News

Rucho resigned his co-chairmanship of the finance committee in protest of Berger's plan, which passed the Senate Thursday.

Regardless of what ultimately passes, Jessica Jones, WUNC Capitol Bureau Chief, said on the State of Things that the implications could be far reaching.

Jeanne Jolly visited our studio a year ago in the early stages of working on her album, “Angels.” Now, she is back in the midst of a national tour promoting her album.

Ailyn Perez and Stephen Costello are husband-and-wife opera singers. They talk with Dick about the peculiarity of their relationship, which includes competing to see who can hold the longest notes, and trying to get cast in the same productions so that they can spend time together.

Power was still out Friday morning for hundreds of thousands of people in North Carolina after severe storms. 

A fast-moving system swept across the state Thursday, knocking down trees and power lines.  Duke Energy Progress says nearly 60,000 people were without power Friday morning in Wake County.  Meteorologist Phil Badgett says damage reports came in quickly Thursday night.

The weather forecast for the Triangle calls for more severe thunderstorms in the coming week, but they likely won’t be as bad as last week, when a downpour from Tropical Storm Andrea flooded streets, caused weak trees to tumble and resulted in hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewer water overflowing.

Records show the city of Raleigh experienced one of the largest sewer system overflows because of Andrea. This comes at a time when the capital city is already spending millions of dollars trying to up-grade water and sewer infrastructure.

State senators have passed a measure that would do away with handgun permits and add more places people can carry or store firearms.

Thanks to recent rainfalls associated with Tropical Storm Andrea, North Carolina is now out of drought or abnormally dry conditions for the first time in three years.

The persistent drought has wreaked havoc on agriculture, affecting apple crops in the western part of the state and corn in the east.

Now, thanks to Tropical Storm Andrea and other rain events this spring, the state is no longer suffering from even the mildest classification of drought condition – abnormally dry or “D-zero” - for the first time in the past three years.

The co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee has resigned from that group to protest changes to his legislative body's tax reform plan.

Senator Bob Rucho submitted his resignation letter to Senate President Phil Berger earlier this week. Rucho was the main architect of a Senate tax reform proposal that would have expanded the sales tax while lowering personal and corporate income tax rates.

But Berger put forth an alternate plan that would repeal corporate taxes without expanding the sales tax base as extensively. Rucho says he was disappointed by the move.

The town of Holly Springs is interested in laying a fiber optic network that could lead to super high-speed Internet for local residents and businesses. 

The Town Council voted unanimously to move forward with the project, which would install 16 miles of fiber optic cable in two loops underneath the town.  Joanne Hovis is president of CTC Technology, which the town hired to design the network.  She told the council at a recent meeting the service would start out as a communications system for the town, but lays the groundwork for Internet Service Providers to build commercial and residential connections.