April 10, 2014 |
The father of a North Carolina prosecutor who authorities said was kidnapped for “retaliatory” reasons was rescued unharmed in Atlanta after a raid by an elite FBI hostage-rescue unit, authorities said. During his five-day ordeal, Frank Arthur Janssen, 63, was tied up in a suburban Atlanta apartment while the group suspected in his kidnapping sent his wife a picture of him tied up, with threats to torture and dismember him, authorities said Thursday. Janssen was kidnapped Saturday from his home in Wake Forest, N.C. John Strong, special agent in charge of the FBI's Charlotte, N.C., office, told reporters Thursday that Jannsen was rescued late Wednesday when the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team stormed the apartment.
March 28, 2014 |
MONCURE, N.C. -- Regulators in North Carolina cited Duke Energy on Friday for a crack in an earthen dam holding back coal ash slurry at a retired coal-burning plant, where the utility was cited March 20 for illegally dumping coal ash waste into the Cape Fear River. The "notice of deficiency" is the latest allegation against Duke Energy, which was responsible for a massive coal ash spill Feb. 2 that left 70 miles of the Dan River coated with coal ash sludge in North Carolina and Virginia -- the third-largest such spill in U.S. history.
March 21, 2014 |
The NCAA women's basketball tournament begins Saturday with 16 games at eight sub-regional sites, including UCLA. Nebraska (25-6), the No. 4-seeded team in the Lincoln Regional, plays No. 13-seeded Fresno State (22-10) at 1 p.m. at Pauley Pavilion. Fifth-seeded North Carolina State (25-7) plays 12th-seeded Brigham Young (26-6) at 3:30 p.m. Jordan Hooper, a 6-foot-2 forward from Nebraska, was player of the year in the Big Ten Conference and is a finalist for the John R. Wooden Award as the top player in women's basketball.
March 19, 2014 |
In a column last weekend, I warned that the Democrats' chances of keeping control of the Senate this year look increasingly bleak. That wasn't a value judgment on my part, merely an assessment of the political landscape. Some readers were pleased, others weren't. On Wednesday, the Cook Political Report , a widely respected firm that forecasts congressional elections for a living, issued a new outlook for the Senate - and for Democrats, the verdict was even bleaker than before.
March 16, 2014 |
1 Virginia (28-6, ACC champion) vs. 16 Coastal Carolina (21-12, Big South champion) Virginia must prove it deserves a No. 1 seed, even after beating Duke in the ACC tournament Sunday. Winning big over the Chanticleers would be a good start. 8 Memphis (23-9, at-large) vs. 9 George Washington (24-8, at-large) Memphis has been inconsistent this season and now faces a George Washington team that has won five of its last seven games. 5 Cincinnati (27-6, at-large)
March 16, 2014 |
MONCURE, N.C. - While poring over regulatory documents for Duke Energy coal ash ponds, environmentalists at the Waterkeeper Alliance grew suspicious of the way the giant utility was handling the toxic ash waste left over from burning coal. They decided to send up a team in an aircraft to photograph Duke's shuttered Cape Fear coal-burning power plant and ash ponds, tucked into piney woods in this tiny community in central North Carolina. The photos revealed what the Waterkeeper Alliance says is evidence that Duke, the nation's largest electric utility, is deliberately pumping toxic coal ash wastewater from the containment ponds into a canal that eventually feeds into the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for downstream cities.