New York, Albany County | featured news

CATSKILL - State Police were back at a local home Tuesday where they searched last year for a Hudson Valley man who disappeared under suspicious circumstances last year.Brandyn Dayne Foster, 31, was reported missing, under suspicious circumstances, on Jan. 30, 2017 to the Woodstock Police Department in Ulster County. He was last seen four days earlier at 1:30 p.m., according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons database.

KINDERHOOK — Nine individuals from various pro-immigration groups in Columbia County were prosecuted by the Columbia County District Attorney's office in court Monday evening. The group was arrested after protesting New York Congressman John Faso's (R-19th) stance on the DREAM Act with a sit-in at his Kinderhook office on Dec. 18.

ALBANY — New York's courts are getting more efficient and are experimenting with new ideas, or the renewal of old ones such as sending opioid addicts to treatment rather than prison.At the annual State of the Judiciary address, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore announced a series of court reforms and gave an update on her Excellence Initiative, an effort to grapple with the perennial problem of heavy caseloads and the resulting backlog in the state's criminal court system.

ALBANY - The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has started a $30 million program called RetrofitNY that subsidizes energy efficiency improvements in affordable housing apartment buildings.

New York's public colleges and universities are seeing a stark rise in applications this winter, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo attributes the increase to the state's new free tuition program, which rolled out this past summer.

A system intended to prevent train collisions, and derailments caused by excessive speed, is gradually being installed across the state's Empire Corridor, the main passenger route connecting Albany with New York City and Buffalo.The route, used by dozens of Amtrak trains each day, is controlled by three different railroads — Metro-North from New York City to Poughkeepsie, Amtrak from Poughkeepsie to Hoffmans, just west of Schenectady, and CSX from Hoffmans west to Buffalo.

City police are investigating a robbery that occurred early Tuesday at the Motel 6 on Watervliet Avenue Extension.Albany Police said at about 12:15 a.m. Tuesday, police responded to the Motel 6 for the report, where an employee at the front desk told officers that an unknown suspect came to the counter, displayed what appeared to be a handgun and demanded money.

A senior administrator at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who sent a controversial email to alumni last week first reached out to the alumni association to see if they would send the email, only to be rebuffed, according to multiple sources close to the matter.

BETHLEHEM -- A Greene County man was arrested Tuesday for the Jan. 6 robbery of the Trustco Bank branch in Slingerlands, Bethlehem police said. Ryan. J. O'Connor, 30, of Hannacroix is charged with robbery and petit larceny and jailed without bail, town police said.

NEW YORK — The energy company executive dubbed "fat man" by ex-lobbyist Todd Howe and former top Cuomo aide Joe Percoco arranged a $90,000-per-year job for Percoco's wife without any sort of job interview.Instead, the matter was settled over dinner in November 2012, as Peter Galbraith Kelly pf Competitive Power Ventures was eager to secure a power purchase agreement from the Cuomo administration that would boost CPV's controversial gas-fired power plant in Orange County into profitability.