Free Republic

Upstate New York is staggering from an accelerating exodus of young adults, new census results show. The migration is turning many communities grayer, threatening the long-term viability of ailing cities and raising concerns about the state's future tax base. From 1990 to 2004, the number of 25-to-34-year-old residents in the 52 counties north of Rockland and Putnam declined by more than 25 percent. In 13 counties that include cities like Buffalo, Syracuse and Binghamton, the population of young adults fell by more than 30 percent. In Tioga County, part of Appalachia in New York's Southern Tier, 42 percent fewer young...

FORT EDWARD, N.Y. - A husband and wife team of amateur archaeologists have unearthed human skeletons, believed to be about 250 years old, at a burial site here on the Hudson River island that's considered the birthplace of today's U.S. Army Rangers. AP - Mon Jun 5, 1:18 PM ET JoAnne Fuller unearths a skeleton on Rogers Island at Fort Edward, N.Y., Thursday, June 1, 2006 . The Fullers, a husband and wife team of amateur archaeologists, have unearthed human skeletons on the Hudson River island that's considered the birthplace of today's U.S. Army Rangers. (AP Photo/ Jim McKnight) Richard...

Jason Cox/The Leader Corning Inc.'s chairman, James Houghton, and Senator Clinton in 2005 at the company's headquarters. Corning Inc., one of upstate New York's largest and oldest employers, has supported Republican candidates for so long that its chairman once joked that it had not raised money for a Democrat since 1812. But since Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000, Corning and its mainly Republican executives have become one of her largest sources of campaign contributions. And in that time, Mrs. Clinton has become one of the company's leading champions, delivering for it like no other...

In what family members are calling a miracle, a Buffalo firefighter is talking again after nearly a decade in a brain-damaged state. Donald Herbert suffered severe injuries when a roof collapsed on him while he was fighting a fire in December 1995. The injury left him brain damaged and unable to speak.

Factories hummed and consumers kept cash registers busy in the first two months of this year, fresh evidence the economic recovery is moving ahead, according to a Federal Reserve report Wednesday. ``Economic activity continued to expand in January and February,'' the Fed said in its latest survey of business conditions around the country. On the jobs front, however, the report found employment ``growing slowly'' in most central bank districts. A separate survey of chief executives of the nation's biggest companies suggested hiring could start to pick up. One-third of the executives said they expected to increase hiring in the next...