Mike Desmond

Presbyterian Senior Care is giving up on two Delaware Avenue nursing homes and putting them into receivership.

At stake are Harbour and Hawthorne Multicare Centers for Living, a few doors down from each other on Delaware near Ferry. The homes have 217 residents who will stay in the buildings while a new firm called Receiver Services, LLC., will take over under State Health Department supervision.

Crowds overflowed Sharf's restaurant Monday night, hoping to keep the Schiller Park landmark open despite having fallen on hard times.

Second generation owner Jerry Scharf says business has fallen so much he might have to close a restaurant his family has run since 1967.

Monday night, the kitchen staff was pumping out the traditional sausage and sauerkraut. Scharf had a big smile on his face at the overflow crowd, saying he and his children were encouraged by the show of support for his struggling business. The organized fundraising event was dubbed "Scarf for Scharf's."

Albany is cracking down on the body piercing of young people, under legislation signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The governor's office says until the bill was signed there were controls on tattoos of people under the age of 18 while there were no such controls for body piercing. The new law changes that by requiring written permission from a parent signing in the presence of the owner of a piercing shop.

With all of the plans in the works, there will soon be more hotels in downtown Buffalo, with taxpayers picking up part of the tab.

There are already two new hotels well along in development, both from developer Mark Croce -- Statler City and the Curtiss Building just up the street.

There is also likely to be a brand new hotel on the Webster Block next to the hockey arena, with two proposals on the table, one from developer Carl Paladino and a more elaborate plan including hockey rinks from Sabres owner Terry Pegula.

This week on You & The Law,  WBFO & AM 970's Mike Desmond talks with attorney Regina Walker  about Social Security Disability.

You and The Law is a weekly feature that can be head on-air each Friday at 5:45 p.m.

This the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims, an annual period of abstaining from food and water during the daylight hours. At sunset, there is Iftar, a dinner to break the fast.

An Iftar dinner was held in the lobby of Buffalo's City Hall Thursday night, sponsored by the Turkish Cultural Center. While the event was sponsored by the Sunni Muslims of the cultural center, guests ranged across the area's Muslim community and local politicians and law enforcement figures.

With the moratorium on natural gas hydrofracking in New York State due to be ended soon, some prominent voices in opposition are surfacing.

Erie County Legislature Chair woman Betty Jean Grant held a public forum Thursday night in the Merriweather Library in Buffalo on the controversial method of fracturing underground rock to produce gas.

Grant told the crowd there is evidence of water pollution and earthquakes as sand and chemicals are forced into gas-bearing rock to fracture it.

The Red Cross is providing assistance to the Johnson family who lost their daughter and entire home in an explosion Tuesday in Wilson. 

14-year-old Sarah Johnson was killed when a blast tore apart the home on Chestnut Street in Niagara County. 

Jay Bonafede, communications director at the local Red Cross, says a senior emergency services director and a mental health volunteer both met with the family Wednesday to offer support.

The future of what may be America's greatest newspaper is in doubt, as the world of print news changes.

That is the thesis of Cornell University English Professor Daniel Schwarz in his new End Times? Crisis and Turmoil at The New York Times. 

WBFO & AM-970's Mike Desmond spoke with Schwarz.

Niagara Falls is staying about the same height while the buildings looking down on it from the Ontario side are continuing to rise.  

The Niagara Falls, Ontario City Council has cleared the way for two massive, linked hotel towers looking down on the Falls.

Niagara Falls, Ontario Mayor Jim Diodati said they will be pitched to Asian tourists, a rapidly-increasing segment of the tourism crowds arriving in the Canadian Cataract City.

The mayor and other city officials went to China, Abu Dhabi and Dubai looking for investment and tourism last year. 

By the time the snow flies, one of the commuter landmarks along the Kensington Expressway may look very different.

Since 1980, the six empty buildings of the old Kensington Heights housing project have towered over the expressway, standing and rusting away. There have been periodic promises of change for the better, with the most recent change indictments of inspectors charged with not properly supervising asbestos removal.

Construction to put cars back on the 600 block of Main Street between Tupper and Chippewa will start in September.

Mayor Byron Brown says construction bids came in below budget at just over $6 million. The work will take about a year.

Construction will add one-traffic lane in each direction and dozens of parking spaces. The Theater Station rail stop will be removed. The road will integrate Metro Rail cars and automobiles.

Buffalo schools' fiscal problems have been well documented, but it's becoming apparent several area districts are experiencing similar difficulties.

With continuing cuts in state school aid part of the pattern of education in New York, districts are explaining the effects.

