Good Thursday morning.
You could be forgiven, considering everything that’s going on in the world these days, for missing a recent – and quite amazing – story about a 15-year-old New Yorker who survived a lightning strike in Central Park last weekend.
Yassin Khalifa told reporters that he had sheltered under a tree near the park’s East Meadow during a sudden thunderstorm – a decision he rightly deemed “might not have been the best idea.” Lightning struck the tree and traveled through a metal chain he had around his neck, which knocked him unconscious for several minutes.
Khalifa suffered second-degree burns on his torso and leg, but is expected to make a full recovery. That would be very lucky for him, because while lightning strikes don’t kill all that many people – about 20 a year in the U.S., with hundreds more injured, according to the National Weather Service – the experience of being struck can cause long-term neurological damage.
Thankfully, the odds of being struck by lightning are less than 1 in 1 million, according to the CDC, and the odds of being struck more than once over the course of your are even less. And by the way, the idea that lightning never strikes the same place twice is a total myth – case in point: The Empire State Buildings gets hit about 25 times a year.
The record is seven times in one lifetime, which reportedly occurred to a Virginia park ranger named Roy Cleveland Sullivan, who survived every single one of those strikes, but died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Sadly, this isn’t terribly surprising, as depression and other mental health challenges are reportedly common among lightning strike survivors.
The best way to avoid getting hit by lightning is to NOT be outside during a severe storm. If you are stranded outside and can’t seek shelter in a safe building or hard-topped vehicle that is grounded, there are a series of best practices for staying safe. The problem is that most people don’t KNOW about these best practices and don’t learn them in school – especially if they live in an urban area.
As Yassin Khalifa’s sister, Reem, said: “We learned about fire drills. We learned about lockdown drills. We know how to escape an active shooter in our schools, shelter in place. We never learned about lightning.”
I mentioned above the word “grounded” – what do I mean by that? Lightning wants to strike the ground, and it will find the most obvious low-resistance conductive path to do so. Ideally, buildings have lightning rods that enable a strike to pass through harmlessly en route to the ground without frying internal electrical systems.
If YOU are grounded and a strike hits nearby, the electricity can travel through your body, causing serious injury or death. If you’re lying down, that’s more surface area between you and the ground for the lightning to flow through. If lightning strikes directly ON the ground, it can spread to a sizable area (this is known as a ground current, and is the most significant cause of lightning-related injuries to people).
So, best practices in the event of a lightning storm:
- Avoid open areas, high ground, and tall/isolated objects (like trees, for example).
- Minimize your ground contact. Stay away from power lines, metal fences, and other things that might be good conductors.
- After the LAST lighting flash you see, wait at least 30 minutes before going back outside.
- Do NOT use or touch electronics, outlets, or anything plugged in.
- Avoid water, tall trees, metal objects, and windows.
Talk about an extreme weather swing – we’re moving from the 90s into the 70s (?!) today, with cloudy skies and a slight chance of a rain shower. Tomorrow will be even crazier…like almost sweater weather, comparatively speaking. Stay tuned.
In the headlines…
A NATO summit designed to please President Trump ended with his European allies approving an ambitious spending goal to meet the threat of a militarizing Russia, and clinching a long-elusive public commitment from him for the alliance’s collective defense.
The split dynamic — where leaders tailored their gathering to appeal to Trump, even as he questions the core provision of membership — made for a charged atmosphere as the conference was getting underway at The Hague.
Far from the tense meetings of Trump’s first term, much of the annual summit in The Hague seemed catered to the impulses and worldviews of Trump, whose “America First” foreign policy ethos downplays the importance and influence of multilateral coalitions.
Trump repeated his claim that U.S. strikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear program despite Pentagon intelligence reports that questioned how much damage was inflicted.
Minutes into the first meeting of new scientific advisers appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it was clear that the skeptical panelists intended to upend longstanding vaccine recommendations in the US, particularly those pertaining to children.
The United States won’t contribute anymore to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, until the global health organization has “re-earned the public trust,” Kennedy Jr. said.
