Good morning. We made it to Friday. YEE-HAW!
The weekend is shaping up to be not bad at all from a weather perspective. Tomorrow (Saturday) will be cloudy with temperatures in the low 60s. It will be fairly breezy with winds topping out at 25 mph. Sunday, we’ll see a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures in the high 50s.
Not fabulous, but not terrible either. A good weekend for starting to get things around the yard and the house back into shape after a pretty grueling winter.
I’ve written here before about the damage done to the trees out back by the last ice/snow storm we had. The clean-up of that is going to take some time, not to mention the usual post-winter rehab necessary to get things looking as they should. It’s an ongoing project, to say the least.
Inside the house is another sizable project. All the sun streaming in has revealed the dust that piled up in corners during the winter. Also, there’s a matter of all the small things that need to be addressed as a matter of ongoing home maintenance – ceiling fan and light fixture replacement, door repair, laying down the new rug I bought months ago and never unboxed. Etc. and so forth. The list grows by the day.
I have been looking into deep cleaning services – the sort of once or twice a year undertaking that some people really enjoy, getting into the cracks and crevices and on to of cabinets etc. I cannot stand this sort of thing. Cleaning has never been my strong suit. Picking up after myself and the doggos I can handle. Scrubbing showers and toilets? No thanks.
There is something very satisfying about cleaning, though, especially when it involves purging things that you no longer need. Jettisoning the flotsam that accumulates as a result of daily living is challenging, but rewarding. Just ask Marie Kondo, who, for the record, is still in the neatening and organizing game.
Purging should not be reserved for your closet, pantry, and refrigerator, but also extend to areas that you might not think all that much about – like the medicine cabinet. There is a right and a wrong way to dispose of unused, outdated medications – and you should regularly check the expiration dates, because these things DO, in fact, expire and are no longer good after a certain point.
Just throwing them into the trash – or, worse yet, flushing them down the toilet – is not a good idea. You should check the FDA flush list (yes, it exists) to see if medication can be safely disposed in that manner.
Animals and fish are already being harmed by elevated levels of certain drugs in the water. We can’t do much about what we excrete from our own bodies, of course, but we can be more cautious about what else we flush or rinse into the waste stream.
If you do throw out medication, the FDA recommends that you mix it with some sort of undesirable substance – like coffee grounds or cat litter – before putting it into the garbage.
By far the best way to get rid of unused medication is to deposit it at a drug take back site – some of which are permanent (pharmacies and medical offices, usually), others temporary – where it will be safely destroyed, or, if possible, donated to someone else in need. Before you do this, remember to remove all personal information from drug containers. Find out more here.
Today is National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day, which was launched in 2019 by DisposeRx (a company that manufacturers an at-home drug disposal product) with the goal of educating consumers about the need to safeguard prescription drugs and dispose of them safely when they’re no longer useful/expired.
We’re already dispensed with the upcoming weekend weather. Today will be cloudy with showers in the afternoon and temperatures in the low 60s. It will again be pretty breezy, with gusts up to 20 mph.
In the headlines…
Israel has carried out a military strike inside Iran, a US official said, a potentially dangerous escalation in a fast widening Middle East conflict that Iranian government officials have so far sought to play down.
The US was given advance notification yesterday of an intended Israeli strike in the coming days, but did not endorse the response, a second senior US official said.
In a meeting between U.S. and Israeli officials, the two sides discussed the attack by Iran as well as the Israeli military’s plans for an operation in Rafah in Gaza, according to the White House.
“Material losses” have been reported in southern Syria after an Israeli strike, Syrian state media SANA reported, citing a military source.
The United States blocked the U.N. Security Council from moving forward on a Palestinian bid to be recognized as a full-member state at the United Nations, quashing an effort by Palestinian allies to get the world body to back the effort.
Negotiations for a cease-fire and the release of Israeli hostages have stalled because Hamas rejected the latest proposal from Israel, Qatar and Egypt, the C.I.A. director said, putting the blame squarely on the group that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The elaborate rollout of a Kennedy family endorsement of President Biden was the most powerful sign yet of rising concern in the Biden camp that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent White House bid is a serious threat to the president’s re-election prospects.
Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, niece of former President John F. Kennedy and sister of the current presidential candidate, delivered the endorsements in Philadelphia by calling Biden “my hero.”
“We are here because we feel obliged to do all that we can. We cannot stand aside. In this election, no American can stand aside. We must vote,” Kerry Kennedy said.
House Republicans took a critical step late last night toward bringing up the long-stalled foreign aid bill for Ukraine and Israel, after being forced to rely on Democratic votes to move a plan to consider it out of a key committee and onto the floor.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s problems spring from his predecessor’s efforts to placate the far right as he grasped for the gavel. Now they are seeking to use the leverage they won then to get their way on the foreign aid bill.
Twelve New Yorkers have been selected to decide Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, the first for a former American president and a crucial challenge to his bid to regain the Oval Office.
Opening statements could begin as early as Monday, the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, said, asking the selected jurors to return to court then.
