Cuomo’s Family Is Said to Have Received Special Access to Virus Tests

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration arranged special access to government-run coronavirus testing for members of his family and other influential people as the pandemic descended on New York last year, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The move to make testing of people closely tied to Mr. Cuomo a priority was carried out by high-ranking state health officials, one of the people said. It mostly happened in March 2020, as the seriousness of the virus was still becoming clear to the broader public and testing was not widely available.

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100-day goal was to have most elementary schools open five days a week, seeming to conflict with his own press secretary, who had said last week that schools would be considered “open” if they held in-person classes even one day a week., Music is a powerful tool that many musicians use in order to convey their world views and opinions. Often, these can be quite controversial, leading to the songs being censored or even banned altogether. These are some of the most popular songs in the world, and the reasons why they were censored or blacklisted altogether. Is your favorite song on the list?, Kring also noted that how often an asteroid or comet hits Earth to create such an impact is statistically insignificant., Another challenge for Biden in getting teachers and students fully back to in-person learning is the question of vaccinations for teachers, where the administration's message has been muddled., Winter storms in Kentucky have caused "physical damage to the infrastructure that transmits and delivers electricity to households" and some residents still might not have power by the end of the week, state officials said.,American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in an interview she hopes Biden will meet his goal, and has said teachers should return to school when COVID-19 mitigation strategies are in place. But she noted that with social distancing, school still won't feel normal., With more snow and ice expected Thursday, Entergy, a power company for Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, said about 40,000 of its customers in Louisiana were still without power Wednesday as a result of the winter storms, according to a statement from the company., More than 100 million people stretching from Texas to Massachusetts are under a winter storm warning or winter weather advisory, and more days of deep freeze could mean a multiplication of the harrowing tales of hardship., While teachers’ unions have embraced what they say was much-needed leadership from the president after the Trump administration left educators worried about their heath and without adequate protection, they also acknowledge that Biden’s goal has put pressure on the unions to deliver., This leaves Biden caught between teachers’ unions expressing caution towards his expanded goal on reopening, and critics who say just one day of classroom time a week for a majority of schools is far too little. Data from Burbio, a service that tracks school opening plans, recently reported that 66% of K-12 students already are learning in-person to some degree., Republicans have been using the issue to hit at Democrats for weeks, pointing to data suggesting that many schools are safe to open now and charging that the Biden administration is siding with teachers’ unions over science and the needs of American families., “Has it made it harder, you know, on everyone to have an ambitious, bold goal for the American people? Of course,” Weingarten said, adding that she gives Biden "credit for wanting to help families get to a sense of hope.”, While Kentucky officials have responded to calls regarding carbon monoxide, state police reported Wednesday that a 25-year-old was found Friday dead as a result of hypothermia., More than 1.7 million customers across the US were without power early Thursday morning, according to PowerOutages.US. And the damage to utilities means many will be hunkering down for a while longer., It doesn't matter if it's approximately "once every 350 million years and we had an event 66 million years ago," because statistically, that would be the one occurrence in the 350-million-year time span, he said., “In places across America where public education depends on the whims of a powerful public sector union, the best interests of children have often come dead last,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said during a floor speech earlier this month. “As the months have rolled by and the data have poured in, it’s become clear that schools can open safely.”, Upon reaching the sun, the sun's gravitational force could have broken the comet into multiple pieces, he said. With more comet pieces, it's 10 times more likely the comet would hit Earth as the pieces moved away from the sun, according to Loeb., The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned doctors Wednesday to be aware of the increased hazard of carbon monoxide poisonings and deaths as storms sweep through the country., Without electricity to survive the cold, many have been turning to other means like gas stoves and generators to stay warm, running the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. To date, 38 deaths have been attributed to the winter storms since Thursday., Loeb theorizes a piece of a comet was the culprit for the mass extinction event, not an asteroid like many scientists have hypothesized. The comet originated from the Oort Cloud, a group of icy objects located on the edge of the solar system, he said., The normally two-and-a-half hour drive turned into a five- or six-hour trek, said