Weather: Foggy again early, with some sun later. High in the low to mid-70s.
Alternate-side parking: In effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints Day).
To help fend off a second wave of the virus, stringent rules were put into place by the state this month in city neighborhoods at the heart of recent outbreaks. The tiered, three-color system stirred confusion, anger and worry among people living and working in the areas, as the borders for the restrictions in many areas cut across streets and neighborhoods.
Then, on Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that measures would be eased in some hot spots, noting the falling rate of positive virus test results. Restrictions, however, were tightened in other areas.
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The initial restrictions, explained
Mr. Cuomo ordered targeted restrictions on Oct. 6, with schools and nonessential businesses in the hardest-hit areas required to shut down for at least 14 days.
The lockdown — which divided virus hot spots into zones of red, orange and yellow on a map, according to their severity — were intended to combat worrisome test positivity rates in Brooklyn, Queens and New York City’s northern suburbs. The lockdown also imposed tight restrictions on houses of worship and restaurants.
The rules affected several neighborhoods with large populations of Orthodox Jewish residents and sparked an immediate backlash in some areas when they were announced.
Here’s what changed on Wednesday
Mr. Cuomo provided new metrics for the color-coded boundaries.
For the most serious restrictions to be lifted, an area in a red zone — where the outbreak had been particularly bad — would generally have to remain under a virus positivity rate of 3 percent for 10 days, while the rate to leave the less-affected orange zones would need to be under 2 percent and the yellow zones under 1.5 percent.
The governor said the rules for each zone — in yellow zones, for example, schools were allowed to remain open and restaurants to operate both indoor and outdoor dining — would not change. He said that in some places, the benchmark would be slightly higher, as “in a more rural area, you come into contact with fewer people.”
For comparison, the state had an average positivity rate of 1.2 percent over the last week, far below most other parts of the country. The current seven-day citywide rate is 1.68 percent, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.
[Read more about the lifting of some lockdown rules.]
The new changes should allow nonessential businesses in some parts of Brooklyn and Queens to reopen starting today, while thousands of children are set to be able to return to schools in those areas as soon as Monday.
Stringent lockdowns remain in the hardest-hit areas of Brooklyn, as well as in parts of Rockland and Orange Counties. Also, the Ozone Park neighborhood in Queens, along with Steuben and Chemung Counties on the Pennsylvania border, are under new restrictions.
She returned home and encouraged them to contact the museum. The neighbors had purchased the small painting by the renowned Black artist for a very modest sum at a friend’s Christmas charity art auction in 1960, to benefit a music school.
The couple, who are not art collectors, asked the Met that they not be identified. They had not been aware that their painting of confrontation between soldiers and farmers in Revolutionary War times might possibly be part of a larger series until they read stories about a Lawrence exhibition that premiered this year in Salem, Mass., and the curators’ efforts to locate the lost works. The couple contacted an art adviser to help them approach the Met.
On Wednesday, their painting — Lawrence’s Panel 16 from his series “Struggle: From the History of the American People” — was hung at the Met, reunited with the rest of the known works for the remaining two weeks of the exhibition, which runs through Nov. 1.
“It is rare to make a discovery of this significance in modern art, and it is thrilling that a local visitor is responsible,” the Met’s director, Max Hollein, said in a statement.
It’s Thursday — what will you discover?
Metropolitan Diary: Lost wallet
Dear Diary:
I had gone to see the Mets play at Citi Field. They won, but I lost my wallet.
My friends covered my subway fare home, and I began the process of replacing my credit cards, my driver’s license, my senior MetroCard and various medical IDs.
When the replacements came, they all looked familiar except for the driver’s license. The photo of me was black and white, not color, and there was a small transparent insert with a smaller version of the photo.
I hadn’t yet gotten a proper new wallet when I got on a crosstown bus a few days later. My cash and cards were crammed instead into an unfamiliar change purse.
When I tried to pay my fare, my MetroCard wouldn’t go in the slot. I didn’t understand why. Then the driver politely explained: I was using my driver’s license.
— Sam Bryan
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