It's 69 degrees in New York City headed up to 82 degrees today with a 40 percent of thunderstorms after lunch and into dinner time. Tuesday, could bring heavy rain with New York City Emergency Management warning of serious flooding. Wednesday, our high will be in the mid-70s as rain clouds hang around until Friday. Saturday looks to be the best day of the weekend.
The Guardian is reporting that an extreme heat wave affecting at least 40 million people is extending from California to Mississippi with heat indexes exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit with portions of the southwest seeing a life threatening 120 degree high.
Wildfires continue to be an issue in northern Canada and are now raging in western Europe with hundreds of thousands in France and Spain being forced to evacuate ahead of fast moving wildfires according to the New York Times.
Of course, these extreme events have increased in frequency and severity due to the climate crisis which is linked to the burning of fossil fuels.
After two weeks of bombing Iran, the Trump administration has signaled it tends to pause the attacks in hopes of re-starting peace talks with Iran.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused New York City Mayor Mamdani of "fomenting hate" by calling for the Israeli leader's arrest on an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Court stemming from allegations Netanyahu perpetrated a genocide targeting the Palestinian population in Gaza in the aftermath of the Oct. 7th, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas than killed 1,100 mostly civilains many of them young people at a music festival.
On an appearance on Fox News, Netanyahu continued to conflate opposition to Israel's military actions with anti-semitism and called the ICC charges "bogus." The Israeli leader, who is expected to meet in Washington with President Trump today, said he plans to be in New York for the UN General Assembly this September.
Last September, the International Association of Genocide Scholars formally declared that the Isreali governments prolonged military operation in Gaza, done in response to Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack, amounted to genocide.
Over the two year scorched earth campaign in Gaza, tens of thousands of civilians were killed including women and children. The IAGS cited the IDF's systematic leveling of entire residential neighborhoods as well as attacks on healthcare and educational facilities.
We covered these latest developments with our current events panel with New Jersey social justice activist Larry Hamm and Dr. Joe Wilson, union consultant and labor historian. We headed back up north to the New York State-Canadian border with Snow Harper-Moulton, RN, with the New York State Nurses Association, who is sounding the alarm about a vital maternity ward being closed in the North Country at Norstar Clayton-Hepburn Hospital.
In our second hour, we spoke with outgoing Uniformed Firefighter Association President Andy Ansbro about his assessment of the status of New York City's Fire Department. Ansbro explained why his members need to have ALL of the 9/11 WTC files that were generated during the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations made public.
We discussed this five alarm fire in Queens that caused one civilian death and the injury of a dozen firefighters. Ansbro described how firefighters were able to battle the aggressive blaze that tore through the all wood attached homes while saving lives in the process.
The outgoing UFA leader raised serious concerns about the deepening crisis within the FDNY EMS, blaming the poor pay for the FDNY EMS for a personnel shortage that’s causing response times to deteriorate.
Ansbro shared his insights about the need, in the era of the climate crisis, to improve our regional, national, and international cooperation on wildfire fighting.
We also got to get an update from Terri Suess, with NJ Eyes on ICE, on conditions at Delaney Hall, the privately owned immigration prison owned by the GEO group in Newark that was the scene several weeks back of a hunger and labor strike by three hundred prisoners who were protesting inhumane conditions at the 1,000 bed facility.
Suess reports that ICE’s stepping up of abductions throughout the region is being reflected in new inmates have to sleep on the floor of the intake room of the private prison.
Suess also recounted the growing national anti-ICE and anti-private prison movement including the recent decision by Citizens Bank to no longer provide financing to private jailers like GEO that came after Montclair, New Jersey pledged to close its account and pull $91.1 million in deposits from the bank.
