Cuomo announces winners of ‘Wear a Mask New York’ commercial contest
New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the winners of the “Wear a Mask New York” contest at his daily press briefing yesterday.
The two winners were “We ❤ NY” by Bunny Lake Films and “You Can Still Smile” by Natalia Bougadellis and Emory Parker.
They will both be aired on television across the state to encourage people to wear their face masks in public to stop the spread of COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus.
These two commercials were chosen from five finalists, and those five finalists were chosen from 600 submissions. When it came to narrowing the competition down to the winners, 186,000 votes were cast.
“We launched the ‘Wear A Mask New York’ contest to help spread the word about the importance of wearing a mask, and frankly this contest generated much more energy and excitement than I even anticipated,” Cuomo said. “The tremendous level of participation demonstrates that people understand that a mask can be the difference between life and death. This is about their lives and this is about their community, and they’re engaged — because they are New York tough, smart, united, disciplined and loving.”
The contest was overseen by his daughter, Mariah Kennedy Cuomo, who volunteered for the position after helping her father come up with the idea for the contest.
“We asked New Yorkers to create ads about the importance of wearing a mask in public, and we received over 600 video submissions from across the state,” Kennedy Cuomo said. “Congratulations to our winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted ads, who voted, who shared ads and helped spread this important message that it’s absolutely critical to wear a mask in public. And we’ll be continuing to reach out to New Yorkers for help in spreading the message about how we can get through this together because New Yorkers are clearly ready, willing and able to help.”
Read more about this in these articles: Eyewitness News, Kings County Politics
De Blasio announces more than 10 new COVID-19 testing sites, two open
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced during his daily press briefing yesterday that over 10 new coronavirus testing sites will open in Queens throughout June and the end of May.
Two of these sites opened up yesterday — one in Forest Hills and the other in Far Rockaway — and the rest will open during the next month.
Far Rockaway has had one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the city but hasn’t had a set place to conduct testing until now.
Two more testing centers will open in Far Rockaway in the coming weeks, one tomorrow at the Sorrentino Recreation Center and the other on June 4. The site open currently is located at the Rockaway Medical Office.
“By Aug. 1 our goal is to be at 50,000 tests per day and we feel confident about our ability to get to that number,” de Blasio said.
Other testing sites will be opened in the neighborhoods of Flushing, Ridgewood, Long Island City, Jamaica, Richmond Hill and Elmhurst.
Read more about this in this article: The Flushing Post
Three Brooklyn funeral homes being sued over storing bodies in unrefrigerated trucks
Three funeral homes in Brooklyn are facing lawsuits after it came out that they were storing dead bodies that they couldn’t fit inside their facilities on unrefrigerated U-Haul trucks.
The Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home in Flatlands, Armistead Burial and Cremation in Flatbush and DeKalb Funeral Services are all being sued by families who feel that their loved ones were mishandled.
The Cleckley home was the first to be reported on when it came to the way it was storing its decedents, which came about after neighbors began reporting foul odors coming from the trucks parked outside the home.
Cleckley and the other two homes have no official business relations to each other, but an Armistead representative said that they have a “gentleman’s agreement” for sending each other business.
So far, Cleckley’s license has already been suspended.
Read more about this in this article: New York 1
Diocese of Brooklyn reopens all Catholic churches in Brooklyn and Queens
The Diocese of Brooklyn reopened all of its Catholic churches yesterday across Brooklyn and Queens for the first time since March 20.
The Diocese’s churches led to mass spreading of the coronavirus among its parishioners before it made the decision to close all of its congregations for in-person prayer.
Churches were holding virtual masses, such as by streaming live on Facebook or by using Zoom to do large groups.
Now that the churches are beginning to reopen, however, weekly mass will still be conducted remotely, but people can come in for private prayer so long as they remain socially distant.
There can only be a maximum of 10 people in a church at a time and face masks are mandatory. GLoves are optional.
Some of the churches are using signs to remind people to social distance while others are using yellow caution tape to literally separate pews. Others, like the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Prospect Heights, are using blue tape to show people exactly how far away from each other they should be sitting.
“Some people will be scared, and we want to let them see that the church is a place where you can feel safe to come and to pray and to be with others,” St. Joseph’s Msgr. Kieran Harrington told The New York Post.
Read more about this in this article: The New York Post
