New York’s Andrew Cuomo cancels Thanksgiving with 89-year-old mother after Covid backlash

New York governor had planned to spend holiday with mother and daughters, despite urging constituents to limit gatherings due to pandemic

Andrew Cuomo won’t be having Thanksgiving with his mother after all.

The New York governor had announced on Monday that he would be spending Thanksgiving with his 89-year-old mother and two daughters in Albany, New York, despite urging his constituents to refrain from gathering for the American holiday amid a rise in coronavirus cases.

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Covid rampages across US, unifying a splintered nation as cases surge

The virus is on the rise so uniformly across the vast landmass of the US, that records are being shattered daily

The Disunited States of America are united once more. After a brutal election that exacerbated bitter partisan divisions and left the country feeling as though it had been torn in two, it has at last been thrown back together.

For all the wrong reasons.

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Ivanka Trump calls New York fraud inquiries ‘harassment’

Authorities reportedly looking at consulting fees that may have gone to president’s eldest daughter

Authorities conducting fraud investigations into Donald Trump and his businesses are reportedly looking at consulting fees that may have gone to his daughter Ivanka Trump, prompting her to accuse them of “harassment”.

The New York Times said there were twin New York investigations, one criminal and one civil.

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‘I don’t care what you think’: Cuomo lashes out at reporters at Covid briefing

Watching Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus press briefings was once a household ritual for many in the US and around the world. But on Wednesday, the New York governor lost his cool.

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New York schools to close again as US approaches 250,000 Covid deaths – live

The US coronavirus death toll has now surpassed 250,029, representing a higher death toll than any other country in the world.

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, x number Americans have now died of coronavirus, more than eight months after the start of the pandemic.

Walmart, McDonald’s and Uber are among the companies that have the most employees on food stamps and Medicaid, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO looked into the matter at the behest of Bernie Sanders. “These giant corporations pay starvation wages – wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps,” Sanders said, pointing to several fast food and other companies whose workers have to rely on benefits because they do not make enough money to survive.

These giant corporations pay starvation wages—wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps to survive:

Walmart
McDonald’s
Dollar Tree
Uber
Burger King
FedEx
Wendy's

This is what a rigged economy is about. We need a $15 living wage and Medicare for All. https://t.co/GFzfK9ERae

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New York City public schools to close again as coronavirus cases rise

  • Closure plan after city reaches 3% Covid test positivity rate
  • Mayor Bill de Blasio: ‘We must fight the second wave’

Public schools in New York City will close again on Thursday, officials announced, after the city reached a 3% Covid test positivity rate.

Related: Covid deaths near 250,000 as US urged to act to stop 'unrelenting' spread

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Viral video of ballerina with Alzheimer’s shows vital role of music in memory

Music’s primal power for those living with dementia has inspired thousands of YouTube views for a clip of a former dancer

We see a frail and elderly woman in a chair, her eyes downcast. She motions for the music to be turned up, a swelling melody from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and with a little encouragement her hands begin to flutter. Then suddenly her eyes flash and she’s Odette the swan queen at the misty lakeside, arms raised. She leans forward, wrists crossed in classic swan pose; her chin lifts as if she’s commanding the stage once more, her face lost in reverie.

The woman in the film is Marta Cinta González Saldaña, a former ballet dancer who died in 2019, the year the video was shot. But the clip has gone viral since being posted recently by Spanish organisation Música Para Despertar (Music to Awaken), which promotes the value of music for those living with Alzheimer’s. Many of the details accompanying the video on its journey around the internet have been erroneous. Marta Cinta was not a member of the “New York Ballet” (there’s no such company) or the actual New York City Ballet, but seems to have run her own dance company in the city; the ballerina performing in the intercut video is not her but Ulyana Lopatkina, who is not even dancing Swan Lake but Mikhail Fokine’s The Dying Swan. Yet none of that takes away the impact of watching someone seemingly light up and have their memories unlocked by the power of melody. It’s as if you’re seeing Saldaña inhabit her true self.

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Covid-19 is rising again in New York. Can the city prevent another surge?

Officials have started rolling back some reopenings, and appear poised to close all public school classrooms

It seemed unimaginable: months after Covid-19 killed thousands of New Yorkers, the city and state finally seemed to get the virus under control. Infections, hospitalizations and deaths plummeted here and in neighboring regions, while surging elsewhere in the US.

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Lucky Grandma review – gambling granny goes on fun knockabout caper

Former Bond girl Tsai Chin confounds expectations brilliantly as an older woman who gets mixed up with the Chinese mafia

Sentimentalising, patronising and generally disrespecting our elders is by now enough of a movie trope that any title including the words “grandma” or “grandpa” causes an involuntary shudder. That Lucky Grandma isn’t one of those films is mostly down to its star, Tsai Chin, whose many attributes include the ability to conduct full conversations with a lit cigarette suspended from her bottom lip. One look at Grandma’s stern face tells us she did not come to play.

