Good news for those who have had parking troubles in downtown Chapel Hill: effective May 10, a new public lot is open at the 140 West Franklin complex. The lot contains about 160 spaces, and local residents can pay to park by both cash and credit card. Like most other downtown Chapel Hill public parking areas, the lot is free on Sundays. For more information on parking in the downtown area, go to www.parkonthehill.com.

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One Tar Heel women’s basketball coach recently received top honors on the other side of the country.

Trisha Stafford-Odom, who has served as assistant Tar Heel women’s basketball coach since 2011, was one of 28 inductees into the University of California Athletic Hall of Fame. Stafford-Odum graduated from the University of California in 1992, and during her time as a Golden Bear, she scored 1,530 points in three seasons—that’s ninth in the school’s history. In her senior season, she earned an honorable mention on the Kodak All-America team, and she topped the PAC-10 conference that year with an average of 22.3 points per game. She was also a member of the All-Decade Team for 1986-1996. After her college years, she played in the WNBA for two years in Houston and Miami.

Before coming to UNC, Stafford-Odom also served as an assistant coach at UCLA and Duke. During her coaching years, she’s been recognized as one of the top recruiters in the country.

Stafford-Odum and the other inductees will be formally honored on Friday October 18 at a banquet in Oakland, CA.

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As a result of redistricting in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, many teachers in the district now have numerous refugees in their classes—and one group of high school students are doing their part to educate teachers who might be teaching some of those children.

Next weekend, East Chapel Hill High School’s Refugee Outreach Club will be holding an informational meeting about refugees in the district and across all of Chapel Hill. A panel of experts will be on hand to answer questions about how the global refugee crisis applies to the local area, both in and out of the classroom. One of those guests, Dr. Niklaus Steiner, serves as Director of the Center for Global Initiatives at UNC.

The event is set to begin next Saturday morning at 11:00, and it will run until 12:30 in the afternoon at UNC’s FedEx Global Education Center in the Nelson Mandela Auditorium.