Good morning, we’ve already reached the middle of the week. How did this happen? I’m so behind the eight ball.
There are some things you think you know, they’ve just been around in the background forever – like part of the furniture. But then when you look a little closer it turns out you really didn’t know that terribly much about these things, if at all.
This sounds a little cryptic, so let me explain.
When I ask: “Do you know about the Red Cross?” You’re probably like, “Of course; they help people in times of need – natural disaster, fire, flood, crisis, etc. – they run blood banks and donation drives.” Yes, that’s true, the Red Cross is one of the best known humanitarian and disaster relief organizations, an affiliate of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.
But beyond these basics, what do you know about the American Red Cross, really?
Did you know, for example, that it was founded by crusading nurse and reformer Clara Barton, whose civilian relief and battlefield experience – both in Europe and stateside during the Civil War (where she earned the nickname “Angel of the Battlefield”) – spurred her to establish the organization and lead it for more than two decades?
Did you know about 40 percent of the nation’s blood supply is provided by the Red Cross, which usually collects many millions of units of blood every year, but this past January declared an emergency blood shortage, noting that the number of donors in the U.S. had hit a 20-year low? (This was in part due to COVID-inspired work-from-home phenomenon, which meant fewer people were out and about and encountering opportunities to give).
Did you know that the Red Cross responds to almost 66,000 disasters around the U.S. annually – from fires and tornadoes to severe weather events, transportation accidents, and explosions. They do this through their network of some 23,000 employees and close to 300,000 volunteers (that’s here in the U.S., but the number balloons to 16 million volunteers, worldwide).
All told, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian network, supporting local Red Cross and Red Crescent efforts in more than 191 countries.
To be clear, this is not a paid post. This is just me taking the opportunity to recognize people who are doing some good in the world. Today is the annual Red Cross Giving Day – a 24-hour period to not only recognize the work this important organization does, day in and day out, but to support it with much-needed dollars.
And, in case you’re curious, the Red Cross reports that 90 cents of every dollar it receives, on average, does toward delivering services and care for those in need.
It will be warm – comparatively speaking – with temperatures in the low 50s, and rainy today. There’s an 80 percent chance of rain, so don’t forget that umbrella.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden said the federal government will pay to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge following its collapse after it was struck by a large container ship, causing several people to fall into the Patapsco River—at least six of whom remain missing.
Biden has commended the alertness of the 22 Indian-origin personnel aboard ‘Dali’, the ship which collided with a Baltimore bridge, for preventing more casualties with their mayday call.
A few minutes before the Dali cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the vessel had a “complete blackout” that knocked out power to the engine and navigation equipment, an industry official said.
The Coast Guard ended its search for six construction workers who were on the bridge in Baltimore when it was rammed by a massive cargo ship and collapsed into the Patapsco River.
A construction company employee who said he labored alongside the six men missing after a Baltimore bridge collapse said many of his co-workers were migrants working to support their relatives.
Ben Schafer, a structural engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that he doesn’t believe most bridges would have withstood the impact of a modern cargo ship.
Biden has completely eradicated Donald Trump’s lead in three key swing states, and reduced it in a further three, according to surveys conducted in seven states.
Polls conducted by Morning Consult for Bloomberg show Biden now leads in Wisconsin, having previously been four-points behind. Biden and Trump are also now neck and neck in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where the former president was leading in February.
A new poll from The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Democrats are more likely to report feeling “fearful” or “angry” about the prospects of another Trump term than Republicans are about the idea of Biden remaining in the White House.
Biden is jetting into New York tomorrow for a star-studded campaign fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall featuring a raft of celebrity performers and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Pop superstar Lizzo, jazzy rap goddess Queen Latifah and Broadway’s Ben Platt will perform, and the three Democratic powerhouses will sit for a conversation moderated by late-night funnyman Stephen Colbert.
The former president and the current one are now on the same page about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s political future. It was not always that way.
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel has been dropped by NBC News after a single, highly controversial television appearance.
A string of top stars had denounced the hiring of McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, on their own airwaves. Her tenure lasted four days.
The New York judge presiding over one of Trump’s criminal trials imposed a gag order that prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors, the latest effort to rein in the former president’s wrathful rhetoric about his legal opponents.
He is barred from making public statements about court staff, jurors, witnesses and lawyers in the district attorney’s office – or their families. The Trump campaign said the order, which is limited in some instances, violated his free speech rights.
Judge Juan Merchan also said that Trump can’t make statements about attorneys, court staff or the family members of prosecutors or lawyers intended to interfere with the case. Trump is also barred from making statements about any potential or actual juror.
The share price of Trump’s social media company jumped more than 50% minutes after it began public trading under the ticker DJT on Tuesday morning.
Trading in the Trump Media & Technology Group was briefly halted amid the rise due to volatility before it resumed around 9:40 a.m. ET. More than 6.5 million shares in Trump Media had changed hands by 9:50 a.m.
Trump is selling special-edition Bibles that include copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance and come as ex-president faces mounting legal bills from his ongoing court cases.
Trump’s Bible sales pitch comes as he appears to be confronting a significant financial squeeze, with his legal fees growing while he fights a number of criminal cases and lawsuits.
An Israeli hostage who was captured by Hamas on Oct. 7 and later released says she was sexual assaulted and tortured during her captivity. She is the first former hostage to publicly speak about her abuse.
