Good Thursday morning, we are inching ever closer to the weekend – and a blessed reprieve from snow, snow, and more snow.
In today’s edition of “anywhere but here, places I would rather be where it is not currently the dead of winter,” I bring you: Australia.
The Land Down Under, as its colloquially known, will likely remain an aspirational destination for me, since (as has been discussed here many times), I am a terrible flyer.
We’re talking a flight time of somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 hours. From New York, that is.
I guess you could break it up and make a stop in California. You could also make a pit stop in Hawaii, and perhaps hang out there for awhile, which, and I know you’re reading this, Dad, is what we did when we flew to Japan to set up shop for a year when I was about seven.
It’s still too much time in the air for my taste, though.
The tickets to fly to Australia are also not cheap, understandably, given the length of the flight – somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 to $3,000, round-trip, although you can find them for less if you bargain hunt, and also are willing to travel in the off season.
Also not optimal: You more or less LOSE A DAY OF YOUR LIFE when you cross the international date line, though to be fair, you gain it back, technically speaking, on the return trip.
So it’s quite possible that I will never bite the bullet and travel to Australia. But I remain fascinated by the place from afar. It’s home to so many amazing and unique things – Ayers Rock and the Outback, the Sydney Opera House, kangaroos and wallabies, and, of course, koalas (they are marsupials, like kangaroos, FWIW, NOT cute bears).
And there’s the cool accents, barbecue, iconic beers (mostly lager) and wins, and the slang.
Today, by the way, is Australia Day, which marks the establishment of the first permanent European settlement on the continent. On this day in, 1788, Arthur Phillip sailed into what is now Sydney Cove with a shipload of convicts and hoisted the British flag upon making landfall.
Over the next 80 years, more than 160,000 convicts were transported to Australia from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They didn’t really have a choice – their other option was the death penalty. This was not always s history Australia celebrated, but over time, the country’s roots became a point of pride for many.
This day was once a very big deal, (though apparently there was some debate as to which date, specifically, it should be held on). People got the day off and celebrated by going to the beach, holding barbecues, parades, ceremonies, and the like.
But in recent years, Australian government officials and business leaders have thought twice about the optics of celebrating it, recognizing the controversy associated with marking the start of British colonization – a very painful issue for the country’s historically abused, murdered, and excluded indigenous population, Aboriginal Australians.
For The First Nations of Australia, this day brings up painful associations related to the invasion of their land. They have long advocated for Australia Day not to be officially recognized, and their efforts are bearing fruit.
Younger Aussies, in particular, are also reportedly shunning Australia Day celebrations in greater numbers. As the BBC reports (in the aforementioned link:
The Victorian state government this year cancelled its annual Australia Day parade. More employers – like supermarket giant Woolworths and telecoms company Telstra – are giving staff the option to work and take another day off instead. Retailer Kmart has stopped selling Australia Day merchandise.
And annual “Invasion Day” or “Survival Day” protests are growing.
There’s also a long-running debate in Australia about changing the date of this day altogether.
This is reminiscent of the debate over Columbus Day, here in the U.S., and, to a somewhat less high-profile degree, Thanksgiving, if you are having a hard time getting your head around that.
Thankfully, the winter weather advisory is over (it ended at 1 a.m.), though there might be a few flurries here and there. It seems like some of the white stuff that has accumulated on the ground – and in the trees, and on the fences etc. – will probably start disappearing because we’re looking at temperatures in the low-to-mid-40s – talk about a big swing.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden announced that the United States is sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“Secretary [Lloyd] Austin has recommended this step because it will enhance the Ukraine’s capacity to defend its territory and achieve its strategic objectives,” Biden said in remarks from the White House’s Roosevelt Room.
The decision came after weeks of tense back-channel negotiations with the chancellor of Germany and other European leaders, who insisted that the only way to unlock a flow of heavy European arms was for the United States to send tanks of its own.
The FBI’s unprecedented search of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, resulted from high-stakes discussions between the Justice Department and Biden attorneys over when and how it would take place, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The discovery of classified documents has thrust Biden into an uncomfortable position after he started the new year with plans to do a victory lap of sorts.
Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton says he will slow down confirmation of all of Biden’s nominees until Congress is allowed to review the classified documents found at the residences of Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Nearly 6 in 10 (57%) Americans say they disapprove of how the president’s team has handled the classified documents situation.
