IT’S FRIDAY. AND IT IS AGAIN GOING TO BE 80+ DEGREES!!!
How many people are feeling a 24-bug coming on? Cough. Cough. I need a sick day, I think. Don’t you?
Good morning.
Somehow I missed that March was National Dolphin Awareness Month, which makes me sad, as any opportunity to write about dolphins should certainly be seized and capitalized on whenever possible.
Lucky for me, I get another bite at the apple, because today happens to be National Dolphin DAY.
Why do dolphins merit both a month AND a day to raise awareness about their existence and contributions to the world? I guess they are just that awesome.
Dolphins, in case you weren’t aware, are mammals. This means they give birth to live young (as opposed to say, fish, which lay eggs) after gestating them for up to 16 months (but usually closer to 11 or 12) and then feed their babies milk.
Dolphin offspring stay with their families (ie, pods) for life. Just keep that in mind when you’re complaining about your adult children being slow to move on, humans.
Also, while dolphins live in the water – both fresh and salt – and can swim for a few minutes while holding their breath, they do eventually have to surface to breathe air (no gills) through their blowholes, which are located on the top of their heads.
They typically they breathe about 4 or 5 times per minute, and blow out water to clear their air passageway, which is what you see/hear when you encounter them surfacing.
There’s something in the neighborhood of 42 species of dolphins in the world (the interwebs has conflicting information on this, but it’s somewhere between 41 and 49). They are among the fastest marine mammals on the planet, and can reach speeds of up to 22 mph.
The ladies tend to live a bit longer (up t409 to 45o 50 years or more) than the men (40 to 45 years), but the average life span for both sexes is generally more int he two-decade range.
The so-called killer “whale: is actually the largest variety of dolphin. If a dolphin exceeds 30 feet in length, some people might call it a whale, but from a taxonomy perspective, it’s still classified as a dolphin.
Then again, scientifically speaking, all dolphins AND whales AND porpoises are classified as Cetacea, within which there are two suborders: baleen whales (blues, humpbacks) and toothed whales (orcas, dolphins). So, all dolphins are, in fact, whales.
Confused yet? Yeah. Me too.
A number of dolphins – five species and six subspecies – are endangered, largely due to, well, us – humans, that is. We either kill them on purpose, or, more often, as a byproduct of fishing for other things. (They get caught in nets etc.)
The best things we can do from dolphins is protect their habitats, stop polluting the oceans, establish fishing policies that keep their wellbeing in mind, and admire them from afar. Yes, that means not swimming with them. Sorry. (In some places, this is actually illegal).
If you happened to be in a place where swimming was, in fact, possible, it might just be warm enough to brave the water today. Our pool remains covered, sadly, so there will be no early dips for me.
In the headlines…
Before the FBI announced it had arrested the suspected leaker of dozens of highly sensitive Ukraine war documents, few would have suspected a 21-year-old National Guardsman as the potential culprit.
Airman First Class Jack Douglas Teixeira was taken into custody to face charges of leaking classified documents after federal authorities said he had posted batches of sensitive intelligence to an online gaming chat group, called Thug Shaker Central.
Teixeira was trained as what the military calls a “Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman.” The service’s career website says cybertransport systems specialists are responsible for keeping the force’s communication networks running.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of US “intelligence access, accountability and control procedures” in the wake of the biggest national security breach in 10 years.
The White House announced a star-studded slate of members for the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, a panel of artists, museum professionals, academics and philanthropists that is an advisory board to Joe Biden on culture issues.
The group will be co-chaired by Bruce Cohen, an Academy Award-winning producer known for films such as “American Beauty” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” and pop megastar and Grammy Award winner Lady Gaga, also known as Stefani Germanotta.
Biden is spending most of his trip to Ireland exploring his family’s roots, from the shoemaker who sailed from Newry in 1849 in search of a better life in America to the brick-seller in Ballina who sold 28,000 bricks to pay for his own family’s passage to the US.
As he became the fourth US president in history to address the Dublin parliament, Biden toasted the “Irish blood” spilled in the American War of Independence.
Biden hailed America’s close alliance with his ancestral home of Ireland, touting a “partnership for the ages” focused on forging peace in the face of rising global challenges.
Federal investigators looking into the Pentagon document leak are “getting close,” Biden said. He didn’t clarify what that meant, ant the White House deferred comment to the Justice Department.
The Biden administration is awarding nearly $300 million to help repair or replace more than a dozen bridges across the country, closing out a three-week tour to highlight the benefits of infrastructure investments in local communities.
Biden announced that hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children will be able to apply for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges.
“We need to give Dreamers the opportunities and support they deserve,” Biden said in a video posted online.
The Biden administration approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska LNG project, a document showed, as the United States competes with Russia to ship natural gas from the Arctic to Asia.
A pair of high-profile absences has thrown the Senate into a state of uncertainty, raising questions about whether Democrats will be able to conduct business and who will lead Republicans through a potentially chaotic period as they try to reclaim the majority.
The Supreme Court refused to block a class-action settlement that forgave $6 billion in federal loans for students at for-profit schools or vocational programs.
