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Ier It's Thursday May 9th. Tonight gearing up for the Summer Olympics in North Carolina now. Good evening everyone and welcome to this Thursday edition of North Carolina now. I'm reading the tray and tonight will take you want to convey a trip through one of North Carolina's

newest state parks and have a conversation with economist Mark Vitner about North Carolina's job market and the economic outlook. We have a great show tonight so let's get started. Communities across North Carolina are getting ready for the arrival of a limb pick athletes from all over the world. This summer Olympic teams from at least 10 foreign nations will come to our state to train prior to the start of the Summer Games in Atlanta. Tonight we look at how North Carolina is preparing to become host to the world is awarded you know if you. Only begin. At not die. As soon as of lanta was chosen as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympics. North Carolina Sports Development Department a branch of the Commerce Department began recruiting foreign teams to choose North Carolina as a pre-Olympic training

site. Steve. You sound out of video and 27 different languages. The governor was speaking and he was speaking French and trying to tell them about the state of North Carolina. As governor of the state of North Carolina I would like personally like you to take a closer look at our athletic facility as you choose a site for your Olympic training touting our state's proximity to Atlanta similar climate abundance of sporting facilities and good ole southern hospitality. The recruitment worked teams from Italy Germany New Zealand Australia Norway the Netherlands Brazil and Jamaica are all taking North Carolina up on its invitation. It's going to be good. It's going to be an interesting process we've got the host committee here in Windsor Salem is in a process now where they're they're actually learning Italian Wake Forest

University will be the training site for at least nine teams from Italy including weightlifting and track the Italians are expected to arrive in Winston-Salem in early July. And in addition they're getting volunteers as part of their staff to to assign at least one interpreter and host so to speak to be with each Italian team training here to help us through this through this language problem. Learning Italian will take some work however Wake Forest University won't have to undertake any major construction projects to accommodate the Italians. Only a few minor adjustments will have to be made to the already existing facilities. For example on the basketball court the three point line will have to be lengthened and the width of the lane will have to be extended to meet international rules. Hendersonville will be the pre-Olympic training site for the New Zealand swim team. Last fall the New Zealand swimmers came to Hendersonville to get a sneak peek at their fall away from home prior to the Olympics.

Come on it's go in Hendersonville in Henderson County as well as all of western North Carolina thinks that the Olympics are going to be a real boon to us in 96 and. The promoters who were thoughtful and far sighted enough to invite a team to train here. I knew that that put us in an even better position to take advantage of the whole one pick. How far to become from Atlanta. The Commerce Department has not been able to assess an exact dollar figure regarding the economic impact that this pre-Olympic training will have on our state. The benefit is being judged by more intangible factors. Travel and Tourism is really going to benefit from this because it will fuel travel and tourism. People will come over and see what a great place this is to live and they'll want to come back to North Carolina in the future. And then business and industry will certainly benefit by it because corporations will see the quality of life that we have here. The great climate that we have all four seasons would not have been too harsh. And the ideal place to locate a

corporation or a business. It's an honor for us to to have international count internationally acclaimed athletes be the training here in our facilities. It's going to be good publicity for us and it's it's really just been a good part of us to play a role in our community here. It's not only the athletes that are gearing up for the Olympics and the reasons that Campbell is you are also preparing 150 Marines are taking special classes at the Division of Motor Vehicles to receive their commercial driver's licenses. Well as the games get underway in Atlanta the Marines will be used to transport athletes to and from their sporting venues. Later in the program we'll take you through one of Southern North Carolina's most beautiful waterways. But before we do that let's join Michel Louis at the North Carolina now news desk for the latest statewide news match. Thanks Maria. Good evening everyone. After coming out on the losing end of his primary bid for re-election to the state house element's county representative Ken Miller is seeking to capitalize on the use of his name and image the one term Republican

