What you need to know for Wednesday.
Coronavirus in N.Y.C.: Latest Updates |
Weather: Maybe a sprinkle, with a high in the mid-50s. |
Alternate-side parking: Suspended through May 12. Meters are in effect. |
 | | Andrew Seng for The New York Times |
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Cuomo calls subway sleeping by homeless people ‘disgusting.’ |
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday waded into a struggle between New York City and the state agency that runs the city’s transit system over the issue of homeless people sleeping on subway trains. |
At his daily briefing, Mr. Cuomo held up a front-page photo in The Daily News of homeless people camping on subway trains. |
“That is disgusting, what is happening on those subway cars,” he said, adding that what was shown in the image was “disrespectful to the essential workers” who rely on the subway. |
“It’s not even safe for the homeless people to be on trains,” he added. “No face masks, you have this whole outbreak, we’re concerned about homeless people, so we let them stay on the trains without protection in this epidemic of the Covid virus? No. We have to do better than that, and we will.” |
He did not elaborate on what measures would be taken, but he said in a subsequent radio interview on WCBS that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways, needed to “take dramatic action, and they have to take it now.” |
Mr. Cuomo called on the authority, which he effectively controls, to tell him what steps needed to be taken. |
Virus admissions at state’s hospitals have fallen 70 percent. |
The number of coronavirus patients newly admitted to hospitals in New York State has fallen more than 70 percent since the outbreak’s peak this month, according to statistics that Mr. Cuomo cited on Tuesday. |
The number reported Tuesday was below 1,000 for the first time in over a month, down from more than 3,000 reported on April 4 — further evidence that the outbreak was waning. |
Deaths from the virus remained flat — 335 more people died on Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo said, an almost identical figure to the 337 deaths reported on Monday. |
New York City changes the grading system for public schools. |
Six weeks into a profoundly disrupted semester, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced a new grading system effective through the end of the school year for the city’s 1.1 million students. |
Students across the system will not receive failing grades, the mayor said as he laid out the policies: |
Elementary school: Students in kindergarten through fifth grade will be graded either as “meets standards” or “needs improvement.” Because summer school plans are still being worked out, it is not yet clear whether children will be held back if they fall behind academically. |
Middle school: Students will be assessed using the same marks but can also receive a grade of “course in progress,” if teachers need more information to determine whether a student has mastered a class’s coursework. Those students will get priority for remedial help during the summer and fall. |
High school: Students will still get letter grades, but they will have until early next school year to complete courses that they do not finish to their teachers’ satisfaction. They will also be given the option for this semester of switching from grades to a pass or fail mark. |
Mr. de Blasio said the city was trying to strike a balance. Educators want to maintain high standards and motivate students to log on to online school each morning. |
But the city also wants to keep high school students on track for graduation and to avoid penalizing students, particularly those who have lacked the internet access they need for remote learning. |
Residential noise complaints in New York City have gone up by 22 percent compared to the same period last year. [Gothamist] |
A doctor has thoughts about Cristina Cuomo’s treatment for Covid-19. [Jezebel] |
A critical-care nurse on Long Island shares his diary entries: “The war is not over.” [New York Post] |
And finally: About all those kegs … |
Liquor and grocery stores are seeing increased sales of beer in cans and bottles, but shuttered bars and canceled events have created a backlog of draft beer — some of which is being sent to wastewater treatment plants for disposal, freeing up tanks and kegs for breweries to restart future production. |
Most small craft breweries don’t sell to grocery stores, and they normally rely on draft beer sales at their high-margin taprooms and brew pubs to bolster bottom lines. Draft beer makes up 10 percent of the average American brewery’s volume, said Bart Watson, the chief economist at the Brewers Association, but almost 40 percent for small brewers. |
So, as weeks of shelter-in-place orders stretch into months, brewers’ hard work may increasingly go down the drain. |
At its brewery in the Bronx, Torch & Crown Brewing Company has dozens of kegs of hoppy beers that are past the freshness window of about 45 days. They’re slated for disposal. But the brewery is busy transferring kegs of its still-fresh beer to tanks, and then repackaging it in 16-ounce cans — a pint at the bar, now for home. |
“I never thought it would be anything I’d do in my brewing career,” said Joe Correia, the head brewer and an owner. |
The process takes three to four days, involving constant measurements for damaging exposure to oxygen and bacterial infection, before the brewery cans beers such as its Runner Up pilsner and Heavy Crown imperial stout. |
“There’s no reason this beer should go to waste,” Mr. Correia said. |
Metropolitan Diary: Transit strike |
It was 1980. We met by chance on Broadway in January when he was walking home from work. |
We had seen each other a few times since that first meeting, mostly through and with my roommate, a high school friend of his. There was definitely a mutual interest, but neither of us had acted on it beyond some minor flirting. |
Then, on April 1, the city’s transit workers went on strike, 33,000 union members walking off the job. The subways and buses all stopped running. There was disruption and chaos all across New York. Commuting to and from work became quite an ordeal. |
As it turned out, we both worked in Midtown — he at Rockefeller Center and me near the Pan Am Building on Park Avenue — and we both lived on the Upper West Side. We agreed to walk home from work together, and continued to every night the strike was going on. |
Our route took us through Central Park. Everything was in bloom and beautiful. It was crazily romantic. |
The strike lasted 11 days. By the time it was settled, we were falling in love. |
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