Trump holds a 3-point lead over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 rematch, according to a new Emerson College poll released earlier this week.
Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated in the coming weeks, according to the platforms’ parent company Meta.
California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff sharply criticized Meta’s move to reinstate Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts as a “tragic decision” after the company announced it would allow the former president back onto the social media sites.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will be in the city of Philadelphia next week, the White House announced.
The White House says, “They will discuss the progress we have made and their work implementing the Biden-Harris economic agenda that continues to deliver results for the American people.”
In the face of sky-high rents, Biden is rolling out a new set of principles the White House is calling a “Renters Bill of Rights” in an effort to improve rent affordability and protections for tenants.
A record 16.3 million Americans have signed up for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces during this year’s open enrollment period, beating last year’s sign-ups by 13 percent, the Biden administration said.
The war on inflation may be far from over, but the economy has reached a key, little-noticed milestone: Workers’ wage gains are finally outpacing the rise in consumer prices.
A judge in San Francisco ruled that footage of a home intruder’s attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, could be released publicly over the objections of prosecutors.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rumbled with a reporter who questioned why he gave admitted liar George Santos committee seats but booted two Democrats from the House intelligence panel.
Santos said he is undecided on whether he will vote to oust Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to Insider, as Republican leadership attempts to toss Omar from the panel.
Several fundraising committees associated with Santos filed amendments to their statements of organizations, notifying the FEC of a new treasurer, but he said he doesn’t work for the congressman’s campaign and the documents were signed without his consent.
“On Monday, we informed the Santos campaign that (Thomas Datwyler) would not be taking over as treasurer,” Mr. Datwyler’s lawyer, Derek Ross, said. “And there appears to be some disconnect between that conversation and this filing.”
Revisions to financial reports filed by Santos’ campaign about the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans are adding to questions about the embattled freshman congressman’s finances.
In a 2020 podcast episode, Santos discussed a theory that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019, could still be alive.
The Baruch Bearcats volleyball team played their home opener this week under a new spotlight after Santos’s lie about having played for them resurfaced.
The National Institutes of Health made significant errors in its oversight of grants to a nonprofit group that has come under fire from congressional Republicans for its research collaborations in China, an internal federal watchdog agency said.
Critically ill COVID-19 cases in China are down 72% from a peak early this month while daily deaths among COVID-19 patients in hospitals have dropped 79% from their peak, the CDC said.
The updated Covid-19 boosters are cutting the risk that a person will get sick from the coronavirus by about half, even against infections caused by the rapidly spreading XBB.1.5 subvariant.
In addition, individuals who received an updated vaccine reduced their risk of death by nearly 13 fold, when compared to the unvaccinated, and by two fold when compared to those with at least one monovalent vaccine but no updated booster.
The annual pace of Americans dying from cardiovascular-related causes accelerated during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to the worst it has been since 2015, according to final figures gathered this month by the American Heart Association.
Experts say things have gone better than expected this winter with COVID, the flu, and RSV. But the bar set by the past few years is awfully low.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of a looming financial crisis for upstate New Yorkers as a fight about raising the federal borrowing limit continues to rage in a divided Congress.
Republican members of Congress say they have had it with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “radical state takeover” of local government following her controversial proposal to build 800,000 new housing units — even over the objections of local planning boards.
Dozens of advocates and state lawmakers rallied at the state Capitol, calling for an end to qualified immunity and protecting law enforcement and public officials from civil litigation in New York a day after Hochul announced her opposition to the proposal.
Hochul this week told reporters the era of defunding the police is over, announcing millions of dollars in investments in public safety as violent crime remains a top issue for New Yorkers.
New York state households that receive support from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will receive the maximum benefit this month, Hochul announced this week.
Campuses in the State University of New York system have been awarded more than $1.4 million to help expand health care degree programs for students who are working toward a nursing career.
Buoyed by state aid and federal pandemic relief, only a handful of the hundreds of school districts in New York state are considered to be in some form of financial trouble, a report by Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found.
The state’s Cannabis Control Board awarded 30 new cannabis dispensary licenses, bringing the total number of planned dispensaries across the state to 66.
