Good morning, it’s Wednesday.
Today is the feast of both St. Jude and St. Simon – two of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles who share a day because, although there’s not a ton of historical information available on them, legend holds were missionaries together, faced opposition from pagan priests, and were martyred on the same day in 65 AD in Persia.
St. Simon (AKA Simon the Zealot) is frequently depicted in religious iconography holding a saw, while Jude is shown holding a club or an axe – the tools that reportedly were used by their opponents to kill them because they refused to worship pagan gods.
One story says St. Simon is believed to have been literally sawn in half, which is pretty grisly, even for 65 AD, while another insists he died peacefully of old age. Given the whole saw legend, it stands to reason that St. Simon is the patron saint of wood workers and wood cutters. Tanners/leather workers and couriers also claim him for their own.
Of the two, I have to admit that St. Jude is the one who really interests me, because he’s the patron saint of impossible, desperate, hopeless, and/or lost causes.
St. Jude also isn’t mentioned much in the Bible, and only one quote is attributed to him in the Gospel of John. He is said to have written the Letter of Jude, which is one of the shortest books of the Bible. The back story there is that got overlooked a lot because of another, far more infamous guy with whom he was unlucky enough to share a name: Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, leading to his eventual crucifixion.
In some texts, St. Jude is referred to as “Thaddaeus” to try to distinguish him from Judas. Nevertheless, the damage was done, and some early Christians were afraid to pray to St. Jude for fear of accidentally slipping up and directing their entreaties to the traitor, Judas, by mistake.
Hence, St. Jude became known as the “Forgotten Saint” because people rarely called on him for assistance.
Over time, believers who felt like they had nowhere else to turn would direct their prayers to him when all other options had failed. On this feast day, it’s common to offer a prayer to St. Jude and/or light a candle in hopes of getting him to intercede when you’re facing a challenge or seemingly hopeless situation.
We’ll see clouds in the morning followed by partial clearing in the afternoon. Temperatures will be on the warm-ish side, with highs topping out in the high 50s.
In the headlines…
Anxious Israelis watched as election results took shape after many voters delivered a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s far-right government. Exit polls suggested there was no clear winner and that weeks of negotiating could lie ahead.
Nearly 5.7 million Israeli voters cast their ballot out of approximately 7.3 million eligible voters – meaning a turnout of 77.7%, the highest percentage since 1999, according to the Central Elections Committee.
Arab-led parties appear to have made a historic showing, but it’s not clear if other opponents of Netanyahu’s government would form a coalition with them for a majority in the next parliament.
Netanyahu was defiant early this morning as he seeks to remain the country’s longest-serving prime minister. He dismissed the idea of a partnership with Arab parties — whose constituents make up 20% of Israel’s population — as treasonous.
A federal grand jury in Washington rejected an effort by the DOJ to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide Trump targeted after she gave damning testimony to a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Flávio Bolsonaro, the presidential candidate defeated in Sunday’s election in Brazil, left for the US, according to three U.S. officials, a day after the Brazilian police asked him to hand over his passports because he was being investigated in a money-laundering case.
Gov. Kathy Hochul once resisted a data center pause. Now it’s central to her re-election campaign.
Hochul said it would be “a lot easier” for her to defend Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses Tuesday’s election. New York has the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel and is home to many ex-pat Israelis.
With one week remaining before Election Day, Republican gubernatorial challenger Bruce Blakeman and Hochul are making their final appeals to voters, highlighting sharply different priorities as polls show the governor leading the race.
The FBI put Hochul in her place after she labeled the federal probe into a Democratic Party boss a “political hit job” — as the feds revealed its agents are working jointly with state investigators.
The New York State Gaming Commission is demanding that prediction market Kalshi hand over internal data relating to its sports-related offerings and corporate structure, according to a new lawsuit.
New York immigrant rights organizations have stepped into the legal fight over the state’s tuition policies, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of laws that allow certain noncitizen students to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.
Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s supporters are likely not too thrilled about the two of them campaigning together in advance of the Nov. 3 election.
Hochul will raise New Yorkers’ taxes to fulfill Mamdani’s socialist agenda if she’s re-elected next week, her Blakeman warned in his final 30-second campaign ad.
Hochul has widened her lead over Blakeman to 14 points with less than a week until Election Day, according to a new Siena University poll released Wednesday that also found Mamdani gaining popularity among New York City voters.
Hochul isn’t from New York City, but she could be its biggest mass transit defender in a generation. She has embraced that distinction in her re-election campaign.
Mamdani has taken steps to replace the chairwoman of the City’s Commission on Racial Equity, Tigani, an outspoken critic of the administration’s handling of the city’s first, long-delayed racial equity plan, but Black and Latino leaders balked.
Defying Mamdani’s pledge to make New York housing more affordable, rents continued climbing across the city this summer. Median asking prices reached their highest level since Realtor.com started tracking data in 2019 between July and September.
The NYPD is backing away from a $750,000 no-bid contract with a company accused of treading on people’s civil rights for a new technology that can quickly pinpoint a suspect’s cellphone after Mamdani faced heat over using tech from the controversial firm.
Former NYC Buildings Commissioner Eric Ulrich helped reopen then-Mayor Eric Adams’ favored restaurant in Queens despite health violations.
A deadly stretch of Third Avenue in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood is slated for a major overhaul that will replace traffic lanes in each direction with bike lanes and shorten the street’s pedestrian crossings, the city transportation department announced.
The former NYPD detective accused of killing a man in a road rage incident on the George Washington Bridge is again facing a murder charge.
The NYPD has increased police patrols in Central Park after a woman was raped in the iconic park at knifepoint, the department said.
The MTA is looking to significantly boost the number of buses in its fleet that alert drivers about would-be hazards while they’re behind the wheel.
Three brothers who ran a yearslong conspiracy to traffic women and girls for sex were sentenced to 30 years each in prison on Tuesday, capping a dramatic fall from the heights of Manhattan’s wealthiest circles.
The storied Long Island Oheka Castle sold at auction for $72 million, plus buyer premium, to its new owners: Gold Coast Property & Estate Management partners Ronald Browning and Paul Alflen – about half of the property’s appraised value.
Vice President JD Vance reportedly could swoop into upstate New York on the eve of the Nov. 3 election to help keep retiring Rep. Elise Stefanik’s seat in Republican hands.
Rep. Paul Tonko and local advocacy groups condemned recent Trump administration proposals to cut the Head Start program, part of a final push to voters ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
House Speaker Mike Johnson stopped in Rockland County to boost Rep. Mike Lawler’s bid for a third term, sending a message that voters shouldn’t pay attention to national polling that shows Republicans on the brink of losing their narrow majority.
Bogus GOP campaign mailers that falsely claim Lawler backs amnesty for illegal immigrants are being sent to voters in his swing district, the Republican said Tuesday — and now the feds are investigating it as a “voter suppression effort.”
A longtime town justice in upstate New York was removed from the bench on Tuesday after the state’s highest court affirmed a disciplinary panel’s finding that he had repeatedly used a racist slur while recounting a personal story.
For the third time this year, a Schenectady school district employee is facing professional or criminal consequences after being caught on video mistreating a student.
Firefighters have contained about 70% of a wildfire that broke out in the Berlin State Forest over the weekend and spread across the Massachusetts border, officials said at a news conference Tuesday morning.
Alex Berger is leaving WTEN-Channel 10 after four months at the ABC affiliate saying he received a professional opportunity that’s too good to pass up. The reporter’s last day is Nov. 3.
Part of the Aviation Mall in Queensbury has been ordered to close after the town says code and/or safety violations have been left unaddressed.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
