Inducted by Long Island’s own Billy Joel, Bill Medley and the Righteous Brothers joined the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2003. Now 82, Bill sat down to chat with WHLI’s Rob Rush before he plays a show in nearby New Jersey.
Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision for The Society of Singers/AP Images
By BILL BARROW Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.
The endorsement, announced Friday morning in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris continues to build momentum as the party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.
It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those same barriers at the presidential rank.
“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.
Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.
“This is going to be historic,” she added.
Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.
“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.
The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Harris formally — a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.
According to an Associated Press survey, Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.
Biden endorsed Harris within an hour of announcing his decision last Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.
The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the president’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers but he operated quietly.
Barack Obama’s initial statement after Biden’s announcement did not mention Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.
Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former president’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Harris’ campaign.
A Hempstead mother is accused of crashing into two cars while under the influence with her child in the car.
Police say the suspect crashed into the cars in East Garden City injuring one person and drove away from the scene Wednesday night.
When Nassau County police arrest the suspect they found her three-year-old daughter in the car. The child was taken to a nearby hospital for head pain, before being released to a family member. The mother faces several charges including drunk driving.
By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Transit and environmental advocacy groups in New York filed lawsuits Thursday challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to block a plan to reduce traffic and raise billions for the city’s ailing subway system through a new toll on Manhattan drivers.
The groups argue in two separate state Supreme Court suits that the Democrat violated the state’s laws and constitution when she indefinitely paused the fee, citing economic concerns.
The program, which was set to begin June 30, would have imposed on drivers entering the core of Manhattan a toll of about $15, depending on vehicle type. The fee was projected to generate some $1 billion annually for transit improvements.
The Riders Alliance, the Sierra Club and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, in their lawsuit, said Hochul’s decision violated the part of the state constitution that guarantees New Yorkers the right to “clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
“The people of New York City deserve to breathe,” the lawsuit states.
The City Club of New York, in its suit, called Hochul’s decision “quite literally, lawless” and lacking “any basis in the law as democratically enacted.”
It noted the toll had been approved by state lawmakers and signed into law by her predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in 2019, following decades of advocacy and public debate.
“As powerful as a governor is, this Governor has no legal authority — none — to direct the Metropolitan Transportation Authority” to pause congestion pricing, the group stated in the suit.
Hochul, through a spokesperson, dismissed the lawsuits as political posturing.
“Get in line,” spokesperson Maggie Halley said in an email. “There are now 11 separate congestion pricing lawsuits filed by groups trying to weaponize the judicial system to score political points, but Governor Hochul remains focused on what matters: funding transit, reducing congestion, and protecting working New Yorkers.”
Groups ranging from a public teachers union to New Jersey residents and local truckers filed suits ahead of the program’s expected start date seeking to block it.
Hochul has maintained her decision was driven by economic concerns and conversations with everyday New Yorkers.
She’s also suggested raising taxes on businesses to make up for the billions of dollars in lost revenue for transit, a proposal lawmakers have rejected.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who joined the groups in announcing the lawsuits Thursday, said New Yorkers will experience “increasing service cuts, gridlock, air quality alerts, and inaccessible stations” if the governor’s decision is allowed to stand.
Congestion pricing a “win-win-win” for New Yorkers because it would provide much needed revenue to make public transit “faster, more reliable and accessible” while also reducing “costly gridlock, carbon emissions, deadly collisions and toxic air pollution,” added Betsy Plum, executive director of the Riders Alliance.
Before her sudden about-face, Hochul had been a staunch advocate for the toll, even describing it as “transformative.”
The MTA had also already installed cameras, sensors and license plate readers for the program, and reached a contract worth more than $500 million with a private vendor to operate the tolling infrastructure.
By JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — Paris has long been a city of dreamers: Just look at the Eiffel Tower, for decades the world’s loftiest structure. Audacity also underpins the French capital’s plans for its first Olympic Games in a century, which open Friday with an opening ceremony for the ages.
The most sprawling and elaborate Olympic opening ever — a gala spectacular Friday evening on the River Seine that even French President Emmanuel Macron says initially felt like “a crazy and not very serious idea” — kicks off 16 days of competition that promise to be ground-breaking, with nearly every corner of the city hosting some aspect of competition.
