New York City votes for mayor

NEW YORK: New York City residents cast ballots in a Democratic primary on Tuesday that will all but certainly select the next mayor tasked with shaping the post-pandemic future of America’s largest metropolis.

Ex-policeman Eric Adams is the frontrunner in a diverse group of 13 candidates vying for the job often called "the second-most difficult" in the United States after that of president. Voters headed to polls with Covid-19 still casting a long shadow over the Big Apple, the epicenter of America’s early outbreak, and which has lost 33,000 people to the virus.

But the city is now coming back to life -- virtually all coronavirus restrictions have been lifted, and 66 percent of adults have received at least one vaccine dose. A crowded field of progressives and moderates face off in a race made all the more uncertain by a new ranked-choice system of voting that has clouded all predictions.