All Over Albany

Marchione won't seek re-election, Cuomo urges Felder to rejoin Dems, donor reneges on Boyhaven purchase, WWII vet joins class of 2018

Marchione to retire
State Senator Kathy Marchione announced on Wednesday that she will not run for re-election. Marchione cited family reasons for stepping away from the Senate, but Democrats are buoyed by her decision to leave, combined with the results of this week's special election. [Spectrum][TU][Record][TU]

Cuomo/Felder
Andrew Cuomo reached out to Simcha Felder the Brooklyn Democratic Senator who has caucused with Republicans since getting elected, in an effort to gain Democratic control of the Senate. In a letter, Cuomo told Felder,"You have said that you act in the best interest of your constituents. For their benefit, now is the time that matters."[TU][NYT]

DeFrancisco suspending gubernatorial campaign
After eight county GOP committee leaders switched their endorsements to Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro's bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, State Senator John DeFrancisco is suspending his campaign for the nomination. While DeFrancisco says he is not actively campaigning right now, he has not ruled out a bid altogether. [Spectrum][TU]

Schenectady landslide
A Schenectady city engineer says the landslide that crashed into a home was caused by water from a broken service line. [Gazette]

Nicolla
Chris Churchill on the Joe Nicolla's plea deal, and what his cooperation could do to expose corruption. [Gazette]

NXIVM
Westworld actress Shannon Woodward is part of a team making plans to turn the NXIVM scandal into a TV series.[TU]

Bank robbery
Albany police took a man in for questioning on Wednesday following a Central Avenue M&T bank robbery earlier in the day. [TU]

Handgun arrest
Albany police have arrested a 26-year-old Albany man for having a loaded handgun. [TU]

Boyhaven donor pulls out of deal
An anonymous donor has reneged on an offer to give the town of Milton $500,000 to buy Boyhaven camp from the Boy Scouts and preserve it as a park after an attempt to reveal the name of the donor. [Gazette][TU]

Multilingual Albany
The City of Albany is translating important information about things like snow emergencies and recycling policies, into Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Karen and Pashto to help community members who speak those languages. [TU]

Pondering plastic bags
Sara Foss on Andrew Cuomo's recently proposed legislation to eliminate plastic bags in New York. [Gazette]

Stewarts expansion project
Greenfield residents are expressing concerns about a proposed expansion of a Stewart's manufacturing and distribution plant. [Gazette]

NY joining gun violence research consortium
New York has has joined a consortium with five other states to collect and analyze data in an effort to reduce gun violence. [TU]

Man charged for unlicensed trap
A Milton man is facing charges after an unlicensed trap he set caught his neighbors pit bull. [TU]

Uncle Sam Trail expanding
Troy began work on Wednesday to expand the Uncle Sam Trail from North Central Troy to South Troy. [TU]

Record breaking superload
A group of turbines -- some weighting more than 1 million pounds, will be the heaviest "superloads" to pass through the Port of Albany yet.[TU]

Vet graduates 74 years late
A 91-year-old WWII veteran who left school at 17 to join the Navy, received his high school diploma on Wednesday, as a member of the Niskayuna high school class of 2018. [Gazette]

Stuff going on today

Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit
Today-Sunday: Capital Repertory Theatre continues its production of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit. "One highly spirited wife is fun - but two is fertile ground for this smash comedy hit of the London and Broadway stages from the witty pen of Noël Coward. Meet cantankerous novelist Charles Condomine, re-married to Ruth but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira who has been conjured up by a visiting 'happy medium,' one Madame Arcati." The production runs through May 6. Tuesday-Sunday various times -- $20 and up

Arts and sciences

Patti LuPone Thursday: Broadway star Patti LuPone will be at UAlbany as part of the Creative Life series. She'll be talking about her career with WAMC's Joe Donahue. (And she's performing at Proctors on Friday.) Thursday 7 pm, Page Hall on the downtown campus -- free

The Adirondack Archipelago
Thursday: The State Museum's curator of birds, Jeremy Kirchman, will be at Union's Old Chapel to talk about the Adirondacks and bird evolution. "The great swath of spruce-fir forest that stretches from Alaska to the Canadian Maritimes reaches its southern limit in the mountains of New York. Here you find the southern outpost for the Boreal Chickadee, Bicknell's Thrush, and other boreal forest specialists, their populations isolated as if on an archipelago of islands that rise above a sea of temperate deciduous forest. ... In this talk, Kirchman will describe his work catching and sampling birds in the field and sequencing their genes in the DNA lab, examining the geographic patterns of genetic diversity in the boreal forest archipelagos of northeastern North America." Thursday 7 pm -- free

Imagining Slavery, Envisioning Freedoms
Thursday-Friday: Albany Law and UAlbany are hosting a two-day symposium reflecting on the 30th anniversary of Toni Morrison's Beloved, which was published while Morrison was teaching at UAlbany. Thursday and Friday various times and locations

Albany Patroons

Today-Friday: The Albany Patroons have a three-game home stand against the Ohio Bootleggers at the Washington Ave Armory. Wednesday-Friday 7 pm -- $10 and up

Dining Out for Life

Thursday: Dining Out for Life returns at many restaurants around the area. It's a fundraiser for the Alliance for Positive Health. Participating restaurants will donate a portion of their checks from that day to the Alliance. You don't have do anything else. (Well, ambassadors will be at each restaurant and you could make a donation...)

Music

Thursday: Gov't Mule at The Palace
Southern rock. With: Black Stone Cherry. 7:30 pm -- $29.50 and up

Thursday: Raise Your Voice for CASA Kids at Proctors
"Singing competition for youth ages 13-21 for our CASA program (Court Appointed Special Advocates) to raise money for abused and neglected children of the Capital Region who are appointed to us by Family Court judges so we may raise our voices up to be the voices for these children." 6 pm -- $30