Good morning, it’s Wednesday. You’re hanging in there, right? Getting into the swing of the new year? How’s that sobriety thing going?
Yes, it’s that time again: Dry January – a monthlong abstention from alcoholic beverages after what, for many people, was a period of over-indulgence during the holiday festivities.
The history of this practice dates back many years, but the modern-day story is that it originated in the UK and now millions of people around the world – including up to 41 percent of US adults – take part annually.
The positive impact on your health – both mental and physical – of ceasing alcohol consumption is well documented. While those who drink socially probably would tell you they do it to have a good time, alcohol is actually a depressant. It can disrupt the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain, which can impact feelings, thoughts and behavior.
The short term effects of alcohol, which can make you feel relaxed, less inhibited and more comfortable, generally wear off pretty quickly, and can turn to anger, depression, and anxiety – even if you weren’t feeling these things to begin with.
Also, while it’s fairly well known that alcohol slows down your reaction times, which is part of the reason why drinking and driving is so dangerous, did you know that it also takes a toll on our the brain processes information? This makes it more likely that you aren’t able to fully grasp the impact of your actions.
Long-term alcohol use actually changes the brain’s structure, reducing the overall number of neurotransmitters and leading to the possibility of dependence and addiction – not to mention a negative impact on your liver and adding to your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and high blood pressure.
Just taking a month-long break from alcohol can have some big positive impacts on your body, not the least of which is that you give your liver a chance to focus on things other than metabolizing booze, which can result in an up to 20 percent reduction in liver fat and reduce your risk of cirrhosis.
In just 24 hours without alcohol, your blood glucose levels have a chance to normalize and your REM sleep periods (the deepest and most restorative part of the night) might expand and improve. You’ll also be better hydrated, since alcohol is a diuretic, and your skin will look brighter and maybe even younger, and you might lose a few pounds without even trying since the number of empty calories you’re taking in will go down.
After 30 dry days, you might discover that you feel a lot better without alcohol in your life – full stop – and even if you go back to consumption, perhaps you’ll do so more judiciously than previously.
There are a lot of non-alcoholic options to choose from these days. Mocktails are having a moment. There’s also been a rise in availability and popularity of adaptogen drinks, though the science on their efficacy is a bit thin. Water and seltzer are always a safe bet, also coffee – always coffee.
It will be cloudy with temperatures in the low 40s today.
In the headlines…
A federal appeals court ruled that the Biden administration cannot enforce federal guidance instructing doctors to provide abortion care in medical emergencies, no matter state law.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s ruling that sided with Texas AG Ken Paxton. The appeal was heard by Judge Leslie Southwick, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Trump appointees Kurt Engelhardt and Cory Wilson.
The ruling dealt a blow to the White House’s strategy to ensure access to the procedure after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
Tens of thousands of women who are not pregnant are ordering abortion pills just in case they might need them someday, especially in states where access is threatened, according to a study published yesterday.
Aid Access, a nonprofit telehealth service, has offered “advance provision” of mifepristone and misoprostol for more than two years; demand has surged since the leak of the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Air raid warnings sounded for hours across Ukraine yesterday, with officials reporting large-scale missile strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Russian missiles and drones hammered Kyiv in a large-scale attack on the Ukrainian capital and other cities that killed at least five people and injured nearly 130 others, a day after President Putin promised to retaliate for a Ukrainian assault on a Russian city.
Four legal crossings along the southern border will reopen tomorrow after being shut down due to an increase in migrant encounters, authorities announced.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced legal border crossings in Texas, Arizona and California would be reopened starting at various times in the morning.
Thousands of dollars have been placed on the possibility of Biden standing down as the Democratic candidate in 2024, as the incumbent’s approval ratings remain low.
Sen. Bernie Sanders called on Congress to hold back more than $10 billion in military funding for Israel, warning it would be used to fund the Israeli government’s “grossly disproportionate” and “immoral” war in Gaza.
A top Hamas official, one of the founders of the Palestinian organization’s military wing, was killed yesterday in a drone blast in Beirut, according to several reports.
Israel and the surrounding region were on edge after the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, the senior-most Hamas official to be killed since the Oct. 7 attacks, heightened worries that the war in Gaza could spill over into a broader conflict.
Israel had accused Arouri, 57, of masterminding attacks against it in the West Bank, where he was the group’s top commander.
The assassination will likely set back talks, at least temporarily, to reach agreement on a short-term pause in the fighting to allow for more exchanges of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, a senior U.S. official said.
U.S. spy agencies believe that Hamas and another Palestinian group fighting Israel used Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza to command forces and hold some hostages, according to new American intelligence declassified yesterday.
Harvard University president Claudine Gay, the daughter of Haitian immigrants who rose through the sharp-elbowed politics of higher education to become the first Black leader of the nation’s most prestigious university, has resigned.
“(I)t has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual,” Gay wrote in her resignation letter.
Gay will still likely earn nearly $900,000 a year despite being forced to resign her position as the school’s top administrator. The Political Science professor will now return to a position on the Cambridge, Mass., school’s faculty.
Gay’s resignation over plagiarism will be “just the beginning of the reckoning,” House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik said, vowing that Republicans will carry out a “long overdue” cleansing of higher education’s “institutional rot.”
Formal challenges to Trump’s presidential candidacy have been filed in at least 33 states – including New York – according to a New York Times review of court records and other documents.
Lawyers for Trump made their final written request to a federal appeals court to grant him immunity to charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing the indictment arose from actions he took while in the White House.
Trump appealed a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state barring him from the ballot over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Bellows, a Democrat, “was a biased decision maker who should have recused herself and otherwise failed to provide lawful due process,” lawyers for Trump wrote in the 11-page appeal filed in Maine Superior Court.
