KJOY spent the morning at Crossroads Farm in Malverne to get the scoop from Malverne Mel, Nassau County’s famous prognosticator! Six more weeks of winter? Early spring? Find out what Mel had to say here:
Nassau County Executive Laura Curran joined Jamie Thursday morning to discuss how Nassau County is dealing with COVID-19.
Check out this awesome duet remix of “Cold Heart” with Elton John and Dua Lipa!
A couple of surprise guests joined Billy Joel on stage at his final residency show at Madison Square Garden. Jimmy Fallon presented the Piano Man with a new banner to hang in the arena.
Axl Rose also joined Billy to perform three songs: “Live and Let Die,” “Highway to Hell,” and the closer, “You May Be Right.” His two youngest daughers, Della Rose and Remy, also made an appearance.
By BILL BARROW Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.
The endorsement, announced Friday morning in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris continues to build momentum as the party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.
It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those same barriers at the presidential rank.
“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.
Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.
“This is going to be historic,” she added.
Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.
“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.
The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Harris formally — a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.
According to an Associated Press survey, Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.
Biden endorsed Harris within an hour of announcing his decision last Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.
The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the president’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers but he operated quietly.
Barack Obama’s initial statement after Biden’s announcement did not mention Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.
Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former president’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Harris’ campaign.
A Hempstead mother is accused of crashing into two cars while under the influence with her child in the car.
Police say the suspect crashed into the cars in East Garden City injuring one person and drove away from the scene Wednesday night.
When Nassau County police arrest the suspect they found her three-year-old daughter in the car. The child was taken to a nearby hospital for head pain, before being released to a family member. The mother faces several charges including drunk driving.
By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Transit and environmental advocacy groups in New York filed lawsuits Thursday challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to block a plan to reduce traffic and raise billions for the city’s ailing subway system through a new toll on Manhattan drivers.
The groups argue in two separate state Supreme Court suits that the Democrat violated the state’s laws and constitution when she indefinitely paused the fee, citing economic concerns.
The program, which was set to begin June 30, would have imposed on drivers entering the core of Manhattan a toll of about $15, depending on vehicle type. The fee was projected to generate some $1 billion annually for transit improvements.
The Riders Alliance, the Sierra Club and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, in their lawsuit, said Hochul’s decision violated the part of the state constitution that guarantees New Yorkers the right to “clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
“The people of New York City deserve to breathe,” the lawsuit states.
The City Club of New York, in its suit, called Hochul’s decision “quite literally, lawless” and lacking “any basis in the law as democratically enacted.”
It noted the toll had been approved by state lawmakers and signed into law by her predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in 2019, following decades of advocacy and public debate.
“As powerful as a governor is, this Governor has no legal authority — none — to direct the Metropolitan Transportation Authority” to pause congestion pricing, the group stated in the suit.
Hochul, through a spokesperson, dismissed the lawsuits as political posturing.
“Get in line,” spokesperson Maggie Halley said in an email. “There are now 11 separate congestion pricing lawsuits filed by groups trying to weaponize the judicial system to score political points, but Governor Hochul remains focused on what matters: funding transit, reducing congestion, and protecting working New Yorkers.”
Groups ranging from a public teachers union to New Jersey residents and local truckers filed suits ahead of the program’s expected start date seeking to block it.
Hochul has maintained her decision was driven by economic concerns and conversations with everyday New Yorkers.
She’s also suggested raising taxes on businesses to make up for the billions of dollars in lost revenue for transit, a proposal lawmakers have rejected.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who joined the groups in announcing the lawsuits Thursday, said New Yorkers will experience “increasing service cuts, gridlock, air quality alerts, and inaccessible stations” if the governor’s decision is allowed to stand.
Congestion pricing a “win-win-win” for New Yorkers because it would provide much needed revenue to make public transit “faster, more reliable and accessible” while also reducing “costly gridlock, carbon emissions, deadly collisions and toxic air pollution,” added Betsy Plum, executive director of the Riders Alliance.
Before her sudden about-face, Hochul had been a staunch advocate for the toll, even describing it as “transformative.”
The MTA had also already installed cameras, sensors and license plate readers for the program, and reached a contract worth more than $500 million with a private vendor to operate the tolling infrastructure.
By JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — Paris has long been a city of dreamers: Just look at the Eiffel Tower, for decades the world’s loftiest structure. Audacity also underpins the French capital’s plans for its first Olympic Games in a century, which open Friday with an opening ceremony for the ages.
