Afternoon News Brief
Written by Tom Tharp on January 26, 2024
One individual is in custody facing criminal charges after a report of menacing involving a handgun led to an hours-long standoff in the City of Rochester’s Beechwood neighborhood. Around 10 p.m. Thursday, officers were in the neighborhood on East Main Street near Culver Road to investigate the call. The area was closed as officers surrounded a home on the street for several hours. One person was taken into custody. A BB gun was recovered at the scene. Officers said the individual will be charged.
Three former employees of Batavia Downs have filed a lawsuit against Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. and two supervisors, alleging sexual harassment and wage theft. The suit was filed in Genesee County on Wednesday. It names as plaintiffs, Tara Sweet of Elba, Corrine Armison of Batavia, and Brooklynn Cline of Belmont. All three are claiming wage theft by supervisors keeping a share of pooled tips, and Sweet is making allegations of sexual harassment. The defendants, besides Batavia Downs and WROTB, are Scott Kiedrowski, chief operating officer, and Daniel Wood, director of security. Sweet was fired by Batavia Downs on Nov. 16. Armison and Cline both quit their jobs in the spring.
Tops Friendly Markets has announced the launch of a brand-new specialty pharmacy program. Its goal is to provide more services to people who are living with complex and chronic medical conditions. Patients will be able to access specialty medications at their neighborhood store to treat issues such as hepatitis, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s Disease. More details on this initiative can be found by visiting topsmarkets.com.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday blasted his Democratic colleagues over their handling of the ongoing migrant crisis. Writing an op-ed in The Hill, Cuomo likened the Democrats’ current strategy to that of a failing NFL team. The party, Cuomo said, suffers from a “lack of logic” in its approach to such a critical issue. He said that local leaders can be blamed by the public and shouldn’t ignore the problem. He also said that Former President Trump can’t win the 2024 election but the Democratic Party can lose the election.
New York State’s climate plan, which includes phasing out the state’s reliance on natural gas, continues to face criticism. Experts say changing every household to electric only would cost 30 to 40 thousand a home. Add to that the push to buy electric cars which would charge mostly at night and school districts needing to buy electric school buses for 3 times the cost and also have them charge every night. The electrical grid currently can’t handle all that with fossil fuels. New York State has a statewide goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by switching all electricity production to solar and wind power by 2040. Solar panels don’t work at night and wind turbines are not reliable.
It has been dubbed the “Mother of all Breaches”. Cybersecurity researchers discovered a database that contained more than 26 billion leaked data records. Researchers have called it the biggest data breach found to date. Just to get a sense of the breach’s scope, the newly discovered database contains over 3,800 folders, each containing records from an individual data breach. It was discovered that X, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Adobe, Telegram and Canva were breached and usernames and passwords as well as other information about users was leaked. If you suspect that your information may have been leaked you should immediately change your password on any account that could be affected. The second thing is to turn on two factor authentication if it is available.
