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ALBANY — A police commander and a city dispatcher nearly came to blows following a recent Common Council meeting where officials discussed a plan to merge Albany's dispatch services with the county's system.Acting Police Chief Robert Sears on Tuesday confirmed that his commander, Mike Basile, and the dispatcher, whom he declined to identify, began arguing following the meeting at City Hall about two weeks ago. Sears said he was talking to the dispatcher when he and Basile got into it.

ALBANY - A pilot jobs program being offered for free through the Albany Public Library tests your skills through an online test to see if you are a good match and help you understand what you need to learn.The program, called SkillUp Capital Region, uses a software program called Metrix Learning that was developed by a company called New York Wired for Education.

AlbanyNew York and five other coastal states are warning the administration of President Donald Trump against weakening oil drilling safety rules while also pushing plans to dramatically expand off-shore drilling.State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, along with top state lawyers for Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, wrote this week to U.S. Interior Department to oppose a roll-back of federal safety rules imposed after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

ROTTERDAM — A 43-year-old Schenectady man robbed a Cricket Wireless store at knifepoint Tuesday morning, a town police spokesman said.Lt. William Male said the suspect, who is currently in the process of being charged, walked into the store at the Hannaford Plaza and began talking with the clerk before flashing a knife and ordering her to the back room of the Altamont Avenue business.

ALBANY - Running for re-election cost Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan just shy of half a million dollars.The latest state campaign finance filings show Sheehan loaned her campaign a total of $482,000 for her re-election bid, including loaning herself another $95,000 in late December.The high price tag on running for office bolsters the perception that politics favors the rich and the well-connected and prompts further calls for campaign finance reform.

NEW YORK — Former top Cuomo aide Andrew Kennedy testified Tuesday that Joe Percoco lit into him in a profanity-laced tirade to compel him to include executives with a Syracuse development firm in a September 2015 "Capitol For a Day" event Gov. Andrew Cuomo was holding in the city.Kennedy said at that point he had about 20 minutes to add officials with the firm, COR Development, to the list of participants. Two COR executives stand accused with Percoco, Cuomo's former executive deputy secretary, of swapping bribes for official favors.

Serafino Zaccone, a Queens-born chef educated at Schenectady County Community College who opened Three Vines Bistro in Saratoga Springs with his brothers-in-law three and a half years ago, died suddenly Jan. 18, according to his obituary. He was 35. No cause of death is given.