Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
I am a big fan of fall. Intense heat is not my favorite. It makes me feel lethargic and sticky and slow (perhaps I need to do a better job at hydrating). Give me a nice 65-to70-degree day with a crisp breeze and the smell of burning leaves in the air and I am a happy camper.
The only drawback to fall is that it is the harbinger of winter, which means long, cold, and dark days are not too far away. I have never been formally diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder, but the lack of light does do a number on my psyche.
I am decidedly less upbeat in the winter – to the degree that I am EVER upbeat, which is not a word most people who know me well would likely use to describe me.
I was under the impression that seasons of prolonged darkness and cold might have a disproportionate impact on our collective mental health, perhaps so much so that the suicide rate during these periods might go up. There’s also the added factor of the forced holiday cheer, feelings of isolation and loneliness and family dynamics and/or dysfunction of the holiday season.
Turns out, I was wrong.
Research shows that suicide is actually more common in the spring. Experts are not entirely certain as to why this is, though there are several theories – including the fact that social engagements and the pressures they bring increase in frequency during the spring and summer.
According to the CDC, the number of suicide deaths in 2022 hit an historic high, exceeding the next closest year – 2018 – by more than 1,000 deaths. After adjustments made for population growth and age, the suicide rate is up by 16 percent from 2011 and 37 percent since 1999.
Those numbers also may be higher, as suicides are historically undercounted – especially as drug overdose deaths are also on the rise, and it’s difficult to say whether these are accidental are intentional.
What is causing this increase is also up for debate, though experts have pointed to the loneliness, stress, difficulty accessing mental health care, and financial pressures of the COVID crisis as a likely culprit.
Others cite the rise in popularity of social media and cyberbullying, especially when it comes to suicide rates increasing among teens. Severe physical health conditions have also been linked to a higher risk of suicide. Veterans are also at a much higher risk than those who have not served.
September is Suicide Prevention Month, which presents an opportunity to raise awareness about the resources available to assist individuals in crisis and the signs to look out for when someone might be considering taking their own life. It also offers a chance to remember those who lost their lives to suicide, and the impact that their deaths have had on friends and family.
The new, three-digit number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) is 988. It is now available nation-wide. It is free to anyone who might need someone to talk to, and can be accessed by text, chat, or phone.
If you or someone you know is in distress, please seek help.
We’ll have partly cloudy skies today, with temperatures in the low 80s. There’s a slight chance of rain showers, which will increase as the day wears on.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden marked the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks during a stop in Alaska, telling servicemembers gathered in Anchorage, “terrorism – including political and ideological violence – is the opposite of all we stand for as a nation.”
During his speech, Biden falsely claimed that he was at Ground Zero the day after the Twin Towers fell in Manhattan. He actually went there nine days after the attacks.
Biden spoke at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson before an audience of more than 1,000 service members, first responders and their families, a White House spokesperson said.
The president had been overseas to attend the G20 summit in India and to visit Vietnam in an effort to further shore up U.S. relations with key partners in Asia amid China’s rising influence.
Biden took heat from some families of 9/11 victims for departing from tradition and becoming the first U.S. president in 22 years to neither spend the day at an attack site nor the White House.
Relatives of those who died went to Lower Manhattan to mark the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attack, where they were joined by governors, senators and the vice president.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was at Ground Zero yesterday, used the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks to make divisive political claims about illegal immigration and the border with Mexico.
The man leading the Republican charge for an impeachment inquiry into Biden, Rep. James Comer, has spent “eight months of abject failure” in trying to prove the US president guilty of wrongdoing, a watchdog report says.
The president’s top aides believe that stories about the president’s age and health are stoked by his enemies in an effort to undermine his accomplishments.
The Food and Drug Administration approved a new round of Covid boosters that will arrive alongside the seasonal flu vaccine and shots to protect infants and older adults from R.S.V., a potentially lethal respiratory virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to follow up today with an advisory meeting to discuss who should get the new shots, by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
After a final decision by the C.D.C.’s director, millions of doses will be shipped to pharmacies, clinics and health systems nationwide within days. Health officials are urging people to get vaccinated as soon as the shots are available.
The mRNA vaccines have been updated to teach the body to fight the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus and other closely related strains that are circulating.
The new shots do not include protection against the original virus, which may actually help broaden protection against new variants.
The police in Pennsylvania said Danelo Cavalcante, a convicted murderer who escaped from a Pennsylvania prison more than 10 days ago, was armed and had been spotted again last night.
Pennsylvania authorities announced that the reward has increased to $25,000 for tips that lead to Cavalcante’s capture.
Former President Donald Trump asked a judge to throw out most of the 13 charges against him in the wide-ranging election interference indictment handed up by a grand jury last month in Georgia.
Trump’s attorneys also asked the federal judge overseeing his looming trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election to recuse herself, claiming that she has shown a bias against Trump in public statements made from the bench in other cases.
They did not outright accuse Judge Tanya Chutkan of being biased against Trump, but highlighted statements they claimed “create a perception of prejudgment incompatible with our justice system.”
Trump is conjuring his most foreboding vision yet of a possible second term, telling supporters in language resonant of the run-up to the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol that they need to “fight like hell” or they will lose their country.
