Thursday the 13th doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as Friday the 13th, but here we are. Good morning.
Those of you who know me, or have been following me here for some time, will not be surprised to hear that I am not a big candy eater. The exception would be – again, not a surprise – anything that involves peanut butter. Not peanuts, mind you. Peanut butter.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Yes, please. But Justin’s are better, IMHO, AND they have white chocolate, dark chocolate, cashew, crispy, and almond varieties for the win.
I know this is a topic about which people feel very strongly – even passionately. But I have to confess that I never really got into M&M’s (and yes, the apostrophe is intentional; it denotes possession and not the plural in this case, as in the company belonging to…well, you’ll understand if you just keep reading).
Before you come at me, I am hardly in the minority here. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are America’s favorite Halloween candy, followed by Skittles (?!?), and then M&M’s. (FWIW, how did candy corn make the list? I mean it did come in 10th, but it’s still there, and much better options – like Butterfinger, for example, or HEATH bars, or even Kit Kats, aren’t even represented).
Also, I don’t understand how Sour Patch Kids are ranked No. 1 in New York, followed by Hot Tamales, and (NO!) candy corn. What? No chocolate anything? Just tooth-achingly sweet sticky sugar pieces? Get it together, Empire State, WTF?
But I digress, and so back to M&M’s, which have been around for more than a century.
They are actually a knockoff. Yes, it’s true. The British version – Smarties – were invented first, dating back to the 1880s. The two candies are pretty similar when it comes to their chocolate innards, but the difference is in the colorful candy shell that melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
Smarties use natural flavors and colors – including orange oil, which gives them a distinct flavor. M&M’s have more chocolate and a thinner outside coating. (If you really want to dive deeply into a head-to-head comparison, click here).
Forrest Mars Sr., son of the Mars Company founder, Frank C. Mars, saw soldiers eating Smarties during the Spanish Civil War in the1930s, and was struck by how the hard sugar shell prevented the chocolate treat from melting.
He basically co-opted the idea, received his own patent for it in 1941, and started manufacturing the candy at a factory in New Jersey under the company name M&M Limited.
The two Ms stood for the aforementioned Forrest E. Mars Sr., and Bruce Murrie, who was the son of Hershey Chocolate’s president William F. R. Murrie. Murrie had a 20 percent share in this new candy, which facilitated the use of his chocolate – rationed at the time due to the war.
Speaking of war, the U.S. Army was the company’s first big customer. In fact, the colorful candy, which had the benefit of not melting in hot climates, was solely available to the military at the time.
The “melts in your mouth, not in your hand” tagline was added in 1949 when the candy first became publicly available. The trademark “m” stamp was introduced in 1950. It was initially black; the white version wasn’t introduced until four years later.
The original colors were red, yellow, green, brown, and purple. Yep, purple. (Now, it’s blue, along with red, orange, yellow, green, and dark brown in the classic bag, and speciality colors abound).
Peanut M&M’s, which I know many people consider the superior version of this sweet, were introduced in 1954, but were initially only available in tan. (Why? So unappetizing, IMHO). Orange was introduced in the 1970s to replace red due to the infamous red dye scare, and red M&M’s weren’t reintroduced until the whole mess died (see what I did there?) down in the 1980s.
M&M’s have been sold in more than 100 countries since 2003. There are a lot of conflicting reports on the interwebs as to exactly how many flavors of the candy there are, (safe to say, it’s a lot), but as far as I can tell, there’s about 12 mainstay versions.
Today, BTW, is National M&M Day, which is technically M&M’s Day, if you want to pick nits. I do not. Chocolate for breakfast!
We’ve been awfully spoiled as far as the weather goes of late, and that is coming to an end – at least temporarily. We’ll have clouds in the morning and scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day, which could be accompanied by gusty winds of up to 25 MPH. Temperatures will be on the mild side again, in the high 60s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden is angry at Saudi Arabia for its decision to slash oil production along with its OPEC allies against U.S. wishes, and he’s made no secret of it.
Biden warned that Saudi Arabia would face “consequences” after OPEC+ last week announced the biggest cut in oil production since the start of the pandemic, but didn’t get into specifics.
Biden designated the first national monument of his administration at Camp Hale, a World War II-era training site in this state, as he called for protecting “treasured lands” that tell the story of America.
Biden will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit next month — even to discuss the release of American basketball star Brittney Griner — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
However, Biden said during a CNN interview that aired this week that he would be open to meeting with Putin if the Russian president was willing to discuss the release of Griner.
The Biden administration announced it would accept up to 24,000 Venezuelans via a humanitarian parole plan, although the scope of the program was far narrower than a similar one for Ukrainians.
Biden arrived at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday afternoon for a roughly two-day trip in Southern California.
Though details regarding Biden’s schedule remained scant, he will make an appearance at an LA Metro station in Brentwood to discuss “historic investments in our nation’s infrastructure” today, the White House said.
The Los Angeles politician caught on tape making racist statements about a colleague’s son gave up her City Council seat. Nury Martinez had been president of the LA City Council, but she resigned that position on Monday.
