Good morning, it’s Thursday.
Did you know that only four of the 12 months in a calendar year have 30 days? November is one of them. The others are April and June. If you find this confusing and sort of pointless, blame Julius Caesar.
It’s kind of amazing that we’re all still following something that was created back in 46 B.C. How many other things can you think of with that sort of longevity?
Tomorrow will be a brand new month – the last month of 2023. We’ve been having a lot of holiday content around here, and there’s more where that came from. So let’s give it a rest for a moment, shall we? Let’s talk about something else. Something like…Scotland.
I’ve been to Scotland once and I really enjoyed it. But it’s not a place people think about terribly often or know much about, I’ve found.
They sort of lump together Ireland (which is a stand-alone island), Scotland, and the Britain. Maybe that’s because the United Kingdom is, in fact, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which is a little confusing for those of us on this side of the pond.
Or maybe it’s just me and I need to pay more attention to the world and geopolitical realities? Maybe.
Well, that starts now with my focus on the fact that it’s St. Andrew’s Day, which is officially a national day in Scotland to honor its patron saint. The day is marked with a celebration of culture, and with traditional food and music.
The official whys and wherefores related to Andrew becoming Scotland’s patron are as follows (the short version…for the long version, click the link above):
Saint Andrew was selected as Scotland’s saint in 1320 when the Scots made an appeal to the Pope in the Declaration of Arbroath for protection against English attempts at conquest. He was thought to be a suitable choice as he was the brother of Saint Peter, the founder of the Church
Scotland shares Saint Andrew with Barbados, Romania, Ukraine and Russia, as well as the cities of Pienza and Amalfi in Italy, Esgueira in Portugal, Luqa in Malta, Parañaque in the Philippines and Patras in Greece. (This saint really gets around).
If you happen to be in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh today, you’ll encounter storytelling events, street markets and traditional music, which mark the start of the country’s winter celebrations. Elsewhere, festivities can last an entire week, with pipe bands, an open-air ceilidh (pronounced “kay-lee” – basically, a party where people do Scottish country dancing) and more.
You might also have the opportunity to sample some cullen skink – a type of hearty soup that is usually made with smoked haddock and might be thickened with mashed potatoes – or lamb. Other traditional fare includes haggis – the national dish of Scotland made of the innards of a sheep that are mixed with oatmeal and spices and then cooked in the sheep’s stomach.
As for what to wear, you can’t go wrong with blue and white (like the Scottish flag). Bonus points if your blue comes in the form of a kilt and/or you paint a version of the flag on your face.
An aside: The blue-and-white flag features an X-shaped cross known as a “saltire,” because when St. Andrew was being crucified by the Romans in A.D. 60, he met his end on such a cross, which subsequently became his symbol.
There’s also an unofficial Scottish flag, which features a red lion on a yellow background. This is the Scottish Royal Banner of Arms and its use is legally restricted, because it represents the monarch and so can only be flown by a royal residence and a handful of representatives.
We’ll have partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-40s (a veritable heat wave!). Get outside while you can, because the weekend is looking, well, dismal, to be quite frank.
In the headlines…
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the diplomat with the thick glasses and gravelly voice who dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China, has died, his consulting firm said. He was 100.
As President Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy aide, Kissinger helped set out the nation’s grand international strategy of extricating itself from an unpopular war and plotting its relations with two rival communist powers.
The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, Kissinger was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East.
Hamas last night released 16 people held hostage in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli authorities said, pushing the number of freed captives past 100, and in return Israel was expected within hours to set free 30 more Palestinian prisoners.
Liat Beinin Atzili, an American-Israeli dual citizen who had been held in Gaza, was among the hostages freed. She is the second U.S. citizen released since the cease-fire began.
The family of Abigail Mor Idan — the 4-year-old who was the first US hostage released by Hamas in its cease-fire deal with Israel – gave heartbreaking new details of her capture to help push for the release of the Iran-backed terror group’s remaining hostages.
Israel’s initial deal with Hamas to pause hostilities in exchange for the release of hostages has technically expired. International mediators were pushing yesterday to lock in another temporary extension of the cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Israel and Hamas said they agreed to extend their cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, keeping alive tenuous hopes for a lasting halt to the fighting.
