Good morning, it’s Thursday already. I’m not sure how that happened. I have been behind the eight ball all week.
Perhaps I should spend less time going down internet rabbit holes, but it’s hard not to get sucked in – especially when it comes to animal videos. I have lost countless hours laughing aloud at some of the content out there.
A few of my favorites these days include a woman who films her two huskies trying a wide variety of foods and “commenting” on their reactions. The guy who chronicles his life with a bevy of senior rescue dogs (as well as a chicken and a pig). The TikTok viral octopus. And anything to do with capybaras, which, really, IYKYK.
So, yeah. I’m an animal enthusiast. I think we knew that already.
So, of course, I was captivated by the video – and accompanying news story – of the baby emperor penguins cliff diving. Apparently, this was an historic moment, since no one had ever before managed to capture footage of penguins engaging in this sort of daredevil activity when taking their inaugural, post-fledging swim.
Penguins are super cool, in part (IMHO) because they’re just so odd and unexpected. They look like they’re wearing tuxedoes and waddle around sort of awkwardly, but once they get into the water, man, watch OUT.
They swim like nobody’s business, reaching speeds of up to 25 MPH, but averaging between four and seven, and often under the ice, which just freaks me out completely. They can hold their breath for 20 minutes at a clip, and dive as deep as 500 meters (1,640 feet) in search of their preferred food sources (crustaceans, squid and fish).
Penguins are one of about 60 flightless birds alive on the planet today. (There were once a lot more, but they’ve become extinct, in part because being unable to fly makes one highly susceptible to predators). They’re only found in the Southern Hemisphere – mostly on the Antarctic coasts and sub-Antarctic islands, and have a lifespan of up to two decades.
Here’s another great thing to love about penguins – the ladies are in charge of mate selection and compete for the males of their preference. Also, while one male generally only breeds with a single female during the mating season, the females have been known to take multiple partners during that same timeframe.
When it comes to taking care of the kids – or, at the very least, building their nest and then incubating them – the task of sitting on the eggs falls to the male penguin – at least when it comes to the Emperors (more on these guys, who are largest of the species here).
The male balances the egg on his feet (!) to keep it warm, and sits on it for several months while mom goes out with the girls to feed up for the season. Talk about female empowerment.
All told, there are somewhere between 17 and 20 different species of penguins. Sadly, despite their immense popularity – I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t love a penguin?! – they are one of the world’s most threatened seabirds. About half of the known species are considered either vulnerable or formally endangered.
Today is World Penguin Day, which coincides with the start of the northern migration of Adelie penguins – the smallest, and perhaps feistiest species. I would suggest donning your tuxedo, if you have one, to celebrate. But maybe that’s overkill? Maybe just watch that penguin cliff diving video a few times and then make a donation in the penguins’ name to your favorite wildlife charity.
It’s going to be a tad chilly today, with temperatures starting out in the low 30s (!?) and then barely breaking out of the 50s. The saving grace? Skies will be sunny. So as long as you’re not in the shade, you should be OK.
In the headlines….
President Joe Biden signed into law an aid package providing crucial military assistance to Ukraine, capping months of negotiations and debate.
“We rose to the moment, we came together, and we got it done,” Biden said at a White House event to announce the bill signing. “Now we need to move fast, and we are.”
But significant damage has been done to the Biden administration’s effort to help Ukraine fight Russia during the funding impasse. Even with a burst of new weapons and ammunition, it’s unlikely Ukraine will immediately recover after months of setbacks.
Biden’s re-election campaign plans to continue using TikTok for at least the next year, despite the president signing a law that would ban the social media platform nationwide if its China-based parent company doesn’t sell it in that time frame.
Five Democratic House lawmakers urged Biden to reinstate Trump-era immigration policies to “bring order to the Southern border.”
Arizona took a major step toward scrapping an 1864 law banning abortion, when three Republican lawmakers in the state House of Representatives broke ranks with their party and voted with Democrats to repeal the ban.
The vote was the third attempt to repeal the law in as many weeks, as Republicans had thwarted Democratic attempts to bring the bill to the floor every other time.
Members of the Arizona state Senate, where Republicans also hold a narrow majority, voted last week in favor of a motion to introduce a bill that would repeal the abortion ban. Two Republicans joined every Democrat in the chamber on that vote.
The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided over whether federal law should allow doctors to perform emergency abortions in states with near-total bans, in a case that could determine access to abortion in emergency rooms across the country.
Most legal experts say Trump will face deep skepticism at the Supreme Court when the justices hear arguments on his claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. But there are attractive ways for him to lose.
Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani are unindicted co-conspirators in the Michigan attorney general’s case against the state’s so-called “fake electors” in the 2020 election, a state investigator revealed in court yesterday.
Giuliani, Meadows, and a number of others who advised Trump during the 2020 election were indicted in Arizona yesterday, along with all of the fake electors who acted on Trump’s behalf there to try to keep him in power despite his loss in the state.
Trump will hold campaign events next week in Wisconsin and Michigan, marking the first time he will use a day off from his hush money trial in New York City to visit a battleground state.
A wave of pro-Palestinian protests spread and intensified yesterday as students gathered on campuses around the country, in some cases facing off with the police, in a widening showdown over campus speech and the war in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu denounced the pro-Palestinian protests roiling college campuses across the U.S., arguing they are “antisemitic mobs” targeting Jewish students and faculties.
