One employee at the state's Department of Transportation office in Buffalo took an unusual leave of absence: He went back to his native country of Somalia to be its prime minister. Mohamed Adullahi Mohamed spoke with the NY Times about being back in his war-torn homeland, "Every morning when I was brushing my teeth I heard bullets hitting the metal over my window. It was like, pop pop pop pop. The first day I was shocked. But after that I knew the bullets would not get through, so I continued brushing." more ›

The Jets have had a week and a half to think about suffering two losses in the span of 96 hours. On Sunday, they'll take the field against the depleted Bills, who started the season as a surprise but now have regressed into the hapless team that has resided in Buffalo for the past 10 years. more ›

Before this 2011 season started, the Jets' game this week at Buffalo appeared to have all the makings of a trap game. A game against the perennial AFC East champion Patriots looms next week, and the Bills have given the Jets—and almost all other teams—no trouble in recent years. But the Bills—not the Patriots and not the Jets—sit in first place in the division, and this week's game in Orchard Park, N.Y., may be as important as the home game against New England next week. more ›

Kids these days. If they're not sucking down the Four Lokos, they're rotting their teeth on pot-shaped candy instead. Say goodbye to candy cigarettes and hello to pot-shaped suckers. more ›

A man can only make so many Meximelts, and be burned from Cinnamon Twist grease so many times before he reaches his breaking point. Adam, a shift manager at a Taco Bell / KFC combo store outside Buffalo, was upset that he reportedly had to work 22 days in a row and was denied a day off on July 4. So he ended his career in a flash of brilliance, posting the above farewell message for his overlords and the public to see. more ›

An upstate man who was about to be pulled over by cops knew he had to ditch his weed. So he decided to throw it out the window... and it landed right on the cop's vehicle. Was it bad luck? Or could the man have been the mysterious Marijuana fairy we've heard so much about? more ›

At an Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development conference earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg admitted our city has problem. But they're not as bad as they are in Buffalo, amirite?! Bloomberg said, “Our city's problems are problems of success. We don't have enough classrooms. We don't have enough roads. We don't have enough housing. If you go to other cities, they don't have those problems. There's an awful lot of free space up in Buffalo, New York, if you want to go there. I don't think you do. Buffalo would love to have our problems." And his attempts to backtrack have just driven his foot deeper in his mouth. more ›

The hits keep coming for the TSA. On Sunday box cutters were found aboard an international flight leaving JFK and then, on Tuesday, a 43-year-old TSA behavioral detection officer named Minnetta Walker was arrested and charged with helping a suspected drug dealer evade security. more ›

Shawn Peace, the 22-year-old wanted for shooting livery cab driver Trevor Bell, has been arrested in Buffalo. Police easily identified the shooter from surveillance footage taken inside Bell's cab during the shooting, and were able to find him by tracking his cell phone usage. One source told the Daily News Peace may be responsible for over a dozen restaurant and livery cab robberies, mostly in Queens. The News also reports it's unclear why Peace was in Buffalo, but it's pretty obvious that not even the most hardened criminal can resist the siren call of the "City of Good Neighbors." Especially not in January! more ›

Break out the "In Russia, drunks fly you!" jokes: The Russian junior hockey team, which won the World Junior Hockey Championship last night in Buffalo, was kicked off a flight from Carl Paladino's hometown to Atlanta (with a stopover at JFK) for unruly behavior. A Delta spokeswman told the Buffalo News, "The crew of a flight from Buffalo to Atlanta denied boarding to 30 passengers as a result of unruly behavior. This was an effort to ensure safe operation of the flight. They will be rebooked on a future flight." more ›

In what the Post is calling "potentially the art find of the century," a Buffalo family may be in possession of an unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary done by Michelangelo. Though the Kolbers always joked about "The Mike," they didn't actually believe it was a Michelangelo until their son, Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober, brought historian Antonio Forcellino to see the piece. Forcellino said, "I'm absolutely convinced that is a Michelangelo painting." Too bad it spent years attracting dust in a forgotten corner of the living room! more ›

