It was a Sunday night early last January, and Benji Smith and Emily Lau were celebrating their honeymoon aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship.

They were traveling near Tuscany when it happened: The ship scraped a rock that tore through its hull, flooding its engine room, and sending the ship tilting onto its side. More than 4,000 people were on board.

When we think of the classics of 19th Century literature, names like Melville and Hawthorne come to mind. But what about their contemporaries? What makes ones writer a master and another forgotten? Phillip Gura, professor of American literature and culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tackles that subject in his newest book, “Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel” (FSG/2013).

Joe McHugh says we spend too much time focusing on what information people consume instead of how they consume it. Conservatives may focus on Fox News, and liberals may love MSNBC, but McHugh says that’s not as important as the fact that members of both ideologies are watching television. He says the mediums we use can be as influential as the content they provide.

An invasive plant called hydrilla is spreading from the Piedmont toward lakes near the coast. 

Biologists say the aquatic weed first found in Wake County is now on river banks in northeastern North Carolina and in lakes near Wilmington.  Dr. Rob Richardson is a crop science professor at N.C. State University.  He says the plant grows in thick patches, which can cause problems in drinking water supplies.

"Large mats have, at times, clogged turbines," says Richardson.

Preservationists are welcoming federal approval of a management plan to preserve areas steeped in Gullah Geechee culture.  The U.S. Department of the Interior says the effort to promote cities and towns in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida is ready to be put into action.

A bill that would abolish regional economic development commissions has tentatively passed the state Senate.

The measure would dissolve all seven of the state's commissions. The Department of Commerce would then send at least one employee to work in one of eight newly created economic zones.

In the weeks after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School this past December, President Obama began talking about tightening gun control – and firearm sales boomed. Larry Hyatt runs Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, N.C., and he says that he’s seeing a growing demand for "high capacity" guns and that he’s selling as much as he would over Christmas. He stocks 7,000 guns in his store, making it one of the biggest in the country. He tells host Dick Gordon about the one thing he’d like to see changed in Washington.