Morning Edition on WAMC

Reporting from Afghanistan, Morning Edition's Renee Montagne talks to Salahuddin Rabbani. President Hamid Karzai recently appointed him chairman of the High Peace Council, which is tasked with negotiating with the Taliban. Rabbani replaced his father who was assassinated last year by a suspected Taliban member.

The group MassEquality is applauding President Barack Obama's declaration that he supports same-sex marriage.  WAMC's Tristan O'Neill reports...

After refusing to take a clear stand for months, Obama made the announcement in an interview with ABC News at the White House on Wednesday.

Polling suggests the nation is evenly divided on the issue

MassEquality Executive Director Kara Suffredini says Obama's evolution on the issue is not unlike the experience of many Americans who have come to understand why marriage is important to same-sex couples and their children.

Governor Cuomo, who won national praise and attention for championing the passage of same sex marriage in New York, calls President Obama’s support of gay marriage a “major advancement for equal rights in this country.”  Capitol Correspondent Karen DeWitt reports…  

A coalition of upstate New York landowners seeking to lease land for natural gas drilling is pressing state officials to consider the rights of property owners as they make decisions on shale gas development. WAMC’s Dave Lucas has details…

The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York is at the Capitol Wednesday to present a "Declaration of Rights."

With the start of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season less than a month away, hundreds of people attended a hurricane preparedness conference Wednesday in central Massachusetts.  WAMC’s Paul Tuthill reports…

The director of the National Hurricane Center, Bill Read urged hundreds of public safety officials not to be in denial when they see a forecast that has a hurricane tracking to New England.

Read said since 1990 hurricane tracking errors, 48 hours from landfall, have been cut in half. But forecasting a storm’s intensity remains tricky…

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A third year of dredging for PCBs has begun on the upper Hudson River. The Environmental Protection Agency says dredging started for the season Wednesday. WAMC’s Dave Lucas has more…

General Electric Co. plans to start with a single dredge about 40 miles north of Albany and ramp up work over the next few weeks.  Three to four dredges will eventually be operating all day, six days a week along a two-mile stretch of river south of Fort Edward.

A report says in 2010, 38 percent of 911 calls in New York City were accidental calls lasting just seconds. Most, according to the New York Daily News, appear to be calls made from pockets or purses. There were actually more of these calls than calls that warranted a response by a police car.

Listen to Paul Caiano's WAMC Regional forecast.  Paul Caiano is a meteorologist at WNYT Newschannel 13. He graduated from SUNY Albany in May of 1993 with a B.S. in the field of Atmospheric Science/Meteorology.