In recent years, High Point, NC has come to embrace the legacy of one of its most famous former residents, jazz legend John Coltrane. This weekend, the town will host the first John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival. Coltrane spent his youth in High Point, where he learned to play the clarinet and the saxophone. Host Frank Stasio talks about Coltrane's early life and his music with John Brown, director of the Duke University Jazz Program; Bruce Davis, a member of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and co-chair of the Friends of John Coltrane committee; and Edith Brady, director of the High Point Museum.

Floyd Council of Chapel Hill, NC was one of the Piedmont Blues greats in the 1930s. He is best known as being a namesake of the popular rock group Pink Floyd. Council, who died in 1976, would have turned 100 tomorrow. Frank Stasio talks with Raleigh musician "Th' Bullfrog" Willard McGhee about Floyd Council's life and legacy.

An insect that feeds on invasive kudzu is making its way into North Carolina. The so-called kudzu bug was first discovered in Georgia several years ago. Jack Bacheler is an entymologist with N.C. State University. He says the problem is the beetle, called the bean plataspid, also likes crops like soybeans.

Public schools across eastern North Carolina are implementing backup plans for classes due to extensive damage from Hurricane Irene. In Tyrrell County, all but one public school building were breached by three feet of water and sewage. Students there are on a limited schedule in makeshift classrooms until further notice. State school support director Ben Matthews says coastal districts are still trying to come up with estimates for how much it will cost to repair their schools.

Winston-Salem, NC has the worst rate of family hunger of any metropolitan area in the nation, according to a new study by the Food Research and Action Center. Winston-Salem is only a particularly acute example of what's happening across North Carolina and the nation: increased hunger and poverty, and the suburbanization of poverty as it surges out of inner cities and pulls in the formerly middle class.

Author Sharon Ewell Foster spent the last five years researching Nat Turner, the slave who led a violent rebellion in Southampton County, VA in 1831. She found that Turner’s ancestors hailed from Ethiopia, that Turner was a man of strong spiritual faith and that there was much to be gained by whites in the Commonwealth of Virginia by painting Turner as a savage villain. Foster’s research led her to create a new series of historical fiction called “The Resurrection of Nat Turner.” The first book in that series, “The Witnesses” (Howard Books/2011), has just been released.

Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands remain cut off from the mainland after Hurricane Irene dumped water and sand on several parts of Highway 12. There are several breaches in the highway just north of Rodanthe. Governor Bev Perdue says officials are doing all they can.

Agriculture officials say most of North Carolina’s biggest and most profitable farming operations are in the state’s coastal region that was hit hard by Hurricane Irene.  

Tobacco was one of the hardest hit crops during Hurricane Irene – a 750-million dollar industry.  Brian Long is with the state Agriculture Department.

Brian Long:  "If you think about how much tobacco was still out there, yet to be harvested, and then, Irene’s wind and rain just did a really big number on that crop."

The first of a series of public information sessions on the proposed Wake Schools student assignment plan will be held tonight. The sessions are designed to update people on the status of a new plan.

The presentations will be held at high schools throughout the county. Members of the student assignment task force will offer some details of the plan and discuss what it may mean for where kids will go to school next year.

Dare County officials are asking residents to conserve power as utilities set up emergency generators on Hatteras Island. Parts of the main highway on the Outer Banks were washed away in four spots near Rodanthe. That left residents who waited out the storm stranded on Hatteras Island. Dare County spokeswoman Cathryn Bryan says emergency crews are taking bare essentials to the hardest hit areas.