Colin Campbell/WUNC Radio While the legal battle over last year’s N.C. Supreme Court election is now settled, it’s not the last unresolved election contest remaining in North Carolina. A legal dispute over the 2023 election for mayor of the Robeson County town of Pembroke is still dragging on, heading now...

Brian Murphy & Shaun Gallagher/WRAL News Nina King spent the second half of Duke University’s most important men’s basketball game of the season huddled in the Alamodome concourse. As the top-ranked Blue Devils tried to hold off Houston for a spot in the NCAA Tournament national title game, King —...

Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News  On May 2, 2024, a brief, awkward moment inside a women’s restroom at Western Carolina University was recorded, uploaded to social media and sparked a flashpoint in America’s ongoing culture wars. At the center of the encounter was Payton McNabb, a former high school athlete and...

John Boyle/Asheville Watchdog While you might not be wowed by the frequent flotillas of brightly colored tubes drifting down the French Broad River this summer, the river will be plenty busy with recreational users. Tropical Storm Helene’s raging flood waters did a number on the river, and particularly on its...

Brighton McConnell/WCHL Chapelboro Horace Johnson, a longtime elected official who became the first Black mayor of the Town of Hillsborough, died Thursday. He was 95 years old, having celebrated his birthday just days before. The town government shared the news of the six-term mayor’s death Friday night in a release....

Nick Fogleman/Watauga Democrat  Local leaders and business owners are raising alarms over a planned closure of the Blue Ridge Parkway between Blowing Rock and Linville later this year. They cite potential devastating economic impacts and urge the National Park Service to reconsider the project’s timing. Jesse Pope, President and CEO...

Colin Campbell & Mary Helen Moore/WUNC Radio The N.C. House began releasing its budget proposal Thursday, and Republicans are planning cuts in what’s expected to be a tight budget year. Lawmakers got their first look at parts of the spending plan during a series of subcommittee meetings. The full budget...

Hannah Vinueza McClellan/Education NC The North Carolina Republican-led Senate unveiled its 2025-27 budget proposal on Monday night, calling for pay raises for teachers and most state employees and additional funds for Hurricane Helene recovery, among other things. Most state employees would receive an across-the-board raise of 1.25% in FY 2025-26,...

Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press In 2021, after months of tough negotiations over clean energy policies, North Carolina lawmakers, Gov. Roy Cooper and public energy utilities made a commitment: by 2050, North Carolina’s largest electric generating facilities would reach carbon neutrality. By then, facilities would offset each ton of carbon dioxide...

Tyler Davis/The (Henderson) Daily Dispatch Monday morning, Henderson city council members received word of a complaint made by a city employee as well as the results of an employee survey administered by the city’s human resources department. Though they didn’t discuss specifics at the regular meeting that afternoon, it would...

Joseph Williams/The (Whiteville) News Reporter Faced with a projected sevenfold increase in property tax collection fees from Columbus County government, the City of Whiteville has made the first step to start its own in-house collections later this year. During its Tuesday meeting, city council authorized staff to move forward after...

Morgan Casey/CityView Almost 300 children are waiting for a spot to open at First Adventures Child Development Center, a child care center under Cape Fear Valley Health that serves the health system’s employees. Some of them won’t have to wait much longer. Cape Fear Valley Health is expanding the center,...

Port City Daily New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise and City of Wilmington Councilmember Luke Waddell have been appointed to serve four-year terms on the UNCW Board of Trustees. Starting their terms in July, Waddell and Scalise were appointed by the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors on...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio When the North Carolina lottery began in 2005, the idea was that all money would go to public education. The public believed the lottery dollars would supplement money already spent on K-12 schools. But over the last two decades, critics say the lottery money has, in part,...

WRAL News The North Carolina Museum of Art is undergoing a major renovation project that will involve the park amphitheater and many spaces within the museum’s East building. “It involves multiple sp aces within our original East building, including our conservation lab, an addition above the conservation lab on the...