representative has drawn up a contract claiming ownership of the use of his name photo or statements. The contract demands a fee to be paid for any statements or pictures of Miller from the floor of the state house during his term as a public servant. An attorney with the North Carolina Press Association says the contract is ineffectual and will not hold up in court. The House Ethics Committee has voted to censure Miller for allegedly making inappropriate advances toward a 16 year old girl working in the legislative building. Senate President Marc bass tonight is issuing a word of caution to his fellow legislators as the General Assembly prepares to open next week. Best night is saying state senators will take a long hard look at the state's needs before deciding to reduce taxes. Republican House speaker Harold Rue Baker is in favor of cutting the sales tax on food by 1 percent. Governor Hunt has also spoken in favor of the food sales tax cut and a reduction in the corporate income tax. But last night a fellow Democrat says now may not be the time to undertake the reductions

improvements in education and environmental cleanup are some of the needs best nights as must be met. The Senate president also worries the tax reductions could make the state vulnerable to economic slowdown. A proposal to do away with the top position at North Carolina's Department of Motor Vehicles has some official backing. A state legislative committee is supporting the proposal which will be introduced to the General Assembly when the legislative session opens next week. The limitation of the commissioner post is the first step toward a complete reorganization of the DMV and audit which was made final yesterday finds the commissioners position and others adds unnecessary bureaucracy to the agency. Granville County will soon be home to a new business. The Santa Fe natural tobacco company a manufacturer of organic cigarettes is planning to build a factory that will produce the additive free smokes made from organically grown tobacco. The Oxford plant is expected to employ 30 workers. It's a case of irony and ingenuity all wrapped up into one. Students from Charlotte's Eastover

Academy were in Washington D.C. today. The school was invited to the White House for a ceremony highlighting the president's support for school uniforms new uniforms were supposed to be ready in time for the visit. But when they did not arrive on time borrowed uniforms were used instead Eastover adopted the use of school uniforms just days before President Clinton indorse their use in his State of the Union address. Now for a look at tomorrow's weather. High temperatures across the state will heat things up for Friday look for the Mercury to climb into the high 80s and even low 90s from Charlotte to Elizabeth City Warmington could experience a 10 degree difference between the coast and further inland who should not get out of the high 70s. Conditions will make the day enjoyable mostly sunny skies and a slight breeze will offer bright relief. The mountain areas will experience partly cloudy skies the chance of an afternoon shower or thunderstorm could dampen things in the Far West. In business news this Thursday digital wireless telephone technology is coming to North Carolina this summer. Bellsouth will introduce

the cutting edge service in the Tar Heel state in July. Bell South is the first company to put the new generation technology in place. This is the design is much different from cell phones being used now. It will help eliminate dropped calls and static Pollitt project is currently underway in the Washington D.C. area. Environmental uncertainty is putting fund raising efforts on hold for the proposed global trance park. Officials say companies and individuals have been reluctant to make financial contributions until the trans park's problems have been ironed out. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today. If you've been paying attention the story is about the economy lately you may be confused by a lot of

conflicting reports. Well tonight business correspondent Cristina Copeland tries to sort out some of it. In an interview with First unions vice president and economist Mark Vitner. Mark thanks for being with us this evening. It's my pleasure. I want to start off with a very basic economics lesson. I think a lot of people are very confused that we hear all of this good economic news that job growth is up unemployment is down that the economy is growing at a healthy rate and yet there are all these people running around saying this is bad. Why could it possibly be bad. Well the good economic news is not bad. What is bad is the interpretation that the financial markets sometimes the economic news. Explain that a little bit more than let's take it let's take the unemployment rate for an example. Well the unemployment rate really is the crux of the matter. What's happened is that we've had five years of uninterrupted economic growth. Which is it which is a good long time by itself that has returned the unemployment rate brought the unemployment rate back down below.

