Will Atwater/NC Health News People who have been struggling to clean up decades of industrial pollution in the lower Cape Fear River basin are expressing their dismay and anger at a federal delay announced Wednesday on a crackdown on so-called forever chemicals that have fouled their drinking water. That day,...

Liz Bell/EducationNC In the last 18 years, Wilkes County has lost 56 child care programs, 67% of its child care capacity. This year, thanks to a scrappy community effort, local leaders saved the county from losing another. Sharon Phillips and her daughter Katy Hinson, owners of PlayWorks Early Care and...

Max Tendler/WUNC Radio Some 148 acres of multi-use trails in Wake County’s most popular park close permanently June 1 to make way for an entertainment development from the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority. Trail users are devastated. “When I heard that they were closing, I was very upset, very sad,” said Tres...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press  This summer, 5 million tourists will descend on 200 miles of remote North Carolina coastline. The Outer Banks are idyllic — and popular. But for both those visitors and the area’s 38,000 year-round residents, the vacation paradise has one serious problem: health care access. Dare...

Claire Cranford, Ana Despa & Ishita Vaid/The (Duke) Chronicle Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) sent a letter to President Vincent Price May 14 requesting Duke formally end its joint venture with Wuhan University — Duke Kunshan University. The Chronicle has reviewed several of the claims made...

Jonathan Bym/The (Southern Pines) Pilot Paul Ross was tired of his weekly cross-country commute for work, so he’s moving his gun manufacturing company closer to where he lives. Ross, who lives in Moore County and runs his Carthage Cattle Co. with his wife, also is president of OA Defense, which...

Brianna Atkinson/WUNC Radio The North Carolina Senate’s proposal for the upcoming biennial state budget includes more than $180 million in cuts to the state’s public universities. The reductions could impact several higher education initiatives, ranging from tuition and academic centers to scholarship programs. One proposal, a $9.5 million cut to...

Brenna Flanagan/Port City Daily The focus of conversation surrounding the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge has largely taken place on the Wilmington side of the platform, though it shifted west earlier this week as Leland Town Council received an update on progress. Trevor Carroll, North Carolina Department of Transportation Division 3...

Rebecca Pifer/Healthcare Dive There’s still significant support in Congress for overhauling the pharmacy benefit manager industry, after reforms almost made it across the finish line late last year but died at the 11th hour, lawmakers said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. “Americans are fed up… they’re eager...

Mark Hibbs/Coastal Review Online The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, speaking Wednesday during a Senate budget hearing in Washington, D.C., dismissed reports that the agency was weakening standards on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called “forever chemicals.” During questioning by the chair and ranking member, respectively, Sens. Lisa Murkowski,...

Colin Campbell/WUNC Radio While the legal battle over last year’s N.C. Supreme Court election is now settled, it’s not the last unresolved election contest remaining in North Carolina. A legal dispute over the 2023 election for mayor of the Robeson County town of Pembroke is still dragging on, heading now...

Brian Murphy & Shaun Gallagher/WRAL News Nina King spent the second half of Duke University’s most important men’s basketball game of the season huddled in the Alamodome concourse. As the top-ranked Blue Devils tried to hold off Houston for a spot in the NCAA Tournament national title game, King —...

Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News  On May 2, 2024, a brief, awkward moment inside a women’s restroom at Western Carolina University was recorded, uploaded to social media and sparked a flashpoint in America’s ongoing culture wars. At the center of the encounter was Payton McNabb, a former high school athlete and...

John Boyle/Asheville Watchdog While you might not be wowed by the frequent flotillas of brightly colored tubes drifting down the French Broad River this summer, the river will be plenty busy with recreational users. Tropical Storm Helene’s raging flood waters did a number on the river, and particularly on its...

Brighton McConnell/WCHL Chapelboro Horace Johnson, a longtime elected official who became the first Black mayor of the Town of Hillsborough, died Thursday. He was 95 years old, having celebrated his birthday just days before. The town government shared the news of the six-term mayor’s death Friday night in a release....