Category: PostNews

(WIVB) – The U.S. will reopen its land border to vaccinated Canadians in November, Rep. Brian Higgins announced Tuesday evening.

Proof of vaccination will be required, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will announce further details.

Rep. Higgins, who has been pushing for the reopening of the border, shared the following statement on Tuesday:

“A robust cross-border exchange between the United States and Canada is fundamental to our binational relationship and mutually beneficial to our nations’ citizens, businesses and economies. Strong vaccination rates in Canada made the continued border shutdown absurd and unjustifiable.”

Higgins says that for months, he’s heard from businesses and families suffering due to the separation from the ongoing border shutdown.

“The sigh of relief coming from Northern Border communities following this announcement is so loud it can practically be heard on either end of the Peace Bridge,” Higgins said. “Border communities await further details from the administration with great expectation, and I will continue to advocate for a more fully and freely open border to both governments, sooner rather than later.”

(WIVB) – Buffalo mayoral candidate India Walton says the city’s parks will receive more attention if she’s voted into office.

Families joined the Democratic nominee at Shoshone Park Tuesday afternoon.

Walton says the parks need more care than city leaders are providing, and she’s committed to making them better.

“The city of buffalo is not maintaining our parks appropriately. We have the infrastructure that currently exists to have a wonderful and robust park system, and luckily for parents like me, who has a son who played baseball here at Shoshone, we have folks like those behind us who came in with weed whacked, cut grass, cleaned our batting cages and kept the facilities well-upkept enough to be of use to our children,” Walton said.

In his most recent capital budget, released last fall, incumbent mayor Byron Brown announced about $10 million dollars for parks, and cultural and recreational facilities combined.

(WIVB) – October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and News 4 teamed up with Roswell Park on Tuesday for a mammogram live drive.

News 4’s Jacquie Walker was live at Roswell’s Breast Imaging Center to talk about the importance of early detection.

You can make an appointment for a mammogram by clicking here or calling 1-800-ROSWELL.

(WIVB) – If you are carrying a load of student debt and work in the public sector, federal officials are reworking a loan forgiveness program that could wipe the slate clean.

They’re fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was designed to encourage college students to consider working in public sector jobs or for non-profits.

On paper, officials gave it an “A” but it was the execution that failed.

Congress wanted to steer professionals with big college debts into public service jobs that were going unfilled, such as teachers and first responders by forgiving their loans.

“If you have worked full-time in the public sector for any amount of years you should be reaching out to your loan servicer and asking them about public service loan forgiveness,” said Noelle Carter with the Consumer Credit Counseling Service.

Carter says it did not quite work out that way. Congress established the public service loan forgiveness program in 2007 for graduates who worked in a public service or for a non-profit agency, and after 10 years of payments, the balance on the loan would go away.

But in the first year of eligibility, 99 percent of the applicants were rejected and 94 percent of military borrowers.

“So there was inherently something going on with the requirements, or the qualifications needed to receive the forgiveness if so many people were denied their application,” Carter said.

Reviews showed many of those loans were denied because of minor errors on the part of the applicants, the loan servicers, and the U.S. Department of Education.

The Secretary of Education is now loosening some of the rules for forgiving the loans, and Carter says Consumer Credit Counseling is uniquely qualified to help.

“We saw the writing on the wall that there would be so many people so confused,” she said.

Carter told News 4 their credit counselors have specific knowledge with these loans.

“So if you did not know what loan types you had, or that you have the wrong type of loan type, or how to get it into the right loan type, that was one huge thing that disqualified your payments being made,” she said.

The education department estimates as many as a half million professionals can benefit from the revamped loan forgiveness program.

You can contact consumer credit counseling for help at 1-800-926-9685 or click here.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — The next show at Shea’s Performing Arts Center is getting ready to raise the curtains.

“Every day I wake up and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening’, and I’m like, ‘it is happening,'” said Jared Grant, who plays Jeff Slater in “Tootsie”.

That joy carries through the rest of the cast. For many, this is their first touring production.

If you’re unfamiliar with the plot from the classic 1982 film, it’s centered around a blacklisted actor named Michale Dorsey.

“He is just a desperate actor who just wants to work,” said cast member Dominique Kempf. “He loves acting and it’s his whole life, and he makes a very desperate decision to be in the spotlight and to create work.”

