Tasnim Shamma

Several environmental activists were in front of the Mecklenburg County Government Center Thursday to speak out on Senate Bill 10. The legislation would fire all current members of many regulatory boards – including the Utilities Commission – and give the governor and lawmakers the power to appoint new members. Gerrick Brenner of Progress North Carolina calls the bill a power grab.   

Catholics reacted to the surprising news that Pope Benedict announced his resignation Monday morning. We spoke to a few of them after the noon mass on Monday at St. Peter's Catholic Church.

Kevin Barto says his coworkers and friends have been asking him all morning about what this means for the Catholic Church. He says it's not easy to say what Pope Benedict's legacy will be because he was in the role for such a relatively short amount of time.  

The Levine Cancer Institute and UNC Charlotte are teaming up for a new project they hope will make a difference in the world of cancer research. It's called the Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Project.

UNC Charlotte and the Levine Cancer Institute will be making $400,000 in grants available to scientists and doctors at both institutions. 

WFAE listeners have e-mailed me about how we should probably change the title of this podcast. They find it offensive. One listener says it reminds him of  "small, off-the-beaten path, lonely, dismal, dark places" and surely, surely, it's not Charlotte that President George Washington was talking about. 

• 49: Percent of tree canopy lost between 1995 and 2008
• One: Public tree for every seven residents
• $11.83: Amount spent per person on its street trees
• 215: Tree species in the city's inventory. Predominant tree species are willow oak and crapemyrtle
• $166: Total benefits of an average street tree
• 28: Million cubic feet of stormwater intercepted annually 
• $2.1: Million dollars in stormwater management savings
  

Mayor Anthony Foxx says the city needs to focus on getting the streetcar and nearly $1 billion capital budget plan approved in order to create more economic opportunities and see Charlotte grow in the future. He spoke at the City Council chamber on Monday morning in an annual state of the city address.

The Charlotte host committee is still $10 million short of its fundraising goal for the convention and has had to tap a line of credit guaranteed by Duke Energy.

A new report shows the committee made little progress – barely a drop in the bucket -- with only half-a-dozen contributions in the past few months. So Duke Energy may just have to foot the bill after all.

Two years ago, DNC organizers were confident they wouldn't need to use Duke Energy's $10 million line of credit.

Here's the host committee's interim director Will Miller at the time.

Regions Bank, based in Birmingham, Alabama has been using a federal banking law to provide payday lending services, even though these types of loans are illegal in North Carolina.

But the bank recently announced that it will no longer offer its payday lending service to North Carolina residents because of the small number of eligible customers for the product in the state.

Since 2001, payday lending shops have been illegal in North Carolina. But that law doesn't apply to banks that are based outside the state.