Fears were growing for Gaza’s youngest hostage after Hamas claimed that he and two other members of his family were killed in an Israeli bombing.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, said in a 40-minute speech on the Senate floor that antisemitic incidents were on the rise before the start of the war between Israel and Hamas but have worsened since.
Schumer warned that some liberals and young people were “unknowingly aiding and abetting” antisemitism in the name of social justice, fueling a dangerous rise in bigotry against Jews amid Israel’s war against Hamas.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk insisted that his trip to Israel was not an “apology tour” amid the backlash he received for endorsing an antisemitic social media post, for which he expressed regret.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed the streets surrounding Rockefeller Center, clashing with NYPD cops and chanting “river to the sea,” long seen as an antisemitic slogan, in an effort to derail the annual tree lighting in support of Gaza.
The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Education Department has opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism at Harvard University, which has been roiled by demonstrations and confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students.
President Joe Biden’s visit to a wind turbine factory in Colorado yesterday was as much a rebuke of his far-right opponents in Congress as it was an official stop to show off investments in clean energy and manufacturing.
Biden sharply criticized Rep. Lauren Boebert in her Colorado congressional district, attacking the Republican directly for several minutes during his 23-minute long speech. It came as she hurled sharp criticism at him throughout the day on social media.
Biden has retaken the lead against his presumptive 2024 Republican challenger Donald Trump in a new survey.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote tomorrow on whether to expel scandal-plagued Republican George Santos, who faces criminal corruption charges and new accusations that he misspent campaign money, according to Republican aides.
Speaker Mike Johnson expressed “real reservations” about expelling Santos from the House since he has yet to be convicted of a crime — even as GOP support grows to make him just the sixth member of the chamber ever to be formally ousted from his seat.
While dozens of Democratic lawmakers had voted against the effort to expel the embattled New York Republican earlier in the month, those same lawmakers are now lining up to support Santos’s ouster when a similar resolution hits the floor later this week.
In a new memoir, Liz Cheney wrote that Kevin McCarthy justified his trip to Mar-a-Lago by saying the former president was depressed after losing re-election and “not eating.”
The former Wyoming congresswoman claims in her new book that McCarthy told her Trump acknowledged that he lost the 2020 presidential election just two days after the election.
Not long after federal prosecutors issued a subpoena last year for all the classified documents that Trump took with him from the White House to his Florida estate, one of his lawyers told him, in no uncertain terms, that it would be a crime if he did not comply.
Attorney Jennifer Little, who is representing Trump in his election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, told special counsel Jack Smith’s team of investigators earlier this year that the former president “absolutely” understood the warning she gave him.
Bankers whom Trump is accused of defrauding testified at his civil fraud trial this week that they did not rely on his embellished claims of wealth, lending support to the central plank of the former president’s defense.
Life expectancy in the United States has begun to climb again as the threat of Covid-19 has receded, increasing by more than a year from 2021 to 2022, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rise represents a slow and partial recovery for the country, which tallied more than 1.1 million Covid deaths and lost 2.4 years in life expectancy from 2019 to 2021.
Gov. Kathy Hochul will not continue to pursue legislation to require housing growth across New York when she releases her 2024 agenda, according to several sources familiar with the governor’s deliberations.
Democratic and Republican election commissioners of Albany County are urging Hochul to veto legislation that would require certain local elections to be moved to even-numbered years, adding those races to the current cycle for state and federal elections.
Hochul announced the start of construction on Mosaic Apartments, a two-building development that will create 60 apartments in Schenectady’s Mont Pleasant neighborhood.
Two months after record-breaking rainfall inundated the city and surrounding areas in late September, Hochul has requested a major disaster declaration from President Joe Biden to help fund ongoing recovery efforts.
Hundreds of people impacted by cannabis-related criminal charges will finally be allowed to move forward with the pot-shops they had already been granted licenses for — if the terms of a settlement agreement filed Tuesday are approved.
The female investigator who is suing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for sexual harassment confided in a retired State Police major and privately sought his guidance two years ago, around the time she was interviewed by the AG’s office about her allegations.
