The Durham Planning Commission will hold a public hearing tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall to determine whether Durham should amend its Comprehensive Plan Unified Development Ordinance to accommodate a privately funded survey that significantly re-draws the boundaries of Jordan Lake. This is the first step in a public hearing process the Durham County […]
Matt Saldaña
Posted inNews
Cuba in the news
Last April, President Barack Obama reversed history in announcing he would remove all restrictions from Cubans in the United States who wish to visit, and send money to, their family on the island. The two countries have also agreed to resume high-level migration talks, broken off during President George W. Bush’s tenure. And this afternoon, […]
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Raleigh’s Cuban community: Their stories, their views on Obama’s new diplomacy
Across the highway from Raleigh-Durham International Airport, 80 Cuban exiles and family memberssome who fled the island more than a half-century agoare gathered at Carmen’s Cuban Café to swap stories, eat slow-roasted pork and laugh. Sipping mojitos, the men form a light-blue sea of linen guayaberas, a relic of pre-Castro couture that is today reserved […]
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Cubans’ immigration status inseparable from politics
Since 1983, the United States has resettled more than 2 million of the world’s refugees. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, one in sevenabout 300,000have arrived from Cuba. Between 1983 and 2006, the U.S. resettled eight times as many Cuban as Haitian refugees (PDF, 3.1 MB). The inequity has little to do with geography […]
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HK on J to protest Racial Justice Act amendments
For the first time ever, the N.C. Senate has passed the Racial Justice Act–a measure that previously failed after the Senate refused to vote on the bill. The historic legislation would prevent the execution of defendants who can prove race was was an underlying factor in the decision to seek, or impose, the death penalty […]
Posted inGuides
Falls Lake: a summer refuge for snake-birds—and people
It’s snake-bird season in North Carolina. The ostrich-necked, fan-tailed fish hunter also known as a water turkey, or anhinga, typically resides in the bayous of Louisiana and Florida. However, it will migrate north in the summer if it finds a swampy, low-lying lake with trees to perch onnot around, but inside the lake. As the […]
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Racial justice victory dimmed by possible resumption of executions
On May 14, during the same week that North Carolina’s death penalty cleared a significant legal hurdle, the state Senate passed a landmark bill that seeks to make capital punishment decisions more equitable. The Racial Justice Act, which passed by a 36-10 margin, would prevent the execution of defendants who can prove race was an […]
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Missouri set to execute inmate tonight
Update (5/20/09): Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon denied clemency shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday, and the state executed Dennis Killicorn shortly after midnight today. Updated, with reference to HB 1203 (Felony Murder), below. For those following the mercurial advancements of the death penalty in North Carolina (updates here and here), Missouri’s story is a reminder of […]
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Bonfield proposes FY09-10 budget for Durham
At tonight’s regular City Council meeting, Durham City Manager Tom Bonfield proposed a $344 million budget for Fiscal Year 2009-10–a decrease of roughly $11 million, or 3.1 percent, from last year’s budget. You can view his Power Point presentation, and accompanying letter, at the City’s new budget Web site. The most controversial aspect of Bonfield’s […]
Posted inNews
Wake Co. judge dismisses case against execution protocol; death penalty nears in N.C.
Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens has issued an order (PDF, 896 KB) upholding the method North Carolina used to approve its death-penalty protocol, removing one of the final hurdles to resuming executions in the state. (See ‘De facto death penalty moratorium may end,” Independent Weekly, May 13, 2009.) The order rejects an appeal, […]
