was temporary, but how much of its effects could be permanent?
Daniel H. Weiss, who in 2015 arrived to stabilize the troubled Metropolitan Museum’s, told the museum’s board that he would step down as president and chief executive in June 2023.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite who conspired with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a judge who said she played a pivotal role in facilitating a horrific scheme that spanned continents and years.
After 11 tumultuous years, New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics conducted its final meeting. It will be replaced by the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.
After more than a decade in the top spot, the chair of the Saratoga County Democratic Committee has stepped down.
An attorney for the Port of Albany is defending the decision to halt site-preparation work at Beacon Island after the port allegedly got in hot water with the feds over the clear-cutting of all vegetation on the 80-acre site without proper environmental approvals.
Serena Williams, who had not competed in singles on tour since withdrawing from Wimbledon last year with an injury, lost in three sets to Harmony Tan of France.
Beyond Meat Inc. is preparing to launch a sliced-steak product, expanding the company’s lineup of plant-based meat alternatives as it works to boost languishing sales.