What is considered full employment are currently at five point four percent and full employment is at 6 percent. Now once we get back to full employment if the economy grows too strongly then we're likely to see inflation accelerate. And that's what the financial markets are concerned about. And that's why we're hearing a lot of concern now about inflation where a couple of months ago we were only concerned about the possibility of maybe a recession. Yes. And as is usually the case whenever we hear about it whenever the economic news makes the front page of the newspapers it's usually because people's fears are over exaggerated or that there are joys of good economic news are over exaggerated and neither is typically the case. So this is really much more of a psychological thing in many ways than an actual thing. Yes very much so. The I would say that the the indicator which is disturb the financial markets the most has been employment growth. A couple of months ago we got a report that seven hundred twenty five thousand jobs were created during the month of February which is a lot of jobs. That's about five times the average of what we created

each month during 1905. Well since that time we have seen that job again revised down and we've seen more modest job gains in the months since. Last month we only added 2000 jobs. And if you look at all of the months together so far this year versus the monthly at the same months last year job growth in 1906 is actually a little bit slower than it was in 1905. Let's talk a little bit about job growth here in North Carolina and what's happening with that. Well North Carolina has seen quite a slowdown over the past year mostly in its traditional core industries textiles apparel tobacco and furniture that's brought job growth down from about a three and a half percent pace in 1904 to about two percent this past year and we've seen it continue to grow modestly around a 2 percent pace. What do you see overall for the economic outlook in North Carolina. Well North Carolina still has a much healthier economy than the nation as a whole. And we have a very diversified.

Industrial base and so much that so that even with the slump that we're seeing our traditional industries the rest of the states are actually growing at a pace about twice that of the rest of the country so that is good news we're seeing a lot more diversification in North Carolina were not as reliant to some and on some of those traditional industries. Yes we have a remarkably diversified industrial base. In fact North Carolina has a larger share of its workforce employed the manufacturing sector than any other state in the country. And even at a time when manufacturing is suffering nationwide. The state is continuing to produce job gains well ahead of the nation and has an unemployment rate that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 percent. Should we be concerned though that a lot of these jobs that are being created are relatively low wage jobs even if they're not minimum wage they're still relatively low wage jobs. Well I don't think that the jobs being created today are a much different quality than they were in years past there have been a lot of discussion

on that on that point but I think that most of that is is really. Over simplifying the question. The fact is that the quality of jobs is pretty good. We are seeing pretty good wage growth but most jobs are being added in the service sector and when people say the service sector the first thing that comes up to their mind is hamburger flippers. Absolutely. But hamburger flippers actually are not service workers. They are in their retail trade. Employees and we have been seeing a whole lot of growth in hamburger flippers. Most of the growth has been occurring in this broad services category which includes data processing jobs at customer service centers and jobs in the financial services industry not so much in the banks but in the non-bank sector. The quality of jobs is pretty good. How about the construction industry because that has really been such a boom industry the past couple of years but it is slowing down. Yes and it's slowing down in part housing activity is actually rather strong right now and it is it's holding its own fairly solid levels and

commercial construction is coming back. In fact here in North Carolina we're one of the few states that have seen commercial construction surpass its 1900 peaks. Really. Because I was afraid that perhaps there's us I see so much construction going on that I wonder at what point you start to become concerned about a glut on the market. Well I don't think that we're going to have any of those problems in the next couple of years. We begin to see some overbuilding in single family construction about this time last year. But very quickly builders cut back in terms of office space office vacancy rates in North Carolina's larger metropolitan areas are among the lowest in the nation. All right overall what's your economic outlook for the next for the rest of the year. Well we think that the economy is going to continue to bounce back a little bit. So we're going to see some more strong economic numbers and that may not be good for the financial markets. But by the second half of this year we think growth is going to moderate and we're going

to see I guess GDP move back in those who percent range maybe see the unemployment rate rise back toward 6 percent it's currently at 5.4 percent. And I think that North Carolina will continue to see job growth the neighborhood of two to two and a half percent maybe a slight uptick in the unemployment rate but it's down around 4 percent right now. So we could stand with that. Mark thank you so much for being here today. It was a pleasure talking to you. Well thank you for having me here. As the mercury climbs to near 90 degrees the thought of going down a cool river

