https://www.timesunion.com/local/feed/timesunion-com-top-headlines-74.php Capital Region https://www.timesunion.com/img/logo_40h.png https://www.timesunion.com article15156004 New York’s COVID-19 numbers have blown up over the past few days, while California and the Bay Area have experienced much gentler outbreaks, by comparison. Experts say that this state’s earlier introduction of social distancing measures, even by just a few days, may have saved California from New York’s fate.

]]> Wed, 25 Mar 2020 14:22:57 UT 42.65156 -73.75521 38.57944 -121.49085 article15147991 The coronavirus pandemic has caused a critical shortage of face masks for health care professionals. Now scientists and public health officials are working quickly to get the word out on the proper use of masks — who needs them, when and why?

]]> Sat, 21 Mar 2020 15:53:02 UT article14491646 Paul Grondahl ]]> ALBANY — Hardwood trees were the first to snap, towering maples and oaks laden with a canopy of big russet leaves acting as tarpaulins that caught gloppy, heavy snow as it fell freakishly before dawn on Oct. 4, 1987. After a run of Indian summer, forecasters were caught off guard when a cold front blasted through overnight and a steady rain turned to wet snow. Across the Capital Region, snow-laden limbs yanked down utility lines and triggered a cascading event with widespread power outages and all manner of havoc. What would have been a modest snow falling without drama through bare trees in January instead rendered the landscape a wintry cataclysm: four deaths, power knocked out to 270,000 homes, major roads impassable and millions of dollars in utility repairs, ruined crops and lost business. Live wires crackled and sparked with a lethal force on the ground. Community centers became emergency shelters. The soundtrack was the incessant high-pitched whine of chain saws amid a mangled mess of sheared-off limbs and uprooted trunks. Many people didn't have power restored for days, forcing those without electricity or hard-to-find generators to revert to a pioneering spirit: reading by candlelight, putting food from refrigerators into snowbanks, cooking in fireplaces. Craig loved everything about the storm's aftermath: a week off school, camping out in the house in sleeping bags; boiling snow for bath water because the electric water pump didn't work; making up games; and listening as a family to the radio. The rival Troy Record stepped in to help its stricken competitor thanks to a gentleman's agreement common to the industry. The Oct. 5, 1987 edition was printed on the Record's press and marked another first: the Hearst's morning Times Union and afternoon Knickerbocker News shared the same masthead in a never-repeated combined effort. During their late-night toil to paste up the pages of what became the iconic "Fall's Snowy Crippler," a collector's edition, Palella twice drove back from Troy to the Times Union's plant to fetch more type squirreled away. Palella drove a Camaro, trunk loaded with sandbags, and he fishtailed around snowy curves as he raced to get out the first draft of history.

]]> Fri, 4 Oct 2019 12:11:42 UT article12473892 Bethlehem On a small mound of earth behind the old Mangia restaurant in Slingerlands, hidden from view, sits a monument to local history, the Slingerland family burial vault. Inside the 1852 structure are former congressman and famous anti-slavery champion John I. Slingerland and his brother William Henry, Slingerland's first postmaster, along with several of their family members, including their father, John A. Slingerland. While the structure is one of the most important historical artifacts in Albany County, it has become so run-down it could be mistaken for a pile of rocks in a stand of trees, not the sacred final resting spot of two of the most important local civic leaders of the 19th century.

]]> Sun, 7 Jan 2018 04:00:00 UT article12478992 Sat, 6 Jan 2018 23:58:00 UT article12478971 Shanta Myers, 36, loved to cook and share recipes with friends and co-workers. Jeremiah Myers, 11, wanted to play basketball in the NBA when he grew up. Shanise Myers, 5, was a mama's girl. Relatives, friends, clergy, local politicians, school officials and strangers packed into the auditorium at Troy Middle School on chilly Saturday afternoon. They were there to mourn the untimely death of Myers, two of her children and her partner Brandi Mells, 22, all brutally slain in their basement apartment at 158 Second Ave. the week before Christmas. The day before, a Rensselaer County grand jury had indicted James W. White, 38, and Justin C.

]]> Sat, 6 Jan 2018 23:40:00 UT article12478908 Guilderland Gio Mariah was adamant about the photograph. It's glamorous. She is lying on her side in grass of fluorescent yellow and green shades, her skin glistens in the sun, her red hair glows. When she asked the Times Union to consider writing a profile about her, Mariah insisted that be the featured portrait. "I want this to be authentic to myself and my journey and how I represent as a female," she wrote. Mariah eventually agreed to the paper's use of its own more realistic photographs, in keeping with journalistic protocol. Her concern over her image is nonetheless telling in light of her journey, which has much to do with how she is perceived.

]]> Sat, 6 Jan 2018 23:02:55 UT article12478843 Albany The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is examining New York's controversial system of civil confinement for sex offenders. The probe was revealed when an attorney with the Justice Department's special litigation office recently interviewed a sex offender confined at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Oneida County. Under New York's decade-old Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act, convicted sex offenders can be kept in secure psychiatric hospitals indefinitely after their prison terms expire.

]]> Sat, 6 Jan 2018 22:09:37 UT article12474951 Schenectady City Councilman Vince Riggi described it as voodoo economics. But Mayor Gary McCarthy on Thursday defended the small increase in water and sewer rates that for many city residents effectively offset the 1 percent decrease in property taxes this year. On Thursday, a few residents on the ground floor of City Hall who said they came to pay their 2018 property taxes were unaware of the issue when approached by a reporter.

]]> Fri, 5 Jan 2018 01:45:55 UT article12472102 Thu, 4 Jan 2018 01:18:46 UT article12472047 Thu, 4 Jan 2018 00:48:29 UT article12472046 Brett Reihs washes his car at Colonial Car Wash on Western Avenue on Wednesday in Guilderland.

]]> Thu, 4 Jan 2018 00:48:25 UT article12469613 Albany They'll fight and disagree over it, but Job One for Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers this session will be dealing with a yawning budget shortfall. It will be neither easy nor quick. "We start with a $4 billion deficit," the governor said in December. In fact, the latest estimate is at least $4.4 billion, with some saying it could go even higher — and that's without taking into account the impacts of the recent federal tax overhaul. It also comes during an election year for the governor and legislators, who typically shower their districts with pork-barrel projects and school aid before voters go to the polls. No one, however, seems to be in a tax hike mode these days.

]]> Wed, 3 Jan 2018 04:22:51 UT article12469603 Sixty days spread over six months. When the legislative session begins Wednesday, we know how long it's scheduled to go for. How efficient lawmakers will be over that period is in the eye of the beholder, though. It's inevitable that between now and June, someone will point out that the Assembly or state Senate was in session — in other words, passing bills — for, say, only a half hour on a given day. With a legislative budget for the 2017-18 fiscal year of more than $200 million — and lawmakers being paid a minimum of $79,500 a year — if every session day took up only 30 minutes, the $6.6 million spent per session may look like a poor return on investment. But efficiency is measured by much more.

]]> Wed, 3 Jan 2018 04:15:49 UT article12469579 Albany More than usual, the 2018 legislative session will be influenced by outside events. There are dual upcoming trials featuring former close associates of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The governor is expected to face a deficit upwards of $4 billion. And majority rule of the state Senate may shift near the midpoint of the legislative session. All this comes in a year that will build to Cuomo, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the entire Legislature facing elections in November. The first corruption trial, likely to begin later this month, involves former top Cuomo aide Joe Percoco and three business executives, and will focus on alleged bribes paid to Percoco in exchange for government favors.

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