Good morning, it’s Monday.
On this date in 2016, the 65th Infantry Regiment became the only Hispanic unit from the Korean War to receive a Congressional Gold Medal – one of this country’s highest civilian honors, awarded to individuals, groups, or institutions for distinguished achievements and contributions that impact American history and culture.
Members of this regiment were dubbed the “Borinqueneers”, which stems from the the Taíno name for Puerto Rico: “Borinquen,” combined with the word “buccaneer.” The unit served in Panama during World War I and in Europe during World War II, but gained fame for its actions in the Korean War.
Side note: the Taíno were the indigenous people who lived in the Caribbean islands before Columbus showed up in 1492. They primarily made their homes on the islands we know today as Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas. In the native Arawak language, “Taino” means “the good ones”.
Back to the Borinqueneers.
Congress authorized the “Puerto Rico Battalion of Volunteer Infantry” in 1899 for local peacekeeping after the U.S. acquired the island from Spain in 1898 through the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War. (This occurred just one year after Spain had granted Puerto Rico self-rule).
The volunteer infantry was incorporated into the so-called “regular” Army in 1908, and then, after serving in WWI, was formally designated as the 65th Infantry Regiment on June 4, 1920
Members of the segregated, all-Hispanic unit were renown for their bravery, but perhaps best known for their heroics during the Korean War, during which they won numerous decorations, including 10 Distinguished Service Crosses, 256 Silver Stars, and over 600 Bronze Stars.
They did these things despite facing significant challenges, including language barriers, lack of leadership, and being consistently under-supplied. Another significant challenge arose between December 1952 and January 1953 when 104 members of the 65th were court-martialed following the Battle of Jackson Heights.
The outcry in response to these charges was so significant that the an Army internal investigation left to the convictions being eventually overturned and the men were pardoned. It wasn’t until then-President Barack Obama’s decision to award the once-disgraced regiment the Congressional Gold Medal in 2014 that their reputation was fully restored in the public eye.
As is the case with other Korean War veterans, there are only a few Borinqueneers still alive today. Those who are still around are in their 90s or even older. As of 2024, there were at least two living in Western Massachusetts.
It’s going to be cloudy today with showers developing in the afternoon. The good news is that it will be warmer, with highs potentially reaching into the low 70s.
By the middle of the week, temperatures are expected to rise into the mid-80s in Orange County and the lower 80s in portions of the mid-Hudson Valley region — a double-digit deviation from the 30-year average, according to the National Weather Service.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump said that the US Navy will begin blockading ships in the Strait of Hormuz and interdicting every ship that has paid a toll to Iran, after US peace talks with the country ended in a stalemate.
The announcement plunged the already brittle truce into further uncertainty. Vice President JD Vance and the chief Iranian negotiator met in Pakistan over the weekend, but did not reach a deal to fully reopen the strait or conclusively end the war.
Trump predicted that Iran would return to the negotiating table and “give us everything we want”, while warning that he could take out Iran in “in one day.”
Oil prices rose and stocks fell after peace talks between the United States and Iran ended without a deal. Hours later, Trump announced plans to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump suggested that elevated gasoline prices in the United States might not fall before the November midterm elections, a prediction that continued his mixed messaging and underscored potential political headwinds facing Republicans in the fall.
Trump slammed Pope Leo XIV for being “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in a lengthy Truth Social post following the American pontiff’s veiled rebukes of the Iran war. “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump wrote.
“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History,” the president added.
When Pope Leo XIV embarks today on a 10-day tour of Africa, he will visit a continent that both represents the demographic future of the Roman Catholic Church and bears some of its deepest ideological fault lines.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has conceded defeat in the country’s elections on April 12 after 16 years in power and as one of Trump’s closest European allies.
The party’s leader and the country’s likely next prime minister, Péter Magyar, said on Facebook that Orbán “congratulated us on our victory over the phone.”
Speaking to supporters last night in Budapest, Orban said the “election results, although not complete, are understandable and clear. They are painful for us but unequivocal.”