It's a happy ending for Oliver (formerly Navarro) the cat! Upon reading of the animal's traumatizing ordeal of being left marinating in peppers and oil in the trunk of his former owner's car, Vickie Dankowski of Cheektowaga decided it was her job to give the cat a good home. She told the Buffalo News, "I woke up [Tuesday] and read the article in The Buffalo News and couldn't believe what I was reading. I said, 'I think I might want to adopt him.'" more ›

Earlier today, President Obama was in Buffalo, where he met with families of Flight 3407 victims and spoke at metal manufacturer Industrial Support, discussing the economy, "We can now say without a shadow of a doubt: We are headed in the right direction," but added, "If you're still looking for a job, it's still a recession... No matter what the economists say, it's not a real recovery until people can feel it in their own lives." (Yes, they do.) He was told by a woman at Duff's Wings, "You're a hottie with a smokin' little body." more ›

We already knew that GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is "not politically correct" and enjoys forwarding photoshopped images, but this is some next-level stuff: today a liberal Buffalo-based blog revealed dozens of emails from the mad-as-hell millionaire, featuring a potent cocktail of bestiality, racism and really bad jokes. more ›

Buffalo millionaire real estate developer Carl Paladino announced his candidacy for the 2010 NY Governor's race by rallying the crowd with the immortal words of Paddy Chayefsky, "I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!" He said, "The government is in shambles, and we’re paying for it in unbearable taxes far, far above the national average. Are you mad? Are you gonna take it anymore?" and also took a shot at the presumed Democratic frontrunner, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo: "Some of the people I oppose think they are entitled: 'My daddy was governor.'... We're going to unhinge the Albany ruling class." more ›

Gov. Paterson has sunk expectations so low that getting a 200 person turnout at a Buffalo campaign event Sunday was seen by some as a positive. "For this governor, getting more than 100 people to show up, it is a sign of strength, so, in fact, he is beating expectations," said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. "For somebody else, it would have been a disaster," he added. "Somebody would have been fired." Much of the crowd was made up of members of a local union, and not many of Paterson's fellow Democrats showed up in support. "I think people are waiting to see how things work out," said the ever-hopeful official. more ›

The tenacious Gov. Paterson says he's charging ahead with his electoral campaign, but with so many officials failing to RSVP, he may have to cancel his kick-off event on Saturday. The governor—who is as short on funds as he is on official and voter support—planned to launch his run at his alma mater Hofstra University, where his campaign manager said he would take "his case directly to the people." But some prominent Democrats don't want to show their faces. more ›

The National Transportation Safety Board released pre-flight transcripts from Flight 3407, the fatal flight from Newark that crashed near its destination of Buffalo in February, and it turns out that co-pilot Rebecca Shaw was in fact sick. She told pilot Marvin Renslow, while sniffling, "I'm ready to be in the hotel room. This is one of those times that if I felt like this when I was at home there's no way I would have come all the way out here. But now that I'm out here," to which Renslow said, "You might as well [fly]." Forty-nine people on the plane were killed; one person on the ground was killed. more ›

In the wake of the NTSB's hearings about the fatal Flight 3407 that crashed in Buffalo, more attention is being drawn on low pilot pay and their commutes. Flight 3407's captain commuted from Tampa to Newark while the co-pilot (who only made $16,000/year) commuted from Seattle. One young pilot tells the NY Times he makes $25,000/year as a co-pilot and is $100,000 in debt from training. One senior pilot said he was lucky to get 4.5 hours of sleep at a hotel, because others can't afford hotel rooms or even "crash pads" listed on Craigslist. A former regional pilot (now a safety consultant) said, "I know a guy who bought a car that barely ran and parked it in the employee lot at his base airport, and slept in his car six or seven times a month." And NY-based (but lives in Boston) pilot Alex LaPointe spoke to the Daily News, "Probably at least once a trip you find yourself nodding off just 'cause there's some days you don't get enough sleep...If you spend an extra three or four hours commuting on top of a 14-hour duty day, you can easily go 18, 20 hours of being up. It cuts into your rest. It certainly fatigues you." more ›

Colgan Air officials said that they had changed hiring requirement for pilots, raising the number of hours flown from 600 to 1000 hours. The move is a response to the fatal Continental Flight 3407 plane crash—operated by Colgan— from Newark to Buffalo, which killed the 49 passengers and crew members plus one person on the ground. The flight's pilot, Marvin Renslow, only had 625 hours of flight time; he also failed the FAA proficiency test three times. more ›

