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Good morning, and Happy St. Paddy's Day to those of you wearing leprechaun-colored leisurewear. New York City was not in a celebratory spirit last St. Patrick’s Day. The timing couldn’t have been worse: Bars, restaurants and schools were closed, and the mayor had floated the possibility of a “shelter in place” order.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade organizers announced they would postpone the celebration, but a small group marched in the wee hours to preserve the tradition.

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Now, after a year of virtual celebrations that replaced New York City’s usual rousing parades, the St. Patrick’s Day event makes a humble appearance today. It won’t have the large-scale fanfare New Yorkers are used to, but it will maintain a more than 250-year-old tradition as the oldest uninterrupted St. Patrick’s parade in the world.

Here’s what you need to know:
What to expect this year

You won’t get lost in a sea of green outfits.

Organizers planned a very low-profile ceremonial march to keep the tradition alive without risking a superspreader event. Details on the small march were kept under wraps to keep crowds from gathering.

The rest of the festivities will be virtual. Parade leaders, emergency medical workers and essential workers will offer a prayer for victims of both the pandemic and the 9/11 attacks, according to the parade’s website. Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral will be broadcast live at 8:30 a.m., followed by a virtual parade.

Bob Pokost and Dave Litwack are both Villagers and veterans of the Vietnam War, although each got a very different perspective of the fighting there.

Pokost served in the Navy and spent three tours sailing off Vietnam’s coast aboard the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier. Litwack, an Air Force fighter pilot, got a view of the country from above while flying an OV-10, an observation and attack aircraft that he flew at relatively low levels on missions to impede North Vietnamese troops.

They also share something else. They are both Jewish and serve as commander and deputy commander, respectively, of the Judith A. Resnik Post 352 of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA, or JWV.

Pokost and Litwack recently shared some of their experiences and some of what their group does, as the national JWV celebrated its 125th anniversary on Monday.

That birthday makes the JWV the oldest, continuously active veterans service organization in the U.S., three years older than the Veterans of Foreign Wars and 23 years older than the American Legion.

Read this story and many others in Tuesday's edition of the Daily Sun.

Schrantz was a key voice in the town shifting to the North County Water District “to deliver water to residents and business in the most cost-effective, safe, reliable way and of good quality and quantity,” he said at that time.

He is a lifelong resident of the town who graduated in 1971 from Brocton Central School. Schrantz is married to the former Debra Zanghi and they have resided at 42 Central Ave. in the village of Brocton for the past 48 years. He was a member of the Brocton Fire Department was former town councilman while serving on numerous committees. In 2008 he received the Brocton Central School Richard Prince Award and in 2011 he was inducted into Brocton Central School Hall of Fame for community service.

“I feel the town of Portland and Chautauqua County is a very special place to live and raise our families,” he has said in previous years.

After months of crippling COVID-19 closures, Los Angeles County on Monday unlocked a significant portion of its battered business sector, allowing the return of in-restaurant dining and the resumption of indoor activities at gyms, movie theaters and other venues.

Proprietors and employees alike hope the latest round of reopenings — prompted by falling numbers of new coronavirus cases and rising vaccinations — will give the region’s economy a desperately needed shot in the arm.

But business as usual remains a far-off concept, and those establishments that are open are still subject to restrictions on how many customers can be served at any one time, as well as requirements for physical distancing and face coverings.

L.A.'s wider reopening was made possible by its advancement from the purple tier, the strictest category in the state’s four-level coronavirus roadmap, to the more lenient red tier.

A dozen other counties — Orange, San Bernardino, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Placer, Mendocino, San Benito, Tuolumne, Siskiyou, Amador, Colusa and Mono — also officially progressed over the weekend.

Those 12, along with L.A., are home to a total of 17.7 million Californians.

Moving from purple to red clears the way for those counties to: permit indoor dining at restaurants and movie theater showings at 25% capacity; welcome back students in person in grades 7 through 12; reopen indoor gyms and dance and yoga studios at 10% capacity; and expand capacity restrictions at nonessential stores and libraries.

Ashraf al Homsi, a Syrian refugee from the Homs province, told Al Jazeera that the protesters were forced by the government to fight in 2011.

“The regime forced us to take up arms and turned the uprising into a war …. it was no longer possible to face guns with our screams,” he said.

The decade of war has wrought unfathomable destruction on Syria.

Millions have been pushed into poverty, and most households can hardly scrape together enough to secure their next meal.

Deraa, the birthplace of Syria’s uprising in 2011, has been under the control of Assad’s forces since 2018.

Maysoun al-Masri, a Syrian activist, told Al Jazeera that he almost had a breakdown when Syrian government forces raised their flag in Deraa.

“The town had a lot of symbolism for the revolution. We have been forced to give up on our dreams. The international community failed the Syrian people,” he said.

Today, more than half the prewar population of 23 million displaced, including more than five million who are refugees, mostly in neighbouring countries.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon said that most Syrian refugees living in the country want to go home.

“According to the UN, nine out of 10 Syrian refugee families in Lebanon are poor and they rely on UN support in order to survive,” she said.

“Although they want to go home, they have little choice. They are afraid to go back because there are no safety guarantees put in place by the Syrian government,” she added.

“In fact, the United Nations and the European Union believe that mass returns are not conducive at this point because of lack of safety guarantees for refugees.”

Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said most of the approximately 4.5 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey established their lives in large cities.

“Most of them do not want to go back, as they established their lives in these cities. They have jobs and their children go to schools here,” she said.

“After spending five years in Turkey, refugees are also entitled to apply for Turkish citizenship by law.”

Today, Syria is economically devastated and remains divided.

Armed groups dominates the northwestern Idlib province, with Turkey-backed rebels controlling stretches along the Turkish border.
US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces hold around a quarter of the country in the northeast while Assad controls the rest.

Through most of the conflict, Assad was able to shield Syrians in government-held territory from unbearable economic pain. Even if barely sometimes, the state kept fuel, medicine and other supplies coming and the currency propped up.

Now he has gained a decisive upper hand in the war with Russia and Iran’s help, his grip on areas under his control is unquestioned, and the rebellion is largely crushed.

But the economy has fallen apart with startling swiftness. It was hit by a double blow of new, far-reaching US sanctions imposed last year and the financial meltdown in Lebanon, Syria’s main link with the outside world.

That proved too much, on top of the strains of war, government corruption, other Western sanctions in place for years and the coronavirus pandemic.

The UN says more than 80 percent of Syrians now live in poverty, and 60 percent are at risk of hunger. The currency has crashed, now at 4,000 Syrian pounds to the dollar on the black market, compared to 700 a year ago and 47 at the beginning of the conflict in 2011.