Scott D. Yost/Rhino Times Everyone knows the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, the residents in Summerfield are living in extremely interesting times and, now, after the Summerfield Town Council recently called for an investigation of the actions of former Town Manager Scott Whitaker and other...

Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press James Hardaway spent Election Night counting ballots in Wake County. With another poll worker standing behind him as a second pair of eyes, Hardaway physically checked each paper ballot, ensuring that the numbers matched those the precinct’s tabulators had been tracking all day and night. In...

Andrea Hsu/WUNC Radio When Jocelyn Samuels learned through an email late on the evening of Jan. 27 that she was being removed from her seat on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was shocked. She had heard rumblings that President Trump might try to oust commissioners of independent agencies,...

Stephanie Baker/New America Like so many parents in the United States, college students with kids are in dire need of child care options. Unlike those of us who aren’t in college, parenting students are grappling with the costs of tuition and fees on top of trying to find and pay...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio The Republican Party has long been against abortion. But in the last few years, some conservatives have supplemented that message with another: The country’s dropping fertility rate is a national crisis. A nation needs 2.1 births per woman to keep its population steady, assuming there’s no immigration....

Savanna Tenenoff/Wilmington StarNews As the Holden Beach Board of Commissioners continue to take action on big ticket projects, residents are voicing concern through a civil case against the town. A civil summons was filed against the town of Holden Beach on Jan. 30, 2025, by Lisa Ragland. The case requests...

David Malakoff/Science  In a Friday night move that quickly drew howls of protest from the U.S. biomedical research community, President Donald Trump’s administration today announced it is immediately reducing by at least half the so-called indirect cost payments that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) makes to universities, hospitals, and...

Travis Loller/The Associated Press  After 24 years of guiding whitewater trips on the Nolichucky River Gorge for other companies, Patrick Mannion finally received a permit last year to operate his own outfitter business. But following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, he doesn’t know if Osprey Whitewater will be around for...

Colin Campbell/WUNC Radio Midway, about 15 minutes south of Winston-Salem, wasn’t even a town for most of its history. The Davidson County community became a municipality in 2006 in an effort to avoid getting annexed into the nearby city. Local leaders didn’t want to pay higher city property taxes, and...

Chris Isidore/CNN  North Carolina is a state that is generally hostile to unions. Amazon is a company that is, historically, extremely hostile to unions. Now an upstart union is attempting to represent more than 4,000 Amazon workers at one of the online retailer’s facilities there. More than 100 workers on...

Hannah Vinueza McClellan/EducationNC During a year in which lawmakers are saying there may not be funding for raises, the State Health Plan’s Board of Trustees took the first step on Friday to set premiums for active members based on a salary scale. Increases in premiums are likely for all educators,...

Shea Carver/Port City Daily While progress has been made to the workforce housing market in Wilmington in recent years, there is still more to do. That was the message from Tom Gale, the chair of the city and county Workforce Housing Advisory Committee — a six-member board founded in 2019....

April Laissle/WFDD Radio Forsyth County homeowners received notices in the mail this week about big increases in their property valuations. But officials say the changes may not translate to significantly higher tax bills. Nearly all Forsyth County properties have increased in appraised value since the last assessment in 2021. On...

Paul Nielsen/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Maggie Valley aldermen are perplexed by N.C. House Rep. Mark Pless’ request to speak at the next town board meeting — lamenting what they describe as Pless’ refusal to communicate with the mayor and most of the board for the past two years. Alderman John Hinton...

Chandler Inions/The Salisbury Post     Local Government Commission (LGC) members voted to approve a financing requests from Kannapolis to obtain N.C. Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) repayable loans to conduct lead service line inspections and inventories. The surveys are required under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and DEQ regulations. The intent of...