“He creates a character named Dorothy Michaels, and he plays her,” Kempf added.

The concept of “creating your own work” is something all the cast members can relate to. They laugh now at past auditions, failed gigs, and weeks without landing an acting job, as they prepare for their opening night.

Opening night will mean a little more to Kempf. A graduate of Frontier High and SUNY Fredonia, she worked hard to make it back where she first fell in love with theater.

“Buffalo is our first stop. Talk about a good omen, right? When I got the offer, when they said it’s opening in Buffalo, I was like ‘this is amazing.’ It was like a full-circle moment.”

Opening night for “Tootsie” is October 13. Click here for ticket information.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – A Buffalo man has pleaded guilty to rioting for tossing a burning laundry basket into a broken window at Buffalo City Hall in May 2020.

Courtland Renford, 22, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he’s sentenced on Dec. 17.

According to U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross, Renford also participated in the looting and rioting of a 7-Eleven convenience store at Elmwood Avenue and Summer Street the same day and was captured on the store’s surveillance camera.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – During a press conference Tuesday evening, the CWA area director called proposals that Catholic Health has put out to the press “misleading”

“The staffing language they’re proposing for us has what they classify as “wiggle room” – the language we’re looking for is iron-clad,” CWA area director Debora Hayes said during the 5:30 p.m. conference. “We’ve had experiences before where a little ‘wiggle room’ leads to an hour of not meeting ratios, which leads to four hours of not meeting ratios, and then a whole shift of not meeting ratios – we’re here for a reason and that reason is fixing staffing issues.”

On Monday, Catholic Health released a document containing its latest proposal to the press, which includes adding 250 new employees.

Hayes said that that proposal to add new employees didn’t help when the union was in negotiations with Catholic Health in 2016.

“They hit that number, and once they hit it, things deteriorated down to conditions worse than they were when we started negotiations,” Hayes added.

The strike has been going on since Oct. 1.

“This isn’t about playing games – [Catholic Health] knows what we need, and it’s in their power to put it on the table,” Hayes said.

“More or less disheartened, we really thought that this contract was going to be good, and we’d be back in the hospital,” said Chris Anderson who’s a registered nurse at Mercy Hospital. “Get this over with and let us get back to the hospital where we need to be and that’s where we all want to be. They’re holding it up, it is not the union, right now it’s the hospital holding it up.”

Latest on the CWA strike against Catholic Health:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — 15 years ago the October Surprise Storm ripped through Western New York. It changed the way storms are handled in the region.

Richard Dixon is one of many Buffalonians who remembers the scene very clearly.

“I didn’t think it was gonna be that bad but it winded up to be really devastating,” Dixon said.

The storm left nearly 20 inches of snow, countless fallen trees, and more than 265,000 Western New Yorkers without power. Ken Kujawa is the regional director of National Grid and worked for the company during the storm.

“It was a challenging time because we obviously had to get power restored to everyone but the magnitude of the event was so large that it took time to be able to get our system rebuilt and get everybody back in power,” he said.

He remembers bringing in 4,000 workers from 19 states to help out.

“It was a community effort: hotels, restaurants, people were coming out to bring coffee and food to our crews as they were restoring power and it was something that really made you feel good.”

Dixon said he had no power for a week and grilled all the food in the fridge to keep it from spoiling.

Kujawa said what came out of that storm are now considered best practices not only for National Grid but for utility companies around the state.

“We believe that because of what happened 15 years ago we’re a better company today in terms of responding to storm events that happen on our system.”

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB) – The Niagara Falls Conference Center and Old Falls Street will be under new management next year.

New York State is making Destination Niagara USA the new manager of the site in downtown Niagara Falls.

Destination Niagara USA is the official marketing organization for Niagara County.

The state says the change-over will happen in January.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Drivers who were planning to use the Skyway this Saturday will need to make alternate plans since the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) will be performing bridge deck repair work that day.

Work is expected to last from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The southbound I-190 ramp to the Skyway (Exit 7) will be closed.

Instead, drivers can follow a detour exiting at Elm Street (Exit 6) to N. Division Street and Church Street.

If there is bad weather, this work could be delayed.