Top Stories from NCPR

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Muslim refugee crisis on the U.S.-Canada border. [full story]

North Country travelers will have a new option for direct flights to the East Coast starting this spring. Boutique Air will begin offering daily service from Massena to Baltimore, as well as twice daily flights to Albany. [full story]

Leaders at private colleges and universities in New York State are taking issue with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plans for college funding. [full story]

Rob Carr from Saranac Lake tells us a coming of age story from his college years. This was the winning story at the Howl Story Slam Grand Slam at Pickens Hall.The Adirondack Center for Writing is co-sponsor of the Howl Story Slams [full story]

Strawberries are a good fruit for a home gardener. They're inexpensive to buy from a catalog. And according to Cooperative Extension's Amy Ivy, they're pretty easy to tend.You've got to decide which type to plant: June bearing or day neutral. The former produce all its crop in one big rush, and they don't bear fruit till the second year in the ground. Good for making pies and am, or anything needing a lot of berries at once. The latter bear fewer berries at once, but produce whenever the temperature is between 45 and 80. Insect pests can be a real bother to day-neutral varieties, getting worse as the season goes along. [full story]

One of the North Country’s border crossings into Canada drew more national attention over the weekend after news photographers captured images of a migrant-refugee family fleeing from New York state into Quebec.According to a Reuters article, four adults and four children scrambled over the international boundary on Friday in the town of Champlain in northern Clinton County. [full story]

Several aid organizations and pro-immigrant groups are pressuring the Canadian government to pull out of a controversial program which turns away almost all refugees coming in through the United States. [full story]

A leading budget watchdog group accuses Gov. Andrew Cuomo of fudging the numbers in his state budget to appear to stay within his self-imposed 2 percent per-year spending cap. [full story]

The Adirondacks picked up 10-18 inches of new snow on Sunday and an additional 5-10 inches Wednesday, and some light snow is expected this weekend. There is about 1 to 2 feet of snow on the ground across the Adirondacks at lower elevations; there is 5 feet at the Lake Colden Caretaker’s Cabin and several feet more at higher elevations and on summits. Snowshoes or skis will be needed everywhere and in the High Peaks Wilderness Forest Rangers are turning visitors away who are not equipped with snowshoes. Also, there is thick ice in some exposed locations on and near summits - carry traction devices if you are headed to higher elevations this weekend. [full story]

Lake Placid resident Lowell Bailey put an emphatic end to the United States gold medal drought in biathlon on Thursday. Bailey won the grueling 20-kilometer race at the World Championships in Austria. [full story]