Many spoke to Governor Cuomo's Education Reform Commission which is holding meetings across the state and seeking some solutions. During a session last week, members heard stories of building closings, staff cuts, program cuts, even cuts in the number of class periods a day.

Another Downtown Buffalo landmark may soon be undergoing a massive renovation.

If everything goes right for developer Rocco Termini, the block of Washington Street between Lafayette Square and Eagle Street might have another of his successful historic rehabilitation projects.

In anticipation of Governor Cuomo signing legislation to increase tax credits on historic preservation rehabs, the Signature Development president has started the process for a $60 million rehab of the old AM&A's  department store, adding retail, hotel, offices and apartments.

Buffalo's Latino community leaders turned out yesterday to welcome new Schools Superintendent Pamela Brown, welcoming a school leader who speaks Spanish and has taught in Spanish.

They hope she can invigorate a bilingual education program involving 5,000 students and a constantly-increasing array of languages spoken by city students.

As the immigrant population grows, it's believed  as many as 70 languages are spoken in city schools.

Transit riders will have a new voice on the NFTA board.

During the fight over service cuts and fare increases, some of the most vocal testimony at public hearings involved people with disabilities who need Metro Bus and Rail to get around to jobs, to homes, to health care.

They had no voice when the decisions were actually made.

Under legislation signed into law by Governor Cuomo, that's changing.

He signed a bill adding another member, a non-voting member, who is a transit-dependent person with disabilities.

Governor Cuomo's Education Reform Commission held a public meeting Wednesday at Makowski School in Buffalo.

Most of the speakers agreed New York's massive and expensive education system is in trouble, grappling with problems from shrinking state aid to training for teachers.

Chairman Richard Parsons says the 25-member panel will deliver a preliminary report this fall and a final report a year later.

New York's smallest breweries and some wineries are getting a tax break from Albany.

Governor Cuomo went to Utica yesterday and the family-owned Matt Brewing Company to sign a package of bills to help smaller brewers and the farmers supplying them.

In recent years, small breweries, brewpubs and farm breweries have become a tiny but vital part of the state's liquor industry, along with wineries and small distilleries.

The bills signed by the governor ease the tax and regulatory rules and will probably help the farms supplying essentials like hops.

A Tuesday night meeting touted the benefits for cities that are becoming more bike-friendly.

GoBikeBuffalo sponsored the event in Bennett Park Montessori School in a neighborhood dominated by heavily traveled Clinton and William Streets.

Executive Director Justin Booth says there are a lot of things that can be done to make it safer to bicycle or walk in that neighborhood and encourage those students who can to ride or walk to school. He admits that is easier in some neighborhoods than others and many kids are bused cross-town to their schools, making it difficult.

The region is on the edge of getting a major new manufacturing plant on the site of the old Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna.

If all of the dotted "i"s and crossed "t"s fall into place, Welded Tube of Canada is planning to put $50 million  into a new facility in the Tecumseh Business Park on the old steel plant site.

War always leads to literature. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan underway for more than a decade, novels are coming out about those wars. 

Writer Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya  spoke with WBFO & AM-970's Mike Desmond about his new book The Watch.

Though it seems Washington doesn't always appreciate problems along the border with Canada, the director of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement says his agency is constantly monitoring the many sensitive cross-border issues.

John Morton passed through Buffalo from Washington and then down to the Mexican border later that afternoon.

He says there is nothing on his desk about changing border crossings in this area, although he preached joint border inspections like those long proposed for the border with Canada.

The heat continues to take its toll in Western New York, but as residents seek relief, the pressure builds on the infrastructure transporting fresh water across the region.

Town of Tonawanda Water Services Director Ken Maving knows this very well, still cleaning up behind a very visible pipe leak on Sheridan Drive a week-and-a-half ago.

That 16-inch line wasn't on the long-term replacement list.

He admits the town water system is being pushed because of demand but there is plenty of capacity and the system is holding up pretty well.

While Canada may seem very close to commuters on the Niagara Section of the Thruway, it's nowhere near as close when the legal system wants to bring someone from Canada to stand trial in the U.S.

When federal officials announced on Tuesday they had broken a cross-border scam which cost 2,000 Americans millions of dollars they said 23 of those indicted living in the Metro Toronto area would have to be extradited to stand trial.

National Grid is putting millions of dollars into a city program to renovate old buildings for new uses.

The cash from National Grid was announced during a news conference yesterday in the Genesee Gateway complex of mostly rehabbed-buildings.

Office space in the complex is gradually filling up and work on apartments is starting, more living space in a Downtown which seems able to absorb more and more residents.

Mayor Brown says the 1,000 housing units opened in very recent years are making Downtown the fastest growing neighborhood in the city.