News

North Carolina has seen its fair share of both flooding and drought over the past several years. One of the problems has been getting accurate information, especially in rural areas. Francios Birgand is a biological engineering researcher at N.C. State. He led the development of the 'Gauge-Cam'. He says he and his team wanted to explore the possibility of using wireless imaging technologies to help track water flows in streams and rivers.

On Tuesday, Durham County voters will decide whether to approve a sales tax increase that would help fund big improvements to public transit. Public transportation advocates across the Triangle have been working for years to plan a comprehensive network of buses and trains to make the area more commuter-friendly.

Winston-Salem based BB&T is acquiring part of Florida’s BankAtlantic.

The bank will pay $300 million in exchange for nearly $5.5 billion in loans and deposits. The North Carolina company will not take on any loans at risk of default or bad assets in the merger. BB&T CFO Darryl Bible says the acquisition is ultimately safe.

Darryl Bible: "They separated the good bank form the bad bank. BB&T is acquiring all the good assets from BankAtlantic, about 2.1 billion dollars. BankAtlantic is basically retaining all the non performing assets."

In the pre-colonial era, vast forests of long leaf pines stretched along the eastern seaboard from what is today upstate New York as far south and west as east Texas. By the time Helen Boyd Dull came south to visit the North Carolina Sandhills in the early 1900s, millions of acres of long leafs had fallen to logging or been gutted to make tar and turpentine. At her urging, Helen Boyd Dull's father preserved a stand of these old trees that became known as Weymouth Woods in Southern Pines, NC. Historian and artist Ray Owen has created an homage to Helen Boyd Dull and the trees she saved in a new performance piece called "Bleeding Pines of Turpentine." Owen and choirmaster Rod Brower of the Together-N-Unity Choir join host Frank Stasio to talk about the story of the long leaf pine and telling it through music, dance and spoken word.

Cookbooks are a lone shining light in all of publishing at the moment. Last year, more than 60 million of them were sold, but many of the bestselling titles were written by celebrities. What are we getting from our cookbooks? Do we read cookbooks to actually learn something or to live a vicarious life? Cookbook author Michael Ruhlman and food writer Kelly Alexander join host Frank Stasio to ponder those questions and talk about how America eats. Ruhlman, a writer and cook, recently released “Ruhlman’s Twenty” (Chronicle Books/2011) and Alexander contributed the introduction to “The Great American Cookbook” (Rizzoli/2011), a reissue of Clementine Paddleford’s classic cookbook from 1960.

This November marks the 25th anniversary of the North Carolina Latin American Film Festival, which celebrates and examines Latino culture in cinema. This year, the focus of the festival is on narcotic drug trafficking, and the violence and corruption that goes with it. Host Frank Stasio talks about that theme with North Carolina filmmakers Rodrigo Dorfman and Elva Bishop and with festival Director Miguel Rojas-Sotelo.

Dare County continues to struggle with re-building and with high job loss since Hurricane Irene hit two months ago. 

The latest unemployment numbers from across the state show a majority of counties experienced a drop in their jobless rates.  But not Dare County.  In August – the unemployment rate in Dare County was 7-point-5-percent – much lower than the national and the state rate.  But in September - the jobless rate was nearly two points higher.  Kenny Kee manages the Employment Security Commission office in Nags Head.  He says people couldn’t get to work after the storm.

State officials investigating an outbreak of E-Coli say there are now nine confirmed cases of the bacterial infection. Fifteen more possible cases are being investigated. All 24 of those people attended the state fair. The venue is believed to be the source of the outbreak, but a direct cause has not been confirmed yet. Dr. Megan Davies is North Carolina's state epidemiologist.

A state senator who led the fight against gay marriage has died. Republican Jim Forrester of Gaston County suffered health problems before checking in to a hospital this weekend.

Tonight ghosts, goblins, gremlins and all manner of imaginary monsters may knock on your door. But while Halloween is all about make believe, for some people the business of paranormal phenomenon is serious. Sally Rhine Feather is one of them. She is executive director emeritus of the Rhine Research Center in Durham. The center, founded by Feather’s father, J.B. Rhine, has been around in one form or another for 70 years. In that time, it has investigated such unexplained experiences as telepathy, clairvoyance and life after death. Host Frank Stasio talks to Feather about her work and her family’s history as researchers of the paranormal.