Good morning, it’s Monday.
Yesterday was a total gift – especially after the endless deluge we experienced last week – bright blue skies without a cloud in sight, endless sunshine, temperatures that were just warm enough not to wear a jacket, but not so warm as to be uncomfortable.
I went for a trail run and then took a lovely walk with my mother and step-dad in one of my favorite places – my hometown of New Paltz. We stuck to the back roads to avoid the crowds, of which there are many this time of year. We sat in the sun and had a snack and just enjoyed each other’s company. It was perfect.
While I was running I crossed paths with a number of cyclists, and felt a tiny pang of envy. The aforementioned conditions make for perfect cycling weather. I am really looking forward to getting back to riding outside after a season of monotonous indoor training.
Biking on the roads is a mixed bag for me. I love the freedom of being outside on my bike and the ability to work out for hours on end without doing a number on my aging knees. I do not, however, love sharing the road with distracted, angry, careless, speeding drivers.
For the record, folks, buzzing a cyclist is not funny. Please give us some space out there. Close passes are dangers – and, apparently, they are increasing in number, which is very bad news indeed. I don’t even like to be beeped at – even by friends – because if I’m really in the zone, it can be very startling, which can, it turn, cause me to veer unnecessarily.
I am one of those cyclists who is militant about wearing a helmet, which, unfortunately, is only legally required here in New York for those who are 14 or younger. I have two acquaintances from my triathlon days who were hurt very badly in bike accidents – one hit a pothole and went over the handlebars, the other collided with a fellow cyclist.
So, if you encounter someone on a blue and orange trio bike this season – on the road or rail trial – who yells at you to “put on a helmet” – especially if you happen to be with your kids, who ARE protecting their noggins, while you are not, chances are that’s me. Yes, I’m that person. And proud of it.
When done correctly – with the head protected, observing the rules of the road, signaling appropriately etc. – cycling can be incredibly beneficial, both for your body and your mind. It’s also good for the environment. Bikes slash your carbon footprint by reducing the number of cars on the road, cutting down on both noise AND air pollution.
May is National Bike Month, and this week – May 12 through the 18th, is National Bike to Work Week, a perfect opportunity to leave your car at home and try commuting to work on your own steam. (This would be difficult for those of us who work at home; I would basically have to go for a ride and then return in order to make it work, not that I’m adverse to that idea).
If you do plan on hitting the road on two wheels this week, today looks like your best bet, weather wise. It will be another glorious day, with clear, sunny skies and temperatures flirting with 80 degrees. There’s more rain in the forecast later on this week – mostly thunderstorms. We’ll keep you posted as the situation develops.
In the headlines…
The White House yesterday announced a “trade deal” with China without providing specifics, after Trump administration officials spent the weekend negotiating with their Chinese counterparts.
While details of the deal are still unclear, any de-escalation in the ongoing trade war could bring much-needed relief to a global economy that has been roiled since President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement.
Trump vowed to bring “FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!” by deeply slashing prescription drug prices through an executive order he plans to sign this morning.
Trump promised to implement what he called “most favored nation” pricing, which would cut pharmaceutical and prescription drug prices “almost immediately, by 30% to 80%,” he announced in a Truth Social post last night.
The Trump administration plans to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One, which would make it one of the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the U.S. government.
Trump intends to use the aircraft — called the most luxurious private jet in the world — as an interim presidential jet while Boeing completes the next generation Air Force One fleet following years of frustrating delays and cost-overruns.
A U.S.-funded charter plane carrying dozens of white South Africans who claim to have been victims of discrimination in their home country left Johannesburg yesterday, heading for the US, where the Trump administration is welcoming them as refugees.
Hamas said yesterday that the last living American hostage in Gaza, Edan Alexander, 21, will be released as part of efforts to establish a ceasefire, reopen crossings into the Israeli-blockaded territory and resume the delivery of aid.
The announcement, which did not say when Alexander, an Israeli soldier with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship who was captured while on duty in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, would be set free, came as Trump planned to visit the region.