Drivers who self-certified their vision tests when Department of Motor Vehicles officers were closed during the coronavirus pandemic have just days to submit official tests or risk having their licenses suspended.
A Manhattan indictment says an agent of the Indian government orchestrated a hit job on a Sikh separatist, a plan linked to a killing in Canada. The man prosecutors called the agent’s go-between was arrested in the Czech Republic.
Nikhil “Nick” Gupta, who the feds say is involved in drugs and weapons trafficking, is accused of carrying out the orders of an unnamed Indian government official who tried to cut down Gurpatwant Singh Pannun because of his criticism of India’s leadership.
Trump called on Mayor Adams and ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to join him in fighting the New York law that allowed women to sue all three leaders for long-ago alleged sexual assaults.
Trump called the state Adult Survivors Act “totally unfair and unconstitutional” because it extended until last week the deadline to file sex assault suits like the ones Adams and Cuomo were recently hit with.
Adams said that New York City had made progress in helping homeless people who are severely mentally ill get connected to treatment and housing, moving 54 homeless people experiencing severe mental illness into stable housing or medical centers.
The 54 people were on the city’s two so-called Top 50 lists, which together include about 100 high-need people who typically stay in the subways or streets, consistently refuse services, and are seen to experience particularly entrenched cases of homelessness.
An average of 137 mentally ill locals are now being taken off the streets by first responders and city health professionals every week — a significant number of them removed involuntarily under the mayor’s directive, officials said.
A year before joining the Mayor’s Office, one of Eric Adams’ press secretaries, Amaris Cockfield, registered as a foreign agent for a trade group with close ties to the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The leadership of the City Council is crafting an alternative to the budget cuts announced by Adams that potentially includes using the city’s robust financial reserves to stave off immediate cutbacks and asking Albany for tax increases to bolster the budget.
Of the thousands of people who’ve passed through an East Village “reticketing site” City Hall opened a month ago to encourage migrants to move somewhere else, just 10% have accepted tickets elsewhere, according to internal data obtained by THE CITY.
The Adams administration is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to bus some 200 asylum-seeking kids to school from the isolated shelter at Floyd Bennett Field, which is already costing $1.7 million a month.
City Comptroller Brad Lander had a “productive” day discussing federal support for the Big Apple’s migrant crisis with White House officials — but left Washington admitting more work needs to be done to help eligible asylum seekers join the workforce.
The first congestion pricing program in the United States is taking final shape in New York City, and most drivers appear likely to pay $15 to enter some of the busiest streets in Manhattan as soon as next spring.
Delays in New York City’s congestion pricing plan are forcing the MTA to delay key subway signal upgrades, transit officials said.
Common Cause New York and The Black Institute – a public policy think tank in New York focused on issues impacting Black New Yorkers – have filed a lawsuit to prevent the usage of controversial touch screen ExpressVote XL voting machines.
Correction Commissioner Louis Molina’s trip with seven aides in September to London and Paris cost New York City taxpayers around $40,000, records obtained by the Daily News show.
Central Park hasn’t exactly been a winter wonderland in the past few years as the majestic green space at the center of Manhattan has gone 653 days without getting one inch of snow in a 24-hour period.
Former Rep. Mondaire Jones announced he has won the backing of a key Democratic rival in his bid to retake his old Westchester County congressional seat next year.
The sister of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer dropped her bid to represent part of the Lower Hudson Valley in Congress Wednesday and instead threw her support behind Jones.
Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy has vetoed the 2024 budget that fellow Democrats on the divided City Council recently adopted — an amended spending plan that had already narrowly passed during a raucous meeting last week.
Twenty-five people were indicted for alleged involvement in a multi-county drug ring that used a local restaurant – Troy’s El Coqui – to sell and store narcotics, according to a release from the state attorney general’s office.
A fisher suspected in three biting incidents at the Hudson Pointe Nature Preserve has been caught and killed, according to health authorities.
A 49-year-old man from Queens in New York City died Saturday while hiking on Sawteeth Mountain Saturday in the Adirondack High Peaks region in Essex County.
The Winter Olympics and Paralympics moved a step closer to returning to Salt Lake City in 2034 following a decision by the International Olympic Committee to deem the city a “preferred host”.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
