NEW YORK CITY (WROC) — Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday that due to rising COVID-19 rates statewide, masks will be required to be worn in all indoor public places unless businesses or venues implement a vaccine requirement.

“We are entering a time of uncertainty,” Gov. Hochul said Friday morning while speaking at the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center at Goddard Riverside in New York City. “We can either plateau here or our cases can escalate beyond control. We are heading in an upward direction that I find is no longer sustainable.”

According to state officials, this determination is based on the state’s weekly seven-day case rate as well as increasing hospitalizations. The new business and venue requirements extend to both patrons and staff.

This measure is effective Dec. 13, 2021 until Jan. 15, 2022, after which the state will re-evaluate based on current conditions.

Backroom deal-making threatened to shake up North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary last week. Now, it’s given way to public brawling.

Negative attacks are ratcheting up in the fight for the open seat. A 12-page mailer landed in voters’ mailboxes this week calling former Gov. Pat McCrory “fatally flawed” and criticizing his ethics, while TV ads hammered him as a “Trump-hater, liberal faker” and attacked McCrory for endorsing Mitt Romney for president in 2012. They’re all paid for by the Club for Growth’s super PAC, part of a multimillion dollar effort to back Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who has received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the Senate race.

And McCrory, in his first interview since the ads started airing, went after the big-money group as Budd’s “bank,” intimating that Budd sold himself to the group “funding his entire political existence.”

“He’s standing on the backs of [a] Washington insiders’ group and endorsements with no record whatsoever,” McCrory said. “I don’t need to do that. I can stand on my record of accomplishments, kept promises as a mayor and as a governor. … My opponent’s vote may be for sale, but mine isn’t.”

Everything was pretty horrible in 2020, but at least we were gifted a reprieve from the annual tradition of having to avoid the vomitous path of drunk bros in Santa costumes trying to relive their undergraduate glory days. But now that the city has reopened, so too have the binge-drinking floodgates: SantaCon NYC 2021 is scheduled to happen on December 11th.

As usual, most of the major details about the event—where the event is kicking off, which bars you'll want to avoid at all cost that day—won't be revealed until much closer to the date. What we do know: You have to give a $13 donation to get your Santa Badge, which gives you access to all the official SantaCon NYC venues. There are more details here if you are someone who is genuinely interested in learning more.

To their credit, the organizers of SantaCon are well aware of the its less-than-stellar reputation among New Yorkers, and they've attempted to curtail the worst behavior with rules and PSAs urging participants to not start fights, not bring open containers of alcohol, not try to use fake IDs or Vax cards, and to avoid "a crappy, trashy or Grinch-like attitude." And last year, when the event was off, they still encouraged Santas to donate to charity, even with no promise of public intoxication as a reward.

Having said that, you can only put so much lipstick on a pig that's completely passed out in a puddle on the floor of Penn Station. Overgrown frat guys who have been cooped up for much of the last 20 months may be looking to make up for lost time—and in case you've forgotten, even under optimal circumstances, that still involves quite a number of fistfights and unfortunate public incidents. At the end of the day, most New Yorkers just want to traverse the city without someone drunkenly stumbling into them and smashing their face into the sidewalk.

As lockdowns were imposed nationwide, struggling restaurants looked for ways to keep revenue flowing in. Alcohol is a high-margin item for many establishments, and as restaurants shifted to focus on takeout, they asked cities and states to allow them to also provide cocktails-to-go. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, 35 states plus the District of Columbia adopted ordinances allowing the sale of cocktails-to-go.

The cannabis industry got a boost of legitimacy in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, as state after state declared cannabis businesses “essential,” allowing them to stay open during lockdowns. Only one state — Massachusetts — ordered its dispensaries to close its doors. The essential business designation often came with a whole host of temporary regulatory changes — for instance, some states started allowing marijuana home delivery and curbside pickup for the first time. Many of those states are now moving to make those changes permanent.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began to sweep the country, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services eased regulations on telehealth use to permit patients to access health care from home to reduce the spread of the virus. Much of that new flexibility is still in place. States also made a number of policy changes to expand access.

Two factors came together to provide a new solution. First, hotel occupancy plunged when the pandemic brought travel to a standstill. Second, state and federal policymakers worried about the spread of Covid were willing to spend money on moving homeless people into private hotel rooms. They were able to lease — and eventually purchase — hotels at discount prices and convert them into housing.

An Amtrak executive told Congress on Thursday the railroad doesn’t expect to have enough people to operate all of its trains next month, when a federal coronavirus vaccination mandate takes effect.

Amtrak President Stephen Gardner said about 5 percent of its workforce has yet to get vaccinated less than four weeks before the Jan. 4 deadline.

“We anticipate proactively needing to temporarily reduce some train frequencies across our network in January to avoid staffing-related cancellations — with our plan to fully restore all frequencies by March, or as soon as we have qualified employees available,” Gardner said at a hearing of the House transportation subcommittee on railroads, pipelines and hazardous materials.

Amtrak last month warned it would send letters to uncompliant workers starting Dec. 8 in preparation for termination Jan. 4. The railroad is expected to publish a revised service schedule next week to reflect the cuts. Gardner said the carrier is still determining what trips will be removed, adding that the railroad wants to give passengers enough time to rebook trips.

Domingo García, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization, has instructed staff and board members to drop the word "Latinx" from the group's official communications.

García sent the directive out in an email Wednesday night, addressed to Sindy Benavides, the league's CEO; David Cruz, its communications director; and the LULAC board.

"Let's stop using Latinx in all official communications," García said, adding that it's "very unliked" by almost all Latinos.

The email included a link to a Miami Herald editorial with the headline: "The 'Latinx community' doesn't want to be called 'Latinx'. Just drop it, progressives."