NYC NOW - January 31, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: After lawmakers overrode Mayor Adams’ veto of two criminal justice bills, he now faces a more empowered City Council. Meanwhile, researchers at Rutgers University say they’ve made progress in the search for a new COVID-19 treatment.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, January 31st. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. After lawmakers overrode his veto of two criminal justice bills he opposed, Mayor Adams is facing a further empowered city council. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim reports. The bills to improve police transparency and ban solitary confinement, reveal a divide between Adams, a former cop and tough-on-crime Democrat, and a progressive city council. Speaker Adrian Adams issued one of her sharpest rebukes of the administration

before the vote. The resistance to this legislation is disturbing. The resistance to truth telling of data of who is being stopped in the city of New York is disturbing to me. It should be disturbing to everybody. Adam says the bills would stymie police and correction officers. Speaking to the media before the vote, he referenced his 2021 campaign slogan, quote, we can have public safety and justice. Researchers at Rutgers University say they're making progress in the search for a new COVID-19 treatment. WNIC's Caroline Lewis reports. Existing COVID medications like Paxlovid can help reduce the risk of hospitalization or death. But experts say it's likely a strain of the virus that's resistant to those drugs will emerge, and it's hard to predict when. A team of scientists at Rutgers has developed a molecule

that targets a different part of the virus than Paxlovid. They recently published a paper showing that it significantly reduced the viral load in mice infected with COVID-19. They tested it on strains of COVID that are currently in circulation, as well as drug-resistant strains engineered in a lab. But the research is still in its early stages. The paper is now awaiting peer review. 35-foot clouds now, maybe some snow showers later, Ohio 42. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.