Posts tagged "North Carolina"

Swarthmore among colleges named in federal suit

The complaints are not public, according to Gloria Allred, but they allege that the schools – Swarthmore, Dartmouth College, the University of North Carolina, the University of Southern California, and the University of California at Berkeley – did not …
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Virginia's Class of 2014 Is Loaded; Can UVa and Virginia Tech Keep It in State?

In 2013, the state's top two players, Christian Hackenberg and Jonathan Allen, bolted Virginia for Penn State and Alabama, respectively. In recent years, Michigan, North Carolina and Stanford, in particular, have consistently raided Virginia for top … See all stories on this topic »

Bleacher Report

North Carolina nuclear plant shut down after crack discovered

A nuclear plant near North Carolina’s capital city was shut down after operators reviewing ultrasonic tests from last year found the results showed tiny marks of corrosion and cracking that need repair, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

Operators at the Shearon Harris plant on Wednesday found a quarter-inch flaw in the covering of the reactor vessel, which contains superheated steam produced by the nuclear reaction’s energy.

The crack did not penetrate the vessel head and there is no evidence of radiation leakage, an NRC incident report said. The discovery did not affect the health and safety of employees or the public at the New Hill plant, federal regulators said.

NRC inspectors will want to ask plant owner Duke Energy Corp. — which acquired the 26-year-old plant through its buyout last year of Progress Energy — why the testing performed during a spring refueling outage last year didn’t find the problem, agency spokesman Roger Hannah said Thursday.

“I think that’s a question, from our perspective, that we’d like to have answered,” Hannah said. “We’ll follow up on that to see if it was something that should have been seen.”

Spokesmen for Charlotte-based Duke Energy said it would evaluate why the problem was missed last year. Data from last year’s test were being reviewed ahead of an upcoming planned refueling outage.

“During refueling outages, we collect and analyze a lot of plant data,” spokeswoman Rita Sipe said in an email. “The reactor is shut down and our repair plans are in progress.”

She said Duke has reserves that can meet customers’ needs during the shutdown.

The company expects to have the unit back online within a matter of weeks, Duke Energy said Thursday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The “minor repairs in a nozzle that penetrates the top of the reactor vessel” has been performed successfully at other nuclear reactors around the world, the company said.

The reactor vessel head is commonly checked because the metal is “subject to very high pressure and very high temperatures over a long period of time,” Hannah said.

The shutdown comes days before the Harris plant’s annual assessment meeting, at which NRC staffers discuss plant operations with the public. The meeting is Monday in nearby Holly Springs.

Progress Energy was cited last year for two safety violations considered to be of low to moderate significance, which Hannah said have since been corrected. Regulators found problems with ventilation systems that would be needed if there were a nuclear emergency.

Since the two North Carolina utilities merged to make Duke Energy the country’s largest electric company, the Charlotte-based company has cut back on plans for Progress Energy nuclear plants.

Duke said earlier this month that it will not build two new reactors at Shearon Harris, reversing plans put in place by Progress Energy executives.

In February, Duke Energy said it will permanently close the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida after botched repairs while it was operated by Progress Energy Florida. Estimates for repairing the nuclear plant shut down since 2009 were between $1.3 billion and $3.4 billion.

Duke Energy Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Rogers told North Carolina regulators last year that former Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson was dumped within hours of becoming CEO of the merged company in part because of dissatisfaction over his handling of Crystal River’s problems. Johnson is now CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

North Carolina man pleads guilty to buying gun for terrorist jihad

A North Carolina man who the FBI says spoke of killing U.S. Army soldiers as part of a personal jihad has pleaded guilty to possessing a stolen firearm.

Erwin Antonio Rios admitted guilt Tuesday in U.S. District Court as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

In an affidavit filed with the court, FBI Special Agent Frank Brostrom said the 19-year-old from Fayetteville holds extremist Islamic views and told a government informant he would like to kill Fort Bragg soldiers.

Authorities said Rios also plotted to travel overseas to commit violence and devised a scheme to commit armed robberies to get money to buy weapons. The FBI set up a sting where Rios bought what he was told was a stolen handgun and was then immediately placed under arrest.

Nittany Lions Ready For Canisius

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The Penn State Nittany Lions will take on the MAAC champion, Canisius Griffins, Friday night as they host their first NCAA game since 2005. The Nittany Lions were ousted by North Carolina, 7-6, in triple overtime the last time …
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Police: 61-year-old NC woman strangles husband, 77

Investigators say a 61-year-old woman has been charged with murder after strangling her elderly husband at their home in North Carolina.

Police said they were called to the home in Cary around 11 p.m. Wednesday by someone who said 77-year-old Sharad Amtey was unconscious. He died a short time later at the hospital.

Authorities weren’t releasing any other details about the case.

Dottie Amtey was arrested after officers arrived at her home. She is being held in the Wake County jail, and it wasn’t known if she had an attorney.

Officials in Cary say it is the first homicide in the town southwest of Raleigh in nearly two years.

Dartmouth’s Folt to become UNC-Chapel Hill leader

A board has elected Dartmouth College interim president to become the next chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The UNC Board of Governors selected Carol Folt on Friday. She becomes head of the country’s oldest public university.

Folt replaces Holden Thorp, who has been chancellor since 2008. He resigned after two years of scandals involving academic fraud, improper travel spending by fundraisers, and special treatment for athletes.

She spent less than a year at Dartmouth. The Ivy League school in New Hampshire is five times smaller than UNC-Chapel Hill and lacks big-time collegiate sports.

Folt becomes the first woman to head the Chapel Hill campus, a ground-breaking role she also pioneered at Dartmouth. She takes over in July.