“As the first Latina Council President, I strived to serve with compassion and to give a larger platform to the communities I felt had been left behind,” Martinez said. “While I take the time to look inwards and reflect, I ask that you give me space and privacy.”
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, will focus its hearing today on former President Donald Trump’s state of mind as the panel begins to make its closing argument that he orchestrated a wide-ranging attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
A Trump employee has told federal agents about moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago at the specific direction of the former president, which offers key evidence of his behavior as investigators sought the return of classified material.
The employee said they were directed by Trump to move boxes out of a basement storage room to his residence at Mar-a-Lago after his legal team received a subpoena for any classified documents at the Florida estate.
A federal judge rejected Trump’s attempt to pause his deposition in a defamation lawsuit scheduled for later this month saying his efforts to delay the case are “inexcusable.”
An ethics complaint in New York against Kenneth Chesebro is the latest example of legal troubles for lawyers who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
Alex Jones’ day of reckoning has arrived. A jury in Connecticut decided that the right-wing conspiracy theorist should pay eight families of Sandy Hook shooting victims and a first responder a staggering $965 million.
With the plaintiffs sobbing in the gallery, the clerk read out the verdict in which the jury decided compensatory damages for both slander and for emotional distress.
Jones, who was not in court to hear the jury’s decision, had been found liable for defamation after he spent years falsely describing the shooting as a hoax and accusing the victims’ families of being actors complicit in the plot.
The Sandy Hook families leveraged personal stories, social media analysis and the Infowars fabulist’s lack of contrition to secure a major verdict.
Jones has put his parent company, Free Speech Systems, into bankruptcy, a move the Sandy Hook victims’ families have challenged in court, saying the filing is an effort to avoid paying the mounting damages against him.
U.S. health regulators expanded eligibility for the new Covid-19 booster shots to children as young as 5 years old, broadening access to help bolster protection against Omicron strains of the coronavirus.
The moves mean children and teens can get the boosters from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech as long as they’re at least two months past their primary vaccine series or last booster dose.
“We want to have the best of both worlds,” Pfizer’s Dr. Bill Gruber, a pediatrician, told The Associated Press. He hopes the updated shots will “re-energize interest in protecting children for the winter.”
Ryan Seacrest has contracted COVID-19 for the first time.
A young San Fernando Valley woman went missing for two weeks and her family thinks it may have been related to a diagnosis of the rare mental condition known as COVID psychosis.
A new long-covid study based on the experiences of nearly 100,000 participants provides powerful evidence that many people do not fully recover months after being infected with the coronavirus.
The Scottish study found that between six and 18 months after infection, 1 in 20 people had not recovered and 42 percent reported partial recovery.
People reported certain persistent symptoms, such as breathlessness, palpitations and confusion or difficulty concentrating, at a rate roughly three times as high as uninfected people in surveys from six to 18 months later, the study found.
It’s becoming clearer that New York City’s recovery from the pandemic will be drawn out and that some aspects of the city’s economic ecosystem could be changed for good.
A recent study conducted by financial tech company SmartAsset found that New York had the largest net outflow of young professionals under 35 making more than $100,000 of any other major city.
A decision on whether voters can invoke a fear of contracting COVID-19 in order to use an absentee ballot is in the hands of a state Supreme Court justice following a court hearing when attorneys argued whether the practice is constitutional.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing a federal investigation into his use of COVID relief funds to bankroll the controversial flights of asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard as part of his effort to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations.”
The inquiry came in response to a request from congressional Democrats, who accused DeSantis, a Republican, of violating federal law by using the money or what they described as an “inhumane program to relocate newly arrived immigrants out of Florida.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul says repeated pleas to Biden about the worsening “humanitarian crisis” caused by a flood of migrants into New York City have fallen on deaf ears — but she continued to sidestep whether his open-border immigration policies are also to blame.
In New York City yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Biden must do a better job of securing the southern border and acknowledged it’s “unfair to unload people on to a community” amid the migrant crush affecting the Big Apple.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams demanded that the Department of Education “get a handle” on the placement of thousands of migrant kids in city schools.
A swank midtown Manhattan hotel will be home to hundreds of migrant families, Mayor Eric Adams said, announcing that the Row NYC is being turned into the latest “humanitarian relief center” to grapple with an influx of asylum seekers in the city.
New York is doling out an additional $13.4 million to bolster access to abortion services in the state, Hochul announced.
Meanwhile, Republican Lee Zeldin was in Westchester to protest the scheduled parole of a man convicted of killing a police officer in 1976.
In an open letter, health care professionals and advocates urge New Yorkers to elect a governor committed to protecting the right to choose. They claim Zeldin fails to fit that mold.
A new ad from a union-backed Super PAC ties Zeldin to the Jan. 6 insurrection and accuses the Republican gubernatorial candidate of putting “politics before the police.”