Related: Tsai Chin: 'What was it like being in bed with Sean Connery? Fine'

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Election night in New York City: anxiety, uncertainty and empty streets

Photographer Jordan Gale and George Etheridge documented a historic election night in New York City, from an empty Times Square to Brooklyn

New York City prepared for the final act of the most consequential election in a generation on Tuesday. There was reason to worry.

During the city’s 10 days of early voting, many of the 1.1 million New Yorkers were forced to spend large parts of the day in socially distant lines that stretched across multiple city blocks – including some who had decided to vote in person after a mail-in ballot snafu. Even the mayor waited almost four hours, after which he and the governor suggested a complete overhaul of the board of elections.

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‘He couldn’t move’: New York City man falls into sinkhole full of rats

Leonard Shoulders was waiting for bus in the Bronx when concrete cracked open and he fell into hole, unable to scream for help

A New York City man has fallen through a sinkhole in a sidewalk, landing directly on to a pack of rats and leaving him unable to scream for help out of a fear that they might crawl into his mouth, local media have reported.

In a city long used to tall tales of urban horror, like crocodiles in the sewers, the real-life terror experienced by Leonard Shoulders, 33, appeared to strike an appalled chord with denizens of the Big Apple.

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Nxivm leader Keith Raniere sentenced to 120 years in prison

Group leader was sentenced on convictions that he turned some female followers into sex slaves branded with his initials

Keith Raniere, a self-improvement guru whose organization Nxivm attracted millionaires and actors, was sentenced on Tuesday to 120 years in prison on convictions that he turned some female followers into sex slaves branded with his initials.

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‘Sue if you must’: Lincoln Project rejects threat over Kushner and Ivanka billboards

  • Lawyer for group issues scathing response to legal letter
  • Times Square ads blame Trump advisers for Covid deaths

The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.

Related: 'On the brink': US coronavirus cases surge in final days before election

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‘We cannot survive’: New York’s Strand bookstore appeals for help

Proprietor Nancy Bass-Wyden appeals to customers as literary landmark suffers the effects of the pandemic

The Strand Bookstore, a landmark of literary New York, is in serious trouble, appealing for customers to help it stave off closure amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: New York's Strand bookstore fights back over landmark status

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Amy Cooper made second call claiming black birdwatcher tried to assault her

  • Cooper in court after altercation in New York’s Central Park
  • Prosecutors aim to deter others from ‘this racist practice’

Amy Cooper, the white woman charged with filing a false police report for calling 911 during a videotaped dispute with a black birdwatcher in New York’s Central Park, made a second, previously undisclosed, emergency call in which she added that the man had tried to assault her, it was revealed on Wednesday.

Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance called Cooper’s complaints a hoax and noted it was lucky that no one had been injured or killed that day as a result.

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Who is Clare Bronfman, the Seagram’s heiress who financed Nxivm?

Bronfman was the first sentenced in connection with the group led by Keith Raniere – but while she was part of Nxivm, she used her wealth ‘as a means of intimidation’

Clare Bronfman, daughter of a billionaire Canadian father and a British mother, was making a name for herself as a showjumper in Europe in 2002.

Riding a 12-year-old gelding called Charlton, Bronfman – the heir to the Seagram’s liquor fortune – won the Rome Grand Prix equestrian tournament, and later placed second in a show in Bremen.

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Man dies after being shoved to the ground in New York mask altercation

The 80-year-old man was knocked unconscious after confronting a patron in a West Seneca bar over not wearing a face covering

An 80-year old man has died after being shoved to the ground during a confrontation at a bar with another patron who was not wearing a mask.

Rocco E Sapienza confronted another patron at a bar in West Seneca, New York, on 26 September because he was not wearing a mask, Erie county prosecutors said on Monday. Donald M Lewinski, 65, then shoved Sapienza, who fell and struck his head on the floor, said district attorney John Flynn.

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Coronavirus: Europe struggles to contain surge of cases

Rise in infection rate in Paris as Spanish authorities clash over Madrid lockdown

Bars in Paris have been ordered to close for two weeks, Madrid residents may no longer leave their city and Ireland is set to introduce tighter national restrictions as governments struggle to contain a Europe-wide surge in Covid-19 cases.

As infections in the Paris area rose to 270 for every 100,000 people – and as high as 500 for every 100,000 among 20- to 30-year-olds – with 36% of intensive care beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, the city’s police chief said bars must close from Tuesday.

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NYPD officer charged with spying on Tibetan immigrants for China

Baimadajie Angwang’s job was to ‘locate potential intelligence sources’ and ‘identify potential threats’, court papers say

A New York City police officer has been charged with spying on Tibetan immigrants in the United States as an “intelligence asset” for the Chinese government.

A criminal complaint filed on Monday in Brooklyn federal court accuses Baimadajie Angwang of working as an agent for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It says he was secretly supervised by handlers from the Chinese consulate in New York.

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