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,...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press When Tropical Depression Chantal struck Moore County in early July, the deluge of rain took out a food bank, a golf course, a cemetery, a shopping center, hiking trails, homes and major roads. The storm exposed the vulnerability of Moore County’s aging infrastructure in the...

DJ Simmons/WFDD Radio Burlington City Manager Craig Honeycutt is retiring at the end of the year. Honeycutt has been in the role since 2022, and before that was briefly assistant city manager. “Burlington has been a joy to work for – from a city council that collaborates and fully supports...

Charlie Fossen/Port City Daily After years of waiting for effective water treatment against PFAS contamination, Brunswick County is now in a legal battle with its contractor for a water treatment expansion project facing repeated delays. Brunswick County filed a lawsuit against Oscar Renda Contracting, Inc. for breach of contract and...

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...

Pat Kimbrough/The (High Point) Enterprise A bank with a significant High Point presence says its planned merger with another institution won’t hamper its longtime philanthropic housing initiative in the city. Pinnacle Financial Partners in recent years has funded construction of more than 40 single-family houses in distressed core city neighborhoods....