Good morning, it’s Thursday.
I think by now those of you who have been here a while are well aware of my fear of flying. So, it will probably come as no surprise to you that hot hair ballooning is not high on my bucket list.
I do very much enjoy watching hot air balloons – the oldest form of flight technology employed to carry human passengers – while standing safely on the ground.
I have several times witnessed the pre-event inflation of the Thanksgiving Day Parade floats, which, to my mind, anyway, are a relative of a traditional hot air balloon. That draws a VERY big crowd to Manhattan’s Upper West Side annually, and while I’m not a fan of crowds these days, it is a fun thing to do at least once – especially with kids.
I have never attended a hot air balloon festival, though there are several held across New York, including one in the Hudson Valley in August, another in Lake George in September, and yet one more in Binghamton – with the added bonus of spiedies! – also in August. (Full disclosure: I was once at Spiedie Fest in a professional capacity, broadcasting “Capital Tonight” live from its grounds, but we didn’t stick around long enough to watch the balloons get launched).
If you’re really into the idea of traveling around to watching colorful cloth bags float gently on the breeze, click here.
Today is Hot Air Balloon Day, which purports to commemorate the first public demonstration of what was at the time cutting-edge technology, though the interwebs inform me that event actually happened in Annonay, France on June 4, 1783.
On that day, two brothers – Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier – successfully managed to get a 28,000-cubic-foot fabric balloon lined with paper, coated with fireproofing, and held together with 2,000 buttons rise more than 3,000 in the air and travel two miles.
The balloon in question had no passengers, but a few months later, the brothers Montgolfier sent a duck, a chicken, and a sheep skyward. The successful animal flight demonstration was held in front of Louis XVI and the royal family at the palace of Versailles. The trio was rewarded for their bravery with a place in the Menagerie in Versailles, which is better than getting eaten, I guess.
The first manned hot hair balloon flight occurred on Nov. 21, 1783 – a significant milestone in aviation history.
These days, we view hot air balloons largely as a recreational novelty, but they really were influential and paved the way for modern-day flight. They also were adapted for military and scientific uses (spying, which is still a thing today – remember the infamous Chinese intelligence-gathering balloons? – weather monitoring and prediction, etc.)
Ostensibly speaking, hot air balloon accidents are increasingly rare. The NTSB, which collects data on pretty much all forms of transportation, found there were just 775 accidents involving hot air balloons between 1964 and 2022, and only 70 of those were fatal. In 2022, the FAA decided hot air balloon pilots should have medical certificates when flying paying passengers — just like other commercial pilots – and also increased their number of required training certification hours.
The most famous hot air balloon crash was one that occurred in 2013 near Luxor, Egypt, in which the balloon in question caught fire due to a leak in its gas fuel system and crashed, killed 19 of the 21 people on board. This was the deadliest aerostat disaster since the 1937 Hindenburg debacle, which involved a Zeppelin, killed 36 people, and marked the end of passenger airships.
FWIW, “aerostat” is a fancy word for a lighter-than-air aircraft that uses buoyancy to stay aloft, similar to how a ship floats on water.
It’s going to be warm and mostly sunny again today, though there’s a chance of showers and/or a stray thunderstorm developing later on in the evening. Temperatures will max out in the high 80s, potentially even hitting 90 degrees.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump is resurrecting the travel ban policy from his first term, signing a proclamation Wednesday night preventing people from a dozen countries from entering the United States.
The countries include Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Trump also imposed restrictions, but stopped short of a full ban, on travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. People from those countries cannot come to the US permanently or get tourist or student visas.
The proclamation carves out exceptions for lawful permanent residents, visa holders, World Cup and Olympics athletes and their immediate relatives, and people whose visit is deemed to benefit U.S. national interests, among other classes.
The ban was issued due to national security risks, the White House said. The antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado last weekend, reportedly spurred Trump to complete work on the proclamation more quickly.
Trump ordered his White House counsel and the attorney general on Wednesday to investigate former President Joe. Biden and his staff in the current president’s latest attempt to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor.
In an executive order, Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge.
The executive order came after Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone.
The Smithsonian had spent months trying to get its paws on a pair of Arabian leopards, and now the Saudis are agreeing to send two of them to live at the National Zoo as part of a conservation program. Trump is very happy about this.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the broad Republican bill to cut taxes and slash some federal programs would add $2.4 trillion to the already soaring national debt over the next decade.
The budget office is projecting 10.9 million more people will be uninsured in 2034 because of changes to Medicaid included in the Trump megabill and a total of 16 million people could potentially go uninsured over the next decade.
House Republicans suddenly find themselves scrambling to mollify Elon Musk, who has been venting his rage at them for voting for a Trump-backed domestic policy bill he calls a “disgusting abomination.”
That total includes an estimated 1.4 million people in state-funded health programs without verified citizenship, nationality or satisfactory immigration status.
The Trump administration has returned a Guatemalan man wrongly deported to Mexico, the first instance of compliance with a judge’s order to facilitate the return of a migrant challenging their removal.
The man, known in court documents at O.C.G., made contact with his attorneys after landing in the U.S., Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, confirmed.
Judges have directed Trump’s administration to help return several migrants to the country because they were wrongly deported, and the man’s arrival appeared to mark the first time one of those migrants has been able to come back.
