News

Drivers can learn how to save gas at a workshop today in Raleigh. The North Carolina Solar Center will host the Drive Green, Save Green demonstration. Participants will drive a five-mile course as they normally would and then try again with a few pointers in mind. Anne Tazewell from the Solar Center says a conscientious driver can save an extra 10 to 30 percent on fuel by following their advice.

State senators have pardoned a Reconstruction-era governor who was impeached and driven from office nearly a century and a half ago.

The U.S. is more energy dependent on Canada than you might think. That's why Duke officials say they've planned a conference tomorrow on the U.S.-Canada energy relationship. Stephen Kelly is the associate director of Duke's Center for Canadian Studies. He says most people don't realize how big a role Canada plays in our energy supply.

The media are all over today’s 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, but a group of journalism students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been spending time studying how reporters covered the war during the four years of conflict. Frank Fee, associate professor of journalism and mass communications at UNC, and UNC students Caitie Forde-Smith and Jessica Hayes join host Frank Stasio to share what they found out about media production and usage during the Civil War.

A team of local library archivists are taking on a lengthy digital project to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Every day for the next four years, they will contribute written content to a blog that features artifacts, photographs and documents related to the war. Online users can visit the Web site called “The Civil War Day-By-Day” to see what was happening during the war on a particular day and everything available to view on the blog is housed in the Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

150 years ago today shots rang out at Fort Sumter South Carolina, marking the beginning of the Civil War. In Charleston, Re-enactors will play out the day's events. Here in North Carolina, the state office of historical records will re-release documents that tell the story of the state's older confederate soldiers. The "Senior Reserves" were men between 45 and 50 years old who were drafted in the last year of the war.  Also, UNC Chapel Hill is launching a website, Civil War Day-to-Day.

New data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services shows some higher complication rates than average at several area hospitals.

The new online data base at the Medicare website shows rates for eight so-called 'never' events.  Those are complications Medicare officials believe should never happen in hospitals. Those incidents include patients developing bedsores, or doctors leaving objects inside their surgical patients. Medicare has stopped reimbursing hospitals for many of these hospital acquired complications. 

Halifax County is celebrating the date memorialized on North Carolina's state flag today. On April 12, 1776, the state's Fourth Provincial Congress met in Halifax to declare sovereignty from the British crown. Carl Burke with the Halifax State Historic Site says the move became known as the Halifax Resolves.

Jimmy Creech had been an ordained United Methodist minister for 14 years before he came to understand the plight of homosexuals within his congregation. A parishioner, whom he calls Adam, came out to him in 1984, revealing the hurt and rejection he felt at the hands of a church that condemned him. Creech became a crusader for homosexual rights within the church, and that crusade led the Methodist church to strip him of his ordination.

This is a period of unrivaled education reform. Charter schools, teacher merit pay, diversity policies - all efforts to improve what many see as a failing public school system. But every effort needs evidence as to whether it is working. Much of it comes from standardized testing. That puts even more emphasis on the most effective way to analyze the growing amount of data. The information is being used in all kinds of ways, from what classes a student takes to teacher merit pay and, in some cases, termination.