News

Mt. Airy is now the site of a 1.2 megawatt solar farm capable of producing power to the equivalent of about 150 homes per year. John Morrison is Chief Operating Oficer for Chapel Hill-based Strata Solar.

The Wake County School Board campaign season is entering its final few days. It’s also a crucial time for the district’s long-awaited student assignment plan.

Wake Schools superintendent Tony Tata has worked for about 7 months on the specifics of the plan. He presented it to the school board earlier this week. A public hearing is scheduled for next Thursday.

Starting tomorrow, visitors to the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham are going to get an education on race. A traveling exhibit called, "RACE: Are We So Different," seeks to highlight a simple truth: Race is really only skin deep. The exhibit is broken down into three sections that examine the history of race, the everyday experience of it and the science behind it. Host Frank Stasio talks to Yolanda Moses, professor of Anthropology at the University of California Riverside and Chair of the National Advisory Board on the RACE Project; Alan Goodman, a professor of Biological Anthropology at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and the co-director of the RACE project; and Taneka Bennett, the director of Marketing and Public Relations at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham.

When Diali Cissokho met Hillary Stewart in his native Senegal he didn't know he'd soon be moving to North Carolina with her to play his kora and start a band. But his life in North Carolina has been fruitful musically and personally. His band Kairaba plays the Shakori Hills festival this weekend, but first they play live in our studio. Kairaba is Diali Cissokho on the kora, John Westmoreland on the guitar, Jonathan Henderson on the bass, and Will Ridenour and Austin McCall on percussion.

If you've listened to music any time since the '80s, then you may be familiar with Weird Al Yankovic's wacky parodies of popular music. He rose to fame with his send-ups of such hits as "My Sharona," and "Another One Bites the Dust," and he's stayed current by poking fun at modern stars such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. He's coming to the Durham Performing Arts Center Sunday. Frank Stasio talks to him about his concert, his album, "Alpocalypse" and more.

“Hot Rize” is a bluegrass band that takes its name from an “ingredient” in Martha White brand flour and cornmeal. Formed in Colorado in the late 1970s , the band’s current line-up plays in Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh this weekend.  Hot Rize is deep fried in bluegrass but as guitarist and founding member Tim O’Brien told Eric Hodge in a recent phone conversation, the four young fellows that formed band had interests that went beyond bluegrass.

The North Carolina Department of Insurance has set up a series of temporary insurance assistance centers in areas hardest hit by Hurricane Irene. The centers are designed to help customers who believe they are not being treated fairly by insurance companies.

Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin decided to open the centers after his office fielded a steady stream of complaints from customers in coastal counties.

Goodwin says many complaints have centered on non-existent or non-communicative insurance adjusters.

This week one North Carolina company gave Davie County a substantial gift.

Winston-Salem based R.J. Reynolds Tobacco gave the rural county 360 acres of undeveloped land southwest of the city. The gift is expected to help bring manufacturing jobs. Terry Bralley is President of the Davie County Economic Development Commission. He says at least one furniture company is considering a plant in the area.

In 2009, Wake County voters elected a new Republican majority to the county school board. Those board members made it their mission to dismantle a long-standing school assignment plan that emphasized socio-economic diversity. In the ensuing two years, the Wake County school board has seen the resignation of its old superintendent, the hiring of a new one and the ongoing reconfiguration of its assignment plan. Board members have also seen themselves on the national news as police broke up protests at school board meetings and led opponents away in handcuffs.

Next Tuesday, voters will go to the polls in Raleigh to choose a new mayor. For the first time in a decade, they will pick someone who is not Charles Meeker. Billie Redmond, Nancy McFarlane, and Randall Williams are all running to replace him. And if history is any guide, it will be the last elected position any of them will ever run for. Becoming mayor in the state’s capitol city is hardly a stepping stone to a long political career.