Free Republic

Region QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION Distances 250 km (155 miles) SSW (197°) from Prince Rupert, BC, Canada 315 km (195 miles) WNW (303°) from Port Hardy, BC, Canada 331 km (206 miles) S (178°) from Metlakatla, AK 662 km (411 miles) WNW (302°) from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 5.5 km (3.4 miles); depth +/- 10.5 km (6.5 miles)

Voters ended more than two decades of Republican leadership in Charlotte Tuesday by electing Democrat Anthony Foxx the city's second African-American mayor and the youngest in memory. Foxx won Charlotte's closest mayoral race in years, taking just over 51 percent of the vote over Republican John Lassiter in unofficial totals. At a victory celebration, Foxx shared a long hug with a jubilant Harvey Gantt, the last Democratic and first African-American mayor. "It's been 22 years since we've had this moment," a hoarse Foxx told a cheering crowd at the Westin hotel. "The work of rebuilding our community starts very soon....

Raleigh, N.C. – John Lassiter has taken a 50-46 lead in Public Policy Polling’s final survey of the Charlotte Mayoral race, an outcome that is still within the poll’s margin of error. White undecideds moved in Lassiter’s direction over the final days, giving him a staggering 68-29 lead with that group. Foxx leads 86-12 with African Americans. Lassiter leads 51-40 with independents, continuing a double digit lead he’s shown with those voters in every poll of the race. He’s also winning 17% of the Democratic vote while Foxx is only getting 9% of Republicans to cross over. The primary reason...

The Young Republicans of Union County are hosting a “Tea Party” rally at Marshall Park in uptown Charlotte on Saturday October 31, 2009 from 10 AM until noon. Press Release ………………………………. We're all invited to the TEA Party in Charlotte on Halloween Day (10/31/09). Hope to see you there! We come from diverse backgrounds, but we believe in these basic principals: 1. The Constitution was written to limit the powers of the government, not the freedoms of the people. 2. Personal responsibility, Free Markets, and a Laissez-faire (hands off) government is what creates jobs, wealth, and greatness in America 3....

CHARLOTTE -- A monument to the financial crisis is rising amid this city's thicket of skyscrapers: gleaming, glass-walled trophy tower that was intended as a fitting headquarters for Wachovia's national banking empire. It will open instead as the headquarters of a regional power company. Wachovia, unable to survive a run of bad decisions, was swallowed by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo during the depths of the crisis last year. Few American cities prospered more over the past two decades than Charlotte, its growth propelled and gilded by Wachovia and its crosstown rival, Bank of America. Executives shoehorned gaudy mansions into old...

It was only a week ago that CBS Radio moved the famous WBCN call letters from Boston to Charlotte, onto WFNA-AM (1660). Now, the plan will be to end the sports simulcast between WBCN & WFNZ-AM (610), launching “America’s Talk” on WBCN on September 14. That will pose direct competition for Greater Media’s market leader WBT-AM/FM (1110/99.3). The Charlotte Observer says the new format will feature a conservative lean, including syndicated talkers Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, along with former WBT host Jason Lewis, now in syndication. WBCN operations manager D.J. Stout tells the paper, “We feel that Charlotte has...

A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools bus stop is right in front of a registered sex offender's house, but CMS won't change the bus stop's location despite parents' pleas. That has parents in the Winget Pond neighborhood ticked off. They contacted us after getting their childrens' bus assignments in the mail. His name is Robert Lance Neal. Court records show he's a registered sex offender, convicted for sexually abusing a 10-year-old in Illinois. Now, records show Neal lives on Arrington Heights Place in Charlotte. Out his front door is a CMS bus stop. "Eight to ten that I'm aware of," a mother says...

SNIPPET: “WASHINGTON - Last week, German authorities discovered that groups of terrorists may have been dispatched from training bases in Pakistan to launch crippling attacks.” SNIPPET: “They say as a minimum of 12 al-Qaida operatives who were trained in the tribal region of Pakistan have left the training camps and are headed back to their home countries. Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Egypt are just some of those countries. According to the source, the threat levels also were raised for many other Western European countries to include concerns for “Turkish Airlines flying passengers from Istanbul to the...