Bryce Smith. He said the one thing that made the drive from Austin to Royce City possible was that he's from Iowa and knows how to drive in the snow., Carbon monoxide is a tasteless, odorless gas that can build up when any type of fossil fuel is burned -- gasoline, coal or natural gas. Home heating systems are a common source, but the danger is especially high when people turn to unusual sources of heat or power during electricity outages., From the moment it first made its debut in the market, the Subaru Forester is nothing if not successful. This hit car offers consumers a wide choice of engines as wells as a powerful 4WD system. It is pretty hard to beat a combination like that! It comes with remarkable turbocharged variants, but the engines are already naturally-aspirated. Expect to see a good 250,000 miles on this baby when you take good care of it!, Other researchers did not agree with the new study's findings and still say several clues point to an asteroid creating the Chicxulub crater., “It was an acknowledgment that every school has different challenges in meeting those guidelines," Pringle said, noting that implementing social distancing guidelines, for example, would be a different challenge in crowded urban schools than it would be in more sparsely attended rural schools.”, Even if school districts receive the money they need to quickly implement changes, the decision on whether to reopen is left up to teachers’ unions and local officials, and is made on an individual basis across the nation’s more than 13,500 school districts., Texas has lost 16 residents to the weather, while the rest of the toll is spread across Tennessee, Oregon, Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma and Arkansas., There's absolutely no evidence that proves their model is incorrect, but on the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that is still pointing to an asteroid being the most likely impactor," Kring said., The weather is not the typical winter cold. Some of those who have already been impacted by the storms have spent days without power and water, and likely won't see temperatures rise above freezing until next week., The researchers offer a scenario for how the comet could have beaten those long-shot odds., Harvard researchers theorized that a piece of a comet crashed into Earth over 66 million years ago to create the Chicxulub crater, according to a study published Monday in Scientific Reports., The Chicxulub crater is located on the Yucatán Peninsula of modern-day Mexico and spans about 110 miles. The impact that created the crater is linked to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which killed off the dinosaurs and many other species, according to the study., The study estimated the size of the comet piece to be about 4 miles wide, and Artemieva argued the comet would need to be at least 7.5 miles wide to make a crater the size of Chicxulub. With the small comet piece, she said, "it is absolutely impossible," and the crater size from the impact would be at least half the size., The odds of an asteroid with a diameter of at least 6.2 miles causing a Chicxulub impact event is one in every 350 million years, according to the study. Long-period comets -- comets with an orbit of more than 200 years -- that are capable of the Chicxulub event are significantly rarer, with one occurring every 3.8 to 11 billion years, the study found., Biden’s aides dismiss the controversy as a flareup that will disappear once the coronavirus is better under control and more school districts reopen, pointing to recent polls suggesting the public so far believes Biden is doing a good job in handling the issue., Fortunately, Texas' power provider, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), said Wednesday it was making progress in restoring power to the state's electric system and hoped local utilities may return to rotating outages instead of extended outages Thursday morning., Psaki acknowledged that during a briefing Wednesday, declaring that while the federal government can help with money and guidelines on how to safely reopen, “this is going to be up to local schools and school districts.”, In San Antonio, Jordan Orta and her 2-year-old son slept in her car Tuesday night because their powerless home was so cold, as outside temperatures dipped into the 20s. Her home was without power from Tuesday night until early Wednesday, after earlier outages., Children face "mental health issues, academic issues, physical and social issues. And the priority seems to be on the adults who worked in the school system, rather than the children who are supposed to benefit from it,” Cooper said.,Republicans see the issue as one that has an urgent and immediate impact on nearly every American family, and one that’s particularly salient for the kinds of suburban swing voters who can be decisive in tough House districts and statewide races., Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, said teachers are willing to go back to in-person learning “only if this bill is passed, only if the dollars get to the school districts in time for them to be able to do the work that they need to do in terms of spacing, in terms of sanitizing, and only if we get the majority of our teachers vaccinated.”, Democrats believe they can turn the issue back on any Republicans who vote against the COVID-19 aid bill, and plan to hammer those lawmakers for blocking funding to get kids back to school., A tornado watch is in effect for parts of the Florida Panhandle, Southwest Georgia and Southeast Alabama until 8 a.m. EST. Washington, DC will be coated in snow, sleet and freezing rain by Thursday morning, while New York should see six to eight inches of snow in the afternoon, Ward said