As Trump widens his lead over other Republican candidates in the GOP primary, the former president’s closest economic advisers are plotting an aggressive new set of tax cuts to push on the campaign trail and from the Oval Office if he wins a second term.
Aides for the White House and Biden campaign pushed back against reported plans among Trump advisers to pursue a cut to the corporate tax rate if the former president wins back the White House in 2024.
The judge presiding over the criminal case against Trump in Manhattan signaled that he could be open to changing the date of the trial — now set for March 2024 — in light of the handful of other potential trials the former president now faces.
After a 13-year detour, work is about to begin again in New Jersey on a rail tunnel that would run all the way to Midtown Manhattan and end the region’s reliance on a pair of crumbling tubes built more than a century ago.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s legal fight to preserve the proceeds of a $5.1 million book deal took a stunning turn yesterday when a state judge essentially invalidated New York’s new ethics commission, which was investigating the book deal.
Justice Thomas Marcelle of State Supreme Court in Albany agreed with Cuomo’s lawyers that the new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government was created unconstitutionally, removing enforcement powers from the governor.
Marcelle wrote that the new law creating the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, shifted power that should belong to the executive branch to a group of unelected law school deans who are not accountable to voters.
If the decision stands, it would seemingly render the 11-member panel obsolete; Gov. Kathy Hochul has vowed to appeal, which would result in an automatic stay.
New York’s public university system is starting a program that uses simple strategies, like transportation money, to keep students enrolled and on the path to graduation.
New York is seeking feedback from the public as it shapes a new “Master Plan” for what transportation will look like in the Empire State through 2050.
Hochul signed into law a bill that aims to notify individuals who may have been exposed to danger toxins due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and work with businesses to notify employers who worked near Ground Zero.
Hours before “Monday Night Football” was scheduled to start, Spectrum cable TV and Disney, which includes ESPN, resolved their dispute, ending a nearly two-week blackout of those channels.
Hochul said in a statement that she’s “pleased that Disney and Charter have resolved their corporate dispute and resumed service for more than 1.5 million New York customers that lost access to ESPN and Disney-owned channels.”
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) fired back at Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other liberal mayors over their complaints about the influx of immigrants in their sanctuary cities, seeing it as hypocritical and saying they “could not last a week in Texas.”
The City Planning Commission approved Adams’ proposal to overhaul the city’s zoning code to remove some barriers for environmentally sustainable development, sending the plan to the City Council for a vote.
Adams has announced a multi-phase initiative to create up to 4,000 new apartments in Central Brooklyn. Known as the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, projections also anticipate the creation of more than 1,500 income-restricted homes.
The NYPD can expect a brain drain thanks to a flood of retirements if overtime is cut as proposed by Adams to help plug a multibillion-dollar, migrant-fueled budget hole, police sources say.
A federal judge has reopened negotiations in a case that will decide how the NYPD responds to protests after the police officers’ union argued that a recent settlement may endanger officers.
Migrants at a Staten Island shelter are being bombarded by a blaring 24/7 recording urging them to leave, claiming the site is rat- and mold-infested and that they “are being lied to by Mayor Eric Adams.”
Curtis Sliwa won’t face prosecution after all following his arrest at a raucous protest outside Gracie Mansion over New York’s migrant housing crisis.
Adams is blaming the city’s multibillion-dollar budget hole on the migrant crisis, but more than half the deficit really stems from City Hall’s massive spending on other issues, a Big Apple budget watchdog says.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg ratcheted up the pressure on Biden over the migrant crisis — skewering him for turning a blind eye to the US’s broken border laws.
Biden is expected to visit New York next week to attend the United Nations General Assembly, arriving at a time when the mayor remains miffed and the governor grumpy over the White House’s handling of the asylum seeker crisis.
Disgraced former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke pleaded not guilty to charges of public lewdness and indecent exposure, weeks after he was arrested for allegedly soliciting sex in a Long Island park.
A Lake George resident, Joe Gross, whose electrical contracting company did work at “Palazzo Riggi,” confirmed winning the mansion with the highest bid at last week’s auction.
A proposal to drop the speed limit on Albany city streets to 25 mph is moving forward, a year after it was introduced.
The City of Saratoga Springs’ century-old seal depicting Native Americans taking in the waters at High Rock spring — and its matching mural that graces the wall in the City Council meeting room — might be retired.
Two Rensselaer County Family Court judges facing allegations of workplace bullying told the complainant that an effort to display posters to promote inclusion was “offensive” as well as “passive aggressive, juvenile, and completely unprofessional.”
The Capital Region’s offshore wind turbine manufacturing sector, still in its infancy, is already a part of creating a new power supply chain upstate.
Virginia police believe a 51-year-old Niskayuna man was responsible for a 1994 stabbing death of a woman.
Astronaut Frank Rubio broke the U.S. record for longest time in space on Monday, NASA said.
In a sugary union of major snack makers, J.M. Smucker, known for its jellies, Jif peanut butter and many other brands, agreed to acquire Hostess Brands, the maker of Twinkies, Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, in a deal worth $5.6 billion.