Israel says Hamas’s rejection of a current proposal for a Gaza truce deal with Israel shows the “damage” done by the UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Biden, after being interrupted at an event in North Carolina yesterday by protesters angry about his approach to the war in Gaza, told the audience that the demonstrators “have a point,” adding, “We need to get a lot more care into Gaza.”
Trump appeared to blame Israel for antisemitism, saying Israel made a “big mistake” in its response to Oct. 7 and is “losing a lot of support” from around the world. He also said he would have responded “very much the same” as Israel did against such an attack.
A majority of the Supreme Court appeared deeply skeptical of efforts to severely curtail access to a widely used abortion pill, questioning if a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations had a right to challenge the FDA’s approval of the medication.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, heard oral arguments on the Biden administration’s appeal of lower court rulings that restricted women’s access to the pill, including its availability by mail.
The Biden administration’s effort to preserve expanded access to the abortion drug mifepristone found more traction among the conservative justices than many observers expected.
The pending Supreme Court decision on the abortion pill mifepristone could have dire consequences for blue state voters, Gov. Kathy Hochul warned on MSNBC.
Hochul said she reached out to the governor of Maryland after a shocking bridge collapse has left six people unaccounted for in Baltimore.
Big Apple officials insisted that New York City is unlikely to experience a bridge disaster like the Baltimore collapse, saying its 14 spans are closely monitored — and that massive container ships do not traverse the Hudson or East Rivers.
New York state Senate Republicans unveiled a package of bills aimed to deal with affordable housing, incentivize home ownership and protect homeowners against “squatters.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie shut down Hochul’s plan to toughen up penalties for thugs who attack retail workers, saying he doesn’t think it would actually crack down on crime.
Heastie said that budget negotiations between state leaders are advancing well even if he wouldn’t say that any of the big issues have been “locked down” just yet.
“I think where the budget negotiations are now, it feels like we’re on the same planet,” Heastie said. “I don’t think we’re in the same country or in the same state yet, but we’re at least on the same planet on what has to happen on all of the big items.”
Ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, 77, spent his final days in a prison bed and suffering from severe diarrhea – a feeble end after an epic fall from power, a new report revealed.
Mayor Eric Adams defended senior adviser Tim Pearson in his first public remarks about the sexual harassment lawsuit against him, telling reporters that his longtime ally deserves “due process.”
Concerns about gang violence in a part of Mexico prompted Adams to call off a trip he was supposed to take to the U.S. southern border last weekend, he said after days of few explanations from his office about the eleventh-hour travel cancellation.
Adams called the fatal shooting of NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller in Queens “a senseless act of violence” and called for greater reductions in recidivism in the wake of the Monday night incident.
Over his short but promising police career, Diller racked up scores of arrests and had already been decorated three times for “excellent police duty.”
A 34-year-old man, Guy Rivera, was in police custody in the fatal shooting of Diller during a traffic stop in Queens. Rivera, who had 21, prior arrests, was shot during the incident, had surgery at Jamaica Hospital and is expected to survive.
The killing of a police officer and a fatal push on the subway underscore the challenges that Adams faces as he tries to improve public safety.
The man charged with shoving a man from a subway platform had a violent history, according to officials. The man who died was recovering from his own troubled past, his family said.
The family of a troubled Bronx man charged with shoving an innocent straphanger to his death at an East Harlem subway station had repeatedly tried to get him psychiatric help — to no avail, his brother said.
The feds want to seize two swanky Midtown apartments worth $14 million from the former prime minister of Mongolia’s family, alleging that they bought the luxe real estate with money from corrupt mining contracts.
A 16-year-old girl was struck and killed by a Brooklyn subway train, police said. She was walking on a catwalk inside the tunnel near the 4th Ave.-9th St. station in Park Slope as a Brooklyn-bound G train left the station around 5:10 p.m., cops and sources said.
New York weed shops are stocking their shelves with Mike Tyson-branded edibles shaped like an ear with a bite mark – a callback to Iron Mike’s heavyweight showdown with Evander Holyfield.
The state attorney general’s office has filed documents in federal court accusing Nassau County of breaking state and federal law with a sports ban on transgender women and girls — but the office stopped short of explicitly asking the court to quash the ban.
Syracuse Assemblyman William Magnarelli said he will not put a bill that would extend the state’s limousine safety task force through 2025 to a vote.
The weekend storm that brought icy roads and power outages throughout the Capital Region also took a piece of Washington Park’s history with it, knocking over a massive European Linden tree – the last of the original Linden trees in the park.
Earthjustice, the environmental law nonprofit, is leading a chorus of 78 environmental and political action groups, including the Sierra Club, in opposing the proposed construction of Saratoga Biochar Solutions in the Town of Moreau’s industrial park.
Norlite, which has mined shale and used it to produce construction aggregate in Cohoes since 1956, is temporarily shutting down its main operations and laying off workers as it mulls its future.
The solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, is happening on a school day — and some schools are closing as a result.
Sean “Diddy” Combs vehemently denied any wrongdoing after Monday’s raid on his properties in Los Angeles and Miami by federal agents, calling it an “unprecedented ambush” and decrying the “premature rush to judgment” it would lead to.
A lawyer for Sean Combs called the searches “a gross overuse of military-level force” and criticized them as “nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”
A Mega Millions player in New Jersey captured the first jackpot-winning ticket of 2024, worth $1.13 billion, last night, snapping a 31-drawing drought.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
