Elisabeth Strillacci/The (Salisbury) Post  The state of North Carolina has a restriction on annexations for every community in the state that prohibits growth beyond a certain point, but there is an allowance for an exemption to that limit. The town of East Spencer is one of three remaining communities inside...

Colin Campbell/WUNC Radio PBS North Carolina announced Tuesday that it plans to cut staff due to the loss of federal funding for public media. The loss of Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding will mean a nearly $5 million cut for the TV network. It’s giving “voluntary separation offers” to most...

Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline Horne LLP, the company tapped to manage homebuilding and recovery from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, is facing a ban on government contract work in West Virginia. State officials informed the Mississippi-based firm on July 22 that they were pursuing debarment, or permanently banning the company...

Brian Murphy/WRAL News North Carolina football general manager Michael Lombardi signed a three-year contract worth $1.5 million annually, according to an appointment letter signed on July 31. The three years matches the guaranteed years in head coach Bill Belichick’s five-year, $50-million. contract. Lombardi was Belichick’s first hire in December and...

Alan Wooten/The Center Square  Five North Carolina counties listed as sanctuary jurisdictions in May are not included in Tuesday’s release from the Department of Homeland Security. The counties of Buncombe, Chatham, Durham, Orange and Watauga had been the only entries in the state-by-state listing. Respectively, the sheriffs are Democrats Quentin...

Sarah White/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Haywood County has confirmed its 13th case of pertussis, or whooping cough, since early July, meaning infections are on the rise with just two weeks before students go back to school. While it’s typical to see kids getting sick about three weeks into the school year,...

Kip Tabb/Coastal Review Online The Dare County Board of Commissioners, in the face of strident pushback from residents and coastal advocates over a proposal to gut special protections for an area around the Buxton Woods Reserve, voted Monday to keep in place those development restrictions officials had previously called “unenforceable.”...

Anne Blythe/NC Health News Sometimes when mapping out things to do that could make the future better for the community, it can be helpful to pause and reflect on the path to today. That was what happened a week ago for North Carolina public health officials and people living with...

Zachary Turner/WFAE Radio The Eden Lake Retreat buzzed with activity last week as a couple hundred attendees built mini solar installations, wired battery controllers and shared stories of recovery and resilience. Absent was the hum of gas generators, as strings of solar panels powered Starlinks, lights and projectors. Jamie Trowbridge,...

Kate Denning/Carolina Public Press Alpha School, an “AI-powered” private school, is preparing to make its mark on Charlotte and Raleigh this year. North Carolina is part of an expansion into five additional states this fall for the private school company, which currently operates Texas and Florida. It plans to expand...

Katie Dukes/Education NC The U.S. military faced a new threat to national security toward the end of the 20th century. This threat affected the recruitment and retention of our nation’s armed forces, reducing their capacity to defend the denizens of the United States and our interests overseas. The threat wasn’t...

Bill Barrow/The Associated Press Anderson Clayton wanted a headline name to speak at North Carolina Democrats’ summer gala — but the state party chair bypassed familiar Capitol Hill figures, looking instead to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. She described him as “a real fighter” against President Donald Trump, someone who gets...

Colin Campbell/WUNC Radio Political experts say North Carolina’s Senate race next year could see around $500 million in campaign spending, and the contest between former Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley could set a new record for the most expensive Senate race in the country. Past...

Brian Gordon/The (Raleigh) News & Observer Bennet Waters emphasized that Research Triangle Park wasn’t a success after 24 months. If state lawmakers had pulled the plug on the economic project in 1961, they would have pivoted away from a bunch of fallow farmland between Raleigh and Durham. Similarly, Waters, the...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio Republican Michael Whatley officially kicked off his campaign for U.S. Senate Thursday against Democrat Roy Cooper with an 18-minute speech Thursday near his home in Gastonia. I listened three times and made some notes. This Inside Politics will look at the words he did and didn’t use,...