Good morning. The end of the week is upon us. HAPPY FRIDAY.
Now that we have a house with some property attached, we have acquired a need for a whole suite of services I never thought about before.
This includes an exterminator, because nature doesn’t do boundaries and I am too soft hearted to trap things on my own. It also includes someone who helps maintain the chemical balance in the pool, which is an entirely new-to-me experience. Left to my own devices, I’m sure it would be completely unswimable – either acidic or green.
And early on in the summer, after we started to notice large swaths of eaten away patches in the lawn, we needed the assistance of a turf expert. It turns out that we have grubs. I guess this is not a big surprise to anyone who has paid an iota of attention to their lawn before, but it was news to me.
He also said that this has been a big year for moths, which start out as grubs and then hatch and fly around. And after he said that, I couldn’t stop seeing them. I mean, the little suckers were EVERYWHERE. The air was quite literally lousy with them.
I developed a deep dislike for the moths, which got me wondering – why is it that we love butterflies (I even planted a whole garden full of flowers specifically intended to attract them to my yard) and disdain their furry cousins?
To the interwebs!
First off, what ARE the differences between butterflies and moths? The former are active during the day, and, as most of us know, moths like to come out at night, though they’re attracted to the light.
There are a number of other distinctions, including the way they hold their wings when they’re at rest, body and antennae shape, and also the aforementioned “fur,” which is really more of a fuzz made up of tiny scales that are very delicate. (Avoid touching moths for this reason, if you can).
Moths, like butterflies are pollinators. They are also an important food source for birds, bats, and basically anything that is insectivorous (which translates into “eats bugs” in case that wasn’t immediately obvious). AND, they have a little bit of a “canary in the coal mine” thing going on, so when their numbers drop, it signals to scientists that something in the ecosystem is out of whack.
For the scientifically minded among you, moths and butterflies are in the insect Order Lepidoptera. There are roughly 160,000 species of moths world-wide – including about 11,000 right here in the U.S. alone – though not all of them have been formally classified.
That’s compared to 17,500 species of butterflies. (Aside: Here’s some interesting butterfly-related news).
The more you learn about moths, the more I think you’ll come to appreciate and even like them. Some of them can grow to be quite large, and some have amazing wing patterns.
Personally, I’m a fan of the light green luna moth, which lives in our area and is apparently a favorite snack for bats, which, by the way, you WANT in your yard because they eat mosquitoes, of which we’re having a bumper year, thanks to all the rain.
It’s National Moth Week, by the way. So get out there and start appreciate our furry flying friends.
Remember how I mentioned that we were in for a hot one? Well, there’s a heat advisory in effect from noon to 8 p.m., with heat index values of in the mid-to-upper 90s expected. Stay hydrated and stay in the shade, if you can. This is hot, of course, but it’s nothing compared to the 100+ degree days some other parts of the country have been experiencing.
The weekend is looking to be mixed, though cooler, with thunderstorms that could contain gusty winds and small hail on Saturday and cooler temperatures (high 70s) and cloudy skies on Sunday.
In the headlines…
With heat waves spreading across the US, President Joe Biden announced new steps to protect workers as well as measures to improve weather forecasts and make drinking water more accessible.
“The No. 1 weather-related killer is heat. Six hundred people die annually from its effects — more than from floods, hurricanes and tornadoes in America combined,” Biden said in prepared remarks at the White House.
Experts described the measures as positive but modest, and the president stopped short of declaring a climate emergency or directly addressing the need to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.
Biden met virtually with the mayors of Phoenix and San Antonio, whose cities have endured record-breaking triple-digit temperatures, at the White House for a briefing on extreme heat conditions by the leaders of FEMA and NOAA.
Biden has a yawning early lead in FiveThirtyEight’s new Democratic presidential primary polling average as he ramps up his reelection campaign.
The Biden administration the first cancer-focused initiative under its advanced health research agency, aiming to help doctors more easily distinguish between cancerous cells and healthy tissue during surgery and improve outcomes for patients.
Biden will not pardon his son Hunter if he is convicted of the charges against him, the White House said. Earlier in the briefing, Jean-Pierre declined to say if the president had spoken to his son after a plea deal fell apart in federal court Wednesday.
The president again took aim at Tommy Tuberville’s military nominations blockade, saying an “extreme political agenda” was behind the Alabama senator’s block on two potentially historic nominations.
“The Republican Party used to always support the military, but today they’re undermining the military. The senior senator from Alabama, who claims to support our troops, is now blocking more than 300 military operations with his extreme political agenda.”
Biden hosted Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House, months after expressing skepticism as her far-right government took hold.
Biden thanked Meloni’s steady backing of Ukraine, offering a warm welcome to a leader his administration saw with some trepidation when she rose to power last year as the head of Italy’s first far-right-led government since the end of World War II.
Biden unveiled his latest round of judicial nominees yesterday, bringing the number of people he has offered for the federal judiciary to 180 and continuing the White House’s emphasis on demographic and professional diversity.
Biden will be in Maine today for the first time since winning the White House.
Biden made a fundraising swing through Democratic donor strongholds in San Francisco, Chicago and New York last month, one city was noticeably absent from the list: Los Angeles.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s health episode at the Capitol has intensified talk about a possible succession, a prospect that his colleagues have not seriously grappled with for years.
The Senate gave overwhelming approval to the annual defense policy bill, sidestepping a tough debate over abortion access for service members and quashing efforts to limit aid for Ukraine in a show of bipartisanship that set up a showdown with the House.
