Amy Diaz/WFDD Radio Some media outlets are reporting that the State Bureau of Investigation is poised to launch a criminal probe into Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. According to Chad Flowers, an SBI spokesperson, the department is not investigating the school district right now. He says Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill...

Maura Carey/The Associated Press A North Carolina judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the 1983 N.C. State men’s basketball team, shutting down the national championship team’s request for name, image and likeness compensation. The team was known as the “Cardiac Pack” for a series of close, nail-biting victories, including...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press North Carolina just made it much harder to pass expensive regulations. HB 402, now law after legislators overrode a veto from Gov. Josh Stein, adds major hurdles for new and existing rules — including those that would limit PFAS and other toxic chemicals in drinking...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio Mecklenburg County Commissioners decided in closed session Wednesday to end all negotiations with The Peebles Corporation, which was hired nine years ago to redevelop a big chunk of uptown into a new project called Brooklyn Village. The company hasn’t built a single apartment since the county picked...

Jack Evans/Asheville Watchdog Asheville’s Tree City USA distinction, which it held for nearly 45 years, has lapsed. Eric North, a program manager for the Arbor Day Foundation, which administers the Tree City program, said in an email Asheville began its application last year but, like some other communities preoccupied by...

The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Another milestone in the I-40 repair job in the Pigeon River Gorge: the N.C. Department of Transportation has officially received permits to mine stone from the nearby Pisgah National Forest. Rock will be mined from the national forest on the opposite side of the river as the...

Laura Leslie & Brian Murphy/WRAL News Basketball games — even in the Atlantic Coast Conference — can’t be as difficult as navigating North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles to get a new driver’s license. NC State men’s basketball assistant coach Brandon Chambers arrived at the Cary office at 5:45 a.m....

The Associated Press The Department of Health and Human Services will cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines that are being developed to fight respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and the flu. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a statement Tuesday that 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines...

Gerard Albert III/Blue Ridge Public Radio Henderson County is in the hole about $20 million, waiting for reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Hurricane Helene-related debris removal. Commissioners discussed the issue at a Monday night meeting. The conversation came as state officials last week urged lawmakers to push...

Dan DeWitt/Asheville Watchdog If Steve Dunning’s Okie Dokies Smokehouse in Swannanoa appeared on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps, his lender would have almost certainly required flood insurance as a condition of the mortgage that he and his wife, Jody, took out on the property in 2006. But Buncombe...

Rachel Crumpler/NC Health News More than one in four people leaving North Carolina prisons in 2024 were released to homelessness, according to a reentry housing assessment presented at the July meeting of the Joint Reentry Council. The assessment identified someone as homeless if they had no verified home plan, self-reported...

Liz Carey/Education NC New research has found that rural LGBTQ+ teens experience significant challenges in their communities and turn to the internet for support. The research from Hopelab and the Born This Way Foundation looked at what more than 1,200 LGBTQ+ teens faced and compared the experiences of those in...

Carolyn Thompson/The Associated Press As a student in western New York’s rural Wyoming County, Briar Townes honed an artistic streak that he hopes to make a living from one day. In high school, he clicked with a college-level drawing and painting class. But despite the college credits he earned, college...

Lucas Thomae/Carolina Public Press Former Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran continues to fall deeper into legal trouble. Two weeks ago, he was arrested again and charged with second-degree forcible rape according to filings in Swain Superior Court. The embattled sheriff left office last month after being arrested and charged in...

Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News A blistering letter signed by four Democratic candidates for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District is raising questions about party neutrality in primaries, calling the party’s decision to include only one congressional candidate — Jamie Ager — as the keynote speaker at the NC-11 Democratic...