Good Morning! The weatherman says today's heat index will be near 110°. It’s going to be hot and humid with an actual high of 99°. Expect isolated thunderstorms this morning and partly cloudy skies in the afternoon.

With temperatures near 100 degrees both today and tomorrow, the Charlotte area will see two of the hottest and muggiest days of the season. Click here for a few words of advice from the experts on how to cope with the sweltering heat.

Here’s what’s brewing in the news:

Ex-director to do time for stealing from Emmett Till cemetery

Former director of a historic black cemetery south of Chicago pleaded guilty to a money-making scheme that involved digging up bodies at the Burr Oak Cemetery and reselling plots.

Carolyn Towns, 51, was convicted on Friday and sentenced to 12 years in prison reports The Grio. Prosecutors say Towns and three workers desecrated hundreds of graves at the Burr Oak Cemetery and stole more than $100,000 by keeping payments for burials and dumping remains in unmarked mass graves.

The Burr Oak Cemetery is the burial site of lynching victim Emmett Till and blues singers Willie Dixon and Dinah Washington.

Although Till's grave wasn't harmed, his original glass-topped casket, which his mother had designed to show the world his mutilated body, was discovered in a garbage-strewn storage shed during the investigation. The casket has since been donated to the Smithsonian Institution.
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Texas woman gives birth to 16 pound baby

Proud parents Janet Johnson and Michael Brown of Texas were expecting a big baby. Doctors scheduled a Cesarean birth, predicting their newborn child would be maybe 12 or 13 pounds. To their surprise, baby JaMichael came out weighing a whopping 16 pounds, 1 ounce and measuring two feet long. That’s about the size of a six-month-old child. The 39-year-old mother suffered from gestational diabetes, which can increase birth weights, but typically not as much. By comparison, the average newborn is about seven-and-a-half pounds. (Read more here)

Watch Video of JaMichael’s parents telling their story on the Today Show.

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Afghan president’s brother assassinated

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was assassinated yesterday in his home town. According to reports, the Taliban is claiming responsibility for the killing, but spy officials said the Kandahar provincial council chief was shot twice in the head by a guest who was apparently an old friend that was not searched on arrival at the younger Karzai's Kandahar home. (Read more here)
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UNC grant for AIDS

A national consortium of researchers led by a team at UNC-Chapel Hill has been awarded a $32 million federal grant aimed at curing AIDS. Over the next five years, the group will seek ways to cure HIV patients taking anti-retroviral drugs. It's part of the first major funding initiative aimed at eliminating HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The researchers will try to find a way to locate all traces of HIV genetic material and purge them entirely from an infected person's body. Although, people infected with the virus can remain relatively healthy by using an elaborate regimen of drugs to block the effects of HIV, the virus itself never goes away. (Read more here)

*** This is your chance to speak out. Do you have something to say? Share what’s brewing on your mind in the comments section below.

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