The Triangle as a variety of year-round competitive swim teams,
many with links to area university clubs.

Several of the senior
swimmers from those organizations produced impressive results against
an international field at theU.S. Open Swimming Championships, a long-course meet held Aug. 4-8 at the King County Aquatic Center in Seattle. ( Complete meet results.)

Mason
McGee of the Marlins of Raleigh Swim Team/N.C. State Aquatics swam to
two top-seven finishes on Saturday, the meet's final day.

Local and regional transit agencies across the Triangle will buy buses and make other improvements with some of North Carolina’s share of federal stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal officials said this week.

Ray LaHood, the U.S. transportation secretary, announced $52.5 million for transit improvements in North Carolina, including:

$7.6 million to Raleigh to buy 23 acres for a new bus operation and maintenance center and park-and-ride lot.

$4.3 million to Durham for bus maintenance and painting, 24 paratransit vans, 20 bus shelters, and GPS satellite technology that will give riders real-time information about bus arrival times.

$2.7 million to Chapel Hill for two 40-foot hybrid-electric buses, eight lift-equipped vans, a maintenance truck, bus shelters and benches, and hardware and software for a fleet inventory system.

$2.8 million to the Triangle Transit Authority for five 40-foot buses, three paratransit vans, a real-time bus arrival system, passenger amenities at bus stops, and paving.

Triangle joblessness rose again in May as the pain of this recession continued to spread across industries.

Unemployment for the eight-county region that includes Wake, Durham, Johnston and Orange increased to 8.8 percent, according to data released this morning by the N.C. Employment Security Commission and adjusted for seasonal effects by Wachovia in Charlotte.

That was up from 8.7 percent in April. More telling than the rate, though, is where the softness is showing up.

“We’re starting to see weakness spread to some parts fo the eocnomy that until recently had been holding up pretty good,” said Mark Vitner, an economist with Wachovia.

The construction and manufacturing sectors had seen much of the pain in this area, but now it is spreading to education, healthcare and government — pillars of the regional economy.

Even so, the Triangle is doing better than the state and nation overall. Unemployment in May was 11.1 percent statewide while the national average was 9.4 percent.

The Sri Venkateswara Temple in Cary is the newest addition to the Triangle religious community.

Local Hindus' celebrate a holy event as their grand, art-filled place of worship opens in Cary

Local microbreweries have begun to spring up in the Triangle. Currently there are almost 40 breweries and brewpubs in the state.

Hello and welcome to Campus Notes, the News & Observer's new blog focused specifically on higher education around the Triangle and beyond in North Carolina.

I write about higher education issues for the News & Observer and want this blog to be a repository for all sorts of information. You'll see some stuff here that you'll also see in the newspaper. But I and other News & Observer reporters will focus on other news items as well — the tidbits that don't make the paper, the breaking news we cannot wait until morning to tell you about, the updates on past stories we think you'll be interested in. We will also link to higher ed-related stories across the nation that we find interesting.

We want this blog to be a bookmark - a place you visit each day as you're scanning the web. We keep an eye on plenty of colleges and universities and want to hear from you. What interests you? What did we do well in covering? What did we miss?

On the left edge of this blog, you'll find plenty of links to area colleges and universities as well as other interesting sites. I'll just mention a couple: If you scroll down the page a bit to the "other useful links" section, you'll find a link titled "the cost of public higher education in North Carolina." If you're a high school senior or the parent of one, you might find this useful.

And if you want a fun time-waster, look at the next link down. That's our searchable salary database. The salaries of all UNC system employees are public records. So go ahead; check out what your boss makes. 

Thanks for visiting. Come again. 

Rep. Becky Carney of Charlotte, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, postponed action today on her bill (HB 2363) to give Triangle voters the power to pay for transit improvements with a new half-cent local sales tax.

Carney's bill and a similar Senate measure would set up a state structure for financing urban bus and rail transit projects, and it would give voters in urban areas new options to tax themselves for transit.

Its sponsors included 11 of the 23 House and Senate members who represent Wake, Durham and Orange counties. Several members of the Triangle delegation have said local voters and county commissioners should decide whether to raise the sales tax to help finance an $8.2 billion plan to build a bus, rail and streetcar network by 2035.