Kennedy Jr. testified this week in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over the department’s 2026 budget — and lawmakers grilled him on an array of topics, from federal funding cuts to vaccines.
Kennedy Jr. promised “one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history” to reach the goal of getting a wearable health tracking device on every American.
A senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, denied to Congress that he had expressed to subordinates an intent to ignore court orders to accomplish President Trump’s rapid deportation goals.
Kari Lake, the close Trump ally and senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, urged Congress to gut the Voice of America and other federally funded news organizations she oversees, as lawmakers of both parties expressed concern about the move.
Lake called independent reporting from international news agencies funded by the government “corrupt” and “biased,” and made clear Trump’s goal was not to overhaul but to shut down the global media agency, which she called “a rotten piece of fish.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, 74, was taken to a local hospital yesterday morning for dehydration treatment after becoming lightheaded while working out. He was briefly hospitalized “out of an abundance of caution,” a spokesperson said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and Con Edison urged downstate New York residents to conserve their energy usage Wednesday, June 25, as state energy officials warn the region’s energy resources are reaching “peak capacity.”
New York Senate Republicans are urging Hochul to help Jewish New Yorkers potentially stranded in Israel amid the Iran conflict, pointing to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to fly residents home to Tampa.
Funds from this year’s state budget will carry the Empire State Plaza through the first phase of its long-awaited decarbonization plan.
Hochul’s embrace. of nuclear power, which follows months of her teasing the possibility, has left environmental advocates scratching their heads and earned Hochul praise from an unlikely source: state Senate Republicans.
Clean energy and environmental advocates quickly came out to condemn Hochul’s planned return to nuclear energy after the state invested greatly to shut down old nuclear reactors.
Hochul’s plan for the government to lead in building a new nuclear power plant is a surprising one, given New York’s history of using top-down policies to shut down the energy source.
If Hochul is in a hurry to build the state’s first nuclear power plant in 50 years, Central New York is likely to be a leading contender to host it.
Republicans in New York finally have a real socialist to rail against when attacking Democrats. And they wasted no time weaponizing Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic primary victory against Hochul ahead of next year’s gubernatorial race.
Democratic primary turnout in New York’s largest cities didn’t top 30% as record temperatures pushed some voters to sit out mayoral contests — including several where the winners will likely cruise to victory in November.
Mamdani took a victory lap on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” yesterday, saying his historic showing in Tuesday’s mayoral primary is a sign that voters are looking for a shakeup in the Democratic party.
“It’s part of a long-needed recognition that our democracy isn’t just under attack from an authoritarian administration in Washington D.C.,” he said. “It’s also under attack from a withering faith in its ability to resolve the most pressing crises in New Yorkers’ lives.”
Trump blasted Mamdani’s politics – and looks – after the socialist’s stunning upset win. “Democrats have crossed the line” by elevating “100% Communist Lunatic,” Trump said. “We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous.”
President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan ripped into Mamdani’s mayoral campaign promise to “kick the fascist ICE out of New York City,” telling the Democratic socialist that it’s “game on.”
The state assemblyman ran a campaign tightly focused on issues related to affordability. Here is a look at where he stands on those issues and others.
The day after Mamdani became the presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee, New York’s political leaders declined to formally endorse him, and some donors to Cuomo considered coalescing behind Mayor Eric Adams.
Mamdani’s success in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population offered the starkest evidence yet that opposition to Israel and its government — even questioning its existence — is increasingly acceptable to broader swaths of the party.
Rama Duwaji, a 27-year-old animator and illustrator, married the presumptive Democratic nominee for New York City mayor this winter. She was not seen on the campaign trail, but her husband’s Primary Day success has thrust her into the spotlight.
The fight for Gracie Mansion is just beginning. And the Democratic primary frontrunner, Mamdani, will face fierce opposition from the current mayor, Adams, the Republican candidate, and possibly former Gov. Andrew Cuomo – again.
