Ashley Anderson/CBS 17 News With the end of a three-year agreement approaching at the end of November, UNC Health issued a statement Tuesday warning that coverage could be lost for Cigna members come December 1st. Cigna may be out of network later this year for any patients of UNC Health...

Mia McCarthy & Jordain Carney/Politico Hours after announcing his retirement, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis went to the Senate floor and slammed the GOP’s plans for drastic Medicaid cuts — warning Republicans they are about to “make a mistake on health care and betray a promise” if their sprawling domestic policy...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, has a far-left mayor, Brandon Johnson. New York City, the nation’s largest municipality, may be governed by self-described democratic socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last week. But in the nation’s 14th-largest city, Charlotte, the center still holds. And...

Jack Igelman/Carolina Public Press Miles of Pisgah National Forest trails near Old Fort in McDowell County, a cornerstone of its fledgling outdoor economy, remain inaccessible due to damage from torrential rain, high winds and landslides during Tropical Storm Helene. The storm damage, combined with changes in federal policy and the...

Scott D. Yost/Rhino Times The Guilford County Board of Commissioners met on Friday afternoon, June 27, to hold a very rare special closed session to discuss a personnel issue and, when the board came out of that closed session, the commissioners voted unanimously to accept the retirement notice of Guilford...

Chantal Brown/EducationNC An annual report found that about one in five teaching position vacancies in North Carolina were in Exceptional Children’s (EC) departments across the state during the 2023-24 school year. Every spring, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) releases the State of the Teaching Profession report for review by...

Kyle Perrotti/Smoky Mountain News Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran has been charged with several crimes after allegedly soliciting two women for sexual acts and is now suspended from office. Cochran, who was first elected to office in 2006, was charged on June 27 with one count of sexual battery, soliciting...

Aarik Long/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Haywood County School’s elected leaders are deep into a hard look at the system’s buildings and facilities, and that means a lot of ideas are being tossed up for discussion, from combining high schools to closing a middle school to bringing the football stadiums on campus....

Trista Talton/Coastal Review Online Aligning North Carolina’s wetlands definition with that of the federal government’s would put the state’s waterways at risk, erase nature’s pollution filtration systems from the land, and increase flooding, speakers at a public hearing said. More than a dozen people commented during the Thursday night hearing...

Emma Kate Williams/Niner Times The Charlotte Ballet lost a $15,000 grant that would have supported the ballet’s Reach program, which provides need-based dance scholarships to students who demonstrate potential for dance training. According to the Associated Press, dozens of arts organizations around the United States have received notifications that grants...

Elena Marsh/The (Southern Pines) Pilot Following weather-related damage last fall that significantly set back rebuilding efforts, the owners of Woodlake Country Club say construction work has now resumed on a new dam that will allow the development to refill its central water feature, Lake Surf. In an update sent last...

Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News In a move more than a half-century in the making, the Town of Canton has announced the pending purchase of a key parcel of land where it plans to construct a new, state-of-the-art flood-proof wastewater treatment plant — ending a long chapter of dependence on a...

Ben Jacobs/Politico President Donald Trump said he would explore backing a primary challenger to two-term Sen. Thom Tillis Saturday — just hours after the North Carolina Republican voted against advancing the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agena. Trump berated Tillis in mutiple Truth Social posts, saying he was making a “big...

Liz Bell/Education NC State lawmakers passed legislation this week to change child care regulations with a stated goal of expanding child care access by reducing costs for providers. The bill heads to the governor for his signature. “Most of these provisions allow for flexibilities and reforms that are aimed at...

Lucas Thomae/Carolina Public Press A recent federal policy brief on North Carolina’s past child welfare reform efforts didn’t mince words: “Children in North Carolina suffer the consequences of an inadequate child welfare system.” But a sweeping bill that Gov. Josh Stein signed Thursday after unanimous passage last week by the...