The National Transportation Safety Board began its three days of meetings examining Continental Flight 3407's fatal crash outside Buffalo this past February. Transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder reveal that Captain Marvin Renslow said, "Jesus Christ!" and swore as he scrambled to right the plane and that co-pilot Rebecca Shaw screamed right before the plane crashed. more ›

According to the Wall Street Journal's sources, "The captain of a commuter plane that crashed Feb. 12 near Buffalo, N.Y., had flunked numerous flight tests during his career and was never adequately taught how to respond to the emergency that led to the airplane's fatal descent." The 49 passengers and crew members aboard Continental Airlines Flight 3407, which took off from Newark and was headed to Buffalo, were killed, as was a man on the ground. The plane was a Bombardier Q400; the WSJ adds, "Capt. Marvin Renslow had never been properly trained by the company to respond to a warning system designed to prevent the plane from going into a stall...As the speed slowed to a dangerous level, setting off the stall-prevention system, he did the opposite of the proper procedure, which led to the crash, these people said." The NTSB will be holding three days of hearings about the crash in D.C., starting tomorrow; the NY Times reports that while the FAA requires "sterile" (meaning no irrelevant conversation) cockpits below 10,000 feet, "According to one investigator familiar with the contents of the cockpit voice recorder from the plane, the pilots’ 'heads weren’t in the game.'" more ›

Jack Kemp, a star quarterback on the Buffalo Bills in the 1960s who later became a Republican congressman, died last night at 73 in his Maryland home. His family said, "During the treatment of his cancer, Jack expressed his gratitude for the thoughts and prayers of so many friends, a gratitude which the Kemp family shares." While Kemp's football career was impressive, the NY Times reports, "His greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became party policy, one that has endured to this day." Kemp was also an advocate for the Republican party to include more minorities; noting how many of his teammates were black, he told friends, "I can’t help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with." Kemp, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988, was housing secretary under George H.W. Bush and was Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 election. more ›

Yesterday Governor Paterson announced a $10.7 billion plan that would improve freight and passenger rail service between NYC and various points upstate. The state hopes to vie for federal funds that would help double the number of intercity rail passengers along New York’s three major corridors (New York City to Albany, Albany to Niagara Falls and Albany to Montreal), increase freight service, and improve train performance—and this would, hopefully, reduce reliance on air and auto travel. Senator Schumer said, “From Albany to Rochester and from Poughkeepsie to Plattsburgh, we must update and reinvent our rail network to unclog the transportation arteries cutting off potential economic growth Upstate." However, hopes for a "high speed train" don't quite mean a bullet train: The Post explains, "At full development, Paterson envisions a train system that peaks out at 150 mph" ("Currently, the top speed on most tracks is 70 mph"). more ›

In the wake of America's first fatal airline accident in 30 months, the Times takes a look at how the FAA has responded to other crashes over the years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, reporter Matthew Wald's tour of the FAA sausage factory concludes that the bureaucracy is a tad "cumbersome." The National Transportation Safety Board, which advises the FAA on regulations, currently cites 429 "outstanding recommendations" which have still not been acted on by the FAA. 146 of them are more than five years old, such as a proposed fix for the malfunction that caused the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800 (pictured) over Long Island in 1996, which investigators concluded was caused by an electrical flaw in the fuel tank. (Many others have speculated that a shoulder-fired missile took down the plane.) After some 12 years of debate about a solution, the FAA now reports that airlines should finally have the problem fixed... in another eight years. more ›

The National Transportation Safety Board revealed a number of details about the Continental Express flight to Buffalo that crashed on Thursday night. more ›

The Buffalo News reports, "Forensic anthropologists and aviation experts are walking grids in Clarence Center, where Continental Express Flight 3407 went down, trying to determine what caused the craft to take a horrific vertical dive." They will mark every spot "where human remains, pieces of the aircraft and personal effects are recovered." The flight's 49 passengers and crew were killed, as was the owner of the home where the plane crashed. According to the NTSB, recovery of the bodies may take several days; here is a partial list of victims. more ›