Good morning, it’s Friday. Is anyone even around to read this on the pre-holiday weekend? If so, WELCOME – to all two of you.
First, a programming note: There will be no Rise and Shine Monday (July 3) or Tuesday (July 4). I hope everyone has a safe and happy and festive Glorious Fourth, full of all the hot dogs and hamburgers and fireworks your heart could desire.
(Personally, I will be avoiding the fireworks thing like the plague because, as you know, Henry hates loud noises. Perhaps he and I will retreat to the closet or the basement with lots of comforting treats).
Before we get to the weekend – at least those of use who aren’t already there – we need to get through today. And it would be a shame to miss International Asteroid Day, (AKA World Asteroid Day), don’t you think? Oh, what’s that? You weren’t aware of this day’s significance?
Well, that’s why I’m here.
The date itself is significant because it was on this day in 1908 that the Tunguska event occurred. This was an explosion on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia that left no impact crater but flattened about 500,000 acres of pine forest.
This blast was so big that it was visible from 500 miles away and created seismic waves as far away as Western Europe. Experts surmise that the energy caused by the explosion was equivalent to the power of as much as 15 megatons of TNT.
For reference, that’s a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan that ended WWII.
There are a lot of questions about the Tunguska event, which didn’t generate a debris field, leading scientists to conjecture that the object – whatever it was, maybe an asteroid, maybe a comet – exploded somewhere above the ground, creating what’s known as an “air burst.”
Asteroids are sometimes called “minor planets”. They are rocky, metallic or icy and orbit the sun, but have no atmosphere of their own and so are neither full-fledged planets nor comets. They are basically leftovers dating back to the founding of the solar system, and can vary widely in shape and size, ranging from 1-meter rocks to almost 1000 km in diameter.
Most asteroids can be found in the main asteroid belt, which is a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
In case you’re wondering, NASA scientists say it would take an asteroid 60 miles (96 kilometers) wide to totally wipe out life on Earth. If an asteroid of a somewhat smaller size – say 7 to 8 miles in diameter – hit the Earth, a massive plume would rise and lock out the sun and billions of people would die, but some might survive. (I feel so much better now, don’t you?)
In 2021, NASA used a robotic space craft to crash into an asteroid to see if it could be redirected – a test to determine if, one day, we could divert one away from a deadly collision course with the plant. The answer? Yes. It was the first time in history that humans purposely changed the motion of a celestial object. HOORAY!
Oh, and one more weird factoid about this day? It was co-founded by astrophysicist Dr. Brian May, also a member of the rock group Queen; Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart; filmmaker Grig Richtersl and B612 Foundation President Danica Remy.
Also, in case you were wondering what’s what:
- A comet is a ball of ice and dust that obits the Sun.
- A meteoroid is a small piece of an asteroid or a comet.
- A meteor is a streak of light that appears when a meteoroid burns up upon entering our atmosphere.
- A meteorite is a meteoroid that does not burn completely up but reaches the Earth’s surface.
Now that we’ve cleared all that up.
The air quality alert is in effect through midnight today. The air quality index remained in the “unhealthy” range in several regions, including Central New York and Eastern Lake Ontario yesterday.
It will be mostly sunny today, with temperatures in the high 80s. Tomorrow looks pretty good, from a weather standpoint, with mostly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid 80s. Sunday? Rain. Get your Vitamin D in while the getting is good.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden weighed in on the Supreme Court following its decision to upend affirmative action in college admissions, calling it “not normal.”
“This is not a normal court,” the president said at the White House when asked whether thought the institution had gone “rogue.”
The court voted 6-3, with liberal members in dissent, that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful, sharply curtailing a policy that had long been a pillar of higher education.
The ruling still allows colleges and universities to consider an applicant’s discussion of how race has affected their life as long as it is “concretely tied” to a “quality of character or unique ability” that the applicant can bring to the school.
At the heart of the ruling is a struggle over whether the Constitution is “colorblind.” In gutting affirmative action in higher education, the Republican-appointed majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, claims to think so.
Colleges have a game plan, like emphasizing the personal essay, to preserve diversity in admissions, but so do conservative groups that promise to monitor and, if necessary, go back to court.
Half of Americans do not support colleges and universities taking race and ethnicity into account in admissions decisions, according to a recent Pew Research Center report, while one-third approve of this practice.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue rulings today in major cases related to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and gay rights.
Biden administration officials are devising plans to ease the sting of requiring tens of millions of Americans to resume paying their student loans this fall for the first time in more than three years.
Biden’s bid to tout the success of “Bidenomics” got a lift yesterday when the government reported the economy grew 2 percent in the first quarter, a jump from previous estimates.
Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, has reached a settlement in his child support case in Arkansas after a months-long legal battle.
As part of the agreement, Biden will pay an undisclosed amount in child support until the child turns 18 and assist in setting up a college fund.
House Republicans requested voluntary testimony from nearly a dozen Justice Department officials involved in the investigation of Hunter Biden as GOP lawmakers widen their scrutiny into what they claim is improper interference by the agency.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say they have unearthed evidence from the 2019 impeachment investigation into then-President Donald Trump that they say rebuts GOP claims of a possible bribery scheme between Biden and a foreign national.
