Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
This year’s St. Patrick’s Day is a little bit of a whomp-whomp, since it falls on a weekday.
Most of the partying and parading took place over the past weekend, though Mother Nature didn’t feel much like cooperating, sending high winds and chilly temperatures that forced at least one local celebration indoors.
I didn’t have the chance to partake in any corned beef and cabbage, of which I am a fan. I did have a little soda bread, which was too heavy on the caraway seeds for my taste, but did have a generous amount of currants. And yes, I am pro-current and/or raisin, (AKA “Spotty Dog”) and also pro-the addition of sugar, in keeping with the Irish-American tradition. Sorry purists.
If you really want to go deep on the history of soda bread and its many variations, click here.
What has evolved into a secular and cultural tradition – everyone is a little bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day etc. and so forth – actually has religious roots. March 17 is a feast day in honor of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland who brought Christianity to the country in the 5th century, and is believed to have died on this day in 461 AD (or maybe 465 AD, depending on which historical source you’re citing).
Despite the name “St. Patrick,” the Christian missionary who is credited for many things – including spreading his religion widely and perhaps driving the snakes out of Ireland – was never actually canonized by the church. He was a real person, but much of his story is not actually known and attributed largely to myth.
Another interesting fact about St. Patrick: Even though he is now so closely associated with Ireland, he was not himself actually Irish, but rather in Roman Britain, likely modern-day Scotland or Wales. He was originally brought to Ireland against his will, kidnapped at the age of 16 by Irish raiders and then enslaved on the island for six years before managing to escape.
During his enslavement, St. Patrick herded sheep and reportedly found comfort in his faith. After his escape and return home, he had a dream, recounted in his Latin autobiography, Confessio, in which he heard the Irish people calling for him to “walk again among us.” Over his parents objections, he went back to Ireland with the goal of spreading the gospel and baptizing as many people as he could.
Today, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated across the nation, but three cities closely associated with Irish immigrants and heritage – Boston, New York, and Chicago – are perhaps best known for their large-scale revelry, with Beantown and Chi-Town going so far as to even temporarily dye their respective rivers shamrock green.
But it turns out that Reno, Nevada, is also giving the big three a run for their money in the celebration department when it comes to the wearing of the green.
The upstate spring weather roller coaster continues – yesterday 60+ degrees, today, break those heavy coats back out because the high temperature will struggle to get out of the low 30s. Skies will be mostly cloudy, though the sun might make a brief appearance in the morning.
A high wind advisory, which started yesterday afternoon remains in effect through 11 p.m. tonight, with gusts up to 50 mph possible, so hang onto those proverbial hats.
In the headlines…
Israel believes that it has killed one of Iran’s most senior leaders, Ali Larijani, in overnight strikes, according to the Israeli defense minister.
The Israeli military said separately that it had killed Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, the powerful Iranian plainclothes militia, dealing another blow to Iran’s top leadership.
At least 400 people were killed and 250 others injured on Monday night after a Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, Afghan officials said, in the deadliest attack of the three-month conflict between the two neighbors.
With the Iran war entering a third week, Israel said it plans for at least three more weeks of war, while President Trump demanded other countries help the U.S. secure the vital Strait of Hormuz.
Trump largely side-stepped diplomatic coordination as he made the decision to launch strikes on Iran with Israel. But with the war’s economic and geopolitical consequences unfurling rapidly, he’s cajoling allies and other global powers to help mop up the mess.
Trump has threatened to postpone a long-planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as he called on China to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, casting a new shadow over the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies.
In a severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda, a federal judge in Massachusetts yesterday blocked the government from implementing a series of decisions on vaccines made over the last year by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The ruling also reversed, at least for the time being, all decisions made by the panelists that Mr. Kennedy appointed to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on which vaccines Americans should take.
Airport security lines are getting longer and longer as the Department of Homeland Security government shutdown stretches on and screeners working without paychecks call in sick or quit altogether.
The situation is likely to keep getting worse with few signs of serious talks in Washington, D.C., to reach a compromise and end the partial shutdown that has cut funding to the Transportation Safety Administration and other DHS agencies.
State budget negotiations took flight yesterday with the kickoff meeting known in Albany as “the mothership” and an announcement from Gov. Kathy Hochul that she is preparing to formally propose changing the state’s 2019 climate law this week.
Hochul has repeatedly pointed to an October ruling from a state Supreme Court justice as the reason energy costs will shoot up in the next five years if the state Legislature won’t agree to her desire to extend the greenhouse gas reduction deadlines of the CLCPA.