After two toned-down, pandemic-hampered Olympics, expect a bold celebration. The heady marriage of sports and France’s world-renowned capital of fashion, gastronomy and culture could also help secure the Olympics’ longer-term future.
Olympic organizers were struggling to find suitable host cities for their flagship Summer Games when they settled on Paris in 2017, enticed by its promise of innovations and the potential for the city of romance to rekindle love for the Olympics, especially with younger audiences that have so many other entertainment options.
But Paris’ challenges are huge, too.
Past and present sorrows hang over the Games
The city that has been repeatedly struck by deadly extremist attacks has to safeguard 10,500 athletes and millions of visitors. The international context of wars in Ukraine and Gaza add layers of complication for the gargantuan security effort. French elite special forces are part of the security detail for Israel’s delegation.
Still, if all goes well, Paris hopes to be remembered as a before-and-after Olympic watershed.
The first Games with nearly equal numbers of men and women, an advance that’s been a long time coming since 22 women first got accepted as Olympians 124 years ago, also in Paris, will take another step toward aligning the Olympics with the post-#MeToo world.
Paris also hopes to reassure climate-conscious Generations Z and beyond by staging Games that are less polluting, more sustainable and more socially virtuous than their predecessors. Many of the sports venues are temporary, because Paris didn’t want to repeat the mistake of previous Olympic host cities that built new arenas and then had no use for them.
With iconic Paris monuments as backdrops — beach volleyball in the Eiffel Tower’s shadow — and breakdancing added to a growing list of Olympic sports that target young audiences, expect plenty of viral moments on Instagram, TikTok and elsewhere.
Crowds will be back for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced Tokyo to push back its Games to 2021 and keep spectators away, and the Beijing Winter Games in 2022, when China was locked down.
Prize-winning French theater director Thomas Jolly is turning central Paris into an open-air stage for the opening ceremony that will run through sunset and showcase France, its people and their history. The 330-meter-tall (1,083-foot-tall) Eiffel Tower will surely feature prominently.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including 320,000 paying and invited ticket-holders, are expected to line the Seine’s banks as athletes are paraded along the river on boats.
During the extravaganza, a no-fly zone extending for 150 kilometers (93 miles) around the capital will close Paris’ skies, policed by fighter jets, airspace-monitoring AWACS surveillance flights, surveillance drones, helicopters that can carry sharpshooters and drone-disabling equipment.
Helping Parisians move past the attacks of 2015
Showcasing and celebrating Paris could be joyously cathartic for the city that was plunged into mourning by extremist attacks in 2015.
Guesses about the identity of the person or people who might get the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron include soccer icon Zinedine Zidane and other French sporting heroes, but also survivors of Islamic State-group gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people on Nov. 13, 2015.
Paris is also taking gambles in hopes of leaving an indelible impression on the Olympics’ global audience of billions.
The decision not to stage the opening ceremony in the traditional setting of France’s biggest stadium — the Stade de France that was among the 2015 attackers’ targets and is now the venue for Olympic track and field and rugby sevens — and to host skateboarding, archery and other sports in temporary arenas in the heart of Paris have made safeguarding the Games more complex.
Rights campaigners and Games critics worry about the broad scope and scale of Olympic security, including the use of AI-equipped surveillance technology.
Paris’ reach stretches to the Pacific
The furthest venue is on the other side of the world in the French Pacific territory of Tahiti, where Olympic surfers will compete on famously giant waves that first form in storm belts off Antarctica.
Up to 45,000 police and gendarmes, plus 10,000 soldiers, are safeguarding Paris and its suburbs that together are hosting most of the 32 sports that will crown Olympic champions in 329 medal events. The gold, silver and bronze medals they’ll hand out are inlaid with a hexagonal, polished chunk of iron taken from the Eiffel Tower.
