North Carolina | featured news

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have introduced a bill declaring that the state has the power to establish an official religion — a direct challenge to the First Amendment. One professor of politics called the measure “the verge of being neo-secessionist,” and another said it was reminiscent of how Southern states objected to the Supreme Court’s 1954 integration of public schools.

A billboard in Greensboro, N.C., claims to be from a scorned woman who apparently caught her husband with another woman, MyFox8.com reported. The red billboard has been slowing down traffic on Battleground Avenue and reads, "Michael, GPS Tracker – $250, Nikon Camera with zoom lens – $1600, Catching my lying husband and buying this billboard with our investment account, – Priceless. – Jennifer."

Two rats — one in North Carolina, the other in Brazil — worked together on a task by communicating telepathically, thanks to implants in their brain. Electrical signals from a "leader" rat’s brain were collected, encoded and then zapped into the "follower" rat’s cortex in the form of an electrical signal. The follower rat then pressed one of two levers based on a light visible only to the leader rat. The Duke University experiment is the first time two animals have collaborated through such an artificial link, and shows that the mammal brain can be trained to act on electrical signals from another animal.

Last year, about $450 million belonging to top executives at billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson’s New York firm took a quick round trip to Bermuda. In April, the executives sent the money to a reinsurance company that they’d set up on the island 650 miles off the North Carolina coast. By June, the Bermuda company, which has no employees and sells far less reinsurance than the industry norm, had sent all the cash back to New York, to be invested in Paulson & Co. funds.

North Carolina lawmakers are drafting legislation that would ban people on welfare or those who are in bankruptcy from buying lottery tickets. Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam, R-Wake is helping draft the legislation. Stam told ABC11 the vendor selling the lottery ticket would be penalized if they knew the person was on welfare or in bankruptcy.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte and the Western District of North Carolina obtained record collections - more than $5 billion - in civil and criminal actions in 2012.

Thousands of people are still coming to visit the western North Carolina forest where the movie "The Hunger Games" was filmed. The Times-News of Hendersonville reported (http://bit.ly/SjO33X ) the number of visitors this year to DuPont State Recreational Forest reached 327,000 by the end of October. Attendance last year was about 250,000.

FBI agents searched the North Carolina house of Paula Broadwell on Monday, signaling renewed activity in the investigation that revealed her extramarital affair with CIA Director David Petraeus that led to his resignation.

Lines swelled Friday outside early voting sites around the Triangle as time to cast a ballot before next Tuesday's election dwindled. As of Friday afternoon, almost 2.39 million votes had been cast statewide, with 93 percent of those as in-person ballots at early voting sites. The total represents more than a third of registered voters in North Carolina and is approaching the 2.64 million early votes cast in 2008.

A hurricane of enormous force continued to march north Sunday, ready to hammer the Washington region sometime on Monday and disrupt life for millions as it sweeps across eight states toward Canada. From North Carolina to the coastal edges of Maine, public officials are urging residents to fortify themselves against Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to unleash torrential rains, and winds of up to 75 mph, even for those residing as far as 100 miles from the storm’s center.