Charlie Fossen/Port City Daily Significant state legislation is poised to reshape North Carolina’s hemp industry, directly impacting businesses and consumers. North Carolina’s largely unregulated hemp market, characterized by a proliferation of psychoactive products and inconsistent quality control, is at a turning point as state lawmakers debate House Bill 328. The...

Chris Burritt/Business North Carolina Guilford College averted the potential loss of its academic accreditation after raising more than $5 million in unrestricted cash by June 30. Next, supporters of the 188-year-old private Quaker College in Greensboro will learn about long-term planning aimed at ending years of financial struggles. “We are...

Savanna Tenenoff/Wilmington StarNews With more residents moving in and debris and waste constantly being dumped, the Brunswick County Landfill is slowly maxing out. The county’s construction and demolition material landfill at 172 Landfill Road NE, Bolivia, is nearing capacity and the county is preparing for eventual closure of the facility,...

Brighton McConnell/WCHL Chapelboro A celebrated local recording studio is on the market, seeking new ownership who aims to maintain its status as a back-to-nature haven for artists. Manifold Recording off Seaforth Road in Chatham County is for sale, as owners Michael and Amy Tiemann are moving to New Zealand. The...

Symone Graham/Charlotte Business Journal Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) is preparing to close two branches in the Charlotte region as part of ongoing efforts to streamline its branch network. The San Francisco-based banking giant plans to close a location at 1018 Dallas-Cherryville Highway in Dallas, west of Charlotte. It...

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...