World famous Rock band Scorpions and Bangladeshi global-band Chirkutt are set to perform a concert to celebrate Bangladesh’s 50 years of independence at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Friday. Also read:Oyshee's 'Garir Mechanic' springs a surprise

Several thousand New York City public workers could lose their jobs Friday if they don’t show they’ve complied with the city’s mandate requiring they receive at least two shots of the COVID-19 vaccine. Though they represent about 1% of the 370,000-person city workforce, including teachers, firefighters and police officers, the mass firings will mark a new line in the sand for the nation’s largest city, which has imposed some of the most sweeping vaccine mandates in the country. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, speaking about the looming firings at a news conference last week, noted that city workers largely complied with the mandate. “Living in a city as complex like this, there must be rules. We must follow them. The rule is to get vaccinated if you’re a city employee. You have to follow that,” the Democrat said. The mandate imposed last year under the former Mayor Bill de Blasio required most city workers to get a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of October or be placed on unpaid leave. New workers who started their jobs after Aug. 2 were likewise required to comply and show that they’ve received their shots. There were up to 4,000 workers who had failed to comply by of the end of January, according to City Hall, but that number has dropped as more workers have started to comply or produce their vaccine cards since they were notified last week that they would be fired. City officials said they won’t know exactly how many workers are fired until after the deadline passes. For most workers, that’s the end of their workday on Friday. A coalition of unions representing different parts of the city workforce sued to block the mass firings. But a judge late Thursday afternoon ruled in favor of the city. A group of city Department of Education employees had a request for their appeal to be considered by the Supreme Court dismissed on Friday. Some unions separately struck deals with the city to allow some workers to choose to remain on unpaid leave until this summer or fall. But not all union members took advantage of those deals. The United Federation of Teachers, which represents New York City public school teachers, had negotiated with the city school district to allow members to choose to stay on unpaid leave until September 5. READ: US donates another 10mn doses of Pfizer to Bangladesh But the union said 700 of its members who have been on unpaid leave for months opted not to extend their leave or provide proof of vaccine and had been notified they’d be fired. The union joined others in fighting the mass firings, contending that workers deserved due process that involved a hearing before being dismissed. Police Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, said less than 50 of its members had received notices they faced termination. Across the entire city workforce, up to 3,000 employees failed to meet an end of October deadline and have been on unpaid leave for months, according to the city. There are additionally up to 1,000 new employees, who started work after Aug. 2, who face termination because they have not shown proof of having received two shots.

Smoke and ash from massive wildfires in the American West clouded the sky and led to air quality alerts Wednesday on parts of the East Coast as the effects of the blazes were felt 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) away. Strong winds blew smoke east from California, Oregon, Montana and other states all the way to other side of the continent. Haze hung over New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The nation’s largest wildfire, Oregon’s Bootleg Fire, grew to 618 square miles (1,601 square kilometers) — just over half the size of Rhode Island. Fires also burned on both sides of California’s Sierra Nevada and in Washington state and other areas of the West. The smoke blowing to the East Coast was reminiscent of last fall, when large blazes burning in Oregon’s worst wildfire season in recent memory choked the local sky with pea-soup smoke but also affected air quality several thousand miles away. So far this year, Seattle and Portland have largely been spared the foul air. Read:Size of Oregon wildfire underscores vastness of the US West People in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere with heart disease, asthma and other health issues were told to avoid the outdoors. Air quality alerts for parts of the region were in place through Thursday. “One of the things about this event that makes it so remarkable is that the smoke is affecting such a large swath of the U.S,” said Jesse Berman, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an expert on air quality. “You’re not just seeing localized and perhaps upstate New York being affected, but rather you’re seeing numerous states all along the East Coast that are being impacted.” David Lawrence, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said wildfire smoke usually thins out by the time it reaches the East Coast, but this summer it’s “still pretty thick.” In California, a wildfire burning completely uncontained south of Lake Tahoe crossed the state line into Nevada. New voluntary evacuation orders were issued for portions of Douglas County, Nevada. The Tamarack Fire, started by lightning in Alpine County, California, has now burned more than 68 square miles (176 square kilometers). Authorities say more than 1,200 firefighters are battling the blaze, which has destroyed at least 10 structures. Read:Huge Oregon blaze grows as wildfires burn across western US Meanwhile, Oregon on Wednesday banned all campfires on state-managed lands and in state campgrounds east of Interstate 5, the major highway that is commonly considered the dividing line between the wet western part of the state and the dry eastern half. The regulation includes the designated fire rings at campsites, as well as candles and tiki torches. Propane grills are still allowed, but the state still urged campers to pack food that doesn’t require heating or cooking. The lightning-caused Oregon fire has ravaged the sparsely populated southern part of the state and has been expanding by up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that’s turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox. Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes and, in some cases, the inferno’s heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky and are visible for more than 100 air miles (161 kilometers). Authorities in Oregon said lower winds and temperatures allowed crews to improve fire lines, and they hoped to make more progress Wednesday. The fire was approaching an old burn area on its active southeastern flank, raising hopes it would not spread as much. The blaze, which is being fought by more than 2,200 people, is about one-third contained. It was within a few hundred acres of becoming Oregon’s third-largest wildfire in modern history. Read:Western wildfires threatening American Indian tribal lands At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and an additional 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have burned, but no one is known to have died. Extremely dry conditions and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. While Berman is hopeful that the smoke will last only a couple of days, he said we may see more of it due to climate change. “We fully expect that you’re going to see more situations where smoke, from fires occurring farther away, is going to travel long distances and affect people in other parts of the country,” Berman said. “I would not be surprised at all if these events did become more frequent in the future.”