The Seine’s banks and riverside roads and more than a dozen of its bridges were fenced off nine days ahead of the opening ceremony, creating a no-go zone for people who haven’t applied in advance for passes and making it tough for Parisians and visitors to get around and see the sights in the city of 2 million. Owners of restaurants and other businesses inside the security fence are howling about fewer customers.
Leaving an Olympic legacy for Paris
Limiting new construction has saved money and, Paris organizers say, contributed to their goal of halving the Games’ overall carbon footprint compared with London in 2012 and Rio in 2016. Among the new venues, an Olympic aquatics center in Seine Saint-Denis is expected to help that underprivileged suburb of northern Paris teach more children to swim.
French organizers argue that the Games will leave positive impacts on Paris long after the Olympians and Paralympic athletes who follow from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 have departed.
A costly and complex cleanup of the long-polluted Seine, sped up by the deadline of the Games, is expected to reopen the river to public swimming next year, after Olympic marathon swimmers and triathletes have competed in it. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a dip this month to demonstrate that its waters are safe.
With estimated overall costs of around 9 billion euros ($9.7 billion), more than half from sponsors, ticket sales and other non-public funding, Paris’ expenses so far are less than for Tokyo, Rio and London.
Once opening ceremony fireworks have become memories, the City of Light will then become the playground of Olympians.
American gymnastics superstar Simon Biles is back. French-born basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama will carry home hopes on his 7-foot-4 (2.24-meter) frame. Ukrainian and Palestinian athletes have points they want to prove about conflict, resilience and sacrifice that go beyond the realms of sport.
The lucky few will win medals. Many will wish they had gone higher, faster and stronger.
But, together, they’ll always have Paris.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
Nassau Police say a fake company named ‘Top Line Masonry’ has been scamming homeowners in Floral Park.
Two men posed as contractors would go to victim’s homes offering to make home repairs, and then causing even more damage to victims’ houses to make more money, and in some cases took deposits for bigger jobs before taking off.
The two suspects pleaded guilty Wednesday to a variety of charges.
The FBI searched the Nassau County home of a former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Federal officers were seen around the Manhasset property of Linda Sun on Tuesday. Sun left the governor’s office nearly two years ago.
The nature of the investigation is unclear and no criminal charges have been filed in the case.
Billy Joel will play the final show of his monthly residency at Madison Square Garden Thursday night. It will be his 150th lifetime performance at the Garden. His first performance at the venue was 14 Dec 1978, and his monthly residency, the first of its kind, started in January 2014. With his 65th show in July 2015, Joel broke the record for the most lifetime performances by any artist.
By BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Tom Thibodeau has agreed to a three-year contract extension after leading the New York Knicks to three postseason appearances in his four seasons, a person with knowledge of the details said Wednesday.
The Knicks have made back-to-back trips to the Eastern Conference semifinals and rewarded Thibodeau for turning around what had been one of the worst teams in the league before his arrival.
Thibodeau had one year remaining on his contract before the extension, which was first reported by ESPN and confirmed to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it had not been announced.
Thibodeau has twice been voted NBA Coach of the Year, including in 2020-21 after leading the Knicks to the playoffs in his first season. They went 50-32 last season, their best record since winning 54 games in 2012-13, and fell one game shy of reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000.
A Knicks fan growing up in Connecticut who later served as an assistant coach with the team, Thibodeau returned to the franchise in 2020 after the Knicks had missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons.
He promptly led them to a 41-31 record in his first season and has gone 175-143 in his four seasons, placing him fifth on the franchise list for coaching victories.
The Knicks had already agreed to a contract extension with All-Star guard Jalen Brunson during this offseason, traded for Mikal Bridges and re-signed OG Anunoby, and the extension for Thibodeau was expected to follow.
Known for his demanding style and strong defensive teams, Thibodeau guided the Knicks through a number of injuries to earn the No. 2 seed in the East last season. They could be one of the top challengers to the NBA champion Boston Celtics in the East in 2024-25.
Thibodeau was also voted the NBA’s top coach in 2011 as a first-time head coach with the Chicago Bulls, after his first of three 50-win seasons in Chicago. Thibodeau also led Minnesota to the playoffs in 2018 and is 527-389 in his 12 seasons.