The most sprawling and elaborate Olympic opening ever — a gala spectacular Friday evening on the River Seine that even French President Emmanuel Macron says initially felt like “a crazy and not very serious idea” — kicks off 16 days of competition that promise to be ground-breaking, with nearly every corner of the city hosting some aspect of competition.
After two toned-down, pandemic-hampered Olympics, expect a bold celebration. The heady marriage of sports and France’s world-renowned capital of fashion, gastronomy and culture could also help secure the Olympics’ longer-term future.
Olympic organizers were struggling to find suitable host cities for their flagship Summer Games when they settled on Paris in 2017, enticed by its promise of innovations and the potential for the city of romance to rekindle love for the Olympics, especially with younger audiences that have so many other entertainment options.
But Paris’ challenges are huge, too.
Past and present sorrows hang over the Games
The city that has been repeatedly struck by deadly extremist attacks has to safeguard 10,500 athletes and millions of visitors. The international context of wars in Ukraine and Gaza add layers of complication for the gargantuan security effort. French elite special forces are part of the security detail for Israel’s delegation.
Still, if all goes well, Paris hopes to be remembered as a before-and-after Olympic watershed.
The first Games with nearly equal numbers of men and women, an advance that’s been a long time coming since 22 women first got accepted as Olympians 124 years ago, also in Paris, will take another step toward aligning the Olympics with the post-#MeToo world.
Paris also hopes to reassure climate-conscious Generations Z and beyond by staging Games that are less polluting, more sustainable and more socially virtuous than their predecessors. Many of the sports venues are temporary, because Paris didn’t want to repeat the mistake of previous Olympic host cities that built new arenas and then had no use for them.
With iconic Paris monuments as backdrops — beach volleyball in the Eiffel Tower’s shadow — and breakdancing added to a growing list of Olympic sports that target young audiences, expect plenty of viral moments on Instagram, TikTok and elsewhere.
Crowds will be back for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced Tokyo to push back its Games to 2021 and keep spectators away, and the Beijing Winter Games in 2022, when China was locked down.
Prize-winning French theater director Thomas Jolly is turning central Paris into an open-air stage for the opening ceremony that will run through sunset and showcase France, its people and their history. The 330-meter-tall (1,083-foot-tall) Eiffel Tower will surely feature prominently.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including 320,000 paying and invited ticket-holders, are expected to line the Seine’s banks as athletes are paraded along the river on boats.
During the extravaganza, a no-fly zone extending for 150 kilometers (93 miles) around the capital will close Paris’ skies, policed by fighter jets, airspace-monitoring AWACS surveillance flights, surveillance drones, helicopters that can carry sharpshooters and drone-disabling equipment.
Helping Parisians move past the attacks of 2015
Showcasing and celebrating Paris could be joyously cathartic for the city that was plunged into mourning by extremist attacks in 2015.
Guesses about the identity of the person or people who might get the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron include soccer icon Zinedine Zidane and other French sporting heroes, but also survivors of Islamic State-group gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people on Nov. 13, 2015.
Paris is also taking gambles in hopes of leaving an indelible impression on the Olympics’ global audience of billions.
The decision not to stage the opening ceremony in the traditional setting of France’s biggest stadium — the Stade de France that was among the 2015 attackers’ targets and is now the venue for Olympic track and field and rugby sevens — and to host skateboarding, archery and other sports in temporary arenas in the heart of Paris have made safeguarding the Games more complex.
Rights campaigners and Games critics worry about the broad scope and scale of Olympic security, including the use of AI-equipped surveillance technology.
Paris’ reach stretches to the Pacific
The furthest venue is on the other side of the world in the French Pacific territory of Tahiti, where Olympic surfers will compete on famously giant waves that first form in storm belts off Antarctica.
Up to 45,000 police and gendarmes, plus 10,000 soldiers, are safeguarding Paris and its suburbs that together are hosting most of the 32 sports that will crown Olympic champions in 329 medal events. The gold, silver and bronze medals they’ll hand out are inlaid with a hexagonal, polished chunk of iron taken from the Eiffel Tower.
The Seine’s banks and riverside roads and more than a dozen of its bridges were fenced off nine days ahead of the opening ceremony, creating a no-go zone for people who haven’t applied in advance for passes and making it tough for Parisians and visitors to get around and see the sights in the city of 2 million. Owners of restaurants and other businesses inside the security fence are howling about fewer customers.
