Dave DeWitt

A controversial charter school that was approved to open its doors in Chapel Hill this fall has hit a road block. The managing company that was supposed to run the day-to-day operations of the Howard and Lillian Lee Charter School has pulled out.

National Heritage Academies, Inc. runs more than 70 charter schools across the country, including six in North Carolina. The Lee School would have been number seven, but NHA has backed out of the project.

Local school districts are bracing for funding cuts due to the federal sequestration. In Durham, the cuts from sequestration could be as much as $1.7 million. In Wake County - a much larger district - the same sequester cuts would total about $11 million.

And it's the most vulnerable students who will be affected.

Former UNC-Chapel Hill football player Marvin Austin said in documents unsealed today in Wake County Superior Court that a player agent, Terry Shawn Watson from Georgia, paid him several thousand dollars cash. The money came to Austin in a Fed-Ex package while he was a player at Carolina in 2010.

Other payments were sent to the home of Jennifer Wiley. She was the tutor who was at the center of an academic fraud scandal that came out of the investigation into the football program.

The State Board of Education has given final approval to 23 charter schools to open this fall.

Last year, 63 applicants began the process of applying to start a charter school, with an eye toward opening this fall. Twenty-five made it to this final round.

When she decided to bring allegations of rape against a former boyfriend in the spring of 2012, UNC-Chapel Hill student Landen Gambill had three options available to her. She could file charges with the UNC-Chapel Hill judicial system, she could file a civil lawsuit, or she could file a criminal complaint.

She chose the first option – to keep the case on-campus – and from the start of the investigation through the final verdict and up until the present day, she felt violated and betrayed by the system.

And now she’s fighting back.

North Carolina is widely considered one of the more progressive southern states. Acts of violence during the Civil Rights Era were rare, and the state was one of the few south of the Mason-Dixon line that went for President Barack Obama in 2008.

But during the Civil Rights Era, North Carolina had more members of the Ku Klux Klan than all other southern states combined.

Musicians David Childers and Bob Crawford bonded over a shared love of Appalachian music and history. The result is the second CD from their band "The Overmountain Men." Crawford is also the bassist for the Avett Brothers, while Childers has had a long career with the Modern Don Juans.

Where would you go if someone called you and offered you a free trip to anywhere in the world?

For artist Nerys Levy, the choice was easy. “My deceased husband was Russian-Jewish,” says Levy. “I had grown up on the edge of Russian culture in our married life. So there was an emotional quality. I also knew this would be a wonderful artistic experience.” 

As a landscape artist, Levy saw the trip down the Volga River as a creative opportunity.  “The country has such a rich cultural history that has been submerged and is now re-emerging.”  

  The federal investigation into WakeMed over Medicare fraud looked like it was going to end in a settlement. But a federal judge twice rejected the agreement between the hospital and prosecutors, leaving the case unresolved. News & Observer reporter Joe Neff joins host Frank Stasio in the studio to discuss the case.

Republicans are looking to make big changes to how industries like energy, telecommunications and transportation are regulated. First on the agenda: fire most board and committee members and replace them with people hand-picked by Governor McCrory and the legislature.