Over the course of two decades, church leaders of the Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina manipulated and abused congregants from Brazil, according to an investigation by the Associated Press. More than a dozen former members report being told to leave their family in Brazil to join the church in N.C. However, after they arrived they say they were forced into hard labor without pay and physically and emotionally abused.

Tashni Dubroy has served as president of Shaw University in Raleigh since 2015. As president, Dubroy has helped bolster the South’s oldest historically black university. She has been credited with increasing the school’s enrollment and closing a $4 million fundraising gap. Earlier this month, Dubroy was recognized for her work and awarded Female President of the Year at the 2017 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Awards. Now Dubroy is stepping away from Shaw University to work for Howard University in Washington D.C. as executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Legendary dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones was inspired to create his dance trilogy “Analogy” after reading W. G. Sebald’s novel “The Emigrants.” The book, like Jones’s resulting oeuvre, deals with issues of persecution, trauma, war and memory.

As some states move to crack down on abortion clinics, protests at some facilities are heating up. In North Carolina scores of activists descend every weekend on A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic in Charlotte. Calla Hales, the director of the clinic, says anti-abortion protestors have become increasingly aggressive, and local police navigate a gray-zone of enforcing city ordinances.

Listening to audio is something we often do alone, whether it is in the car on the way to or from work or through a set of earbuds during an evening run. But people in Durham have another option for listening to audio stories with an event series called "Audio Under The Stars,” which gives adults permission to partake in their own kind of storytime. The events take place summer evenings on the lawn of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The series is now in it's fourth season.