In the unfolding economic crisis, helping borrowers with troubled mortgages has become a growth business, landing Charlotte a dose of good economic news today for its beleaguered financial sector. At an office park in east Charlotte, Gov. Bev Perdue and other government officials gathered to announce an expansion by a non-profit organization that aims to add 1,014 jobs here over the next five years. Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, a nonprofit community advocacy and homeownership organization, plans to hire customer service specialists, mortgage counselors, negotiators and others to help low-income and minority borrowers. NACA, as the organization is known,...

Gov. Bev Perdue will be in Charlotte this morning for a “significant economic development announcement,” the head of the Charlotte Chamber said Wednesday. Chamber President Bob Morgan said that he, Perdue and local elected officials will gather at 9:30 a.m. on the fourth floor of 5855 Executive Center Drive. Morgan declined to say more, but the address is the same as the Charlotte office of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America. Based in Boston, NACA is a national affordable lending program that focuses on low- and moderate-income families and properties. It offers loans with no down payments, closings costs or...

SNIPPET: "U.S. Airways flight 4423 was supposed to leave Lynchburg for Charlotte around 2:30 p.m., Airport Director Mark Courtney said. Instead, it was delayed for nearly three hours while Transportation Security Administration workers and local law enforcement made sure it was safe to fly. Campbell County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Kevin Schmitt said a 23-year-old man was overheard on his mobile phone making the comments while he was standing in the airport lobby. “He was overheard by a TSA official making the comment that the plane wouldn’t make it to Charlotte — that it would fall out of the sky,” Schmitt...

NASCAR's powerful moment of silence drives home the dayBy Jay Busbee Mon May 25, 2009 4:32 pm EDT NASCAR has a long tradition of patriotism and a deep connection with the military, so it's no surprise that they choose to honor our nation's holidays with a variety of tributes. But the moment of silence that was held at Monday's running of the Coca-Cola 600 may rank among the finest in the sport's history. **SNIP** ...NASCAR stopped the entire race. That doesn't happen in sports, ever. This isn't the seventh-inning stretch or a break between quarters; this is stopping play at...

Police arrested more than 40 protesters today at Duke Energy's Charlotte headquarters following a rally and march against Duke's coal policies.

Queen Charlotte was the wife of George III and, like him, of German descent. But did she also have African ancestry? Queen Charlotte died nearly two centuries ago but is still celebrated in her namesake American city. When you drive from the airport in North Carolina, you can't miss the monumental bronze sculpture of the woman said to be Britain's first black queen, dramatically bent backwards as if blown by a jet engine. Downtown, there is another prominent sculpture of Queen Charlotte, in which she's walking with two dogs as if out for a stroll in 21st-century America. Street after...

Law officials urge funds for early education CHARLOTTE -- A report released Tuesday by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids says early childhood education programs give children the right start in life and could keep them from a life in crime. Area law enforcement officials showed their support for the initiative Tuesday. “The report shows that ensuring high-quality early education to at-risk kids in the Carolinas could prevent many of them from becoming criminals," said Fight Crime: Invest in Kids membership director Joey Weedon.

06 March 2009 WILL MCCANTS OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED AN INFIDEL His Holiness Sheikh Samir Khan, the most learnéd cleric of Charlotte, North Carolina, has officially acknowledged Will McCants as a Kafir in good standing:

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0902/090219charlotte.htm February 19, 2009 10 gang members arrested following ICE-led operation in Charlotte Arrests include members of MS-13, Surenos, Brown Pride, SUR-13 and Latin Kings CHARLOTTE, N.C.-Ten foreign-born gang members with ties to local violent street gangs were arrested here yesterday following a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) led operation. The operation, dubbed Community Shield, was a multi-agency effort spearheaded by ICE. Among the participating agencies were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD); the United States Marshals Service and the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety's Alcohol Law unit (NC-ALE)....

Despite a near collapse that required $45 billion in federal taxpayer bailout funds, Bank of America sponsored a five day carnival-like affair just outside the Super Bowl stadium this past week as President Obama decried wasteful spending on Wall St. Brian Ross investigates the bankers who sponsored Super Bowl festivities.The event – known as the NFL Experience – was 850,000 square feet of sports games and interactive entertainment attractions for football fans and was blanketed in Bank of America logos and marketing calls to sign up for football-themed banking products. The bank staunchly defended its sponsorship, saying it was a...