Merchan excused two of the seven jurors chosen Tuesday. One expressed concern about her identity becoming public and her ongoing ability to render a judgment free from outside influences. The other might have lied on a criminal history question.
Trump is a creature of social media. And the lawyers representing him in his criminal trial in Manhattan showed themselves to be savvy at using it during jury selection this week to try to get some prospective jurors dismissed.
Prosecutors in Trump’s criminal trial argued in court that with a steady stream of social media posts, the former president had violated the gag order imposed on him seven times, urging the judge overseeing the trial to hold him in contempt.
Merchan has set a hearing on prosecutors’ request to hold Trump in contempt for allegedly violating the judge’s limited gag order. After initially setting the hearing for Wednesday, April 24, he rescheduled it for Tuesday, April 23 at 9:30 a.m. ET.
New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman were two of 14 House lawmakers to vote against a resolution condemning Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack against Israel.
At least 100 protesters were cuffed and hauled away from Columbia University when NYPD cops in riot gear swarmed the campus yesterday after the president made the bombshell decision to clear a large anti-Israel protest encampment.
The NYPD said at least 108 protesters at Columbia University’s campus had been taken into custody, after university officials called for law enforcement help to respond to a pro-Palestinian demonstration and dismantle a tent encampment.
The New York Civil Liberties Union has denounced the university’s leadership for its handling of the protest.
Cornel West, the public intellectual and independent candidate for president, came to address the students in solidarity. He called Columbia’s response to the protesters “a colossal failure in terms of morality.”
After years of tolerating unruly protests, some schools are starting to suspend and expel students, raising questions about where they should draw the line.
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, revealed that she has been suspended from Barnard College over her involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University.
The camp, which includes dozens of tents pitched on the campus’s South Lawn in protest against Israeli actions in Gaza, has created a standoff between administrators and students on the Ivy League campus.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers have reached agreement on how to stop a scourge of retail theft in New York by passing legislation intended to break up organized efforts to steal and sell stolen merchandise.
“Retail incidents involving physical force have more than doubled,” said Hochul. “This is just not stealing anymore, this is harming.”
Hochul won support from state lawmakers to create a waterfront commission to fight the kind of mob corruption made famous in Marlon Brando’s 1954 flick “On the Waterfront.”
Hochul and other area officials helped with the ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday for a massive dairy processing facility in the Town of Webster.
A lobbying effort led in part by religious groups has New York lawmakers considering two different measures that would legalize psilocybin, a drug known as “magic mushrooms.”
The state budget that’s expected to be adopted in the coming days calls for repealing the potency tax on marijuana products as well as new regulations intended to give municipalities the ability to more easily inspect and shut down unlicensed cannabis stores.
New York City will get the authority to lower the speed limit to 20 miles per hour on most streets in the five boroughs as part of the emerging state budget deal in Albany, state leaders said.
Shamsuddin Riza pleaded guilty to helping orchestrate a straw donor scheme that prosecutors say pumped illegal cash into Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign coffers with an aim to secure political favors.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office said Riza and co-defendant Dwayne Montgomery “sought influence for themselves and their associates” while recruiting straw donors to organize their operation.
While Riza faces up to four years in prison for each charge, prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of three years’ probation in exchange for his guilty plea.
Sylvia Hinds-Radix, the Adams administration’s top attorney, is stepping down from her post, a senior City Hall aide confirmed. Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, said Hinds-Radix’s departure was a “mutual decision”.
Bo Dietl — who vowed not to curse after being dropped from Adams’ legal defense trust for telling a reporter to “suck somebody’s d–k” — slammed the controversy as “political bullsh-t” before catching his own potty mouth.
New York City’s Department of Environment Protection this week put out a notice requesting ideas on how to divert all the excrement that goes down drains from ending up in landfills.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas took to social media this week to share that he is more than willing to take in asylum-seekers and refugees from overcrowded cities such as New York City and Denver and let them work in his city.
The fledgling Professional Women’s Hockey League is booming — except in New York, where the team is in last place. But the players haven’t given up.
Nearly 10 years after the massive protest that led to hundreds of thousands of New York children not taking yearly state tests, the opt-out movement is still going strong in some parts of the state.
Three Rensselaer County officials facing federal criminal charges for voter fraud have filed pretrial motions challenging the government’s case and seeking access to more of the evidence against them as their September trial date looms.
All signs appear to be indicating that Trader Joe’s is seriously considering putting a new store at Glenmont Plaza, located at one of the busiest commercial sections in the Town of Bethlehem.
Albany Police revealed that the man who is seen in body camera footage shooting an officer Wednesday turned his gun on himself, and was not killed by the officer’s returning fire.
A shade over two months after announcing it at the 2024 Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift has released her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Fans celebrated Swift’s midnight release of “The Tortured Poets Department” with listening parties and themed gatherings. Many critics also praised Swift in their reviews.
“The Tortured Poets Department” is a secret DOUBLE album. In a 2 a.m. ET surprise, Swift announced an extra 15 songs.
Swift’s longtime publicist, Tree Paine, whom many fans know by name, was the subject of a lengthy Wall Street Journal article published Thursday ahead of the new album’s release.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
