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A few years ago, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Sociology Professor Judith Blau and her teaching assistant Rafael Gallegos were at Abbey Court Apartments complex in Carrboro, NC. They were passing out flyers on behalf of the Latino cultural organization El Centro when they were nearly run off by the police. The irony of the situation – that the Abbey Court neighborhood has a high density of immigrants who need support and services and that Abbey Court had the highest crime rate in Carrboro and a hostile relationship with the police department – was not lost on Blau.

In his heyday in the 1940s and '50s, jazz guitarist Greensboro native Tal Farlow wowed the Down Beat crowd, playing with Charles Mingus, Red Norvo and the like. His large hands and his intrinsic sense of harmony distinguished him from his contemporaries. Farlow walked away from the jazz scene in the late 1950s, but he never let go of his love for the music.

A ceremony today in Wilmington is honoring black soldiers who served in the Civil War. A North Carolina Highway Historical Marker will be unveiled just outside the National Cemetery in the city. Jim Steele is the manager of the Fort Fisher State Historic Site. He says a combination of free blacks and former slaves participated in a fight to take the fort.

Greensboro city officials will cut the ribbon for a new amphitheater today. The venue is located on the southern part of the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. The amphitheater's capacity holds about 2,000 more people than Raleigh's new downtown Amphitheater. Andrew Brown with the coliseum says an amphitheater was a natural choice for the complex.

Earlier today, lawmakers in the state Senate tentatively approved a 19-point-7 billion dollar spending plan for the next two years. The framework of the plan was a reworked budget proposal released earlier this week after negotiations between Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate.

Republican budget writer Richard Stevens was the first lawmaker to speak about the plan- otherwise known as House Bill 200- on the Senate floor earlier today. He told his colleagues that he and other Republicans have produced the kind of plan they promised they would.

Sports equipment manufacturers meet with medical experts in Chapel Hill Thursday to consider ways to prevent sports concussions. The conference is meant to address research connecting concussions to dementia in retired athletes. A recent Wake Forest University study of football helmets says there is no helmet that can fully prevent concussions. But manufacturers have made progress in producing helmets that reduce the odds of a head injury. Robert Parish is the President and CEO of Jarden Team Sports, which owns the Rawlings brand of sports equipment.

Drilling for natural gas contained inside of a sedimentary rock called shale has taken off in recent years in some states. But a team of environmental scientists at Duke University recently released a report to illustrate how that process can contaminate groundwater supplies with methane. Their research is calling more public attention to the shale gas drilling process, known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."

Jon Gosier and Jonathan Kuniholm don’t seem to have much in common at first glance. One built a company that helps East Africa's budding software entrepreneurs, and the other created an open-source prosthetics nonprofit. But both are speaking at Chapel Hill's TEDx event tomorrow at the Varsity Theater. Gosier and Kuniholm are part of a panel called "Global Health: What's Technology Got to Do with It?" They join host Frank Stasio to talk about their innovative work and TEDx.

We think of our bodies as being our own private property, but in reality, that privacy is often violated. According to Duke University professor Karla Holloway, it is often women and African-Americans who suffer from that violation. In her new book, “Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics" (Duke University Press/2011), she uses case studies to explore the ways in which the law and medicine have overlooked rights of personal privacy.

Starting today, people with disabilities who have been getting supported to live at home will start losing their services. That's why Disability Rights North Carolina filed a federal lawsuit to stop the state service cuts from going into effect. 

Disability Rights head Vicki Smith says the cuts affect about 4,000 people around the state who need help with only 2 activities of daily living - such toileting or bathing - to stay at home.  Smith says if the cuts happen, these people will be likely to end up in institutions if they don't have family members available to help