In a post-election interview with the New York Times, Mamdani, the likely winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, said he took some lessons from Trump’s focus on the cost of living.
The progressive state lawmaker’s sleek social media presence and army of eager volunteers could offer the Democratic Party a road map for how to win back voters.
On the day after Mamdani emerged as the likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler endorsed him in November’s general election, giving Mamdani a key measure of support from one of the city’s most prominent Jewish leaders.
Mamdani’s projected victory was propelled by a surge in voters from historically Black and Hispanic neighborhoods coming out to support him despite leaning more moderate in past elections, including backing Adams in 2021.
Adams blasted Mamdani as a “snake oil salesman” adding: “He was saying anything to get elected,” during a “Fox & Friends yesterday morning.
Adams called himself “perfectly imperfect” while pitching his re-election bid to the New York Post.
Prominent New York business leaders who supported Cuomo are reportedly hoping he will drop out of the race completely after his humiliating loss in the Democratic mayoral primary.
Speculation is swirling about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plans for 2028 after she successfully endorsed dark-horse candidate Mamdani in the heated New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
New York Republican Party members called Mamdani’s lead over Cuomo “the most alarming signal yet of how far left and out of touch the Democratic Party has become” while touting their candidate in the general election.
“Mamdani must be defeated in November — and Republican Curtis Sliwa is the only candidate who will fight for safe streets and economic opportunity for all New Yorkers,” party chairman Ed Cox said in a statement.
The NY Post called on Cuomo to drop his bid to run on an independent line in the November general election.
Several insiders close to the Cuomo camp said that the thrice-elected Democrat will almost certainly not run in the general election as an independent candidate, seeing no obvious path to victory, though Cuomo himself continued to say he’s considering a run.
Relatives of Win Rozario, a 19-year-old shot to death by NYPD officers in his Queens home last year, are demanding that Mayor Adams meet with them.
The cost to taxpayers of the private law firm hired to represent former senior mayoral adviser Tim Pearson has swelled to nearly $500,000, updated city records show.
A potential cyberattack continued for a second day to cause widespread computer system outages at Columbia University on Wednesday as the school’s engineers worked to investigate the problem and restore service.
The notorious MDC Brooklyn federal jail has started taking in ICE detainees, with more than 100 now housed in the Sunset Park lockup that also houses Sean “Diddy” Combs and alleged healthcare CEO-killer Luigi Mangione, sources tell the Daily News.
Soaring temperatures sent more than 100 people to emergency rooms in New York City for heat-related illnesses on Tuesday, the hottest day in more than a decade, according to data from city health officials.
A 17-year-old boy was fatally shot on Tuesday during an argument over a water gun fight that broke out in a Bronx park on one of the hottest days in New York City in over a decade, the police and the boy’s mother said on Wednesday.
Progressive Democrats largely dominated mayoral primary election races across New York on Tuesday with outcomes that appear to offer a sharp rebuke to the more moderate factions of the party scrambling for cohesion after stinging losses last November.
Albany County Legislator Sam Fein beat out two challengers in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in anticipation of him replacing Dorcey Applyrs as Albany’s chief city auditor.
A brand-new Lincoln Park Pool will open July 5 after undergoing almost two years of demolition and construction after water leakage issues with the old, but iconic, pool.
The man who allegedly menaced a federal prosecutor outside a downtown hotel last week will not face the attempted murder charge that was initially filed against him, Albany County District Attorney Lee Kindlon announced.
After the breakup of a merger with another private school, Doane Stuart is trying to attract homeschooled students for programs, such as sports and the arts, that need a larger student base.
The academic year is ending for most City of Albany school students tomorrow, but the district’s contingent of summer school students will still be protected by the city’s speed enforcement cameras.
Saratoga County District Attorney Karen Heggen announced her retirement yesterday, weeks after she told her staff that she planned to exit the office she’s led for a decade.
Camping is now banned in most public portions of the Town of Waterford under a new local law that is designed, in part, to deter squatting – particularly along the Erie Canal.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
