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A long-duration lake-effect snowstorm is expected to bury parts of western and northern New York, including the cities of Buffalo and Watertown, under up to 3 feet of snow into this weekend. Bands of heavy snow are expected to develop to the east and northeast of lakes Erie and Ontario beginning Wednesday night and continuing right through Sunday, when the Buffalo Bills are scheduled to host the Cleveland Browns at Highmark Stadium in the Buffalo Southtowns. Lake-Effect Snow Warnings have been issued from the Buffalo metro area southwestward into northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio ... This will be the start...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The City of Rochester is providing financial assistance for eligible homeowners as part of its Owner-Occupant Roofing Program. There is $2 million available for approximately 80 homes. Eligible homeowners may receive up to $35,000 for a single-family home and $45,000 for a two-family home. The assistance is for roofing repairs or replacement and other related repairs such as gutters and downspouts, chimney repairs, roof flashing, soffits and venting. Detached garage roofs are not eligible. Applicants must be an owner-occupant of a one- or two-family residential property in the city of Rochester, and must live in the home...

Pollen Analysis May Solve Old Murder Mystery Wednesday, October 04, 2006 AP ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Three grains of pollen might help solve a 27-year-old murder mystery. To try to unmask the identity of a teenage girl found slain in a cornfield in western New York in 1979, investigators have turned to a pollen-analysis technique rarely used in the United States in hopes of pinpointing where she once lived. A forensic botanist in Texas determined that three microscopic pollen grains from an Australian pine that were recovered this summer inside the girl's red jacket and her pants pocket could have come...

Penfield, N.Y. — A local private school is facing backlash from some parents over changes to its student handbook. The new policy from the Charles Finney School says it reserves the right to discontinue enrollment of LGBTQ students. Heidi Buckler enrolled her daughter at Finney, a Christian school in Penfield, in 2018. Her son would follow soon after. "When we first initially met with everyone, they seemed nice and warm and welcoming," Buckler said. "It seemed like a nice family atmosphere." Buckler, who describes herself as spiritual, thought a religious education would be beneficial. "They talked about Jesus and the...

While New York, California, and Boston continue to be the most expensive rental markets in the country, some unexpected locales have actually experienced the largest increases in one-bedroom apartment prices year-over-year.Greensboro, North Carolina, sits atop the list with rent increases of 74.2 percent, followed by Newport News, Virginia, at 60.7 percent, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, at 59.8 percent, according to Rent.com’s August report. Jon Leckie, a researcher with Rent.com, told The Epoch Times that such increases aren’t unusual, given the amount of people who have been flocking to these areas.“We’re seeing a pattern where the markets around the larger metro areas...

The scheduled "ReAwaken America" tour stop in Rochester, New York, was canceled on Monday. The owner of Main Street Armory said he'd heard a deluge of concern from local residents. "ReAwaken America" has been described as a promoter of Christian nationalism and white supremacy. The owner of an upstate New York venue that was set to host the controversial "ReAwaken America" tour in August canceled the event after it received widespread backlash from locals. Main Street Armory's owner, Scott Donaldson, wrote in an email on Monday that he made his decision after "careful thought" and in response to an outpouring...

A Rochester Police officer is on desk duty following an altercation with an EMT at a hospital’s emergency department, according to published reports. The incident happened Monday at Strong Memorial Hospital when the police officer’s car was hit by the EMT while unloading a patient in the ambulance bay. The officer wanted to get the EMTs identification, but the EMT wanted to bring the patient inside the hospital first. While the EMT was at the check-in desk, she was handcuffed and forcefully taken outside to a police car. The EMT was later released from custody. She was not charged or...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Starting July 1, people who live in the Town of Perinton will have to pay for their recycling to be picked up. For years, as part of a deal with the landfill in their backyard, residents were able to get their recycling picked up for free by Waste Management weekly but that deal was recently renegotiated and not everyone is happy about it. Recently, the Town of Perinton entered into a new host agreement with Waste Management.

A quiet sunny summer's day in the suburbs became the setting for the dramatic climax of a police chase this past Wednesday afternoon. A video, which came via a Ring doorbell camera, shows a black SUV turning a corner and then flipping over twice as it hurtles to the front yard of a home in Rochester, New York. Multiple police vehicles speed toward the crashed vehicle with sirens blaring. Shortly after the police show up, two suspects emerge simultaneously from the car, breaking through the shattered windscreen, before trying to flee the scene. According to a statement from the Rochester...