A man leaving the scene of a car wreck shot his way into the Colorado Supreme Court building and inflicted “extensive damage” before being arrested by police, who said the incident seems unrelated to the court’s recent ruling banning Trump from the ballot.
Michael Cohen is taking his feud with Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A federal judge dismissed a wrongful death claim in a lawsuit against Trump and two others brought by Sandra Garza, the longtime partner of fallen U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.
Trump is making serious headway with a bloc of the GOP that’s among the most skeptical of his 2024 bid: Republican senators.
Trump is relying on a potential running mate, a former TV actress and one of his sons to stump for him in Iowa as his campaign tries to blanket the state with events ahead of the Iowa caucuses.
Ken Block, whom the Trump campaign hired in 2020 to find voter fraud in the election, penned an op-ed stating unequivocally that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen and that there was no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change its outcome.
Fox News host Sean Hannity announced that he moved from New York to Florida, a state he says has elected officials who “share his values.”
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey — already accused of using his political influence to benefit Egypt — was newly charged with using his power to help the government of Qatar.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said that Menendez, a Democrat, exploited his Senate office to aid a prominent New Jersey developer in securing financial backing from an investment fund run by a Qatari sheikh in exchange for lucrative bribes.
Meteorologists are watching a storm forming over the Pacific that is slated to make its way across the country and hit the East Coast by Saturday into Sunday, disrupting travel with a potent precipitation mix.
The storm is set to arrive in Gotham on Saturday night and stay until Monday morning, potentially becoming the first to bring more than an inch of snow to the region since February 2022.
Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to make it harder for companies to take advantage of New Yorkers who struggle to pay back student loans or medical debt.
Hochul is seeking to stop insulin users from having copayments on their diabetes medication, shield low-income New Yorkers from medical debt collection and bolster enforcement and prosecution on consumer protection issues.
After taking action on numerous bills before the end of the year, Hochul enters 2024 with three pieces of legislation from the past legislative session that she can sign or veto.
Hochul expressed support for strict limits Mayor Eric Adams has placed on asylum seeker-filled charter buses entering New York City — and called a workaround Texas has apparently used to send city-bound migrants to New Jersey “frustrating.”
Hochul proposed limiting the ability of hospitals such as Upstate University Hospital to sue people with limited incomes over unpaid medical bills.
Lawmakers across the Empire State are due back in the legislative chambers this week for the start of the session, where a range of topics — including housing production and mayoral control— are expected to dominate the agenda in the first half of 2024.
The state Legislature will kick off its 2024 session today at the Capitol in Albany, a six-month period when lawmakers will pass a critical state budget and hundreds of bills that Hochul, a Democrat, will decide whether to approve or veto.
Tensions between the governor and state legislators that flared last year were freshly stoked at the end of 2023 after she vetoed several bills with strong support, including ones to ban non-compete clauses and require the posting of emergency contracts.
The governor typically faces intense pressure from outside forces, like unions, the real estate industry or activists. But this year, she could war with fellow Democrats in the Legislature, who make up a majority of the 213 seats making up statewide representation.
The 2024 legislative session will again test New York State’s willingness to tackle one of its most debilitating problems. The context this year is in some ways worse than it was in 2023.
State university leaders are asking the state for regular increases in aid or permission to increase tuition, warning that they need more money to stave off huge annual deficits that could balloon to $1 billion in a decade.
A lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general against Wayne LaPierre and three other N.R.A. insiders accuses the gun rights group of decades of corruption and could end LaPierre’s reign.
Democrats have fired the first salvo in their bid to reclaim George Santos’ vacant House seat in what is expected to be a low-turnout Feb. 13 special election — a seven-figure TV ad claiming GOP candidate Mazi Pilip would imperil government services.
Adams faces potential fines for failing to register his Brooklyn rental property with the city’s housing agency last year — the latest in a string of violations at the building, according to public records.
Adams condemned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for using migrants as pawns “to create chaos,” warning his administration is considering all legal options to respond to what appears to be an effort to bypass an executive order limiting the arrival of buses.
Adams wants to add trains and planes to his executive order limiting migrant buses arriving in the Big Apple — as City Hall attempts to stem the flood of asylum seekers now flocking in on New Jersey transit trains.
Adams jumped to the defense of the Big Apple’s migrant services amid an ongoing influx of unhoused people — claiming the city’s “sanctuary” status hampers his administration’s ability to tackle the crisis.
A new law would finally allow New York City to shut down the ubiquitous illegal pot shops sprouting like weeds across the five boroughs — a law enforcement operation currently left to the state.
Yesterday was the last day for scores of souvenir vendors who have sprung up illegally along the footpath, turning the Brooklyn Bridge into a 6,000-foot-long mall across the East River.
An earthquake rattled parts of Queens yesterday morning and may have sparked a series of underground explosions reported on Roosevelt Island, city officials said.
New York City experiences numerous small earthquakes every year, experts say. Usually, people don’t feel them.
According to fire department officials, a call came in around just before 6 a.m. yesterday about an explosion in a building at 580 Main St., directly below the Tram line on Roosevelt Island.
The driver who crashed an SUV loaded with gas cans outside a Rochester concert venue appeared to have been aiming at a pedestrian crossing, but there’s no evidence of a terror motive in the fiery wreck that killed three on New Year’s Day, police said.
Civility may be in short supply virtually everywhere — with little hope for improvement as an election year dawns — but Stewart’s Shops is doing its part to restore a polite society with the reintroduction of its Civility ice cream flavor.
After 18 years on the Milton Town Board, Frank Blaisdell stepped down last week, two years before his term expired — a move that has sparked a search by the town’s Republican Committee to fill the vacancy.