The court’s brief order gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. There were no noted dissents.
Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose that he had sold a string of properties to a longtime conservative donor from Texas in 2014, ProPublica revealed.
Thomas reportedly sold a Georgia home where his elderly mom lives and two other properties to the right-wing billionaire benefactor who also treated him to pricey vacations.
The transaction is the first known instance of money going directly from the billionaire donor, Harlan Crow, 73, to the justice, in what appears to be a direct violation of disclosure requirements.
The Justice Department’s success in compelling top aides to former President Donald Trump to testify to a grand jury moves the special counsel closer to a decision on seeking indictments.
Trump was questioned under oath in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the latest in a series of legal predicaments entangling the former president, who also faces a separate 34-count criminal indictment unsealed last week.
Trump said in an online campaign advertisement that if he were re-elected he would “completely overhaul” the F.B.I. and the Justice Department and launch “sweeping civil rights investigations” into local district attorneys’ offices.
Trump knocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for what he called “campaigning in Ohio” amid heavy rains and flooding in the Sunshine State.
DeSantis supporters have begun pressing members of the state’s Republican congressional delegation to hold off on any endorsements in the brewing presidential primary after four House members from Florida publicly backed Trump.
DeSantis announced late last night that he signed a bill into law that would ban abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy.
The prohibition is among the most restrictive in the country, and Florida will no longer be a destination for women from across the Deep South seeking the procedure.
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a harsh critic of Trump, has helped pay for a lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll, the New York magazine writer who sued Trump for rape and defamation, according to newly filed court papers in the case.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is holding the line on bail and other budget priorities despite growing pushback from critics and blowing past the state’s fiscal deadline.
Housing has reportedly displaced bail as the big issue holding up a state budget 13 days past an April 1 deadline.
State Senate Democrats announced that they will hold a confirmation hearing on Monday to consider the nomination of liberal Court of Appeals Associate Judge Rowan Wilson to become chief judge of New York’s highest court.
A day later, the panel will hear from Hochul’s nomination to fill Wilson’s current spot on the Court of Appeals, attorney and former state Solicitor General Caitlin Halligan.
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was joined by Hochul to announce $21M in federal funding going toward improving the Castleton-on-Hudson Bridge.
“If you look at that bridge, it represents the very latest engineering and construction ingenuity available in the 1950s. But today, it takes near monthly repairs just to keep it in service,” Buttigieg said.
A report by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli finds the surge in federal spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic significantly improved the state’s ranking in the federal balance of payments from 49th in 2019 to 30th in Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2021.
The State University of New York will no longer require students to take either the SAT and ACT tests to apply to its four-year undergraduate colleges as enrollment declines.
More than half of New York City’s 1 million rent-stabilized households spent about a third or more of their income on rent last year, as a rebounding local economy delivered mixed effects for tenants, according to a new city housing report.
The annual analysis by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board examined stagnant wages, rising employment and surging inflation data from 2022, when New York City’s economy continued to emerge from a pandemic-induced crisis.
Al Sharpton took a shot at progressives at a conference hosted by his National Action Network, saying he’s now in lockstep with Mayor Eric Adams on fighting big city crime.
Adams this week voiced irritation with Trump’s renewed presence in the city for various legal proceedings and national Republicans’ depiction of Manhattan as dangerous place that disregards victims’ rights.
Adams mocked the House GOP over plans to hold a hearing in the Big Apple on crime in the city.
WNBA star Brittney Griner made a surprise appearance at Rev. Al Sharpton’s annual convention in Manhattan — her first time publicly stepping out in New York since her release from a Russian prison.
A 78-year-old Brooklyn man was shot and killed by police officers who responded to a call about a possible burglary at his apartment, New York Police Department officials said.
Police shot and wounded a man when he pointed his gun at them on the catwalk of elevated tracks by a Bronx subway station on last night, cops said — the third such incident in a less than 12-hour span.
New York City Council members have introduced two bills that would ban businesses and residential buildings from using facial recognition technology to identify customers or tenants without their consent.
New York City peaked at 90 degrees in Central Park yesterday, shattering a heat record set in the 1970s with weather rarely seen in spring, meteorologists said.
A heat-related power issue in the Bronx caused significant delays across the Metro-North Railroad yesterday evening, officials said.
Several lawmakers have withdrawn their support for the state’s Penn Station project in Midtown Manhattan as new developers rush to offer alternatives for remaking the transit hub.
New York’s second-highest court unanimously denied the appeal of a former Halfmoon doctor who lost her medical license in 2021 for branding the initials of NXIVM leader Keith Raniere onto the pelvic regions of 17 of his female “slaves.”
New funding regulations being proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could potentially bring in $100 million annually in additional Medicare payments to Capital Region hospitals.
An advocacy group blasted the State University of New York at Albany for allegedly engaging in racial discrimination by participating in a library internship program available only to black students.
Former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York is telling political leaders and wealthy donors that he is considering running for his old seat held by embattled Republican Rep. George Santos.
The city of Minneapolis agreed to pay roughly $8.9 million to settle two lawsuits involving former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with killing George Floyd in 2020.