Artemis II’s astronauts closed out humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century with a Pacific splashdown on Friday, blazing new records near the moon with grace and joy.
To come home safely, the crew — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — and its capsule had to endure near-record-breaking entry speeds and temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
RIT alums Katrina Willoughby and Paul Reichart were the flight operations imagery instructors for the round-the-moon mission, teaching two of the four Artemis II passengers how to snap critically important pics in the challenging, off-planet landscape.
Representative Eric Swalwell is under criminal investigation and has suspended his bid for California governor after multiple women accused him of a range of sexual misconduct in news reports published Friday.
“I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s,” Swalwell said in a social media post.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced on Saturday that it is launching an investigation into Swalwell, over an alleged sexual assault involving a former staffer in 2024.
Swalwell’s former staffer — who has not been identified — told CNN that after a night of drinking with her former boss in April 2024, she was heavily intoxicated and woke up to him having sex with her in his hotel bed.
Lefty billionaire Stephen Cloobeck dramatically cut ties with Swalwell and revealed he has kicked him out of his mansion — hours before the congressman dropped his run for California governor.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking into Swalwell, who has recently faced sexual assault allegations, over allegations of hiring a nanny illegally.
Rory McIlroy has done it again. Yesterday, the Northern Irishman became the fourth player in Masters history to go back-to-back, joining Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the launch of a “customer engagement” effort as part of her proposed $50 million redesign of the Jamaica station, which serves as the main transfer point for LIRR riders, with connections to buses, subways and the JFK AirTrain.
Hochul announced a new $5 million initiative aimed at supporting young people and continuing to drive down gun violence in New York City, with funding intended to create or expand trusted neighborhood “havens” in each of the city’s five boroughs.
Longtime State Sen. Jack Martins won’t run for re-election this year after all, declining the party nomination on Friday, the last day for dropping out. Republicans are reportedly considering Jake Blumencranz, a GOP assemblymember, to run instead.
New York’s hospital lobby is urging state officials to ease compliance requirements under the state’s flagship climate law.
A religious order in southeastern New York has filed a lawsuit against the state over a 2024 law that requires hospice facilities to support patients’ gender identities.
A national gun violence protection organization co-founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul and her running mate last week.
Suffolk County may be declared a “disaster area” by the feds over this year’s dismal oyster crop. The move would allow the region’s devastated oyster farms to unlock low-interest emergency federal loans to cover millions of dollars in losses.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to announce today a plan to eliminate a treacherous stretch of road surrounding Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, part of a long-sought redesign of one of the borough’s most iconic, and hazardous, landmarks.
Mamdani filled a cavernous venue in Maspeth, Queens, with thousands of supporters and city workers to mark his first 100 days in office and continue building the popular support that led him there. Sen. Bernie Sanders was a surprise guest.
At his 100-day address in his political home borough, Mamdani, a democratic socialist, declared his first three months in office a success, and a harbinger of what’s to come.
“We will make no apology for what we believe,” Mamdani told the crowd of thousands of supporters. “I was elected a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.”
Mamdani announced that New York City will open a city-owned grocery store in East Harlem in Manhattan by the end of his first term, taking an early step to deliver on a key campaign pledge.
Mamdani is “the real political leader of the young Jewish community in New York”, whose adoration only intensified the more critics called him an antisemite, his top legal adviser boasted.
Mamdani left early from his marquee event marking his 100th day in office Friday – leaving a sanitation crew to clean up illegal dumping in The Bronx after claiming he’d “fix” it himself.
Mamdani plans to announce major commitments to reduce commute times for buses across the city, according to City Hall. The goal of the project, spanning 45 major corridors across the five boroughs, is to speed up bus trips by 20%, according to City Hall.
A city Department of Probation investigator was canned for blowing the whistle on an alleged tryst between Mamdani’s pick to lead the agency and a top attorney working for her, a new lawsuit claims.