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City after appealing to the political center and promising to strike the right balance between fighting crime and ending racial injustice in policing. A former police captain, Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor if elected. He triumphed over a large Democratic field in New York’s first major race to use ranked choice voting. Results from the latest tabulations released Tuesday showed him leading former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by 8,426 votes, or a little more than 1 percentage point. “While there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear: an historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York,” Adams said in a statement. Read:Biden: Infrastructure vow was not intended to be veto threat He said he was running to “deliver on the promise of this great city for those who are struggling, who are underserved, and who are committed to a safe, fair, affordable future for all New Yorkers.” Adams will be the prohibitive favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels. Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1 in New York City. Adams’ closest vanquished Democratic rivals included Garcia, who campaigned as a technocrat and proven problem-solver, and former City Hall legal advisor Maya Wiley, who had progressive support including an endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate known for his proposed universal basic income, was an early favorite but faded in the race. Voting in the primary ended June 22. Early returns showed Adams in the lead, but New Yorkers had to wait for tens of thousands of absentee ballots to be counted and for rounds of tabulations done under the new ranked choice system. Under the system, voters ranked up to five candidates for mayor in order of preference. Candidates with too few votes to win were eliminated and ballots cast for them redistributed to the surviving contenders, based on the voter preference, until only two were left. The city’s first experience with the system in a major election was bumpy. As votes were being tallied on June 29, elections officials bungled the count by inadvertently including 135,000 old test ballots. Erroneous vote tallies were posted for several hours before officials acknowledged the error and took them down. The mistake had no impact on the final outcome of the race. Adams, Garcia and Wiley all filed lawsuits last week seeking the right to review the ranked choice tally. Wiley said in a statement Tuesday that the board “must be completely remade following what can only be described as a debacle.” As for herself, she said her campaign would have more to say soon about “next steps.” Garcia’s campaign issued no immediate response to Tuesday’s vote tally, but said she would be making a statement Wednesday morning. Adams, 60, is a moderate Democrat who opposed the “defund the police” movement. Read: Black Americans laud Juneteenth holiday, say more work ahead “We’re not going to recover as a city if we turn back time and see an increase in violence, particularly gun violence,” Adams said after three people including a 4-year-old girl were shot and wounded in Times Square in May. “If Black lives really matter, it can’t only be against police abuse. It has to be against the violence that’s ripping apart our communities,” he told supporters the night of the primary. But Adams is a study in contradictions who at different times has been a defender of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a registered Republican and a Democratic state senator thriving in a world of backroom deals. Adams speaks frequently of his dual identity as a 22-year police veteran and a Black man who endured police brutality himself as a teenager. He said he was beaten by officers at age 15. Adams became a police officer in 1984 and rose to the rank of captain before leaving to run for the state Senate in 2006. While in the police department, he co-founded 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group that campaigned for criminal justice reform and against racial profiling. After winning a state Senate seat from Brooklyn in 2006, Adams made an impression with an impassioned speech favoring same-sex marriage rights in 2009, two years before New York’s state legislators passed a marriage equality bill. Adams also weathered a few controversies, including a 2010 report from the state inspector general that faulted his oversight of the bidding process to bring casino gambling to the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Adams had accepted campaign contributions from a politically connected group bidding for the gambling franchise. Adams was elected in 2013 as Brooklyn borough president, his current job. Adams is a vegan who credits a plant-based diet with reversing his diabetes. He has a 25-year-old son, Jordan Coleman, with a former girlfriend. His current partner is Tracey Collins, an educator who holds an administrative job in the city’s public school system. Journalists raised questions during the race about where Adams lived. He was born in Brooklyn, walked the beat there as a cop, owns real estate there and represented it in the state Senate. But he slept in his office in Brooklyn Borough Hall for months during the pandemic and opponents noted that he shares a place with his partner in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Adams gave reporters a tour of a basement apartment in Brooklyn that he said was his primary residence. Read:Adams takes fragile lead in NYC Democratic mayoral primary Adams can be a charismatic speaker but has also made cringe-worthy utterances, such as his 1993 suggestion that Herman Badillo, a Puerto Rican-born politician, should have married a Latina instead of a white, Jewish woman. Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event last year, Adams complained about gentrifiers moving to the city from elsewhere. “Go back to Iowa. You go back to Ohio,” Adams said. “New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is.” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, was barred by the city charter from seeking a third term.

