On #TheUpdate this Thursday, Harlem is being represented in a big way. Governor Kathy Hochul has selected Harlem senator Brian Benjamin as her choice for lieutenant governor. If he accepts, Benjamin would be only the state's second black lieutenant governor.

It truly was a cunning scheme: authorities have taken down a criminal racket in which corrupt lawyers and doctors used hundreds of desperate people- including drug addicts and homeless individuals- to feign trip-and-fall accidents to collect damages.

And the clock keeps ticking on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says that as many as 1,500 Americans still await evacuation as concerns of a terror attack targeting Kabul's airport grow in the arlift's final days.

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!

On the Season 8 premiere of #TheUpdate this Wednesday,, there's a new power structure in the state of New York. Kathy Hochul is now the first female governor, and in her first few hours on the job, she sought to bring a new sense of urgency to the immense problems that went unaddressed during her predecessor's distracted final months in office. At the R. Kelly sex trafficking trial, a woman testifying against him barred her and another live-in girlfriend from watching a documentary series that portrayed him as a sexual predator.

And in Louisiana, graphic body camera video kept secret for more than two years shows a state trooper pummeling a black motorist 18 times with a flashlight- an attack the trooper defended as "pain compliance."

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!

It's always strange how drama always starts when people don't do anything to cause it. That would also describe T's life to a certain point. Gather some snacks and take a seat- it's time for the first ever storytime with Tommie.

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!

From New York, the greatest city in the world, it's The Update with Brandon Julien!