One hundreds days into his tenure, Mamdani has so far failed to clean up the complex and disorganized bureaucracy governing the city’s bike and pedestrian greenways.
Mamdani confirmed that allegations involving his appointed probation commissioner, Sharun Goodwin, are under investigation after a former Department of Probation (DOP) investigator sued the city.
Mamdani is scrambling to shore up support for a key appointment whose fate rests with the New York City Council — another twist in the mounting tensions between the mayor and the body of lawmakers meant to be a check on his power.
One of the Democratic Socialists of America’s top leaders and architects of Mayor Mamdani’s rise to power is a mime.
The mayor has embraced the decades-old concept of “sewer socialism,” hoping to improve New Yorkers’ lives by focusing on public services.
Former Mayor Eric Adams has been granted Albanian citizenship – upon his own request – via special decree by President of the Republican, Bajram Begaj.
Adams’ spokesman Todd Shapiro cast the citizenship request as the culmination of long friendship between the former mayor and the city’s Albanian-American community.
While New Yorkers feel the crush of a housing crisis, newly built affordable apartments in New York City can remain empty for more than a year.
A planned Times Square ball drop to celebrate America’s 250th birthday will come without “a public event” — but critics fear it’ll become a crowd-control nightmare for New York’s Finest because revelers will show up anyway.
A man wielding a machete attacked three people at the Grand Central subway station Saturday morning before being shot and killed by police, NYPD officials said.
A chronic criminal slashed three elderly people with a machete — while calling himself “Lucifer” — in an unprovoked attack and was fatally shot by cops at Grand Central Terminal Saturday morning.
A group of lawmakers rallied Friday to stop the eviction of Jimmy’s Corner, the last remaining dive bar near Times Square.
AI-doctored photos — one depicting a cop in a KKK hood and another showing a man with a rifle standing over a gorilla — were among images allegedly passed around a specialized NYPD unit’s chat group, according to a new discrimination lawsuit.
Assemblymember Micah Lasher, a Democratic frontrunner in the race to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler, is hammering ICE on the campaign trail while his wife rakes in millions from companies heavily contracted with the agency, records show.
Longtime New York Rep. Eliot Engel died Friday from complications of Parkinson’s disease, his family confirmed. He was 79.
A bipartisan group of congressmembers introduced a bill that would raise safety standards in the helicopter industry long criticized for lax regulation — one year after a helicopter crashed into the Hudson, killing the pilot and a family of five visiting from Spain.
Patrick Madden and Harry Tutunjian are among a handful of former Troy mayors to serve on HVCC’s 73-year-old governing board — and together, they are the only two to serve at once.
A decades-old overpass near the border between Orange and Sullivan counties is getting a $17 million lift. State highway crews are upgrading a state Route 17 bridge crossing over state Route 17K in the town of Wallkill.
Three men have been charged in connection with an alleged quid pro quo scheme that involved one man redirecting thousands of dollars in payments owed to his Albany-based employer in exchange for steering business to a vendor the two others worked for.
The legal case that serves as a sort of prehistory of the First Amendment will be dramatized and discussed at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse beginning at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
For the first time since January, members of Albany’s Community Police Review Board reviewed cases of alleged police misconduct and got a sampling of the public’s attitude toward the beleaguered independent body.
Stephen E. Bottino, the former keyboardist for the popular children’s music group The Zucchini Brothers, pleaded guilty Friday to felony sexual abuse of a child, in a case that reached back 23 years.
Field crews with the Ausable Freshwater Center are set to spend the coming months visiting dozens of lakes as part of the first full field season of the most far-reaching Adirondack lake survey in 40 years.
Nearly a decade after plans were proposed, the Town of Malta’s courtroom is finally getting some upgrades to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The new $10 billion computer chip lithography center at Albany NanoTech, the state’s computer chip research and development center on Fuller Road, is taking shape.
Officials with the state Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center say they can step in to help other states after the CDC suddenly paused some specialized laboratory testing services, including for rabies and other infectious diseases.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
