Parker Asmann & Henry Shuldiner/Insight Crime As a growing number of people fled their homes across Latin America and the Caribbean in 2024, migrant smuggling completed its transformation from a tertiary criminal economy to a major revenue stream for some of the region’s most powerful organized crime groups. This criminal...

Peter Castagno/Port City Daily A local brewery and its owner concluded a year-long defamation lawsuit triggered by a viral social media post after its author posted a public apology recanting her allegations. Two other women involved in the case expressed relief the suit has ended but are standing by their...

Jimmy Potts/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer The Town of Canton received a clean bill of financial health during its most recent audit, but it is far from out of the proverbial financial weeds due to a myriad of issues largely beyond its control. That was the word from Sheila Gahagan, a certified...

Paul B. Johnson/High Point Enterprise Piedmont Triad International Airport leaders hope that passenger counts in 2025 ascend to levels not seen since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. nearly five years ago. Airlines serving PTIA have steadily built up passenger yields since the pandemic throttled aviation traffic...

Hannah McLeod/Smoky Mountain News Jackson Community School — Jackson County’s alternative learning center — is the most expensive school in the district per pupil, and now the Board of Education is considering whether it should invest more money into the aging building or relocate the small student population into a...

Brooke Elliott/WCHL Chapelboro Stores across the state are running flash sales on puppies for the holiday season: Friendly Pets in Greensboro offered $200 off in late November, Petland Raleigh offered a 35 percent discount for Black Friday, and The Pet Warehouse in Jacksonville will send five lucky customers away with...

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...