House Republicans abandoned efforts to pass a spending bill to fund the Agriculture Department and the F.D.A. before heading home for summer break, stymied by internal divisions over funding and social policy that threaten a fall shutdown.
Federal prosecutors added major accusations to an indictment charging former President Trump with mishandling classified documents after he left office, presenting evidence that he told Mar-a-Lago’s property manager to delete security camera footage.
The new indictment includes extra charges of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information, adding fresh detail to a criminal case issued last month against Trump and a close aide.
Lawyers for Trump reportedly met yesterday morning with special counsel Jack Smith’s team as a potential indictment of the former president looms.
The meeting happened on the same day that the grand jury hearing evidence from the special counsel’s probe into election subversion efforts by Trump and his allies was seen at the federal courthouse.
The grand jury in Washington, D.C. that has been hearing evidence about efforts by Trump to overturn his 2020 election ended a session yesterday without an apparent criminal indictment of the former president.
Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an advisory last night due to potentially toxic smoke billowing from a battery fire at a solar farm burning near the Canadian border.
CBS affiliate WWNY-TV reports that the fire broke out at about 1 p.m. Eastern time at a solar farm in the Jefferson County town of Lyme, located on Lake Ontario.
Blake Washington, a longtime budget advisor to the state Assembly, will become the next budget director in Hochul’s administration, filling a key role that had been filled on an interim basis by Robert Megna.
New York state is making $500 million in grants available through a program meant to bolster the child care workforce, Hochul’s office announced.
Hochul announced she’d struck an agreement with lawmakers to develop an apartment-filled skyscraper at 5 World Trade Center, ending a two-year fight over the building.
One-third of the 1,200 units planned for a 900-foot-tall high-rise dubbed 5WTC will be set aside at rent levels below market rate.
“The resurgence of lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks is an only-in-America comeback story,” Hochul said. “This community’s very existence makes a strong statement that we are Americans, we are New Yorkers and we are resilient.”
Republicans in the state Legislature are challenging a pending limit on the amount of money New York lawmakers can earn outside of their jobs as elected officials.
Daniel Tietz, who stepped down as Hochul’s commissioner of the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance earlier this week, has joined Oaktree Solutions, the global consulting firm launched by Frank Carone, Mayor Adams’ former chief of staff.
Central Hudson will pay for an independent monitor to verify and correct any billing errors to customers, the state Public Service Commission said. Additionally, the utility will speed up by more than a year its plan to conduct monthly meter readings.
An appellate court has upheld the conviction of the former executive director of the Lake George Watershed Coalition, who was indicted five years ago for pocketing thousands of dollars in state and federal grant funds meant to benefit the association he led.
The US Senate approved a measure that pumps $676 million into the financially troubled 9/11 health care fund providing medical care for first responders and others affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Congress is poised to pass a new law aimed at making it easier for families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to extract financial damages from countries accused of sponsoring terrorism — including Saudi Arabia.
Mayor Eric Adams headed to Washington yesterday to ask the Biden administration, yet again, for its help in addressing the city’s migrant crisis.
Adams reportedly met with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who promised to send a staffer to the Big Apple to help with its relentless migrant surge.
Adams called out a critic who questioned the city’s response to the ongoing migrant crisis during a fiery exchange at an event in Queens.
More asylum seekers have arrived in Colonie. Republican Town Supervisor Peter Crummey says over the past week three busloads of migrants have arrived at the SureStay from New York City.
A potentially deadly heat wave will scorch New York City with humid temperatures soaring into the 90s for three connective days — making it the hottest July since 2020, according to meteorologists.
Con Ed reached out to customers with a request to limit energy use between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. That’s to avoid outages as New Yorkers blast their air conditioners and strain the grid.
As the city sizzles through the first heat wave of the season, with the heat index expected to hit triple digits this weekend, hours at municipal pools will be extended — but there will be no such luck for beachgoers.
New Yorkers tagged with medical bills of $100 and up after taking supposedly free COVID tests will receive refunds as part of a settlement between Attorney General Letitia James and a Brooklyn-based physicians group.
New York Department of Building officials vowed to get to the bottom of what caused a 180-foot crane boom to plunge 40 stories to city sidewalk after it caught fire and rained steel and glass on pedestrians, injuring about a dozen people.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh visited Washington, D.C., to urge federal regulators to adopt new safety standards for lithium-ion batteries that power e-bikes and have been found to cause explosive infernos.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio donor Jona Rechnitz’s five-month prison sentence for his role in a sprawling bribery scheme aimed at the highest levels of New York City government has been tossed by a federal appeals court.
A National Labor Relations Board official dismissed a petition to oust the union at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Manhattan after the NLRB regional director cited unfair labor practice charges against the company from workers at the cafe.
Delaware County is contesting New York City’s plan to continue buying up large parcels of the Catskill Mountain region.
REI, a co-op beloved by campers and other recreationists, is making its debut in the Capital Region where it will join a newly crowded market of outdoor retail chains.
The rail trail bridge over New Scotland Road in Slingerlands that failed earlier this month is in the process of being demolished, the Albany County executive’s office said.
The owner of Crossgates Mall says the mall, the largest in the Capital Region, is now worth just a shade more than $100 million, a fraction of what it was worth just a few years ago.
Police Chief Joseph Sinagra, who is also head of the state Association of Chiefs of Police, was placed on indefinite paid administrative leave pending the results of an ongoing investigation into the department’s policies and practices.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse agreed to pay $100 million to hundreds of alleged child sexual abuse victims – the second global settlement by a New York diocese and second-largest contribution by any Catholic institution in a bankruptcy proceeding.