A Washington man is charged with providing large amounts of chemicals used in a car bomb outside a Palm Springs, California, fertility clinic last month, federal authorities said.
The two men connected in fringe online forums over their shared beliefs against human procreation, authorities told reporters.
The US vetoed the UN Security Council resolution demanding an “immediate and permanent” ceasefire in the Gaza Strip over the measure not having the release of hostages held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas as a condition for the truce.
The resolution, backed by 14 of the 15 member states, also did not say that Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, has to disarm and depart the war-torn enclave, and it did not condemn the group for its Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel.
Israeli security forces in the southern Gaza Strip recovered the bodies of two Israeli Americans who were killed in the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday.
Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is leaving the Democratic Party and promoting a new book expected to offer insight into her time serving under President Joe Biden.
She is expected to write about “the betrayal by the Democratic Party” that led to Biden’s decision to abandon his re-election bid, according to a description of the book from Legacy Lit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that lawmakers who claim not to have read parts of the GOP spending bill should use ChatGPT to ask: “Anything I should worry about in here?”
Hochul has recommended former New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt Jr., a former chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and New York City environmental attorney Jose Almanzar to serve on the Adirondack Park Agency board.
In a rare direct rebuke of his successor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo questioned why Hochul earmarked $2 billion for inflation refund checks in the state budget, but rejected more funding for a child care voucher program for low-income families.
A measure to limit large-scale farming in New York is dividing lawmakers on opposite sides of the aisle — and opposite ends of the state.
Portions of New York were feeling the impacts yesterday morning of Canadian wildfire smoke, which has descended heavily on the Midwest.
A casual viewer could be forgiven for mistaking Democrats’ first New York City mayoral debate for the roast of Cuomo. All eight of his primary opponents took turns throwing verbal daggers last night at the former governor.
The pile-on against Cuomo hit on his big business donors, the sexual assault allegations against him and even his campaign’s use of artificial intelligence.
At one point, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist state lawmaker who has emerged as one of the leading candidates in the race, pressed Cuomo on the overlap between the former governor’s political donors and those who donated to Trump.
Mamdani said of Cuomo: “I think he’s changing their minds himself as he’s shown himself unwilling to admit even a single regret. He’s just as allergic to apology and accountability, seemingly, as Donald Trump.”
Mamdani has been MIA from the state Capitol as he campaigns for New York City mayor — missing a whopping more than 50% of votes in the Assembly.
Cuomo tried to make political bank during the heated Democratic mayoral primary by calling out his opponents’ past support for the “Defund the Police” movement.
Democrats are favored to win the mayorship in deep-blue New York City come November. But the debate caught the attention of the Republican National Committee, which criticized a handful of the candidates over immigration.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City’s most prominent progressive leader, endorsed Mamdani for mayor, throwing her clout behind an upstart socialist who has galvanized young voters, and said she would rank Speaker Adrienne Adams second.
New York City will now limit e-bike and scooter riders to 15 miles per hour on city streets as part of a broader push by Mayor Eric Adams to rein in the fast-growing and controversial delivery sector.
Adams made the announcement during a live interview with News 4, and only minutes before the first Democratic primary debate, which he sat out.
The Mayor of New York City took time to thank Tom Thibodeau upon his impeachment from the New York Knicks.
Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive who is running for mayor of New York City, visited The New York Times for an interview.
Immigrants appearing on short notice for required check-ins with a private contractor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are being detained after their meetings in Lower Manhattan, sometimes as sobbing family members look on.
Win, New York City’s main provider of family shelter and supportive housing, sounded the alarm over Trump’s expanded budget proposal, which seeks massive cuts to federal housing programs and assistance.
As New York City warms up, with nearly 90-degree temperatures expected this week, City Comptroller Brad Lander is warning that many residents struggle to pay their energy bills, and a “triple whammy” of factors could lead to more heat-related deaths.
Ysabel Abreu, a former staff in Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ office, alleged that Williams’ chief of staff created a toxic work environment and that members of Williams’ security detail attempted to drug her during an office party.
Columbia University has discriminated against Jewish students following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants on Israel and no longer meets accreditation standards, the federal Department of Education alleged.
A kite string suspended across the Marine Parkway Bridge cut into one bicyclist’s throat and another’s head and finger as they unknowingly rode into it on Sunday, one of the cyclists said.
With three weeks until the June 24 vote, Albany’s Democratic mayoral primary remains close, and questions have been raised about candidates’ party affiliations.
The East Greenbush Police Department has for decades been housed in the basement of Town Hall on Columbia Turnpike. Police Chief Elaine Rudzinski says it’s time for the department to go elsewhere.
Attorneys for the defendants in the Buffalo Billion case argue in a legal brief this week with the U.S. Supreme Court that a filing last month by the new solicitor general “stakes out and defends an extreme position” in objecting to their quest to avoid a second trial.
GlobalFoundries announced that it will spend an additional $3 billion to expand its artificial intelligence chipmaking capabilities at its factories in Saratoga County and Essex Junction, Vt.
The announcement will bring GlobalFoundries’ total commitments to semiconductor manufacturing, advanced packaging and AI innovation across New York and Vermont to $16 billion.
PJ’s Bar-B-QSA in Saratoga Springs is not permanently closed, say the owners in their first comment on the matter. But its future remains unclear.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
