Top Stories from NCPR

A Mohawk-owned company is nearly ready to start growing and selling medical marijuana in Canada. Seven Leaf is retrofitting an old water bottling plant on Cornwall Island in Akwesasne. The multi-million dollar project hopes to employ 100 people. The company enters a booming and crowded market.

It looks like it's going to be a great weekend. Tomorrow and Sunday summit temperatures are expected to stay in the 50s. But don't let the nice weather fool you, there was snow on summits this week, and another hard freeze last night. Those venturing into the woods or onto the waters should plan for cold weather conditions.

The first wave of rail tanker cars began arriving in the Adirondack Park this week. The mothballed industrial cars are being stored on track in the heart of the Park. Iowa Pacific and its Saratoga North Creek Railroad subsidiary say they eventually hope to store thousands of mothballed oil and chemical tanker cars near the High Peaks Wilderness. The company says it will drop the controversial plan only if it's paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We walk up the trail to the summit of Hadley Mountain in the southern Adirondacks, fallen leaves crunching underfoot.The wind picks up a bit as we climb up the fire tower for the panoramic view."We're looking at the most marvelous combination of balsam fir and northern hardwood trees on a ridge line that stretches north," said David Gibson with Adirondack Wild. "From here we can see the high peaks of the Adirondack Park."

The Adirondack Experience museum owns an early 19th century carpet bag that helps tell the story of an immigrant couple and their ties to a well-known family in Elizabethtown.

Whippoorwills and hummingbirds are close kin. And penguins, who only walk and swim, are cousins to the albatross which only flies. Who knew? A new classification system for birds looks at their genetics as well as their anatomy.Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley discuss bird evolution.

Two businessmen who were supposed to raise money for an aircraft maintenance hub in Plattsburgh have been convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Keith Eric Jergensen and Debashis Ghosh each face up to 20 years in prison. Their trial wrapped up in federal court in Syracuse on Wednesday.

A North Country political trailblazer has died. Longtime Potsdam mayor Ruth Garner passed away yesterday surrounded by family at her home in the village. She was 101.

Residents of a mobile home park in the Town of Beekmantown, near Plattsburgh, are trying to save their own community after the property owner threatened to evict everybody in the park. That's about 50 families. The owner couldn't afford to replace a sewage treatment plant on the property, and faced heavy fines from the State Department of Environmental Conservation. He told residents he had no choice. But residents are making a choice of their own to found a cooperative.

The Orchestra of Northern New York celebrates its 30th anniversary when it presents its 2017-2018 season beginning this weekend. The 55-piece orchestra, under the baton of founding music director and conductor Ken Andrews, is the North Country's only year-round professional symphony orchestra.The orchestra will perform works by Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart on Saturday, 7:30 pm, in SUNY Potsdam's Hosmer Hall, and on Sunday, 3:00 pm, at First Presbyterian Church in Watertown.Todd Moe spoke with Ken Andrews about this weekend's concerts, and 30 years of live orchestra music. Andrews says he started the ensemble back in 1988 as a chamber orchestra as a way for musicians in upstate New York to play together on a professional level.