Fifteen of the new licenses are earmarked for New York City, including eight in Manhattan, four in Queens and three in the Bronx. That’s in addition to 13 city-based dispensaries that were approved at a previous meeting in November.
New York state lawmakers, mental health care experts and criminal justice advocates gathered in Albany to push for the passage of a measure named in honor of a man who died while in custody of the Rochester Police Department.
Mayor Eric Adams today will turn the page on year two of his administration at his State of the City address. He is expected to focus on “making New York a safe, clean, prosperous and equitable city” and lay out a “working people’s agenda.”
The event, scheduled to begin at noon, will be held at the Queens Theatre in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
In his speech, Adams will announce that the city will commit to a 20-month timeline to bring composting to all five boroughs.
Adams also plans in his State of the City address to unveil a new push to place 30,000 New Yorkers into apprenticeship programs by 2030 in what would be a significant expansion of the city’s efforts.
“What we are really going to lean into in 2023 — my Aaron Judge year — is precision resources,” Adams said, adding that he would employ techniques to more accurately identify common criminal patterns and develop profiles of perpetrators.
As Adams outlines his vision for 2023, some measures of the city’s health remain troubling and probably beyond any mayor’s control.
Just days before his administration is expected to open its newest migrant relief center, Adams rejected the idea that asylum-seekers are protected by the city’s right-to-shelter law.
The mayor’s remark, which drew immediate backlash from homeless advocates, immigration groups and elected officials, came during an appearance on WABC’s “Sid & Friends” morning show.
Adams made the rounds of national and local morning talk shows to say that straphangers are enjoying a “cleaner” and “safer” subway system, despite high-profile incidents of violence recently.
A Bronx neighborhood that already has more than 20 homeless shelters is set to get another — and the area’s City Council member recently joined local residents in calling on Adams to put a stop to the “extremely disappointing” plan.
Youth shelter providers say Adams’ administration will continue to require young homeless people to enter the city’s adult shelter system in order to qualify for housing subsidies, despite laws meant to let teens and young adults get them through youth facilities.
Chairman Gregory Russ is set to announce today that he’s stepping down from his high-salaried job running the beleaguered New York City Housing Authority.
A pilot program to convert illegal basement apartments in parts of Brooklyn into legal and safe units has just five active participants out of roughly 8,000 homeowners initially contacted, city officials said at a hearing. The initial goal was to convert 40 apartments.
In a letter sent to MSG President James Dolan on Thursday, Attorney General Letitia James warned that the ban on ticketholders could violate a host of state and local laws, including human rights protections.
James ordered the company to produce justification for its policy and proof that it was complying with the law within three weeks.
At a hearing on yesterday morning, City Council members grilled New York City’s corrections commissioner, Louis Molina, over his administration’s treatment of incarcerated trans women on Rikers Island.
Grand Central Madison opened yesterday with the first Long Island Rail Road riders arriving at 11:07 a.m., marking the culmination of the decades-in-the-making $11.1 billion East Side Access project.
A Brooklyn NYPD inspector is facing termination after being caught on video allegedly “stomping” on the head and shoulders of a George Floyd protester in 2020.
Rensselaer County Executive Steven F. McLaughlin was acquitted on all charges in a criminal case in which he was accused of stealing $5,000 from his campaign and falsifying records to cover it up.
The leadership of the city’s Black Lives Matter movement said he is appalled that the City of Saratoga Springs is considering a police chief candidate who is a defendant in the Darryl Mount wrongful death lawsuit.
State Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch argues in a new legal filing that his decision to scrap Nauman Hussain’s no-jail plea deal in the Schoharie limo crash case was entirely allowed under state law, and that now isn’t the time for Hussain to appeal the decision.
A proposal by the Iroquois gas pipeline company to install 12,000 horsepower compressors in Greene County and in Dutchess County is turning into an early example of the choices state regulators must make in light of new climate goals.
ABC, T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach are headed to mediation after the network told the pair’s representatives it does not want them working together anymore.
A former booker for the Fox News Channel is suing the network and its parent company over what she says were decades of abuse and blackmail by former network head Roger Ailes.
Victor S. Navasky, who for 27 years as either editor or publisher commanded the long-running left-leaning magazine The Nation, and who also wrote “Naming Names,” a breakthrough chronicle of the Hollywood blacklisting era, died in Manhattan. He was 90.
