Brian Tress/Outer Banks Voice In the wake of Hurricane Erin, teams with N.E.S.T. (Network for Endangered Sea Turtles) began assessing sea turtle nest damage along the Northern Outer Banks. Prior to the storm, a total of 29 nests had been laid — 18 remained intact in the ground, while 11...

Liz Schlemmer/WUNC Radio As many North Carolina students return to school Monday, they’ll have to get used to putting away their phones. A new state law aims to restrict cell phone use in schools statewide by requiring students to turn off their phones during class time. Many individual schools and...

The (Waynesville) Mountaineer The owners of the The Swag and Cataloochee Ranch have gifted $750,000 toward the restoration of Helene-ravaged Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Through their nonprofit the Colquitt Foundation, David and Annie Colquitt gifted the funds to the Friends of the Smokies to help...

DJ Simmons/WFDD Radio The SECU Foundation is awarding a $300,000 grant to Legal Aid of North Carolina to expand services in rural areas. The funds will support software development and statewide implementation of Legal Aid’s Innovation Lab. The lab aims to foster collaborations between community partners, law schools and tech...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press East Carolina University is officially pursuing the idea of reopening Martin General Hospital, the shuttered hospital in Eastern North Carolina. But first, it needs $220 million — and for cuts to Medicaid to stop coming. That’s starting to seem increasingly unlikely. The uncertainty around the...

The Associated Press North Carolina will get an in-season close-up for its first season under coach Bill Belichick. In a social media video posted by the program Sunday, Belichick told the players that streaming provider Hulu will feature the Tar Heels in what he described as a season-long show “that...

WRAL News Back-to-school drivers in Raleigh will have to navigate lane closures on a busy commuter route. An eastbound lane on Tryon Road near Brisk Gallop Way remains closed while emergency repairs to a broken sewer line continue. A spokesperson for Wake County Public Schools said the closure is forcing...

Jennifer Shutt/NC Newsline The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside a lower court’s ruling, allowing the Trump administration to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in National Institutes of Health grants that addressed diversity, equity and inclusion issues. The 5-4 ruling narrowly divided the court, with Chief Justice John Roberts,...

Nick Fogleman/The Watauga Democrat Beef prices across the United States have hit record highs, and producers in Watauga County are feeling the strain of a shrinking national cattle herd, rising costs and mounting development pressures. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that ground beef prices, which...

Paul Specht/WRAL News A program designed to protect North Carolinians from people charged with sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking and other crimes faces a murky future as officials seek permanent funding for an organization that monitors alleged perpetrators across the state. The program is operated by the North Carolina Criminal...

Charlie Fossen/Port City Daily The battle for clean drinking water in southeastern North Carolina continues, this time focusing on the chemical 1,4-dioxane, with local governments and utility providers demanding action from the state. A series of separate letters sent over the past few months from New Hanover County Commissioners, Wilmington...

Adam Wagner/WUNC Radio Duke Energy is not moving forward with wind energy off North Carolina’s coast after determining proposals from three developers are more expensive than solar panels and battery storage that result in the same amount of energy. The N.C. Utilities Commission’s carbon and resource plan finalized last fall...

Gary D. Robertson/The Associated Press The North Carolina Supreme Court issued favorable rulings Friday for bars and their operators in litigation seeking monetary compensation from the state for COVID-19 restrictions first issued by then-Gov. Roy Cooper that shuttered their doors and, in their view, treated them unfairly compared to restaurants....

Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News Weeks after a bitter dispute over a Democratic gala laid bare divisions in Western North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, the field is shifting again. Moe Davis, who joined other candidates in protesting the event’s handling and was first to enter the race back in May, said...

Aarik Long/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Spontaneous combustion deep within a flood debris landfill blanketed the greater Canton area with smoke this week, and landfill operators and firefighters currently have no way to extinguish the enormous smoldering mountain of mulch. “It’s been on fire, that we know of, deep down inside of...