About 26,000 Muslims live in North Carolina, a 30 percent increase during the past 10 years. At the same time, the post 9/11 fear of Islamic terrorism continues to dominate people's views of the Muslim religion and people in their community.

Hundreds of people are now attempting to climb Mt. Everest every year. National Geographic writer Mark Jenkins says the mountain, once tackled only by professional climbers, has become accessible to anyone who can afford to pay to go up and down. And as a result, the mountain is being ruined by garbage, human excrement, and even bodies of deceased climbers.

Also: In a World War II era blimp hangar in California, a prototype of a new kind of aircraft, the “Aeroscraft” is being tested. It’s a space-age looking machine that’s almost as big as a football field and able to carry 50 tons or more.

Thirteen thousand students in Guilford County will receive tablets computers when they begin the 6th grade this fall. Last year the county was awarded a federal “Race to the Top” grant for 30 million dollars. Now one of the largest classroom technology initiatives in US history is underway. 

Lawmakers in the State House have passed a compromise measure that would give state and Raleigh city officials more time to work out a lease to create a destination park.

The bill would give officials a year to work out a different lease agreement for the city's Dorothea Dix property. It would dissolve the current lease signed by then-Democratic governor Beverly Perdue and Raleigh city officials.

A longtime state legislator is resigning from her post after a decade of public service.

Democratic Representative Deborah Ross announced earlier this month that she was taking a job as the general counsel of the Triangle Transit Authority. Her last official day at the legislature is Saturday.

Ross told House lawmakers that she will miss both her Democratic and Republican friends.

The history-themed Roanoke Island Festival Park on the Outer Banks may have an uncertain future. Two years ago, lawmakers passed a bill that stipulated the park be self-supporting by 2015. The bill called for systematic reductions in state funding to the site over the next 4 years. That gradual implementation was overlooked in the budget proposal Governor Pat McCrory submitted this year - and instead slashed all funding. So far this session, the general assembly shows no signs of reinstating it.

The multi-billion dollar merger announcement between Smithfield Foods and China-based Shuanghui International caught many people by surprise.  Smithfield owns the largest hog processing plant in the world, in Tar Heel.  And thousands of hog farmers and factory workers in North Carolina are employed by the company.

If the deal clears regulatory hurdles, it could be the biggest takeover of a US company by a Chinese company.

Members of a growing movement are taking their money off of Wall Street and investing it in local food systems through small peer-to-peer loans. Slow Money lenders watch their investments used to grow businesses and farms right in their own communities. 

Host Frank Stasio talks with Carol Peppe Hewitt, the founder of Slow Money NC. She reads from her new book “Financing Our Foodshed” (New Society Publishers/2013) at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill tonight at 7.

On June 2nd, 1913, the University of North Carolina dedicated a memorial on its Chapel Hill campus to students who had fought for the Confederacy.  A century later, Silent Sam – as the statue has come to be known – still stirs passions.