Albany | featured news

A couple stopped for a traffic violation on County Route 23B was allegedly in possession of a large quantity of heroin, New York State Police said.

The city finally has its arms around its vacant buildings – all 1,044 of them.Less than a year into the task of combining multiple running lists of vacant buildings and various other data from different departments, Samuel Wells – Albany's neighborhood stabilization coordinator – has compiled a complete list of all dormant buildings in the capital city.The database program, funded by a grant through the state Attorney General's Office, allows officials to hone in on properties that have unpaid taxes, code violations, or police calls.

SCHENECTADY -The city's roughly 146 blue collar workers would receive 2 percent pay raises for the next three years under a proposed contract that was voted out of the City Council finance committee Tuesday.The 4-year deal with AFSCME Local 1037, which also calls for a 2 percent in retroactive pay for 2017, must still be considered by the full governing body on Monday.

The firms presented business plans last December during a competition as part of the BACC Academy, a partnership between Albany Medical College and Siena College and an extension of the Biomedical Accelerator and Commercialization Center at Albany Med. Local entrepreneurs are paired with researchers, attorneys, accountants and business leaders during the 13-week program.

ALBANY – A Troy police sergeant cannot be prosecuted for the 2016 fatal shooting of unarmed motorist Edson Thevenin, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office said Tuesday in releasing the findings of a more than one-year investigation.The attorney general's report about the predawn April 16, 2016 shooting of Thevenin, 37, sharply criticized Troy police. It cautioned the department to avoid "prejudging" and publicly announcing results of unfinished investigations and called the results of the department's probe "deficient and incomplete in several respects."

Capital Bank is opening a new branch at Mohawk Harbor in Schenectady, its first location in that city.The 2,000 square-foot bank at the corner of Erie Boulevard and Rush Street includes a drive-thru window and a drive-up ATM. The Galesi Group is leasing the facility to Capital Bank.

A winter weather advisory is in effect until 3 p.m. Wednesday as snow steadily falls, the National Weather Service says.The advisory includes the Capital Region, eastern Catskill Mountains and the mid-Hudson Valley.

AlbanyThe state's farming industry has fended off a lawsuit that sought to give farm hands the right to collective bargaining after the state had chosen not to resist the challenge.New York Farm Bureau President David Fischer called this month's ruling in state Supreme COurt a "defining moment" in the state's agricultural history.

State forest rangers used a helicopter to rescue a snowboarder on Mount Marcy who bled profusely after his mouth was punctured by a stick, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.The 32-year-old Staten Island man was injured while he was riding at about 4 p.m. Sunday.

Saratoga Brewing, founded in Saratoga Springs in 1997 and producer of its own line of beers as well as a busy contract brewer for other labels, appears to have closed, at least temporarily. Two senior employees tell me they believe it is out of business, perhaps permanently; the sentiment was echoed by several others I've spoken to who had regular business dealings with the brewery.