Joe Bruno/WSOC News A partner who worked with former Carolina Panthers linebacker Shaq Thompson is accused of embezzling more than half a million dollars from Thompson’s business, Channel 9 confirmed on Tuesday. Shaquille Dixon is facing a lawsuit in Mecklenburg County for embezzling more than $500,000 from a company. This...

Mebane Rash/EducationNC Education Week recently released its Teacher Morale Index, which helps us understand how teachers in North Carolina and across the United States feel about their profession. What matters to our teachers? Pay, of course, but also acknowledgment of hard work and successes, more school counselors and support for...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press Rural hospitals could be putting pregnant women and babies at risk by slashing labor and delivery services across North Carolina. Natasha Fuller delivered her two children at Charles A. Cannon Memorial Hospital in remote and mountainous Avery County in 2011 and 2014. Now, she works...

Rose Hoban/NC Health News After tens of millions of dollars and nearly a decade of false starts, the state Department of Health and Human Services is finally poised to roll out caseload software designed to assess and track children monitored by the state’s child welfare system. The April rollout will...

Scott D. Yost/Rhino Times Former Summerfield Town Manager Scott Whitaker and former Finance Director Dee Hall have lawyered up and appear ready to take legal action in response to what they claim are false allegations made against them by former North Carolina State Auditor Beth Wood and some members of...

Trista Talton/Coastal Review Online A proposed rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements for PFAS dischargers in the state was crafted largely from input provided by a utility association. A draft of the rule was discussed last week in a meeting of the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality...

Sharryse Piggott/WUNC Radio The State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services received a letter from the United States Department of Agriculture earlier this month stating it will no longer receive funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. The nonprofit Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina is one...

Arthur Allen/KFF Health News National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research. The mRNA technology is under study at the...

Kathy N. Ross/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer  Maggie Valley aldermen have launched a response to N.C. House Rep. Mark Pless and his proposal to de-annex eight parcels of land from town limits, passing a resolution that called the bill a threat to local control. It was a 4-1 decision, with Pless’ perceived...

John Staton/Wilmington StarNews For decades, Southeastern North Carolina was known for its laid-back, sparsely populated beach towns, their sandy landscapes dotted by low-slung beach cottages with plenty of room between them. Of course, the above description of Wilmington-area beach towns hasn’t been true for many years now. Beach populations swelled...

Sarah Honosky/Asheville Citizen Times UNC Asheville Millennial Campus properties, a designation that includes 45 acres of wooded land on its south campus, will be developed, Chancellor Kimberly van Noort said in a March 7 letter to faculty and staff. Possibilities include affordable workforce and student housing, research industry collaborations and...

WFDD News Wall Street is panic-selling over President Trump’s chaotic new tariffs. Business executives are reportedly making frantic calls to the White House. And on Tuesday, the country’s top CEOs crowded into a closed-door meeting with Trump — setting a record for attendance. Yet in public, corporate America’s leaders are...

Peter Castagno/Port City Daily A federal agency is evaluating Castle Hayne firefighter health concerns after a local fire captain and the International Association of Fire Fighters alleged the county failed to address toxic hazards at a local station. Assistant county manager Lisa Wurtzbacher sent commissioners an email on Monday, March...

Jack Igelman/Carolina Public Press Dozens of wildfires are burning across the state following a stretch of unseasonably warm weather, high winds and low humidity. And just like in years past, the majority of blazes can be traced to be one source: people. Between Feb. 24 and March 3, the North...

Will Thomas/WTKR News Nearly 400 birds — mostly brown pelicans — were found dead from suspected highly pathogenic avian influenza, a strain of bird flu, in Hatteras, N.C. in late February, Miranda Turner the state wildlife biologist for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission confirmed to WTKR News 3 Friday....