House Republicans are preparing to let the push for potential impeachment proceedings dominate their agenda, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces growing pressure from an increasingly restive right flank eager to take aim at Biden and his Cabinet.
Biden flew into New York City yesterday where he had a number of engagements scheduled throughout the afternoon in midtown. Republican presidential candidate and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was also expected in the city.
Special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly ready to drop a hammer blow of up to 45 additional criminal charges against Trump in the classified documents case, especially if Trump-friendly Judge Aileen Cannon looks set to thwart the case.
Three Florida men were charged with making more than $22 million through illegal insider trading before the public announcement that an acquisition firm was going to take Trump’s media company public.
A federal judge sharply rejected Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity” to fend off a defamation lawsuit from the writer E. Jean Carroll, ruling that Trump’s disparaging comments about Carroll in 2019 had no legitimate connection to his duties as president.
Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that “‘separation of powers’ is not a magic phrase that automatically transforms any issue it touches into an impediment to the exercise of subject matter jurisdiction.”
The political network established by the conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch has raised more than $70 million for political races as it looks to help Republicans move past Trump, according to an official with the group.
New York Democrats announced support for a statewide effort to pass a women’s rights amendment that they hope will also supercharge turnout in 2024, when President Biden and House members will be up for re-election.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and other New York officials vowed to continue efforts to boost minority students’ access to the state’s colleges and universities despite the Supreme Court’s decision to ban race-based admissions.
Temporarily housing migrants at State University of New York campuses is increasingly unlikely as Hochul has de-emphasized the idea in recent weeks and voters in a Siena College poll signaled their opposition.
Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik and Nicole Malliotakis are urging Hochul to veto two bills they claim would force landlords to lower rents approved years ago and destabilize the housing market.
Hochul announced that there will be expanded eligibility for New York State Police applicants to aid recruiting. Before, the maximum age for an applicant was 29. Now, that is up to 34 after Hochul’s decision.
In a jarring interruption to a day of celebration, Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry of Queens was knocked over and injured yesterday at the opening ceremony of the new Louis Armstrong Center in Queens by a man who ran through the crowd after exiting his car.
Attorneys for Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to publicly accuse former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment, filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking to block his efforts to subpoena records related to her prior state employment.
Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, said that they had reached agreement on a $107 billion budget for New York City that would restore funding to several Council priorities that the mayor had initially sought to cut.
New York City’s new $107 billion budget will include $4 billion in funding for affordable housing in the next fiscal year — a cash infusion Mayor Adams promised two years ago and which Council Speaker Adams has pressed for in recent months.
The “handshake deal” added several hundred million dollars to the mayor’s executive budget proposed in late April. Unlike last year, it was reached with little time to spare before the beginning of the next fiscal year.
The deal between the mayor and the City Council will mean cuts that affect services at Rikers and MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers.
Adams publicly admonished a housing activist whose family fled the Holocaust, comparing her to a plantation owner, after she accused him of being controlled by the real estate industry and criticized two years of increases on rent stabilized apartment.
The activist, Jeanie Dubnau, 84, called Adams “an enemy of the tenants, saying: “The fact of the matter is that he is a landlord himself. He got millions from the real estate industry and he’s paying them back. He’s as corrupt as that.”
During the public meeting, Adams acknowledged owning a three-family home in Brooklyn but said he’s never jacked up the rent on his tenants.
More modern trains are hitting the city’s subway tracks, MTA officials announced.
New York City fire and building officials shut down an e-bike shop in Manhattan this week after finding more than 100 lithium-ion batteries inside, part of a crackdown on unsafe battery conditions after a recent blaze at an e-bike shop killed four people.
The New York Police Department has determined that a woman who accused the actor Jonathan Majors of assault attacked him herself and believe that there is enough evidence to support her arrest, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Workers at Barnes & Noble in Park Slope Brooklyn voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionization, making it the third to do so in the New York area.
While some parts of the country may temporarily trade off wildfire smoke for sweltering heat, the Albany area is stuck with the smog for now — and may have to brace itself for poor air quality on and off through the summer.
Higher interest rates and rising construction costs forced NY CREATES, the non-profit that operates Albany Nanotech, to reduce the sale price – and allow a change to the intended usage – of Kiernan Plaza, the former Union Station in downtown Albany.
The New Baltimore Service Area is now open to travelers after a year of renovations, but missing in its lineup of new restaurants is the region’s most hotly anticipated brand, Chick-fil-A.
Access to addiction treatment could soon greatly expand across the Capital Region and beyond, spurred by recent legislation sponsored by Rep. Paul Tonko.
Lane closures and construction projects will be halted on New York highways during the extended July 4 weekend.
A $2 million state grant will help launch the expansion of the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, Assemblymembers Patricia Fahy and John McDonald announced.
Cappie’s Drive-in, an Amsterdam eatery famed for its homemade ice cream and signature hot dogs, has hit the market with a price tag of $799,000.
The Schenectady Daily Gazette newspaper next month will have its newspapers printed in Springfield, Mass., a move that will lead to the loss of more than 30 jobs at its local plant.
