Scott D. Yost/Rhino Times In Guilford County government these days, the top job comes with the top paycheck: Brand new County Manager Victor Isler now makes $315,000 a year – the highest salary on the list of managers, assistant managers and department and division directors in our local county government....

Heidi Perez-Moreno/Border Belt Independent Sonya Hillburn used three decades of retirement and personal savings to open Above & Beyond Wellness & Medical Spa in Elizabethtown in 2021. Local banks refused to give her a business loan, she said, since she could not prove the business would make money. It took...

Will Atwater/NC Health News As the Trump administration keeps pushing to change the focus of scientific research and roll back environmental regulations — moves that critics say favor industry over public health — members of North Carolina’s scientific and environmental communities are speaking out. They’re raising alarms about the effect...

Jack Igelman/Carolina Public Press Later this year, the first of 18 flash flood warning sirens will be installed at the Cruso Fire and Rescue department in southern Haywood County. One of just three siren systems in Western North Carolina, local leaders hope the devices will save lives in a region...

Sergio Osnaya-Prieto/Education NC More than 62,000 North Carolina public high school seniors are set to receive direct admission to select colleges and universities across the state this fall thanks to the NC College Connect program, according to a press release from the UNC System Office. During the State Board of...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio Prominent civil rights leader William Barber II spoke against Charlotte’s proposed 1-cent tax for roads and transit from the pulpit Sunday, saying it would hurt low-income residents who have been negatively impacted by recent property tax increases. Barber became famous last decade leading the Moral Monday movement...

Brighton McConnell/WCHL Chapelboro U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee continued her series of town halls in North Carolina’s fourth congressional last week by holding an event at Carrboro’s Drakeford Library Complex. The Aug. 5 event, which was not widely publicized, drew dozens of attendees and featured the two-term Democrat answering questions on...

Nick Bentley/WNCN Wawa has chosen North Carolina as the place for its first ever travel center, and hopes to invest more than $675 million in the state. According to a press release from Wawa, the travel center will be built in Hope Mills and a special grand opening is planned...

Scott Bolejack/Johnstonian News A development firm proposes to plant a 40-foot landscape buffer between its shopping center on Clayton Boulevard and neighboring single-family homes. But those neighbors told the Clayton Planning Board on July 28 that a previous Town Council had promised them a 125-foot “no development” buffer along their...

Jesse Deal/The Stanly News & Press     A nonprofit water utility corporation based in Richfield has been awarded nearly $5 million in state funding for a major infrastructure upgrade. Gov. Josh Stein and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recently announced that the Pfeiffer–North Stanly Water Association will receive...

Robert Sullivan/The Salisbury Post     The Salisbury City Council voted to sell the Plaza Building to the Wallace Family on Tuesday with no material changes to the development agreement. The Wallace Family, who created the company Wallace Building Salisbury in July to serve as the purchasing entity, will buy the building...

Adam Wagner/WUNC Radio Officials from the N.C. Department of Labor discovered an illegal mine earlier this year when federal officials asked them to provide safety training at the Mitchell County site. A Department of Labor official realized that the mine had “multiple irregularities,” according to a news release from the...

Brianna Sacks & Maeve Reston/The Washington Post The Department of Homeland Security is holding up more than $100 million in preapproved funds intended to help hurricane-battered North Carolina clean up storm damage and fix infrastructure still in disrepair almost a year after Helene hit the region, according to documents obtained...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press HCA Healthcare kept watchdogs waiting for months for information that would determine whether the company was in compliance with the state-mandated terms of its purchase agreement for Asheville-based Mission Health. When the company relented, it kept control over what could be made public about the...

Scott D. Yost/Rhino Times In a sign of things to come – and a sign of how things have been in the last decade – the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, on Thursday, Aug. 7, overturned a previous denial by the county’s Planning Board and gave the green light to...