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BUNCOMBE COUNTY, N.C. -- Thousands of students have now stopped buying lunch each week in County cafeterias. The district says it all started when schools were forced to implement the USDA's Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. It was part of first lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative to get kids to eat healthier. All of a sudden, kids are pitching pounds of food in the garbage. "I like vegetables too, like I like spinach and potatoes - great - but they just don't have any flavor at all," freshman Aislinn French said. Hundreds of kids have now dropped out of...

A year after Blake Brockington was voted homecoming king at East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, the transgender teen died from an apparent suicide, The Charlotte Observer reported Tuesday. Brockington, 18, was the school’s first transgender homecoming king. When he was voted king, he told local LGBT newspaper QNotes: "I honestly feel like this is something I have to do. Nobody should be scared to be themselves, and everybody should have an equal opportunity to have an enjoyable high school experience." The transgender youth activist became open about his identity when he was a sophomore. He explained to...

The man who murdered four people in North Carolina, including a former contestant on “America’s Next Top Model”. Senators Thom Tillis and Chuck Grassley, confirmed that accused murderer, Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, was a known gang member and had been arrested on a marijuana possession charge. They also confirmed that in 2012 when Obama enacted his DACA program, the immigration service halted his deportation. Obama and the democrats believe the life of one illegal alien is worth much more than the lives of four American citizens. Grassley and Tillis wrote to Jeh Johnson:

A local man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of a Durham priest. The killer admitted he had met the priest on a gay sex website and attempted to blackmail him after having sex in the woods. The priest had told the murderer he was married.

width=600> The man who murdered four people in North Carolina, including a former contestant on “America’s Next Top Model”. Senators Thom Tillis and Chuck Grassley, confirmed that accused murderer, Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, was a known gang member and had been arrested on a marijuana possession charge. They also confirmed that in 2012 when Obama enacted his DACA program, the immigration service halted his deportation. Obama and the democrats believe the life of one illegal alien is worth much more than the lives of four American citizens. Grassley and Tillis wrote to Jeh Johnson: March 20, 2015 VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION The...

One month after the State Ethics Commission ruled that sex between lobbyists and government officials doesn’t constitute a gift, a bipartisan group of N.C. House members filed legislation Tuesday to make it clear that sexual and romantic relationships are indeed a conflict of interest. House Bill 252 would require legislators and other government officials to recuse themselves if they’re in a “current dating relationship or current sexual relationship” with a lobbyist who stands to benefit from the issue at hand. While the legislation doesn’t offer a definition of a “current sexual relationship,” it does provide one for a “current dating...

An 18-year-old neighbor was taken into custody following a stabbing that killed three young brothers at a North Carolina home Tuesday night. Two other family members were injured. The incident was reported around 10:30 p.m. at a home in New Bern, WITN reported. The victims' names haven't been released, though New Bern police said the dead victims were brothers ages 12, 5 and 1. The surviving victims, a sister and a mother, were released from the hospital. Two brothers were found dead at the scene, while the third later died at the hospital. Eh Lar Doh Htoo, an 18-year-old neighbor,...

Rules governing the hydraulic fracturing method for drilling natural gas are expected to take effect Tuesday, creating the potential for drilling to start later in the year. The set of 120 rules that govern issues including well construction, water testing and buffer zones was developed by the state Mining and Energy Commission over nearly two years and approved in December by a separate state panel. With the fracking rules in place, companies interested in finding natural gas can begin applying for fracking permits. A member of the Mining and Energy Commission, James Womack, said a company interested in fracking would...

<p>Search-and-rescue crews are looking for seven Marines and four soldiers after an Army helicopter crashed late Tuesday during a routine night training exercise in the Florida Panhandle.</p> <p>Eglin Air Force Base spokesman Andy Bourland told the Associated Press that the helicopter was reported missing at around 8:30 p.m. local time and crews found debris from the crash at around 2 a.m. Wednesday.</p>

An Amtrak train headed to New York City slammed into a tractor-trailer that got stuck on the tracks while trying to make a difficult left-hand turn in North Carolina Monday. One of the train's cars toppled and the conductor and at least 54 others were injured. It was the third serious commuter train crash in less than two months. Two deadly crashes in New York and California in February killed a total of seven people and injured 30. The oversized flatbed trailer involved in Monday's crash was transporting a modular building wrapped in blue plastic and jammed with electrical equipment,...

