The General Assembly’s battle over beer is getting frothy. A bill that would allow higher alcohol specialty beers to be sold in the state moved to the House floor Tuesday after it was passed by the House ABC Committee–despite efforts by a key legislator’s business interests to kill the proposal. State Rep. Leo Daughtry, R-Johnston, […]
Blair Goldstein
Posted inNews
Beer lovers hope bill doesn’t go flat
This is a sipping drink, meant to be served with aged cheese and gourmet chocolate. It’s not wine. It’s not spirits. It’s beer. And it’s missing in North Carolina. Beer sold in North Carolina cannot have more than 6 percent alcohol by volume, excluding about one-third of world beer styles from being sold in the […]
Posted inNews
Pro-choice activists worry bill sets precendent
The debate about abortion rights in North Carolina is tangled in the story of April Greer. The 20-year-old woman from Alamance County was found brutally murdered and dismembered in 2003–she was eight and one-half months pregnant with a baby she had already named Heaven Leigh. Her boyfriend, Jerry Lynn Stuart, has been arrested in connection […]
Posted inNews
‘But they can still marry straight people’
Meredith and Melissa Weiss planned to go to Vermont for a civil union ceremony, but when Canada began performing same-sex marriages they changed their plans. The couple said “I do” in Toronto in August 2003. When the newlyweds returned to their home in Chapel Hill, their fight to secure basic rights as a married couple […]
Posted inNews
Bill seeks limits on lobbying–and lobbyists
The transition from public legislator to private lobbyist can happen quickly under current law. In October 2004, 10 days before the end of her term, Rep. Connie Wilson (R-Mecklenburg) resigned her position in the General Assembly. By January 2005, Wilson was a registered lobbyist for N.C. Travel Industry Association, a North Carolina tourism promotion group. […]
Posted inNews
The nation’s eyes are on N.C.
Death penalty opponents across the country are watching the North Carolina General Assembly. A group of representatives plan to introduce a bill this month calling for a two-year suspension of executions to study problems in the capital punishment system–and it has a good chance of going to Gov. Mike Easley for his signature. Whether the […]
Posted inNews
Ecotourism award touts Durham-Nicaragua partnership
North Carolinians and Nicaraguans have created a tourist destination where visitors don’t just see a new community, but are invited to join it, as well. At Finca Esperanza Verde (Green Hope Farm) Ecolodge and Nature Reserve in San Ramn, Nicaragua, visitors learn how to harvest shade-grown coffee from local farmers and make tortillas from local […]
Posted inNews
Photos hope to keep ReCYCLEry rolling
The short series of photographs capture a community of bicyclists. Broken, floating and chaotic tires mingle with people’s faces and hands as they work to repair the bikes. Carrboro resident Lauren Waterman’s new black and white photography exhibit stands out starkly against the bright yellow walls of Carrburritos, a Mexican restaurant in Carrboro. Her work […]
Posted inGuides
Working for the underdog
This week, Margaret (Peggy) Misch attended a meeting on Monday, a vigil to protest the war in Iraq on Friday, and a walk in Greensboro to support the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project on Saturday. She missed her meeting on Tuesday night because she is moving out of the Chapel Hill house she has called […]
Posted inNews
Prof asks for rebuke to donors
The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy says critics of a proposed “Studies in Western Cultures” minor at the University of North Carolina–to be funded by the center’s benefactor, the John William Pope Foundation–are “fearful radicals.” But faculty who wrote the proposal are among those asking university administrators to take a stronger stand […]