North Carolina prays during 911 call after 2 kids get buried inside 2-story pit

A desperate North Carolina dad could be heard praying during the 911 call he placed after the walls of his two-story-deep pit collapsed Sunday on two young cousins, including his 6-year-old daughter.

“Lord lift this dirt up off these children… so the children will be alive and well…I have to get my kids. Lord please,” Jordan Arwood is heard pleading on the call.

Arwood was operating a backhoe in the pit on his property in Stanley, N.C., which is northwest of Charlotte, when the walls collapsed. The 911 call was released Monday by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.

“Please hurry … My children are buried under tons of dirt …  They’re buried under tons of clay … It fell on top of them,” he said sobbing.

When the dispatcher asked him if he could see the children, Arwood said he couldn’t.

“The entire wall collapsed on them. Get a crane. Get a bulldozer. Get anything you can, please,” he said. “There’s no way they can breathe.”

Arwood began praying a short time later.

The bodies of the two young cousins, 6-year-old Chloe Jade Arwood and 7-year-old James Levi Caldwell, were dug out Monday morning.

Later on Monday, sheriff’s deputies removed firearms and a marijuana plant from Arwood’s mobile home.

Arwood is a felon who is not allowed to have guns. He was convicted in 2003 for possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell.

The father had been digging with a backhoe on the site Sunday, Sheriff David Carpenter said. Investigators described the pit as 20 feet by 20 feet with a sloped entrance leading down to the 24-foot bottom. The children were at the bottom of the pit retrieving a child-sized pickaxe when the walls fell in on them, Carpenter said.

The sheriff would not say what Arwood was building or whether he had any professional help. He did say that investigators would be looking into reports from neighbors that Arwood had been building some sort of protective bunker.

“They were so distraught we hope to be able to talk to them today and come up with some information on that,” Carpenter said. “It’s a very large hole. It would look to be something like that, but I don’t know. … We’re going to find out exactly what his intentions were.”He said deputies would be speaking with county planning and zoning officials about any potential building code violations at the site.

Andrew Bryant, a planner with the Lincoln County Planning & Inspections Department, said no permits had been issued.

On the tape, Arwood said he didn’t know what happened.

“They were inside the hole helping to get something and the wall collapsed,” he said.

At one point, the dispatcher warned him not to put pressure on the dirt. But Arwood said he had to reach the children.

“If this was you and your children in the dirt, you’d be moving the dirt, too,” he said.

Arwood’s house was at the end of a gravel-covered road dotted with modular and mobile homes. It’s a tight-knit rural community where neighbors sit outside on front porches and look out for each other.

When word spread about the disaster, they ran to Arwood’s house and began helping. On Monday, they were somber, saying they were heartbroken for the family. They said Arwood told them it happened without warning and that he tried to grab the children, but they were just beyond his reach.

It was no secret that Arwood was digging a two-story deep hole. Neighbors said it wasn’t unusual to see children in the pit when the girl’s father was working there.

Neighbor Bradley Jones, who works in construction, said there was no structure to support the pit’s tall dirt walls and that there was some concrete on a ledge on top of the hole.

In recent days, the hole was muddy from the rain. He said he warned his daughter, Chelsea, who babysits for the children, not to go in.

“It was dangerous. There was nothing to reinforce those walls,” he said.

Chelsea said Arwood told her that he was building the structure to “protect his family” — it was going to be a bunker.

“It’s so sad,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Car towed from North Carolina crash scene with body inside

The body of a missing North Carolina woman was found inside her wrecked car, three days after it was ordered by a state trooper to be towed away from the crash scene.

Carolyn Ann Watkins, 62, of Clayton was reported missing by her son early Monday after she failed to show up at work.

An accident report filed Friday by N.C. Highway Patrol Trooper Marlon Williams shows her crashed 2000 Pontiac was found Friday morning in a deep ditch near Smithfield, about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh. Both air bags deployed.

“Note: No driver at the scene of this collision,” Williams wrote in his report.

The patrol had a local towing company move the car to a lot for storage, where it remained with the Clayton woman inside until her body was discovered Monday evening by a Smithfield police officer searching for clues about her disappearance.

It was not immediately clear when Watkins died. She was last seen alive Thursday.

Watkins’ son, Al Parker, wondered if his mother’s life might have been saved if the trooper had noticed her in the car.

“I’m thinking she could still have been alive,” Parker said Tuesday. “How do you not look in the car? When you pulled the car out, how do you not see a body in the car?”

Williams, a 9-year veteran of the Highway Patrol, has been placed on paid administrative duty pending the outcome of an internal review that will be conducted with help from the State Bureau Investigation. The patrol refused to release any further information about the incident.

“We will release accurate information to the public as soon as available and appropriate,” Public Safety Commissioner Frank Perry said in a brief written statement. “At this early stage, our main concern is to conduct a thorough and professional investigation so we can determine exactly what happened.”

A man who answered the phone at Dustin’s Towing and Recovery in Willow Springs said the highway patrol asked him not to talk about the incident.

North Carolina man shot 2 neighbors in backyard, police say

Authorities said a man suspected of killing two of his neighbors in North Carolina approached one of the men in his backyard just before he started shooting.

Cabarrus County deputies said 50-year-old Anthony Hardy killed himself after hiding in his home for several hours after the shooting Friday afternoon.

Investigators said Hardy fired on 64-year-old Gary Stocks and 42-year-old Daniel Kirchner in Kirchner’s backyard. The two victims lived on each side of Hardy’s house on a cul-de-sac. The subdivision of dozens of homes is about a mile from Interstate 485 in Harrisburg.

Deputies negotiated with Hardy for hours before he killed himself.

Investigators said it appeared Hardy had some kind of dispute with his neighbors, and they are still trying to determine why he was angry.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.