under a canopy of trees is incredibly inviting. And as Andrea Cates Bailey shows us one of the best places to do that is in one of North Carolina's newest state parks along the lumber river. Most of the parks we visit in the state have been established for years. But the lumber River State Park is a work in progress. It's a relatively new park with a long list of historic firsts. Through the efforts of many organizations and individuals lumber river was the state's first recreational water trail. The first national canoe trail in the south and is today a state natural and scenic river. This beautiful black water river runs through the sand hills and coastal plains regions of the state. The part was formed in 1980. Legislature passed an act called State Parks Act which formed new state parks lumber it was the first park formed under that and at that time

it does and they did a hundred fifteen miles of river as a state park. Since that time we've acquired a little over 2000 acres of léon. Donley in Robinson County. The future hope is to pick up lane along the entire stretch of the river. The lumber of racially stars off is drowning Creek in more and then gamely candies in the Sand Hills area. Once it crosses 15 5 when. It becomes lone river. Too it reaches Nicol South Carolina. Then it becomes a little page. Many of our linear parks stretching along our rivers were homes to mills where the river literally powered the local economy. Today only the large walk in safe is left of the butter's lumber company once located just north of Highway 74 where we are now is called in a hole in the DRAM to turn the

century the second largest sawmill in the southeast United States was located here. So Mia was in existence to the early 1920s. The area is crisscrossed with old rail beds as well as trails over the rivers and some of the Canadians they used the trains to bring the logs to the can nail Zz to the river and then followed him into the Psalm. This is primarily a hardwood forest and small. Ball Scifres is the main sure you'd find you could come along the river and do a wild flower hike with some of the you know you can interest in plants we have along here this and cardinal flower along the river. Feder Bush has some blueberry also some wild as there are some really interesting birds on the river. We have all some for thought of Terry warblers Northern for rule is great horn dials in the main type of bird you'll see here in the swamp as far as

raptors as the barred owl. You'll hear them all night long if you come take a canoe trip on the river and camp. Right like consider the fortune the state has made a study primarily undeveloped The vast majority of the river is classified as natural. There's not much development along it and you can just get out there and just get totally lawless You can spend the day and not see anyone it's just you and the birds and the animals out there. The easiest way to see the river is probably Bochum that there's a lot of areas where it's pretty impassable for for motor boats. Long term goal is to have camping about every 7 to 10 miles and an

access point about same distance. This year development will begin at Princes St with a large group picnic shelter camping but rent facilities office visitor information the contact point. Now is a great time to take a canoe trip down the lumber river. The park office is located 12 miles east of Fairmont off Highway 130. For more information contact the park office at lumber River State Park P.O. Box 10 Oram North Carolina 2 8 3 6 9 or call 9 1 0 6 2 8 9 8 4 4. If you would like to learn more about the other North Carolina State parks we have a great brochure for you. You can receive a copy by just sending us a self-addressed stamped envelope to North Carolina now P.O. Box 14 900 RTP NC 2 7 7 0 9. That's our show for tonight I hope you enjoyed it. A gentle reminder for you that Mother's Day

is just a few days away so if you haven't gotten a card or gift yet you'll probably want to get right to that. And please join us tomorrow night when Maria Lundberg shares with us an unusual Mother's Day story about a literacy program that's helping moms throughout our state including those in prison. Plus we'll continue our series on the University of North Carolina system with a visit you would see Asheville also Captain Kangaroo will be stopping by our studio. Bob Keeshan will talk about children's programming both how it was is now and how it was then I'm sure this interview will bring back a lot of memories whether you yourself watch the Captain Kangaroo show as a child or as a parrot with your own children. You won't want to miss it. Thanks so much for joining us tonight have a great evening. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Good night everyone.