Top Stories from NCPR

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is speaking out against proposed cuts to federal arts funding. Speaking at a visit to the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, Gillibrand called the suggested cuts "devastating." [full story]

There was a massive police response late yesterday afternoon following a shooting and a robbery in the town of Hague on Lake George’s northwest shore.Authorities say the shooting occurred inside the Hague Market around 4:30 pm. [full story]

The Adirondack Shakespeare Company is back on the road this season. ADK Shakes, as the company is fondly known, has an unusual, if not unique, process for its traveling productions. The cast comes in with lines fully memorized and the show is put up with very limited rehearsal time, usually about twelve hours. The troupe will be in Saranac Lake and Upper Jay this weekend for performances of Macbeth and Cymbeline. The Adirondack Shakespeare Company, based in Schroon Lake, can produce a show almost anywhere, outdoors in a park or in the middle of a restaurant. They subscribe to a popular adage that good theatre can be made with just “bare boards and a passion.”A couple of seasons ago, Todd Moe caught up with the ADK Shakes' Executive Director Patrick Siler, Artistic Director Tara Bradway and Meghan Blakeman, the conductor for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They had just finished rehearsing for a performance in the Recovery Lounge at the Upper Jay Arts Center, a funky space filled with antique sofas, vintage decor, creaking floors, and warm acoustics. [full story]

For almost two years, residents of a dead-end street in the Town of Plattsburgh have been at war with activists and a developer over a low-income housing project. The affordable housing supporters have won, at least for now. The town planning board approved the Caron Place apartment complex last week. The board first denied it back in 2015, and the developer took the case to State Supreme Court, arguing that the planning board was biased against low-income housing. The judge sided with the developer, and there have been intense negotiations over the project ever since. [full story]

State lawmakers and lobby groups say Gov. Andrew Cuomo was in error when he said that there was no political will to enact reforms in 2017.Democratic lawmakers, along with the League of Women Voters, rallied outside the Senate chambers Tuesday for bills that would allow same-day voting and early voting by mail in New York state. [full story]

The Champlain Valley Voices community chorus will celebrate the music of women composers on Sunday at 3:00 pm at the Plattsburgh United Methodist Church. The spring concert will showcase a sampling of music by women composers from the 1840s to present day Broadway. It will include the world premiere of a piece commissioned by Champlain Valley Voices and written by local composer Sora Jederan-Shpack. [full story]

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) An entrepreneur, academic and former undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Energy has been appointed the next leader of New York state's public university system. [full story]

Find out who rings "The Bell of Justice" in this story from The Gesta Romanorum, a popular book of compiled stories written in Latin around the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century.The stories from the rich folk tales, legends, history and fragments of different origins from Europe and Asia became the source directly or indirectly for stories told again in Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Shakespeare.Story Traveler is unscripted storytelling from everywhere in the world, stories for the heart to hear and the mind to imagine. [full story]

The village of Lake Placid hopes to launch a sweeping new effort to modernize its busy main street, with new parking, more trees, and a major overhaul of an aging sewer line. But that vision has triggered a growing brawl with one of the North Country’s most powerful cultural institutions. [full story]

A fiscal watchdog group is questioning the state’s century-old prevailing wage law for construction workers, saying it unnecessarily costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year in added expenses for big road, bridge and other projects.The Empire Center, a fiscally conservative budget watchdog group, looked at the state’s constitutionally protected prevailing wage law. It requires contractors on public projects to pay their workers the amounts set in unions’ collective bargaining agreements. [full story]