The NY Post spent a day with Zeldin and his family and paints a picture of him as a dedicated family man who fought hard to support his twin daughters after they were born premature. (They’re now thriving, healthy teenagers).
In a letter full of urgency, former LG Bob Duffy is warning state leaders – including the governor – that legislative decisions have put public safety in peril.
Hochul’s campaign is drawing millions of dollars in contributions tied to real estate power brokers seeking or doing business with the state — including donors who want to develop a vacant Hudson Yards parcel across from the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
Some New Yorkers will get an unexpected windfall when they check their mail in the coming weeks: Checks from the state.
Multiple surveys conducted by Siena College in recent weeks have shown virtual dead heats in battleground areas of the state.
An overwhelming majority of Long Islanders strongly supports abortion rights, and a significant share, whether they oppose or support it, say they will vote only for candidates who agree with them on the issue.
The GOP nominee had 48% support on Long Island compared to 46% for Hochul, according to the Newsday/Siena College survey of 993 registered voters out yesterday that followed an Oct. 6 poll showing her with five-point edge in the suburbs.
A federal appeals court temporarily placed a stay on a lower court’s restraining order against provisions of New York’s concealed carry law amid a legal challenge from a gun rights organization.
That means permitted gun owners are still barred from carrying weapons in sensitive locations and “gun-free zones” such as Times Square.
The state health department’s Office of the Medicaid IG agreed to pay $900,000 to settle a federal lawsuit from four investigators in the New York City office who alleged they didn’t get promotions in favor of younger, white, males — especially of Italian ancestry.
The state Education Department has ruled that a large yeshiva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, does not provide legally sufficient education to its students, ordering the city to work with the school to improve instruction.
New York businesses are trying to find ways of adapting with an uncertain economy. The cost of borrowing is getting more expensive while the cost of raw materials, fuel and energy prices have squeezed virtually everyone.
Democratic state Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara wants to waive the transaction fees for people to obtain a Real ID ahead of a coming requirement for the identification cards to be used when boarding a commercial flight or entering a federal building.
Adams and labor union leaders are running into resistance from the City Council over their last-ditch effort to enroll tens of thousands of retired municipal workers in a controversial, privatized Medicare plan.
Parents who have to choose between religious obligations and their children’s education are calling on Adams to fulfill a promise he made just a day after getting elected to make Diwali a school holiday.
Here’s a look at City Hall’s top earners – including one official raking in more than Adams’ own $258,000 salary.
The Adams administration wants developers to finish capital projects much faster.
Dasheeda Dawson, a native New Yorker, has returned home to direct the effort to build cannabis businesses and to absorb the illegal market into the new legitimate one.
Noise complaints are surging in New York City, and Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers thinks “noise cameras” that detect and ticket illegally loud vehicles could solve the problem.
Two more suspects have turned themselves in to face charges for a bizarre caught-on-video attack on a Times Square subway train carried out by a crew of women in neon green jumpsuits, police said.
Former NBA player Ben Gordon made bail after an alleged violent incident at LaGuardia Airport, only to be rearrested hours later.
Test scores on the ACT college preparation test hit a 30-year low in 2022. The standardized test’s maximum score is a 36, and the average score had been above 20 every year since 1991. This year’s average was 19.8, a full point lower than 2018′s average score.
After years of mounting scrutiny, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and state Attorney General Tish James have sued a Cohoes plant over air pollution. The lawsuit against Norlite was filed in Albany County State Supreme Court.
The Albany County Legislature passed several laws this week, including legislation meant to provide greater salary transparency for job seekers as well as protection for residents seeking medical treatment.
The Albany County Legislature voted down proposed new lines for all 39 elected districts, with Democratic leaders saying the proposed changes would have diluted representation for voters of color.
City of Albany firefighters called in multiple ambulances Tuesday night after people were overcome by noxious fumes at a building on Hudson Avenue.
Several Central Avenue business owners told the Albany Common Council that problems around Camino Nuevo, a counseling and methadone clinic at 175 Central Ave., are killing small businesses in the city’s main commercial district.
Niskayuna Town Board members were set at this week’s budget talks to discuss a controversial proposal in Supervisor Jaime Puccioni’s tentative budget for next year to give herself a $4,700 raise.
The chief executive of Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, announced widespread cost-cutting to its newsrooms, citing headwinds from the “deteriorating macroeconomic environment.”
Trevor Noah will host his last episode of “The Daily Show” on Dec. 8, ending a seven-year run with Comedy Central’s late-night program. The show will break in December and return January 17, 2023, after a “reinvention.”
NewsNation, the new home of disgraced CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, could be dropped from millions of homes by the end of this week if its parent company Nexstar cannot reach an agreement with cable provider Verizon Fios.
The 2022 McArthur Foundation awards are going to 25 artists, activists, scholars, scientists and others who have shown “exceptional creativity.” The grants are a bit bigger than before: $800,000 over five years.
Fake German heiress and convicted fraudster Anna Sorokin insisted she wants to stay in the United States as she fights overseas deportation to “prove people wrong” and “change the narrative” of her socialite scamming.
