Peter Castagno/Port City Daily A Novant executive is the incoming chair of a powerful hospital lobby group seeking to maintain a law requiring state review to approve new healthcare facilities. An ongoing lawsuit is challenging the regulation’s constitutionality. North Carolina is among 35 states with a certificate of need law...

James Doubek/WUNC Radio Of all the products that would be affected by President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on Mexico, avocados stand out: 90% of avocados consumed in the U.S. are imported. And almost all of those imports come from Mexico. Trump has said he plans to impose a blanket tariff...

David Ford/WFAE Radio A scenic section of Pilot Mountain State Park, long closed due to access issues, is slated to reopen to the public next year. Beyond the iconic geologic knob of Pilot Mountain sits nearby Bean Shoals, which provides access to the Yadkin River —But there are challenges getting...

Rebecca Santana & Travis Loller/The Associated Press Congress is allocating more than $100 billion in emergency aid designed to address extensive damage caused by disasters after this week’s scramble to find consensus on a government spending bill. The money comes after back-to-back hurricanes — Helene and Milton — slammed into...

Mari Yamaguchi & Elaine Kurtenbach/The Associated Press Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan have announced plans to work toward a merger that would form the world’s third-largest automaker by sales, as the industry undergoes dramatic changes in its transition away from fossil fuels. The two companies said they had signed a...

Taylor Knopf/NC Health News A new kind of mental health service is available in Wake County, and it offers a voluntary alternative to hospitalization for people experiencing mental distress. It’s called a peer-run respite house; it’s the first of its kind in the Triangle area and only the third to...

Vicki Hyatt/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer As Canton residents face increasing water outages thanks to an aging system, their town board has cleared some official hurdles to make sure grant money is in place to both improve that system and plan future wastewater treatment. In recent years, Canton residents have been plagued...

Amy Diaz/WFDD Radio Forsyth County’s newly elected Soil and Water District Supervisor Edward Jones is a registered sex offender, with an address listed in another county. According to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation’s Sex Offender Registry, Jones was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old in 2001, when he...

Rodney Overton/CBS 17 News Several juveniles are at WakeMed hospital in Raleigh Sunday night for possible injuries after a melee involving nearly two dozen young people at an inpatient and outpatient psychiatric and addictive disease hospital, Raleigh police said. The large fight broke out just after 6:45 p.m. Sunday at...

Eve Goldman/Niner Times UNC Charlotte’s Air Institute’s first-of-a-kind partnership with the Charlotte Douglas International Airport aims to transform the aviation industry by using the airport as a “living lab” to advance research, workforce development and community engagement. With additional support from the city of Charlotte, community organizations and industry partners,...

Becky Johnson/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer A new chunk of Interstate 40 crumbled into the Pigeon River this week, dealing a blow to the anticipated reopening of one lane in each direction in January on the Haywood County route to Tennessee. Heavy rains last week, coupled with the freeze-thaw cycle, destabilized the...

Sarah Honosky/Asheville Citizen Times Like many in line at a North Asheville church that afternoon, Misty Marshall had an eviction notice. She said the process was due to begin that morning, but she called her apartment complex to ask for a few more hours of leniency. “This is my last...

Daniel Sheehan/Wilmington StarNews A proposed bridge has residents across several counties talking. In October, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) asked for comments from the public regarding plans for the replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. The department shared three alternatives of varying heights and designs. Alternate A...

Axios Many in the meatpacking industry were happy to see Donald Trump reelected — but are also fearful it won’t be able to operate without the workers he may try to deport. Why it matters: Meatpacking, more than almost any other industry in this country, relies on foreign-born labor, whether...

Brianna Atkinson/WUNC Radio The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is dismissing all remaining criminal cases against protesters who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus last spring. The decision came a day before some trials were set to begin. In April, hundreds of protesters held a pro-Palestinian encampment at UNC....