The talk station, which carried syndicated talkers Sean Hannity & Bill O'Reilly, has gone silent, says the Charlotte Observer. Station owner Danny Fontana, who positioned his station as a competitor to WBT-AM (1110) tells the newspaper the economy is to blame, saying, “I think our format was the right one, but the economic conditions right now are the worst I've ever seen.” Fontana’s CRN Communications plans to hold on to the station license, and says it’s considering options from selling the station or changing the format. WDYT came in 21st in the latest Arbitron ratings

Breaking now of Fox News.

During the night either Islamic cowards or their leftist supporters have vandalized a Chabad House in North Carolina. Apparently the police there have not turned on the news in the past two weeks, as they have stated that they do not suspect any anti-semitism, "just teenagers".

SNIPPET: "The fundamental truth is that Hamas' road to Iran runs through the international Muslim Brotherhood, and has for two decades. What is often missing in the discussion of the Muslim Brotherhood is that Hamas, according to its own founding charter, is an integral and armed part of the Ikwhan, not separate from it."

The Charlotte Housing Authority is considering giving thousands of public housing residents a choice: Get a job or get out. Agency leaders are proposing a plan that would force tenants to find work to keep their government housing benefits. The idea has prompted criticism from some advocates for the poor who say it would be wrong to impose the rule during the country's worst economic crisis in decades. But backers say it's only right to make able-bodied adults work and try to gain self sufficiency. “There's never a perfect time to start a change,� said Jennifer Gallman, a spokeswoman for...

American Muslims Justify, Equivocate Mumbai Massacre [UPDATED, Bumped] Samir Khan emerges from his parents' house in Charlotte, NC Our nemesis Samir Khan [aka, "inshallahshaheed"] over at the "Ignored Puzzle Pieces of Knowledge" is talking about the Mumbai massacre over at this blog. I don't think long time readers will be shocked that he offers no words of condemnation. Only equivocation and justification. The crux of his argument is the same used by Salafist extremists of his ilk in their routine justification of al Qaeda and Taliban attacks on civilians: okay, so, you people kill innocent Muslims all the time. Classic...

Charlotte-Mecklenburg high school principals overwhelmingly support cutting the number of credits required for graduation, a district leader told the school board Tuesday. When the district polled its 26 high school principals, 24 wanted to cut back the credits – and they want to apply the new standards to current students instead of waiting for next year's freshmen, Associate Superintendent Ann Clark said. Many principals sat silently through Tuesday's discussion of diploma requirements. Clark said parents who attended summer discussions also want the requirements to drop because it will give successful students more options for their senior year: “We heard that...

As of deadline, it was still the biggest untold story in Charlotte. It is a story of shifting political power here of such magnitude that it jumps out at you when you look at the numbers. Dwayne Collins, head of the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, has noticed the change. So did Barack Obama's campaign, which capitalized on it to win North Carolina. Politics is first and foremost a numbers game. Whoever has the most voters and can get them to the polls wins. In Charlotte, that entity is now the Black Political Caucus. Consider this. Between November 2000 and...

Governor-elect Beverly Perdue and her cronies at the state capital must have had a good laugh as the election results rolled in. I know I did. Perdue smacked Charlotte voters hard two weeks ago when she ran commercials across the state -- basically everywhere but the Charlotte and Raleigh television markets -- mocking her opponent, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, for wanting to spend state money in Charlotte. The ads were a slap in the faces of Charlotte voters. They were also part of a clear calculation on Perdue's part that she could win by promising Charlotte-funded goodies to the rest...

(AP) Federal antitrust regulators on Friday cleared Wells Fargo's $11.7 billion acquisition of Wachovia Corp., capping a weeklong battle for the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank. The rapid approval comes a day after Citigroup Inc. walked away from its own efforts to buy Wachovia - which experienced a $5 billion run on deposits in late September after the failure of west coast rival Washington Mutual Inc., according to court documents filed Friday by Citigroup. Late Thursday, Citigroup broke off talks with Wells Fargo and federal regulators after the suitors failed to reach an agreement over how to split up the bank. San...