Leaving an Olympic legacy for Paris
Limiting new construction has saved money and, Paris organizers say, contributed to their goal of halving the Games’ overall carbon footprint compared with London in 2012 and Rio in 2016. Among the new venues, an Olympic aquatics center in Seine Saint-Denis is expected to help that underprivileged suburb of northern Paris teach more children to swim.
French organizers argue that the Games will leave positive impacts on Paris long after the Olympians and Paralympic athletes who follow from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 have departed.
A costly and complex cleanup of the long-polluted Seine, sped up by the deadline of the Games, is expected to reopen the river to public swimming next year, after Olympic marathon swimmers and triathletes have competed in it. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a dip this month to demonstrate that its waters are safe.
With estimated overall costs of around 9 billion euros ($9.7 billion), more than half from sponsors, ticket sales and other non-public funding, Paris’ expenses so far are less than for Tokyo, Rio and London.
Once opening ceremony fireworks have become memories, the City of Light will then become the playground of Olympians.
American gymnastics superstar Simon Biles is back. French-born basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama will carry home hopes on his 7-foot-4 (2.24-meter) frame. Ukrainian and Palestinian athletes have points they want to prove about conflict, resilience and sacrifice that go beyond the realms of sport.
The lucky few will win medals. Many will wish they had gone higher, faster and stronger.
But, together, they’ll always have Paris.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
Nassau Police say a fake company named ‘Top Line Masonry’ has been scamming homeowners in Floral Park.
Two men posed as contractors would go to victim’s homes offering to make home repairs, and then causing even more damage to victims’ houses to make more money, and in some cases took deposits for bigger jobs before taking off.
The two suspects pleaded guilty Wednesday to a variety of charges.
The FBI searched the Nassau County home of a former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Federal officers were seen around the Manhasset property of Linda Sun on Tuesday. Sun left the governor’s office nearly two years ago.
The nature of the investigation is unclear and no criminal charges have been filed in the case.
Billy Joel will play the final show of his monthly residency at Madison Square Garden Thursday night. It will be his 150th lifetime performance at the Garden. His first performance at the venue was 14 Dec 1978, and his monthly residency, the first of its kind, started in January 2014. With his 65th show in July 2015, Joel broke the record for the most lifetime performances by any artist.
By BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Tom Thibodeau has agreed to a three-year contract extension after leading the New York Knicks to three postseason appearances in his four seasons, a person with knowledge of the details said Wednesday.
The Knicks have made back-to-back trips to the Eastern Conference semifinals and rewarded Thibodeau for turning around what had been one of the worst teams in the league before his arrival.
Thibodeau had one year remaining on his contract before the extension, which was first reported by ESPN and confirmed to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it had not been announced.
Thibodeau has twice been voted NBA Coach of the Year, including in 2020-21 after leading the Knicks to the playoffs in his first season. They went 50-32 last season, their best record since winning 54 games in 2012-13, and fell one game shy of reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000.
A Knicks fan growing up in Connecticut who later served as an assistant coach with the team, Thibodeau returned to the franchise in 2020 after the Knicks had missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons.
He promptly led them to a 41-31 record in his first season and has gone 175-143 in his four seasons, placing him fifth on the franchise list for coaching victories.
The Knicks had already agreed to a contract extension with All-Star guard Jalen Brunson during this offseason, traded for Mikal Bridges and re-signed OG Anunoby, and the extension for Thibodeau was expected to follow.
Known for his demanding style and strong defensive teams, Thibodeau guided the Knicks through a number of injuries to earn the No. 2 seed in the East last season. They could be one of the top challengers to the NBA champion Boston Celtics in the East in 2024-25.
Thibodeau was also voted the NBA’s top coach in 2011 as a first-time head coach with the Chicago Bulls, after his first of three 50-win seasons in Chicago. Thibodeau also led Minnesota to the playoffs in 2018 and is 527-389 in his 12 seasons.
Thibodeau was an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics when they won the 2008 NBA title and with the U.S. Olympic team when it won a gold medal in 2016.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
A collection of nearly 80 drawings by Michael Jackson will be up for auction on August 3rd with a starting bid of $1 million. The King of Pop made a hobby of drawing, particularly while he was on the road touring. Each piece is personally signed by MJ. You can see the full selection HERE!