Thibodeau was an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics when they won the 2008 NBA title and with the U.S. Olympic team when it won a gold medal in 2016.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
By MIKE FITZPATRICK AP Baseball Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeff McNeil kept up his sudden power surge with a two-run homer that snapped a sixth-inning tie, and the New York Mets held off the New York Yankees 3-2 on Tuesday night in their Subway Series opener.
With both teams in playoff positions, Jose Quintana (5-6) and five relievers combined on a five-hitter before a sellout crowd of 47,453 at Yankee Stadium as the Mets (52-48) matched their season high of four games over .500.
Under rookie manager Carlos Mendoza, who spent the previous four years as the Yankees’ bench coach, the Mets are 3-0 against their crosstown rivals — including a two-game sweep at Citi Field last month.
“It’s a really good team win,” reliever Jake Diekman said.
Diekman worked a hitless ninth for his fourth save, subbing for Edwin Díaz because the star closer was unavailable following a 28-pitch outing Monday. After walking Juan Soto with one out, the veteran lefty froze Aaron Judge with a 96 mph fastball on the inside corner for a called third strike, then retired rookie Ben Rice on a game-ending grounder.
“He showed us a lot right there,” McNeil said.
The Mets had walked Judge his first four times up, once intentionally, but the Yankees couldn’t capitalize.
“I know how hot he is right now,” Quintana said.
Of the 19 pitches Judge saw, the only four in the strike zone were thrown by Diekman in the ninth.
“The last heater was spotted perfectly,” Diekman said. “I just challenged him and made quality pitches.”
Judge insisted he wasn’t frustrated by the Mets’ approach.
“I think they’re just trying to be a little careful and you’ve just got to pass the baton to the next guy,” he said. “It’s part of it. It’s a team game. Even if I went 4 for 4 today, we still might not win. So it’s just about, if I get a pitch to hit I’ve got to do some damage on it.”
Gleyber Torres homered early and Alex Verdugo had an RBI double for the scuffling Yankees. Rookie right-hander Luis Gil struck out six in five solid innings, yielding his only run when he plunked Francisco Lindor with a bases-loaded pitch in the fifth.
The score was 1-all when Pete Alonso greeted Michael Tonkin (3-4), cut twice by the Mets early this season, with a leadoff double in the sixth. One out later, McNeil launched his ninth home run of the year — fourth in five games since the All-Star break — to put the Mets ahead for good.
“More confident. I feel like my swing is right where it needs to be,” McNeil said. “I feel a lot better. I feel like myself. … I’m swinging the bat freely. I’m trying to get a good pitch I can drive.”
After recovering from a fever last weekend, Quintana permitted one run and three hits over five innings in his first start since the break. He struck out six and walked five.
It was another feel-good win for the sleep-deprived Mets, who arrived home in the wee hours Tuesday morning after their flight from Miami was delayed.
“We’ve had travel delays before,” McNeil said. “We were all prepared, and we showed it out there.”
TRAINER’S ROOM
Mets: Rookie RHP Christian Scott was placed on the 15-day injured list with a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow. Mendoza said Scott will be examined by multiple doctors before it’s determined how much time he could miss. … RHP Sean Reid-Foley (shoulder impingement) faced hitters Monday and hopes to make a rehab appearance Thursday with High-A Brooklyn.
Yankees: OF Jasson Domínguez (oblique strain) took live batting practice Monday at the team’s complex in Florida and is headed to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to ramp up. He could be playing games within the week. “So he’s getting close,” manager Aaron Boone said.
UP NEXT
Yankees ace Gerrit Cole (3-1, 4.60 ERA) starts Wednesday night against LHP Sean Manaea (6-4, 3.73) as the Mets try to sweep the season series.
Cole was tagged by the Mets for six runs and seven hits — including four homers — over four innings June 25 at Citi Field in his second start of the season after returning from an elbow injury.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Big Lots is closing 40 stores across the country including 2 locations on Long Island
The Carle Place and Centereach are closing and running sales to clear out the store’s inventory. There is no word on how much longer they will be open.
There are five other Big Lots locations on Long Island that will remain in business.