Join us this week for some racing near Charlotte at Lowe's Motor Speedway and Race #5 in the Chase for the Cup. Last week made a mess of things for a few drivers. Time to Crank It Up or Bust! This thread is dedicated to our troops serving our nation today with pride and to those who have sacrificed all.

Federal regulators are pressing Wachovia Corp. to sell itself, and Wells Fargo has emerged as the leading candidate to buy the Charlotte bank amid intensifying talks, according to reports late Sunday. The Wall Street Journal reported that Wachovia is also talking with Citigroup but that San Francisco-based Wells appeared to have the upper hand. Even as Congress unveiled a bailout plan to help banks offload troubled assets, Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department officials were pushing for a more dramatic solution for Wachovia, the New York Times reported. A sale would mean that an N.C. institution that became a nationwide...

For months, the United Way of Central Carolinas board said Gloria Pace King was worth every penny of her controversial $1.2 million pay package. Tuesday, 37 of those board members unanimously called on their longtime CEO to resign or be fired.

Charlotte bracing for Wachovia job cuts06:29 PM EDT on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 By MARK BOONE / WCNC E-mail Mark: MBoone@WCNC.com CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Mecklenburg County’s second-largest employer said Tuesday it would cut nearly 11,000 jobs as Wachovia announced a second quarter loss of $8.9 billion. The bank employs more than 20,000 people, ranking just under Carolinas Healthcare System in number of workers, according to data from the Charlotte Chamber. Many of Wachovia’s positions are expected to be trimmed from the company’s Charlotte offices, said Dr. Tony Plath, an associate professor of finance at UNC-Charlotte. “Any way you look at...

Former Priest to Face Trial in Charlotte Right now, a former Charlotte priest is waiting to face a judge in Mecklenburg County. Father Robert Yurgel was brought back to Charlotte this weekend to face several sexual assault chargs. He is being held on a $225,000 bond. The charges stem from Yurgel's time as a priest at Saint Matthew Catholic Church ten years ago. We are told the investigation started when a man filed a police report recently. He was a child at the time of the alleged incident.

Scott Yamanashi could have died on his 38th birthday. But he survived being shot during his party at a Plaza Midwood bar. Now he's starting an armed patrol and stirring conflict in the community he aims to protect. The patrol, called Neighborhood Watch Alliance, is comprised of some of Yamanashi's friends from businesses off Central Avenue. The group is still organizing, he said. But the plan is to patrol the area with handguns, flashlights and notepads. “We can lurk in the shadows, watch people and report what we see,” he said. “That's not against the law.” But the idea has...

The McClatchy Co., publisher of the Charlotte Observer and 29 other daily papers, said Monday that it plans to eliminate 1,400 positions, about 10 percent of its workforce, as it faces declining advertising revenue and increased competition from the Internet. Observer publisher Ann Caulkins told employees today that the paper will eliminate 123 positions, or 11.1 percent of its staff. The cuts will be made through voluntary and involuntary buyouts. The Observer newsroom is expected to lose 22 jobs. Caulkins said previous efforts to trim costs, including an earlier round of buyouts, reduced use of newsprint and the outsourcing of...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

Shocking Past of Former Priest Who Was Killed In Palmer Fire YouNewsTV™Story Published: May 15, 2008 at 6:58 PM EDT Story Updated: May 16, 2008 at 3:13 PM EDT By Liz Tufts Watch The Story The shocking past of Andre Corbin is coming to light, just days after the former priest was killed in an apartment fire in Palmer. Andre Corbin was arrested in 1988 for molesting a boy at a church in North Carolina. According to a website that highlights the history of sexual abuse by priests, it says Corbin plead guilty to the accusations and was sentenced to...

Water Rate Increase Hitting Charlotte Residents HardUPDATED: 6:26 pm EDT April 8, 2008 CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Living in Mecklenburg County just got more expensive. People have been conserving so much; the utilities department now has a $20 million shortfall. City Council approved a 15 percent rate hike Monday night. That's not the only bill you have worry about. Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas are also asking for more money. As a single mother of three teenagers, Becky Kosinski is brought to tears over the news. "Oh, I just take it one day at a time, and just hope everything...

