Viral News: Miami Beach declared an emergency and imposed an 8pm curfew to shut down late night Spring Break parties that threaten to spread the coronavirus. Police fired pepper balls to break up a party that turned into a riot Saturday night.

  “As we hit the peak – at the peak of spring break, we are quite simply overwhelmed in the entertainment district,” City Manager Ron Aguila said.

  Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared, “We are in an oasis of freedom in a nation that’s suffering from the yoke of oppressive lockdowns,’’

  Florida, and some of its most popular beach counties, have among the highest Covid death rates in the country. Florida’s overall death rate is 155 per 100,000, one of the highest in the country. In Miami-Dade County, it’s 210 per 100,000, and 173 in Palm Beach.

  As the national death rate and the spread of Covid-19 gradually diminish, the danger is still present. The Beach Club and a la carte dining room at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club have been closed after a virus outbreak. And the Idaho Legislature voted to shut down for several weeks after six of the 70 House members tested positive. 

  In the NCAA tournament, Virginia Commonwealth dropped out just three hours before it was scheduled to tip off against Oregon because it had received “multiple positive tests” over the previous 48 hours.

  Just shy of 81.5 million Americans have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. According to current projections, 90 percent of the population could be vaccinated by August 5^th. As of this morning, 542,359 Americans are dead of the disease.

Strip Poker: One of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s current aides over the weekend became the eight woman to accuse him of sexual harassment. Alyssa McGrath, 33, an administrative assistant in Cuomo’s office, told The NY Times  that he looked down her shirt, quizzed her about her marital status, and told her she was beautiful. 
  She described Cuomo kissing her on the forehead and gripping her firmly around the sides while posing for a picture at a 2019 office Christmas party.

  Cuomo insists he’s done nothing wrong and judgment should wait for an official investigation, but his pattern of behavior is pretty well established.

  In an article in The New Yorker, writer Ronan Farrow describes an effort by Cuomo and his aides to discredit and ruin the reputation of his original accuser. Lindsey Boylan, who’s now running for Manhattan Borough President.

   Boylan told Farrow the Governor repeatedly commented on her appearance and touched her. “He would put his hand on my lower back,” farrow reports Boylan telling him.

  “He would find a way to, like, touch me in passing—getting on the plane, getting off the plane,” Boylan told Farrow. “He frequently stared at my legs.” She said that, in October 2017, as she sat with the Governor on a private plane, he told her, “Let’s play strip poker.” 

  Boylan told Farrow about an incident in the summer of 2018 when she met alone with Cuomo in his Manhattan office. As she got up to leave, Cuomo moved in front of her. “He blocked me getting out,” she told Farrow. Then, as she attempted to move forward, she said, he kissed her on the lips. “It was in no way platonic,” she told Farrow. “I was mortified.”

Political Correction: The Disney Plus streaming service has pulled some of the company’s most classic movies because they contain what they call “racist” stereotypes. Among movies no longer offered are “Dumbo,” “The Aristocats,” and “Peter Pan.” 

  Of course, the racism has there for everyone to see for decades. In “Peter Pan” the Indians are referred to as “redskins.”  In “Dumbo” a troupe of crows does a musical number that’s like a minstrel show and their leader is “Jim Crow,” taken from the label of segregation laws. 

The Spin Rack:  As the US continues to draw down troops in that country, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a quick visit to Afghanistan’s capital yesterday morning. The US is still hoping for some kind of peace deal with the Taliban, who threaten to take over the country again after 20 years of fighting them. — Arkansas’ Republican governor Gov. Asa Hutchinson said yesterday on CNN that he signed into law a near-total ban on abortion because he wants the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made the procedure legal.

The Obit Page: Jewelry designer Elsa Peretti, whose work adorned the rich, famous, and beautiful, has died at age 80 in Catalonia, Spain. 

  Notable among her designs was the heavy gold “Bone Cuff” bracelet.

  Peretti arrived in New York as a fashion model in the 1960s, hitting the runway for designers like Halston, Issey Miyake and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo.

  Almost on a whim she tried her hand at jewelry design, her first creation a tiny sterling silver bud vase worn as a pendant on a leather cord. A model wore it in a fashion show and suddenly Peretti was a much-admired jewelry designer.

Plotlines: The federal prosecutor initially in charge of the Capitol insurrection cases told “60 Minutes” he believes some suspects might be charged with sedition, plotting to overthrow the government. “I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” Michael Sherwin said. “I believe the facts do support those charges.” 

  The sedition law says people who “oppose by force the authority” of the government or use force “to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States” can be charged with the crime punishable by death.

  Sherwin, who’s not longer in charge of the investigations, said, “It’s unequivocal that Trump was the magnet that brought the people to DC on the 6th. Now the question is, is he criminally culpable for everything that happened during the siege, during the breach?” He said,  “We have people looking at everything.”

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