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...

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...