An immigration court set to open in Charlotte this spring could help hundreds of illegal immigrant children each year win the right to remain in North Carolina. The court, much closer than the current venue in Atlanta, will provide youngsters in North Carolina better access to immigration lawyers. As a result, scores of children who arrive here without their families, often fleeing gang violence or sexual abuse, may no longer face deportation simply because they can't find a North Carolina lawyer willing to take up their cause in Atlanta.

<p>Imagine living in a city with the country's highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up contaminated toxic waste sites than just about any other metro.</p>

For the Rev. Canon Filmore Strunk, 55, it was a painful but strangely exhilarating moment in his life and ministry. For 19 years he had been a priest in the Episcopal Church. It had been his life's work and ambition - to bring the unchanging gospel of Jesus Christ to the folks at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Waxhaw, a growing and thriving suburb on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina. On November 1 all that changed. The abandonment of the historic Christian faith, the sexuality mess and the Episcopal Church's embracing of Gnosticism finally proved too much for the...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Dozens of friends, family members, former classmates and complete strangers searched for a missing 24-year-old Tuesday night, but Kyle Fleischmann is still missing. He disappeared five days ago after leaving an Uptown bar. At last check there are no solid leads and no contact with him. Tuesday, nearly 100 people searched, holding flyers, pictures and maps. It's guess work. "How far are you going to walk with no coat? I would be looking to get indoors any way I could,” said family friend Kandace Hopper while searching in Uptown. "To see anybody go missing like this is...

When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word."America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness," he wrote on his blog. "America is known to be a people of arrogance." Unlike bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents' home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the...

By the time Jesús Ricardo Mendoza led police on a 90-mph chase down Interstate 215 in Riverside County two years ago, he had served four prison terms and had been deported four times already. Mendoza, 33, had been convicted of assault, vehicle theft, drug possession and illegal entry. Although he had immigrated legally from Mexico as a child, he had since lost his legal status and been deported first through Nogales, Ariz., then twice through San Ysidro, then Calexico. Each time, he came back. The federal government has stepped up efforts in recent years to deport immigrants with criminal...

WASHINGTON -- Sheriff Jim Pendergraph first noticed the changes in his jail population early in the decade, as illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries poured into Charlotte and elsewhere in Mecklenburg County, N.C., to find jobs in the robust North Carolina economy. In Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard K. Jones became so frustrated with the swelling population of undocumented suspects in his jail a couple of years ago that he symbolically billed the federal government for his incarceration costs and posted a big yellow sign near the jail reading: "Illegal aliens here." Pendergraph and Jones are part...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- All outbound flights were grounded at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport this morning because of a security breach, the Transportation Security Administration confirms. At 7:55 a.m. a Hispanic male circumvented the security screening process and proceeded to concourse C, the TSA reports. The concourse was immediately closed as airport officials searched for the man. He was not located inside the concourse and they believe he may have boarded a plane in the C concourse. Six planes were grounded in the C concourse while all other outbound flights were allowed to continue. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, TSA and airport security...

The NAACP wants Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory to apologize for remarks he made about African American youth after last week's arrests during Fourth of July festivities in uptown. Ken White, president of the Charlotte Branch of the NAACP, on Wednesday called the mayor's comments "insensitive" and said he's concerned they painted "African American youth with a broad swath that cuts deep in many of our communities." McCrory's comments came July 5 in a letter to the city manager congratulating police on their efforts the night before, when 169 people were arrested in uptown. McCrory also wrote that "too many of...

Weatherman in Charlotte Fox afilliate goes wild on live TV. VIDEO

Lowe's Motor Speedway is once again the center of the NASCAR world, but should other tracks get to share in the all-star festivities? That and much more this week-end when we take a break from points races and race for a million bucks instead and bragging rights.

Two Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers were shot in East Charlotte Saturday night just before midnight. “The officers were shot in the area around Barrington Drive and were transported to Carolinas Medical Center uptown,” said Julie Hill, public affairs director for CMPD. She would not comment on their condition nor the events that led up to the shootings. Police blocked off a two-mile perimeter around the Timber Hollow Apartments where the shootings happened. One suspect was in custody by 12:30 a.m., and police continued looking for two others in the area, said a department spokesperson. The injured officers are from the CMPD...