Top Stories from NCPR

The Adirondack Park Agency commission voted 8-to-1 on Friday to approve a classification plan for the Boreas Ponds tract in Essex County. The plan will add roughly 11,000 acres to the High Peaks Wilderness and it prevents development on a vast swath of the Park. But a small group of environmental activists say it does not go far enough.They wanted more wilderness and they also say much of the land classification plan was cooked up in back rooms and Albany deal-making long before Friday's official decision.

Very cold temperatures continue to move in. High temperatures on summits today are expected to be only near 10 below, with dangerously low wind chills.

Regular flights from Plattsburgh to Boston might come to an end this summer. PenAir has operated the service for the last six years, thanks to a federal program that subsidizes flights to and from smaller airports. But last month, Clinton County said the funding should go to a new airline that flies to Washington, D.C. instead.About 25 people work at PenAir and they're worried they'll lose their jobs because of the change.

North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik voted in favor of releasing a controversial memo compiled by the House Intelligence committee's Republican majority. The document appears to suggest wrong-doing by the FBI, which one GOP lawmaker described as "abuses that go to the core of our democracy."

Over the past 25 years, technology has drastically changed the way law enforcement officers do their job. Those changes have made their way from big city police departments to the small-town forces here in northern New York. Officers at the Tupper Lake Police Department now use a range of mobile and HQ-based networked devices to help maintain law and order in their village deep in the Adirondack Park.

The success of the Clean Air Act in reducing acid deposition in Adirondack lakes is an under-reported good news story. Many lakes once devoid of life can now support healthy fish populations and other aquatic life.But as Curt Stager discusses with Martha Foley, the life that returns to recolonize the water is not the same as what was lost. Sediment cores show that the original algae and plankton varieties that form the base of the food chain and were unchanged for hundreds of years are being replaced by different varieties. A balance has been restored, but it's a new balance, tipped perhaps by warming, and by invasive species.

There's been another development in the long legal battle between the city of Watertown and the local firefighters' union. On Tuesday a State Supreme Court judge issued a key ruling in favor the city. But the battle is far from over.

If football is a game of inches, the Olympic sledding sport, luge, is a game of millimeters. Athletes rocket feet first down an icy track faster than 90 miles per hour.The design of the sled itself can save fractions of a second, and help lift athletes to the medal podium or drag them to the middle of the pack.

While he was in Plattsburgh on Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced additional state funding to expand access to high-speed internet in the North Country. The region won over $100 million in the state's latest round of New NY Broadband grants. "You get the most money from any of the other regions. Doesn't mean I necessarily love you more," Cuomo said. "It is because the North Country was harder to cover, and that's why the state had to invest more to get that (broadband) coverage."

Governor Andrew Cuomo was in Plattsburgh on Wednesday with some big announcements. He said the state will provide up to $7 million to help residents of a mobile home park that flooded last month. An ice jam on the Saranac River in the southern part of the city caused the flooding in Underwood Estates, which is home to about 200 people.