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New York will allow outdoor dining during phase two of reopening, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday, with restaurants in seven of 10 regions given the green light beginning on Thursday.

Cuomo also criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for a staged photo holding a Bible in front of a church near the White House, a visit made possible after protesters were cleared with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Under the plan to restart economic activity shut during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, restaurants and food services are not set to reopen fully until phase three. The hospitality industry and some lawmakers have been pushing to allow outdoor dining to help struggling businesses.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday he was postponing the state’s April 28 presidential primary to June 23 as its number of coronavirus cases climbed to 52,318 and deaths to 728.

“We have been behind this virus from day one. We are waiting to see what the virus does,” Cuomo said at a news conference.

The governor has become a leading national voice on the coronavirus pandemic as the state has accounted for roughly a third of the U.S. death toll and half the known cases.

There were over 74,000 cases of coronavirus in the United States as of Thursday midday. About half were in New York -- almost 10 times more than any other state.

Health experts said the answers are largely specific to the New York metropolitan area -- its density and population, primarily -- but they are also a warning to other states that think they may be spared.

The first and most obvious explanation for the severity of the area's outbreak is that New York is the largest and most densely populated city in the US, and coronavirus tends to spread in dense places.

Throughout the Trump presidency and especially in the Covid era, there was a quest for figures that could be held up as embodiments of everything that Trump’s opposition wanted to restore: reason, technical competence, idealism. Over time these figures took on the character of familiar dramatic archetypes — the Good Republican, the Heroic Whistleblower, the Beleaguered Expert, the Tough Blue State Governor, the Wise and Sophisticated Europeans.

You may have noticed, for instance, the long-overdue collapse of the heroic story around Andrew Cuomo, the Tough Blue State Governor par excellence, whose pandemic news conferences inspired such fawning media coverage — from late-night hosts who declared themselves admiring “cuomosexuals,” from his own CNN-host brother — that the governor wrote a book about “leadership lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic” while the pandemic was still going on.

Finally, the wheel has also turned for the Wise and Sophisticated Europeans, whose governments were once portrayed as having vanquished the pandemic with Science, while Trump’s America was a failed state where the coronavirus held illimitable dominion over all.

Cuomo Thought There Was No Limit to His PowerBesieged on multiple fronts, the governor is no longer holding forth; he’s just trying to hold on.

ret Stephens: I can’t believe I’m saying this, Gail, but Cuomo may make former Gov. Eliot Spitzer look good by comparison. At least Client 9’s behavior was, well, transactional, as compared to Cuomo’s creepy come-ons. And the cover-up of the nursing home Covid death count strikes me as possibly criminal and definitely worthy of impeachment. Especially since he was also trying to peddle a book about his Covid leadership skills while he was busy fudging the numbers.What’s your view?Gail: Have to admit it makes me sad. But the double whammy seems impossible to overcome. If it had just been the sex part we could have had some interesting conversations about what’s acceptable in an era that combines feminism with a fairly expansive view of what people — at least unmarried people — can and can’t do.Bret: “If It Had Just Been The Sex Part” could have been the title of a memoir by anyone from Caligula to Johnny Rotten. Sorry, go on.

ret: My gut reaction to your scenario is that it sounds very “Ooh la la,” like it could be a movie starring Cate Blanchett as Gov. Fatale, whereas Cuomo’s behavior is strictly “Ugh Yuck,” like it could be a movie starring Mickey Rourke. I just don’t think it works in quite the same way.Gail: If young workers in a state capitol started complaining that their female governor was touching them inappropriately, I sorta doubt the voters would see it as a glamorous movie.

Hours later, the police in Albany, N.Y., confirmed that they had been notified of one such accusation by the New York State Police, an incident at the Executive Mansion that was characterized as something that might have risen “to the level of a crime.”

The convening of a special judicial committee could signal a shift in Mr. Heastie’s thinking, but it could also give him more time to decide whether to proceed with impeachment. It also may give the governor some breathing room in a scandal that has overwhelmed his administration in recent weeks.

The tumult from the governor’s compounding scandals has significantly complicated negotiations over the state budget, due April 1, when the year’s most important policy issues are decided.

President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Tuesday that Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should resign if an investigation confirms the allegations of sexual harassment against him.

he'll probably end up being prosecuted, too," Biden said.

"Takes a lot of courage to come forward," he said. "So, the presumption is they should be taken seriously. And it should be investigated. And that's what's underway now."

A hospital ship heads to New York, and more than 17 states now tally over 1,000 cases.

Illinois reports the first known U.S. death of an infant with the coronavirus.

President Trump says he is weighing enforceable quarantines for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

ALBANY, N.Y. — For most of the past year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has tried to brush away a persistent criticism that undermined his national image as the man who led New York through the pandemic: that his policies had allowed thousands of nursing home residents to die of the virus.

He also asserted that the lack of data on hospital deaths of nursing home residents was due to concern and caution about the accuracy of data that nursing homes supplied — an issue also raised by the attorney general. “D.O.H. does not disagree that the number of people transferred from a nursing home to a hospital is an important data point,” he said.

