Two years and two days after East Hampton Town declared a state of emergency because of a surging Covid-19 pandemic, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc announced on Tuesday the rescinding of that declaration and of its accompanying executive orders, saying that he was "really excited that things are looking up, finally, after two very long years."

Next to a display of 34 recovered handbags and a phalanx of Suffolk County police officers, including East Hampton Village Police Lieutenants Gregory Brown and Jeffrey Erikson, County District Attorney Ray Tierney told a crowd of reporters and photographers on Wednesday that an “organized retail theft ring” was behind the March 3 grab of $94,000 worth of handbags from Balenciaga, a high-end retailer in East Hampton.

“The dishes in my dish rack rattle,” said Andy Rosenthal, a resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the president of Stop the Chop, an organization seeking to end nonessential helicopter flights, including air shuttles to and from the Hamptons and tourist flights over the five boroughs.

A relaxation of outdoor dining rules for restaurants, put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, could become permanent. East Hampton Town officials have been working on changes that would allow most restaurants to double their seating capacity, but with one catch: the total numbers of patrons would have to remain the same. A three-year trial period is planned.

The East Hampton School District’s new transportation center on Springs-Fireplace Road is proof that the future of school busing here is much more than bright yellow buses and a place to park them.

As construction on its new 7,000-square-foot building nears completion, the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center is bumping up against unexpected costs that have left the organization “a couple of hundred thousand dollars” short of its $3 million budget. That’s why every little bit helps, its executive director said this week as she acknowledged a meaningful donation from the Hamptons United Methodist Church in the amount of $25,000.

The East Hampton Town Trustees have authorized the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation to once again use an aquatic weed harvester this summer as part of the ongoing effort to alleviate conditions that have promoted the growth of harmful algal blooms, particularly that of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in the pond.

Drivers in New York State may soon be paying around 46 to 50 cents less per gallon for gasoline. A bill making its way through the State Legislature as part of the state’s budget could provide that relief in the form of a temporary gas-tax holiday through the end of 2022.

Friday at 4 p.m. is the deadline for public comment on the scope of a draft environmental impact statement associated with the May 17 deactivation of East Hampton Airport and the opening, 33 hours later, of a “new” private-use airport on the same site.

Mindful of what some have called a creeping commercialization of the town’s beaches, the East Hampton Town Board is likely to amend the town code pertaining to peddling ahead of the 2022 summer season to get a handle on businesses that rent beach chairs, umbrellas, and watersport equipment and set up and maintain beach fires.

A teen PechaKucha at the Parrish Art Museum, with rapid-fire presentations by teen artists and high school art teachers, is one of the highlights of this week's South Fork programs for teens and kids.

A donor known only by the name Eric recently brought smiles to the faces of 25 patients at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital with surprise bouquets of flowers in honor of his mother, who died in 2021.

As construction of the onshore portion of the South Fork Wind farm proceeds in Wainscott, a lawsuit filed in United States District Court last week seeks to halt that work, claiming its potential to spread the perfluorinated chemicals, known as PFAS, that were detected in nearby groundwater.

The operators of the Beach Hut concession at East Hampton's Main Beach pavilion have applied to the state recently for a "summer tavern wine license," which allows the sale of beer and wine for on-premises consumption, and they're also hoping to add dinner service this summer.

A man going 74 miles per hour in a 55 m.p.h. zone also crossed the double yellow lines multiple times as he streaked west, leading to a police stop and a D.W.I. charge.

A Montauk woman told police last week that she’d found a grenade near the water by Shagwong Point, and had left a big stick at the spot so police could find it more easily — as indeed they did. A plastic toy grenade.

Kristofer Kalas, a trained pastry chef and owner of the tiny market Hello Oma in East Hampton, is in Ukraine helping women and children to get out of the country.

This photograph by Robert Hefner shows Broadview, the main house of the Bell Estate in Amagansett, on April 29, 1988, not long after Reginald and Loida Lewis bought it.

Robert Beahan Shnayerson, a respected editor at Life, Time, and Harper’s magazines who first came to the South Fork in 1960, died at home in Hillsdale, N.Y., on March 6 of complications of vascular disease. He was 96.

Adelaide H. Dunlop, a 1955 graduate of East Hampton High School, died on Feb. 10 in Venice, Fla., where she had been living since 2006. She was 84.