The House Agriculture Committee approved the long-awaited 2018 Farm Bill Wednesday. It includes a controversial change to food stamps that could push thousands of people off the program.

Mutants are neither the creepy brain domes of science fiction, nor the smart-mouth turtles of the cartoons. Mutations arise all the time from environmental exposure to mutagenic substances and from imperfections in cellular reproduction. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk change, genetic change.

Check the coffee/tea aisle at your local grocery store and you'll find lots of choices - black, green and herbal. What about chaga tea? Never heard of it? A young Adirondack entrepreneur is hoping to tap into this little-known fungal super food.

This week, we're looking into the DRI: New York state's grant program that awards small cities $10 million to bolster their downtowns. That money gets divvied up among a bunch of projects, so to make it more impactful, the DRI and other grant programs rely on this idea of leverage: the state gives grant recipients a certain amount of money to put into a project, and those people invest additional money of their own. But in communities that don't have a lot of wealth, putting up that kind investment can be difficult for business owners.

Have you ever seen a picture of a 600-pound sturgeon? How about an 1890s butter plant, or a mail boat making the rounds on Cranberry Lake? Those are the sorts of things you'll find in our freshly launched North Country at Work website, a place built to explore the photos and stories we've been collecting from around the region for the last few years.

Small cities across New York have been competing for $10-million state grants to jump start improvements to their struggling downtowns. Communities are nominated by the state Regional Economic Development Councils. So far in the North Country, plans entered by Watertown, Plattsburgh, and Glens Falls have won grants under the two-year-old Downtown Revitalization Initiative, or DRI. Potsdam hopes to be next. Each community lists its own priorities, but the state favors splashy anchor projects, including a new farmer's market building in Glens Falls and a riverside city center in Plattsburgh. And there's no free ride. Communities are required to use the state money to pull in local financing. This week, we're taking a look at whether this push and pull can really change the game for the North Country's small downtowns.

A controversial wind farm in St. Lawrence County got a reprieve last night. Board members in the town of Hopkinton voted against a strict new law that would have pushed wind farms at least a half-mile away from local homes and the boundary of the Adirondack Park and limited the amount of noise that turbines can give off.

Monday marked the first day that the former breakaway Democrats in the New York State Senate were working with the mainstream Democrats after they agreed to reunify earlier this month.

There are a lot of big disagreements on the left in New York state with Democrats divided over the future of their party and their movement. That extends to the North Country's congressional race. There will be seven Democratic challengers in the New York 21 House primary right up through the end of June.

Rain and warm temperatures will help raise the levels of rivers and streams. Expect the full range of mixed precipitation through the weekend, including the possibility of several inches of new snow and high winds at higher elevations on Sunday, before rain is expected that could produce some minor flooding through Tuesday. Before headed into the woods, always check the most recent weather report.