Forty-seven Senate Republicans are signaling in an open letter to Iran and the White House that a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program will be at risk once President Obama leaves office. “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Bloomberg. “Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution — the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices — which you should seriously...

Dr. Suzanne Barakat was writing a prescription for one of her patients at San Francisco General Hospital when her phone lit up with text messages from friends sending condolences. It was Feb. 10 and Barakat, 27, was in her first year of family medicine residency. She ignored the first text, thinking it was either a mistake or a reference to family members in war-torn Syria. “I just put my head back to work,” she said. But then Barakat noticed that one of the texts mentioned her 23-year-old brother, Deah Barakat, a dental student at the University of North Carolina in...

The administration released in late January its draft five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing, the game plan for what areas will be open for exploration and how they will be managed. By no small coincidence, opponents of offshore exploration are now beating the drum to close off areas to oil and gas and put the emphasis entirely on wind power. As a country, we cannot take an either/or approach to our energy needs by picking just one source, whether it is wind or hydrocarbons. That is why the Administration’s stated goals of an “all of the above” energy...

Currently, 61 members of Congress have confirmed they will not attend the speech. Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) California Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) — “I am disappointed Speaker Boehner chose to irresponsibly interject politics into what has long been a strong and bipartisan relationship between the United States and Israel. As President Obama has noted, it is inappropriate for a Head of State to address Congress just two weeks ahead of their election. I agree that Congress should not be used as a prop in Israeli election campaigns,...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - North Carolina prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a man who police say kept detailed notes on parking at his condominium complex before gunning down three young Muslims in a neighboring unit, according to documents released on Monday. Craig Hicks, 46, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the Feb. 10 shooting deaths of a newlywed couple and the wife's sister about two miles from the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Armed robbers stole $4 million in gold on Sunday from a truck traveling north along Interstate 95 from Florida to Massachusetts, authorities said Monday. The two security guards working for Transvalue Inc. of Miami reported pulling off to the side of the interstate about 6 p.m. Sunday after their vehicle began having mechanical problems in Wilson County, the sheriff’s office said. [snip] They were then approached by three armed men driving a white van who ordered the guards to lie on the ground, tied their hands behind their backs and then marched them into nearby woods....

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina public university leaders decided Friday to kill an anti-poverty center headed by a sharp critic of Republican lawmakers and Gov. Pat McCrory, taking their vote after protesters disrupted their meeting and were led out by campus police. The University of North Carolina Board of Governors, which consists almost entirely of Republican appointees, voted to disband the think-tank created to help launch John Edwards' presidential campaign and run by a law professor and former Democratic candidate for Congress from Colorado. [snip] The center provided Edwards a platform to travel the country discussing poverty, which he had...

HOUSTON — The wife of the pastor of the nation's largest church was asked to leave a plane after she failed to comply with a flight attendant's instructions, the FBI said Tuesday. Houston Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, his wife, Victoria, and their two children boarded a Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Vail, Colo., Monday. The plane's door had been closed when Victoria Osteen and a flight attendant had a disagreement. "She failed to comply with the flight attendant's instructions, and they were asked to leave the flight," FBI spokeswoman Luz Garcia said without elaborating on the disagreement. The...

North Carolina’s State Ethics Committee has just opened up a major problem for their state — they just made it legal for lobbying firms to purchase prostitutes to service politicians. The Committee’s determination that sex had no value and that sex between a lobbyist and politician was nothing to report or in any way questionable means that a major loophole has opened up for lobbying firms. Now lobbying firms can hire people with the explicit goal to seduce and fornicate with politicians in order to garner favor. In other terms, lobbying firms can hire people who can offer sexual services...

The Dem Congressmen Boycotting Netanyahu are the Same Old Hamas SupportersPosted By Daniel Greenfield On February 26, 2015 @ 6:02 pm In The Point | 12 Comments There are a lot of stories about the Dem members of Congress boycotting Netanyahu’s speech. But most of the names on the list are longtime opponents of the Jewish State.The boycott lists consists of two groups. Congressional Black Caucus members who are offended on Obama’s behalf and can smell racism anywhere.The other consists of opponents of Israel.It’s instructive to compare the list of boycotters to the 54 members of Congress who signed...