A notorious New York mobster who killed three people and attempted to kill two others has escaped from federal custody after recently being moved to a halfway house, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Dominic Taddeo, a hitman from a Rochester-area crime family, escaped on March 28, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. Taddeo, 64, had been imprisoned at a medium-security lockup in Florida before being transferred to a residential halfway house, also in Florida, in February. He failed to return from an authorized medical appointment and “was placed on escape status” on Monday, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson...

Sticker shock is arriving in the mail with the RGE bill. Tuesday we talked with two small business owners who say they went months without getting an RGE bill. And then this week the bill arrived, dwarfing what they normally pay in a month. RGE says missing meter readings are the root cause, but the customers I talked to showed their meters were read and they still weren't billed since Christmas until the big one arrived. "They didn't bill me for two months on at least two of my business locations," pizza shop owner Peter Jones said. But this week...

Anyone walking into Hillside would instantly notice the eye-watering prices — $2 for a pack of Top Ramen, $5.29 for a box of 30 Saltines, $5.59 for a single head of garlic. However, the problem is far worse than it first appears. When buying a meal plan, a student must spend about $1.30 for every declining dollar. Thus, the true prices of Hillside products are astronomical — $2.58 for ramen, $6.90 for saltines, $7.29 for garlic. Hillside’s Grubhub menu (yes, Hillside is on Grubhub for some reason) allows one to explore this capitalistic wet dream where prices are often double...

Correctional facilities in Rochester, Fishkill and Southport are among six New York prisons shuttering Thursday, amid diminishing prison populations and the implementation of key reforms aimed at curbing incarceration. At the close of business Thursday, Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill and the Rochester Correctional Facility will be two of six that will close, adding to the 18 prisons that the state has already closed since October 2011. The Department of Correction and Community Supervision operates 50 facilities as of March 1. People incarcerated at the prison have been moved to other facilities based on their security classification along with their...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — A convicted cop killer—invited to speak at a local college. That's a claim going around on social media. But is that really true? That's tonight's Fact Check. Jalil Muntaqim, also known as Anthony Bottom, lives in Brighton. Back in 1971, he killed two New York City Police officers. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. But now he's out on parole, and next month he's scheduled to speak at SUNY Brockport. According to the posting on Brockport's events calendar, it will be "an intellectual conversation on his time with the Black Panthers and...

A student of color is reportedly behind racist graffiti found Monday morning in a bathroom at a private Catholic all-girls school in Brighton, New York. Our Lady of Mercy School for Young Women, a grade 6 through grade 12 school located within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, announced Thursday that its investigation into the graffiti containing a racial slur has ended with a student coming forward and taking responsibility for writing the offensive message. Mercy said it will not disclose the name of the student who confessed to vandalizing the school bathroom with the N-word graffiti because of its...

Video shows the moment a security guard forcibly dragged a New York father-of-two out of an upstate school board meeting Tuesday night because he was not wearing a face mask. Dave Calus said he attended the regularly scheduled school board meeting to speak out against mask mandates in schools.

Rochester, New York, mother and local radio host Shannon Joy filed a federal lawsuit against her school board after she was arrested and charged with trespassing during a meeting last year for supposedly not wearing her mask properly. Joy, joining SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly, said that during the meeting her mask was only pushed down for a moment so she could put a piece of gum in her mouth. That’s when the school board broke for recess, called 911, and directed authorities to arrest her, specifically. She was indeed cuffed, arrested, and charged with “trespassing” — all of which was...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Gov. Kathy Hochul delivered her COVID-19 briefing in Rochester “We're not in a good place, I'm going to be really honest with you… this is the winter surge we predicted,” she said. In Monroe County, there is currently less than 2% of available staffed ICU capacity and hospitalization numbers continue to rise. Starting Tuesday, Gov. Hochul will ask hospitals to report whether a patient is in the hospital for COVID-19 or if they tested positive for COVID-19 while being treated for another ailment. Someone is in a car accident they go to the emergency room they...

An upstate New York school district has pulled the classic winter tune “Jingle Bells” from the music curriculum at an elementary school over concerns that it may have first been performed in Boston at a minstrel show in which white performers donned blackface. On December 23, the Rochester Beacon first reported that the Brighton Central School District nixed James L. Pierpont’s song from the curriculum at Council Rock Primary School. The school’s principal Matt Tappon told the Rochester Beacon via email that it was being replaced with tunes without “the potential to be controversial or offensive.” Officials with the district,...

Twelve major cities across the nation broke annual homicide records this year, following 2020’s already historically bloody year. "The community has to get fed up," Rochester Police Department Capt. Frank said at a news conference in November. "We're extremely frustrated. It has to stop. I mean, it's worse than a war zone around here lately."