Trump played down the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 while portraying a recent wave of vocal but predominantly peaceful pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses as “riots.”
Speaker Mike Johnson called for Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign amid a wave of antisemitic protests that have roiled the Upper Manhattan Ivy League campus.
Shafik faced skeptics yesterday in a meeting with the university senate that could vote to censure her over her handling of protests on the Upper Manhattan campus. She defended her choice to summon the New York authorities to campus.
The speaker said he would meet with Jewish students and Rabbi Yuda Drizin at Columbia before holding a press conference with several House colleagues, including Reps. Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis and several other members of the state delegation.
Johnson, R-La., struggled to get a word in edgewise while on the Upper West Side, battling a chorus of booing crowds during a speech at Columbia University where he condemned the ongoing student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Several prominent New York Democrats accused Johnson of “politicizing” the chaotic pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked Columbia. Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters that “bringing the entourage to put a spotlight on this is only adding to the division.”
“A speaker worth the title should really be trying to heal people and not divide them, so I don’t think it adds to anything,” Hochul added.
Hochul told reporters that she currently has no plans to deploy the National Guard to the school and praised officials with the New York Police Department (NYPD) for their efforts to respond to the protests.
The dean of Columbia College, the undergraduate liberal arts college at Columbia University, sent an email to alumni about the protests on campus, describing it as a “difficult moment” for the New York school.
Giuliani visited Columbia University and slammed protesters as he called for president Minouche Shafik to resign over her handling of the crisis.
NYU protesters swarmed and berated an NYPD chief and his officers – calling them “f–king fascists” – after they cuffed one of the demonstrators at an anti-Israel rally, wild new video shows.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in Austin, Texas, condemned “unnecessary and excessive force” used by police officers to arrest students at the University of Texas campus in Austin who were protesting the Israel-Hamas war.
Hochul and the Legislature tripled state budget funding for a politically connected nonprofit group on her home turf, Say Yes Buffalo, which boasts powerful board members including Sen. Tim Kennedy and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples Stokes.
As part of the budget, Hochul announced more than $33 million will go towards expanding services for New Yorkers struggling with mental illness and involved in the criminal justice system.
“We don’t want to see people locked up as a solution — that is not going to stop what is happening out there on the streets,” Hochul said. “We want them to get the help they need, get the stability, get the path toward a healthy life.”
New York lawmakers are pushing a flurry of bills on squatters, declaring enough is enough after a series of disturbing home takeovers in the Big Apple and elsewhere.
Plans to streamline the siting of transmission line projects in New York were included in the final budget plan, and supporters are celebrating changes they say will benefit the state’s ambitious clean energy goals.
After schools reopened and went back to their normal schedules post-pandemic, special education students in New York are still waiting for all of their programs to be fully restored.
Mayor Eric Adams revealed higher revenue projections and lower asylum-seeker costs in his latest budget update, according to several people familiar with the plan — allowing him to further roll back some unpopular planned cuts.
Adams announced a $111.6 billion budget proposal yesterday afternoon — $2.2 billion more than his January estimate. However, the mayor has only restored a fraction of the more than $7.2 billion worth of cuts across the current and upcoming fiscal years.
Adams reversed proposed cuts to the police department and early childhood education after the city was able to lower the cost of migrant care and tax receipts came in better than forecast.
Adams’ nearly $112 billion spending plan reverses unpopular cuts to schools and police, fire and sanitation services but leaves libraries with a multimillion-dollar hole that will mean continued Sunday closures at nearly all branches.
“We’ve maintained all along these cuts were never necessary in the first place and we’ve got the money to restore these cuts, so let’s just do it,” said City Council Finance Chairman Justin Brannan.
The mayor’s reversal earned praise from organizations dependent on city funding, even as it fed criticism that his budgeting practices were opaque, overly conservative and detrimental to governance.
Fast-food chains and coffee shops in New York City would have to slap a warning on menu boards and packaging under a new rule from the Adams administration.
Far more allegations of sexual assault were recently made by detainees at Rikers Island than the number that the city ultimately reported under a federal law on sexual abuse in jails, New York City Council members said at an oversight hearing yesterday.
A Queens man who worked as a school crossing guard was charged with attempted rape and other crimes after he tried to lure an undercover police officer he believed to be a 14-year-old girl into a sexual act, officials said.
A federal judge in Brooklyn has rejected Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman’s request for a reduction of her nearly seven-year prison sentence for her crimes in Keith Raniere’s cult-like personal growth organization.
Three protesters have filed federal lawsuits against the City of Albany and its police department in connection with the April 2021 protests outside South Station.
Jonathan Damphier, the Albany police officer who was shot in the leg last week, was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon.
Nauman Hussain, the limousine company operator convicted of manslaughter in the 2018 Schoharie limo crash that left 20 dead, has asked a court to hear his appeal in September.
HBO’s “The Gilded Age” is set to return this fall to film parts of the series’ third season while possibly moving into new neighborhoods, city officials said.
The Capital District Transportation Authority said it awarded a contract to Carver Construction for $2.9 million to build two Mobility Hubs in Albany and Troy.
Biden granted clemency to a City of Albany woman who spent more than four years in federal prison for a nonviolent drug conviction.
The Albany Dutchmen won’t play this year because the team’s home field in Guilderland is no longer available to them, the summer college baseball team announced.
In celebration of more than a decade in business, Nine Pin Cider Works has released a package of cocktail-inspired light ciders, including mimosa, Cosmo, and mule flavors.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