His release is part of “the steps being taken to achieve a ceasefire, open the crossings, and allow aid,” Khalil al-Hayya, head of Hamas’ negotiating team, said in a statement. Al-Hayya did not provide information on Alexander’s condition.
Trump took to social media to confirm the agreement with Hamas on Alexander’s release, saying that it was made to “put an end to this very brutal war and return ALL living hostages and remains to their loved ones.”
House Republicans released a plan that would cause millions of poor Americans to lose Medicaid health coverage and millions more to pay higher fees when they go to the doctor, but stopped short of an overhaul with the deepest cuts to the program.
The program’s defenders in the GOP appear to have won the intraparty clash over how aggressively to change the system that provides health insurance to more than 70 million low-income and disabled people.
But lawmakers are plowing forward with other major initiatives that could leave millions without coverage as the GOP starts laying out key provisions of its party-line domestic policy megabill.
States have long used taxes on hospitals and nursing homes to increase federal matching funds. If Republicans end the tactic, red states could feel the most pain.
Tallying hundreds of pages, the legislation is touching off the biggest political fight over health care since Republicans tried to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, during Trump’s first term in 2017 — which ended in failure.
A preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over the decade.
Newark Liberty International Airport saw another meltdown yesterday morning after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a ground stop at the travel hub.
“There was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark…airspace,” the FAA said, adding that it “briefly slowed aircraft” while ensuring “redundancies were working as designed.”
A short time later, a different outage hit Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — the busiest in the country.
As Newark Liberty International Airport struggled with technological disruptions and staffing shortages, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that more U.S. airports could face similar disruptions as the busy summer travel season approached.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday at a federal immigration detention center where he has been protesting this week in opposition to its opening. He was released hours later and told supporters: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Baraka said he’s been “shocked by all the lies” told so far about his arrest at a New Jersey immigration detention center, specifically the false claims that he’d been trespassing before he was taken into custody.
Trump administration homeland security officials were responsible for starting the confrontation at the New Jersey immigration jail that led to the arrest of Newark’s mayor as well as threats to detain three members of Congress, the representatives said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security suggested that three Democratic members of Congress might face assault charges after a confrontation outside an immigration detention facility in Newark during Baraka’s arrest.
Trump’s efforts to upend the conventional understanding of birthright citizenship heads to the Supreme Court this week, the first time in his second term that the justices will consider a major administrative action from the bench.
Pope Leo XIV returned to the balcony where he was presented to the world as the new leader of the Roman Catholic church just days ago, using his first Sunday address to the faithful to call for peace.
“Never again war,” he said to the tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square. His appeal was addressed to the world’s most powerful leaders, and he noted that it had been almost 80 years to the day since the “immense tragedy” of World War II had ended.
The Trump administration has fired the nation’s top copyright official, Shira Perlmutter, days after abruptly terminating the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office.
A new poll has found New York could be competitive for Republicans as candidates eye challenging unpopular Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul who is running for reelection in 2026.
Legislation incorporated into the latest state budget in 15 years was signed by Hochul Friday after more than a month of negotiations that resulted in a $254 billion package with tax relief, new spending and other key items sought by Democrats.
A state budget bill passed by the New York Legislature included unforeseen changes to the public campaign finance system that could help candidates collect more taxpayer money for their campaigns while also leaning on bigger donors.
Hochul signed legislation to make community college free for adults in New York State who are entering “high-demand fields.”
Hochul’s big-spending, $254 billion budget is extending her considerable power over New York’s finances — granting her authority to make mid-year cuts if the economy sours.
In an op-ed published on Friday by Fox News, Hochul invoked her status as New York’s “first mom governor” to pledge her commitment to protecting children.
The message, and her choice of a conservative news outlet to deliver it, was a striking example of how Hochul has embraced a kind of “family values” approach more in line with the Republican Party of the 1990s than with the Democratic Party of the 2020s.
A multimillion-dollar contract the state comptroller’s office signed with a tech company over a decade ago, which does not appear on the agency’s public-facing database of similar agreements, has spurred indignation among current and former employees.