The report also cast a critical eye on perhaps the governor’s most criticized decision since the beginning of the pandemic last year: a March 25 directive from the Health Department that ordered nursing homes to accept and readmit patients who had tested positive..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-1sjr751{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1sjr751 a:hover{border-bottom:1px solid #dcdcdc;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% - 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:'See more';}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}

Letitia James has been making big legal waves, from investigating the Trumps to Cuomo’s nursing home scandal, generating a torrent of national attention

Over the course of their long and controversial careers, both men have seemed untouchable. But thanks to the recent work of one lifelong public servant, who was born into a big family in Brooklyn without legacy money or power, each man is suddenly facing a moment of unaccustomed accountability.

The state attorney general, Letitia James, the first woman of color ever to hold statewide elected office in New York, blasted a hole in the fable of Cuomo’s pandemic leadership with a report in January showing the state was under-reporting deaths in nursing homes by as much as half.

As states try to scale up vaccine rollouts that have been marred with confusion and errors, the online registration sites — operated by a welter of agencies and using a range of technologies — are crucial.

There are many, many more people who want to be vaccinated than there are opportunities to get the shot.

“The registration system worked as designed, but there is far greater demand than available supply at this time,”

The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open possession of small amounts of marijuana, giving an unexpected lift to an effort by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cut down on the number of people arrested as a result of police stops.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose Police Department made about 50,000 arrests last year for low-level marijuana possession, said the governor’s proposal “strikes the right balance” in part because it would still allow the police to arrest people who smoke marijuana in public.

The governor’s announcement was cheered by lawmakers from minority neighborhoods as well as by civil rights groups, who are increasingly looking to Albany and to Washington in an effort to rein in what they see as overly aggressive tactics on the part of the Bloomberg administration.

"We ended up getting our first positive patients -- and that's when all hell broke loose," said one New York City doctor.

"We don't have the machines, we don't have the beds," the doctor said.

"To think that we're in New York City and this is happening," he added. "It's like a third-world country type of scenario. It's mind-blowing."

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday that his campaign is consulting with local public health officials before his rallies as he chases the Democratic presidential nomination amid mounting concern over the spread of the novel coronavirus."I think every American has got to think about it. And we, before we do rallies, consult with local public health officials to make sure that it's OK. So we've never done a rally without the approval of local public health officials," Sanders told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "Cuomo Prime Time."

The virus has infected more than 108,000 people around the world and killed more than 3,800, according to CNN's tally. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it is likely that widespread transmission of the virus will occur in the United States, where there were 717 confirmed cases as of Monday night.

"We're the only country -- major country -- not to guarantee health care to all. Think about somebody watching this program right now who may be feverish, who may be having a cough, who may be saying 'God, do I have the coronavirus? But I can't afford to go to a doctor. I can't afford the couple hundred bucks it may cost me.' Think about a worker who's making $13, $15 an hour who doesn't have any paid medical leave who has to go to work together because if he or she doesn't go to work they don't have the income to take care of their family," he said.

Justice Neil Gorsuch for his stirring words last week in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo.

“Government,” he wrote in a concurrence to the 5-4 majority opinion, “is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis.”

The case arises from restrictions Andrew Cuomo imposed by executive order in October that sharply limit attendance at houses of worship in zones designated by the New York governor as pandemic hot spots. In so-called orange zones, attendance is capped at 25 people; in red zones, at 10. That goes for churches and synagogues that can seat hundreds and that were already limiting attendance, barring singing, practicing social distancing and taking other precautions.

The numbers are also spiking in some areas that were spared the worst in the spring: Western New York has seen about 3,700 new cases in the last week alone, with rates of positive test results running above 5 percent.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says his response to the pandemic continues to be aggressive and highlights his state’s achievements: New York is still seeing much lower rates of infection than most states. And the number of daily deaths and hospitalizations pales in comparison to the spring, when thousands died for several weeks running, and tens of thousands were sickened.

he defensive posture from Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, is striking considering the confident air he’s projected since the early days of the pandemic.

A deal with General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to produce tens of thousands of the critical lifesaving devices seemed imminent. Then the announcement was pulled back.

The White House had been preparing to reveal on Wednesday a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems that would allow for the production of as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators to respond to an escalating pandemic when word suddenly came down that the announcement was off.

The decision to cancel the announcement, government officials say, came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it needed more time to assess whether the estimated cost was prohibitive. That price tag was more than $1 billion, with several hundred million dollars to be paid upfront to General Motors to retool a car parts plant in Kokomo, Ind., where the ventilators would be made with Ventec’s technology.

Washington (CNN)Welcome to CNN's fact check coverage of the eleventh Democratic presidential debate from Washington, DC, ahead of the nation's third super Tuesday, where primaries will be held in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio on March 17.

As Vice President, Biden campaigned with New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2015 to increase the state minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Asked whether he would order a national lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic, Biden took a swipe at Sanders' "Medicare for All" proposal. He pointed to Italy, saying that its single-payer health care system hasn't worked to stem the outbreak there.

When the definitive history of the coronavirus pandemic is written, the date 20 January 2020 is certain to feature prominently. It was on that day that a 35-year-old man in Washington state, recently returned from visiting family in Wuhan in China, became the first person in the US to be diagnosed with the virus.

In the two months since that fateful day, the responses to coronavirus displayed by the US and South Korea have been polar opposites.

One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.