The State of Things

Facebook’s stock plummeted at the news that 50 million user accounts had been breached and used to create profiles of prospective voters. Since then the company behind the breach, Cambridge Analytica, has been suspended from Facebook. The damage in North Carolina has already been done.

Duke University has teamed up with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project to connect today’s young organizers with activists of the civil rights era. The project is called “ SNCC Digital Gateway ,” and its aim is to pass on informational wealth from the organizers of SNCC to the young people of today, to help inform their activism. Instead of solely taking information from the SNCC activists, researchers treated the activists as partners and fellow scholars in their

This month Asheville hosted the first ClimateCon , a conference to explore innovations and business solutions to combat the effects of climate change. The nine-day conference included a business of climate forum, a summit for emerging climate leaders, and community-wide events.

More than 100 public schools in North Carolina have applied and been granted approval to participate in a scholastic experiment called Restart . The Restart program allows low-performing schools to operate like charter programs without having charter status.

Barbara Claypole White always wanted to be a writer. But she put her passion aside when her young son was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Throughout modern history the work of African-American artists has often been appropriated for the financial and cultural gain of those outside the black community. Black artists bare their souls to create provocative art, but their work is sometimes tokenized or categorized as being just "black art." At the Bullcity Black Theater Festival in Durham, black artists are challenging perceptions of their work through performances and community conversations.

Since the mass school shooting in Columbine, America has seemed almost powerless against rogue gunmen attacking defenseless suburban schools. After the tragic killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, many declared that if America did not make changes after Newtown it never would.

Tutu Alicante grew up in Equatorial Guinea, a small nation on the western coast of Central Africa. The country is one of the largest oil producers in sub-Saharan Africa, yet many of its citizens live in extreme poverty. The oil profits stay within the government, and long-serving President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo uses intimidation tactics like imprisonment or even execution to silence his critics.

The special election in Pennsylvania this week turned a reliably red district blue. Democratic candidate Conor Lamb beat Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. Is this a wake-up call for the Republican party?

Krish Mohan has been a comedian since his teenage years when he won a talent contest at high school. Looking for a way to finetune his craft, he wound up at a local club practicing his jokes between sets for rock bands. His early humor revolved around being from an immigrant family who moved from India to Pittsburgh when he was just 8 years old.