A pioneer of New York’s legal marijuana sales to medical patients has accused Hochul and state regulators of being “un-American” for allegedly thwarting his and other such businesses.
New York has paused sales of millions of dollars of top-selling cannabis vapes and pre-rolled joints amid an investigation into whether they were made with legally approved ingredients produced in the state.
More than 1,700 pages of documents about Mayor Eric Adams’ closed criminal case were released Friday night by Trump’s Department of Justice.
The trove of court records, which had been sealed, opens a window into the criminal case and shows that even as Washington officials were backing away from the prosecution, investigators in Manhattan were moving forward.
The documents reveal the extraordinary steps the mayor and his aides took to keep their communications secret — prompting the FBI to seek approval to unlock his electronic devices by pressing the mayor’s fingers to devices or holding his head in front of them.
Prosecutors weren’t buying Adams’ tale of cellphone mishaps and were considering the possibility that he was obstructing the investigation. They also suspected he was lying about the device’s location when they attempted to seize it from him near NYU.
In a statement on Friday, Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, said the case “should never have been brought in the first place and is now over.” A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
For the first time since his federal corruption case was dropped, Adams met with Trump in Washington on Friday, hours before documents related to his case were released.
After Adams had left, Trump quickly summarized the meeting. “I think he came in to thank me, frankly,” he said without elaborating.
A historic West Village rec center at risk of collapse will be rebuilt at a cost of $51 million under Adams’ latest proposed budget.
A group seeking to mobilize Jewish voters in the city’s upcoming June 24 primary elections including for mayor is launching a $500,000 TV and social-media ad campaign to try to drive up turnout amid rising antisemitism.
US Rep. Adriano Espaillat is backing Andrew Cuomo for New York City mayor — strengthening the embattled former governor’s support among Latino communities in Washington Heights and the Bronx.
A veteran prosecutor who used to work in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is seeking to topple current DA Alvin Bragg.
A city councilman wants to close a discovery law loophole that’s sparking unnecessary criminal case dismissals — with a tweak Albany lawmakers left on the cutting room floor during budget season.
An informal survey along Bleecker Street surfaced complaints about higher delivery costs due to congestion pricing, but most businesses are making do, even if they do not like it.
Evidence has mounted that the congestion pricing program so far is achieving its two main goals — reducing congestion and raising revenue for transit improvements — even as the federal government has ramped up pressure to halt it.
New York City students scored far below the rest of the state and country on the SAT — producing the lowest average scores in at least seven years, troubling new data show.
A bipartisan group of nine New York City and state lawmakers is demanding that Brooklyn College take swift action after a mob of anti-Israel protesters brawled with cops on campus Thursday, resulting in more than a dozen arrests.
Hudson the dog is officially off the leash after being adopted by the NYPD officer who fished her out of the East River.
Scientists have a plan to restore the nearly extinct American chestnut to its abundant glory, and they need New York City residents’ help.
Abigail Williams, a 21-year-old freelance video game designer, was named the 77th Tulip Queen at the Tulip Queen coronation on Saturday, a key part of the city’s annual Tulip Festival in Albany’s Washington Park.
Norlite’s controversial hazardous waste incinerator off Saratoga Street in Cohoes was shut down in March of last year amid legal challenges with the state. More than a year later, the company’s future plans are up in the air.
The body of a 22-year-old Canadian man who went missing last year while hiking around Allen Mountain in Essex County has been found, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said Saturday.
Village of Ballston Spa residents who live in the shadow of a water tower now fear that an even taller structure will hover over their homes — a 180-foot cellphone monopole.
One of the worst “zombie properties” in Schenectady county on Landon Terrace, as well as a warehouse on Rankin Avenue that sat vacant for years, are among the blighted properties that Habitat for Humanity is poised to turn into a dream home for a family.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Friday released preliminary findings in its investigation of an airplane crash that killed six people in Copake last month.
There will not be any freshmen at Schenectady High School next school year. The school district is moving its entire ninth grade to other sites this fall — most of them to a newly renovated building called the Steinmetz Freshman Leadership Academy.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
