Good morning, it’s Wednesday.
Today is one of those days that I am reminded of just how amazing the internet is. I am old enough to remember when we didn’t have a world’s worth of information at our fingertips, when if you wanted to know a thing you had to go to the library or your home set of encyclopedias (everyone had those, right?) to look it up, or maybe seek out an expert opinion.
Sometimes having all this information is not a good thing. For hypochondriacs like myself, for example, being able to Google symptoms is a sure-fire way to get sent into a tailspin of epic proportions.
But then there are other times when the internet serves up pure serendipity – information that one would otherwise not have any chance of knowing that enriches your life, if for nothing else than to provide a moment of levity and distraction.
Case in point: Thanks to the internet, I now know that today is St. Swithin’s Day – an English holiday that is akin to the American Groundhog Day. According to folklore, if it rains on this day, then it will proceed to rain again for the next 40 days, while if it’s fair, 40 days of similarly fair weather will follow.
There’s even a rhyme that explains this phenomenon:
St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain.
St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair,
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.
Which begs the question: Who was this St. Swithin guy, and what does he have to do with predicting the weather? Back to the internet we go.
St. Swithin – sometimes spelled Swithun, depending on which source you’re consulting – was a 9th-century Bishop of Winchester who was posthumously sainted after miracles that were reportedly connected to him. (Not a lot is known about what he did during his life, as everything vaguely historically significant appears to occurred AFTER his death).
He died in 862 BC, but before his demise had requested that he buried in a no-frills, no-fuss manner in the churchyard where he could be one with the elements and passersby could walk over his grave.
His wishes were heeded, but close to 100 years later, some monks got the bright idea of exhuming his remains and moving them indoors to a fancy shrine at Winchester Cathedral, of which Swithin is the patron saint. Legend has it that on the day his body was relocated in 1315, St. Swithin made his displeasure known through a heavy downpour that soaked all those involved to the bone, and the next 40 days were similarly marked by inclement weather.
Though this whole biblical rain thing (interesting that it’s 40 days, which is very on-brand for the Bible) is, as mentioned, legend. But there is a kernel of science behind it, thanks to the positioning of the jet stream. Though this summer, the UK – like pretty much all of Europe – is experiencing a hot, dry summer of epic proportions.
Speaking of the weather, which has been making headlines of late, we are headed back down from yesterday’s near record highs and into the 90s today, though it will still feel very hot. Skies will be partly cloudy.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump has threatened to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants next week if the country does not return to talks. Tensions are flaring over the critical Strait of Hormuz, pushing the two sides back towards all-out war.
The US military says it has reimposed its naval blockade of ships going to and from Iranian ports. It also said Iran has struck seven commercial ships in the last week, leaving nearly a dozen crew members killed, missing or injured.
Trump plans to use part of a primetime speech tomorrow to discuss new findings about the security of American elections, among other topics — setting up yet another high-profile opportunity for the president to dispute the results of the 2020 election he lost.
The address comes as an administration task force has been working to declassify documents, including some related to elections, according to people familiar with the process.
Trump said Tuesday that he is aware of conspiracy theories circulating about the sudden death of his friend and ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., but declared “the FBI is wasting their time” investigating the matter.
The sudden death of Graham, the 71-year-old Republican of South Carolina, has renewed criticism of an increasingly aging Congress and the systems and norms that continue to reward seniority and tenure.
The US government has already paid back tens of billions of dollars in tariffs it collected before the supreme court ruled them illegal, according to budget figures released this week.
The House voted overwhelmingly to make daylight saving time permanent, but the measure to spare Americans the semiannual clock-changing that shortens winter days faces an uncertain path to enactment.
The measure, fittingly named the “Sunshine Protection Act,” passed on a 308-to-117 vote. Its fate is murky in the Senate, where one G.O.P. leader said it was unclear whether it could move ahead and at least one Republican appears inclined to try to block it.
President Trump has paid E. Jean Carroll the $5.6 million in damages a federal judge ordered him to fork over after a civil jury found him liable for sexual assault and defamation in 2023, a key milestone in the high-profile and long-running dispute.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of seven senior Navy officers, five of whom are women or people of color, to two-star admiral rank, current and former defense officials said.
Speaker Mike Johnson said House Republicans were to receive a briefing from Hegseth at the Pentagon last night as they consider the White House’s request for a $350 billion defense funding boost amid the war in Iran.
After immigration officers fatally shot two people during enforcement operations over the past week, the Department of Homeland Security disclosed that none of the officers involved wore body cameras.
A man was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer in St. Augustine, Fla., on Tuesday following an incident involving federal immigration officers.
The Trump administration has ordered ICE officers to halt most vehicle stops while carrying out operations across the country, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about the directive.
The fatal shooting of a Colombian man in Maine by an ICE agent has put pressure on Sen. Susan Collins, with several of the Democrats seeking to challenge her criticizing her support for aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
The father of a Colombian immigrant shot and killed by a federal agent in Maine on Monday described him as “a good person raised with strong values,” who worked two jobs to support his wife and 3-year-old daughter.
Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist detained by immigration officials, filed a federal lawsuit accusing Trump officials and pro-Israel groups of conspiring to suppress his constitutional rights.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s first-in-the-nation statewide moratorium on data centers is being heralded as necessary government action — and blasted as a job-killing measure that will drive critical investment out of state.
Hochul’s first-in-the-nation data center moratorium could provide a playbook for other Democrats confronting one of the midterms’ most heated issues.
Artificial intelligence advocates fear New York’s one-year moratorium on new data centers could embolden Democrats across the country to put more restrictions in place.
The executive order throws into question the near-term future of the controversial $19.5 billion Stream data center proposed for the Town of Alabama in Western New York, and could impact at least three massive local projects.
Contaminated lettuce and salad greens are emerging as possible causes of the national cyclosporiasis outbreak sickening people in 34 states – including New York – health officials said this week.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that he will expand special education programs for preschoolers across New York City as part of an effort to address long-standing gaps in early childhood education.
Mamdani said the City Council will receive hundreds of NYC public school contracts it has sought for months “in the coming weeks,” offering a public timeframe in an escalating transparency dispute between lawmakers and the Department of Education (DOE).
Mamdani’s hands-off homeless policy is handcuffing New York’s Finest, who are being forced to sit back while a homeless encampment continues to grow and grow on Manhattan’s West Side.
A former top aide for ex-Mayor Eric Adams sued the city over Mamdani’s decision to end the city’s taxpayer-funded representation of him in four sexual assault, retaliation and improper conduct cases brought against him when he was working for the city.
The mayor said that New York City would move forward with a project to improve bus speeds on a busy thoroughfare in the Bronx, reviving an initiative that was put on hold after objections to similar plans from the Trump administration.
Manhattan’s luxury real estate market ground to a halt last week, with just one trophy home asking more than $10 million entering contract — as brokers said anti-wealth rhetoric from Mamdani and the controversial pied-à-terre tax are spooking affluent buyers.
An uptick in rape reports to the NYPD has drawn significant attention online this week after Mamdani addressed the trend.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin has thrown her support behind legislation to phase out horse-drawn carriage rides in Central Park, becoming the first sitting Council speaker to publicly back the proposal.
The bill would end the new carriage horse driver licenses, ban their operation in Central Park, and direct the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to run a retraining program for the roughly 150 carriage horse drivers who will be out of work.
Mamdani said that while he supports ending the horse-drawn carriage industry, he believes a City Council proposal to phase out the business does not go far enough to protect workers.
Some of New York City’s emergency medical workers make just $18 an hour. Their boss, Mayor Mamdani, has staked his mayoralty on making New York City more affordable for all.
Following a series of recent incidents involving Council Member Phil Wong’s district office and staff, Menin vowed increased security measures will be taken to protect the public servants.
New York City’s lawmakers are poised to get a hefty raise this summer. The City Council is expected to approve legislation tomorrow that would boost the salaries of city elected officials by 18.2%.
The official in charge of fixing New York City’s troubled jails submitted a plan to a federal judge on Tuesday to improve conditions at Rikers Island, calling for changes to investigations and discipline, as well as to some infrastructure.
A disproportionately small number of Black and Hispanic students received admission offers to elite public high schools for the upcoming academic year, continuing a pattern of racial and ethnic gaps despite promises by elected officials to address the divide.
New Yorkers should prepare for hazy skies and declining air quality in the coming days as smoke from a wildfire outbreak in Ontario, Canada, drifts into the metropolitan area.
Dozens of additional water-cooling towers on the Upper East Side have tested positive for Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, amid the city health department’s ongoing investigation into an outbreak of the severe form of pneumonia.
One of “creepy” Queens high school principal William Bassell’s sex abuse accusers is poised to get a whopping $700,000 settlement from the city in a civil lawsuit, the Daily News has learned — and the six-figure payoff could be the tip of the iceberg.
Highway crews have removed the bright red paint on intersection curves on Niskayuna’s Grand Boulevard after residents complained that it marred the look of the street.
Twin Bridges Waste & Recycling has added a 10% fuel surcharge to its July residential service bills in Clifton park to compensate for the rise in diesel fuel prices.
Carmel Patrick has returned to Schenectady’s City Council after suffering a stress-related hemorrhagic stroke on Dec. 2.
A Rensselaer County sheriff’s investigator has accused a “senior manager” of being complicit in a so-called “Book of Shame.”
Power outages hit the Albany International Airport on Tuesday afternoon, with electricity for the private aircraft carriers and main passenger areas cutting out shortly before 3 p.m.
Authorities are investigating the third plane crash in the Adirondacks this week, after a plane was reported missing and wreckage was found in a wooded area Monday night.
The 74-year-old pilot killed in a plane crash in the Adirondacks on Sunday is being remembered as a former Civil Air Patrol commander and instructor who trained future aircraft mechanics.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