A judge sentenced a Bangladeshi immigrant to life in prison Thursday, saying he plotted to carry out a “barbaric and heinous” plot to kill as many people as he could with a suicide bombing attack in New York City’s subway beneath Times Square in 2017. Akayed Ullah, 31, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Richard J. Sullivan, who said Ullah had carried out “about as serious a crime as there is,” though he largely failed when the bomb attached to his chest barely exploded, burning him severely but largely sparing those around him from severe injuries. “A life sentence is appropriate,” Sullivan said. “It was a truly barbaric and heinous crime.” The judge told the would-be suicide bomber that life in prison was “less draconian than the sentence you were going to impose on yourself.” Ullah, 31, speaking through a white mask over his black beard and with his tearful mother looking on from a courtroom bench behind him, apologized before hearing the sentence. “Your honor, what I did on Dec. 11, it was wrong,” he said. “I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I’m deeply sorry. ... I do not support harming innocent people.” Prosecutors had sought the life term for Ullah, saying the “premeditated and vicious” attack was committed on behalf of the Islamic State group. But defense lawyer Amy Gallicchio said Ullah deserved no more than the mandatory 35 years in prison. She said he had “lived lawfully and peacefully” before the December 2017 attack that she blamed on a “personal crisis that left him isolated, depressed, vulnerable and suicidal.” “He’s not an evil man. He is not a monster,” she said. The attack in a pedestrian tunnel beneath Times Square and the Port Authority bus terminal left Ullah seriously burned but spared some pedestrians nearby from more serious injuries, though the government noted that one bystander has lost 70% of his hearing. At trial, prosecutors showed jurors Ullah’s post-arrest statements and social media comments, including when he taunted then-President Donald Trump on Facebook before the attack. Hours after Ullah’s bombing attempt, Trump derided the immigration system that had allowed Ullah — and multitudes of law-abiding Bangladeshis — to enter the U.S. Ullah got an entry visa in 2011 because he had an uncle who was already a U.S. citizen. Trump said allowing foreigners to follow relatives to the U.S. was “incompatible with national security.” Sullivan’s sentence was formally described as life in prison plus 30 years because one count required that a 30-year mandatory sentence be added to whatever was imposed for the other charges. The judge, who now sits on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also ordered $7,380 in restitution.

This New Year’s Eve is being celebrated like no other in most of the world, with many bidding farewell to a year they’d prefer to forget.

New York City has seen almost one in seven nationally recognized chain-store branches close their doors in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country and sent consumers scurrying for cover, according to a latest industry report.

The surging coronavirus is taking an increasingly dire toll across the U.S. just as a vaccine appears close at hand, with the country now averaging over 1,300 COVID-19 deaths per day — the highest level since the calamitous spring in and around New York City.

A giant, yellow ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural was painted Thursday on New York City's Fifth Avenue right in front of Trump Tower, a skyscraper that serves as the headquarters for the Trump Organisation.

Tensions between police and members of New York City's Hasidic Jewish community flared again Thursday as officers interrupted a crowded funeral procession to crack down on social distancing violators.