Despite the broad support from Hochul and state lawmakers for changes to Tier 6 of the New York State and Local Retirement System, which covers about 780,000 public employees, actually passing the reforms could be costly.
Assembly Republicans called on Hochul and her fellow Democrats to adopt some of the recommendation of a committee formed after last year’s state prison strike and had suggested several changes to the statute governing the use of solitary confinement.
State lawmakers want to ban surveillance pricing – when consumers’ personal data and algorithms are used to assign different prices to different people.
Hochul’s office is using taxpayer money to fund an advertising blitz promoting her agenda, brushing up against a ban on governors appearing in promotional material. State law prohibits elected officials from appearing in ads paid for with state funds.
Law-enforcement unions, including for New York City police and firefighters, are backing Hochul’s plan to attack car-insurance fraud and rein in personal-injury lawsuits.
David Fried, who’s served as a judge on the state’s Court of Claims and as an acting justice of the Rockland County Supreme Court since 2023, will take a seat on the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, thanks to a nomination from Hochul.
Five organizations that represent New York’s cannabis industry are urging Hochul to support a series of actions they say would help the state accomplish its goals to create “a safe, legal and equitable marketplace.”
New York State lawmakers won’t be able to get away with promoting legislation without spelling out its cost, thanks to a new watchdog website launched by the Business Council.
State Attorney General Letitia James is once again trying to strengthen consumer protections in New York. She’s pushing for nation-leading legislation that would make so-called “surveillance pricing” illegal in the state.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler’s campaign is quietly employing a political activist who criticized Democrats for traveling to Israel and benefiting from a “Jewish organized spending spree.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a go for today’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City. The mayor confirmed that he would not miss out on 265th edition of the annual parade, set to step off on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue at 11 a.m.
Mamdani said he will march alongside Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on Tuesday, brushing aside questions about any tension surrounding the appearance.
Mamdani will kick off his first St. Patrick’s Day as New York City mayor by hosting the first woman elected president of Ireland for a pre-dawn breakfast at Gracie Mansion.
Mamdani’s family has crossed paths with the anti-Israel activist who called Jews “cockroaches” and “vampires,” despite his attempts to distance himself from her.
The mayor’s first St. Patrick’s Day in City Hall may start with something more pointed than the usual breakfast-pageantry circuit: a lesson in Irish history from one of his closest labor allies.
Mamdani is moving to lower the speed limit around hundreds of schools across the five boroughs as part of a major escalation of the Vision Zero initiative.
Mamdani’s inauguration delivered something unimaginable for many of the city’s Muslims: representation of their identity for the first time among the elite echelons of political power in the city and country.
Mamdani is reportedly considering poaching the Council’s finance division head, Richard Lee, to be his Finance Department commissioner – a potential change that comes in the midst of budget negotiations between the two sides of City Hall.
Lee’s move to Mamdani’s finance department would leave the speaker without her top budget adviser amid increasingly tense negotiations over the city’s $127 billion spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year.
The union representing the city’s subway workers has filed suit against the MTA, arguing that transit agency honchos failed to get proper public comment before deciding not to back-fill sick subway station agents.
The former commissioner of New York City’s Department of Probation faces a criminal investigation into her rocky tenure at the agency.
A Queens man was freed and exonerated after 19 years in prison for a robbery he didn’t commit — after the Brooklyn district attorney’s office found he unwittingly used a money order belonging to the victim to buy a stove for his mother.
A New Jersey woman who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University in 2024 has been released from a federal immigration detention center in Texas, where she had been held for more than a year.
A four-alarm fire fanned by fierce winds killed four people, including one child, in Queens yesterday afternoon and injured 12 others, at least one of them critically, the authorities said.
Commute times across the Capital Region and Hudson Valley vary widely, from about 17 minutes in the town of Hunter in Greene County to more than 40 minutes in the city of Beacon in Dutchess County, according to data from the American Community Survey.
New York’s ban on residential brush burning began yesterday and will remain in place until May 14, according to the DEC.
Much of the Capital Region was under a wind advisory from yesterday afternoon until this morning, with meteorologists predicting strong winds and heavy rain could move into the Northeast.
The Albany Common Council will consider a bill that would allow police to seize vehicles used in illegal street races and punish spectators at those gatherings.
The proposal would amend Chapter 359 of the Albany City Code by adding a new Article XVI. The measure would give the city expanded authority to investigate and penalize conduct associated with unlawful speed contests, races, and sideshows.
The City of Schenectady says it is seeing progress on a series of changes at a Speedway location after the property was previously flagged for nuisance conditions.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
