Morning News Brief
Written by Tom Tharp on July 21, 2022
A local news organization had their social media account hacked. Our news partner The Batavian spent half of the day on Monday getting their Facebook page restored after it was hijacked and then it happened again on Tuesday. Batavian owner Howard Owens says downloading a business manager app called Pages Manager allowed a malicious third party to remove him as page manager and take over and attempt to buy facebook ads using company money. He says make sure you only use the facebook approved app. An update posted to The Batavian’s site Wednesday afternoon said they have regained control and will start posting news again soon.
Governor Hochul announced this wednesday that the COVID situation in New York was not going to cause a return to masking the kids going back to school in the fall, although she reserves the right to put a mandate back in place if COVID numbers climb. Hochul said kids need to be in school and it is the state’s objective to ensure the safety of students and that they are in the classroom for in-person learning this fall. The state is distributing over 3 million COVID-19 tests to school districts ahead of the start of the school year to ensure every student and staff member can test before the first day.
A set of 8 bills were signed into law by Governor Hochul Wednesday to address human trafficking. 2 of the bills added trafficking awareness training to Liquor Stores and Hotels employee training requirements. The other 6 were about adding human trafficking help information to public places and bathrooms in Airports, Thruways stops, Truck Stops, Port Authority locations, anywhere that sells alcohol, and adult entertainment venues and stores. The hopes of these bills is that people being trafficked will see the information and seek help or that employees might be able to recognize the signs of human trafficking and contact authorities to intervene.
The Sheriff’s Office Teen Academy is underway at GCC. The program was moved from Byron Bergen to GCC so it can be more centrally located to the county. GCC also has a VirTra virtual reality training simulator that has been used by local law enforcement to train for different scenarios. There are 13 students participating in the academy. The program was started by Deputy Matthew Butler in 2018 while he was a School Resource Officer at Byron-Bergen High School. Butler retired in 2019, and the academy was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
After the Main Street Armory in Rochester canceled their event a church in Batavia stepped up to give a controversial tour a place to meet. The Cornerstone Church on Bank Street Rd just north of I90 will be hosting the ReAwaken America Tour August 12th and 13th. The Tour is a combination of political, business and Christian speakers with a tagline of “freedom, faith, family, health and conservative family values” and fighting the Great Reset. It is led by Thrivetime’s Clay Clark and retired General Michael Flynn. The event was supposed to be held at Main Street Armory but the venue canceled it after staff and employees received death threats and threats to the building and Rochester’s mayor and community organizers worked to get it shut down. They said the event would draw “extremists” to the area. Cornerstone Church, led by Pastor Paul Doyle, is also hosting tent revivals on August 4th through 6th.
