Albany County | featured news

A lawsuit filed this week accuses five of the state's largest tobacco wholesalers of giving secret rebates to customers to drive down competition as part of an alleged scheme which may have violated state laws that set minimum prices on cigarettes.

ORANGETOWN — A 25-vehicle accident Wednesday morning delayed traffic on I-87 Northbound at the Mario M. Cuomo Tappan Zee Bridge.

SCHENECTADY — Mayor Gary McCarthy announced the end of the State of Emergency declared Jan. 28 of the Nott Terrace hillside on Wednesday. According to a press release, enough progress has been made at the hillside.

HOOSICK FALLS— Breese Hollow Dairy has been prohibited from selling raw milk after the Department of Agriculture and Markets found a sample contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes on Jan. 30.

BETHLEHEM—The New York State Humane Association is offering a $500 reward for information regarding the dead beagle-mix dog dumped on Clapper Road last week.Call Detective Ken Beck at the Bethlehem Police Department at 518-439-9973 with information. Calls will be kept confidential.

WASHINGTON _ Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer was jubilant over striking a budget deal with his GOP counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. _ so enraptured that he even summoned the N.Y. media via conference call to extoll its benefits for the state.“The budget deal doesn’t have everything I wanted; it doesn’t have everything Senator McConnell wanted; but it has what New Yorkers need,” Schumer said.

Jill Peckenpaugh, the director of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants' Albany field office, will discuss how the organization is helping refugees and immigrants rebuild their lives, at the next meeting of the Albany Roundtable.

The Albany Symphony dropped details of its 2018-2019 season on Wednesday evening, and the tally was five world premieres, six soloists, one guest conductor and a performance of Benjamin Britten's monumental "War Requiem" with Albany Pro Music at Proctors.Also coming: a memorial concert for Heinrich Medicus, the nuclear physicist and longtime Albany Symphony benefactor who died last February and left $7 million to the orchestra's endowment.

ALBANY — David Laitin, professor of political science at Stanford University, presented his research on low-income immigrants' access to citizenship at University at Albany on Wednesday afternoon.In 1970, 64 percent of legal foreign-born residents were naturalized. The rate dropped to 56 percent in 2011, despite the fact that studies have shown most immigrants want to become U.S. citizens.

ALBANY — Defense attorneys on Wednesday began their effort to demolish the credibility of Todd Howe, a key prosecution witness in the federal corruption trial of Joe Percoco, former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and three businessmen who allegedly paid him more than $300,000 in bribes.In a Manhattan federal courtroom Wednesday, Percoco's attorney Barry Bohrer wasted no time in establishing Howe's years of lying to friends and employers, and living well beyond his ample financial means."Mr. Howe, are you an honest man?," Bohrer asked."I am today," he said.