Will Doran/WRAL News A former Greensboro-area adult video store employee, who was sued alongside CNN for defamation by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, asked a Wake County judge on Wednesday to throw out the complaint. The lawsuit might be seen less as a legal argument, and more “for the very purpose...

Peter Castagno/Port City Daily The Department of Environmental Quality enacted temporary rules to guide the remediation of PFAS groundwater contamination for eight substances this week. The Department of Environmental Quality implemented Interim Maximum Allowable Concentrations Tuesday after receiving a public request from a Greensboro firefighter in July. At least a...

Christopher Miller/The Independent Tribune In an explosive moment during Monday’s Cabarrus County Board of Education meeting, a county commissioner called out a school board member for not being forthright with the public. Commissioner Kenny Wortman singled out Laura Blackwell Lindsey, who is running for a seat on the county commission,...

Rusty Jacobs/WUNC Radio On Thursday, Sept. 26, John Noce was in Graham County, just above Cherokee, on the southwestern tip of North Carolina, the part that pokes into Tennessee. Noce had been helping the county’s small local elections office prepare for the start of in-person, early voting, which was just...

Zachery Eanes/Axios Raleigh For nearly 100 years, the Durham Athletic Park, the well-known setting of the movie “Bull Durham,” has been a dominant fixture in downtown Durham. It was for years home of the Durham Bulls and N.C. Central’s baseball team. But with the Bulls no longer using the stadium...

Hannah Vinueza McClellan/Education NC The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced on Tuesday, Oct. 15, the launch of the second stage of testing (Beta 2) for the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) — which is set to launch for all students and families by Dec. 1. The...

Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline As North Carolina rebuilds from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, the loss of $70 million in FEMA funds — $18 million of which would have helped western North Carolina to prepare for floods — may come back to haunt the state. The shortfall can in part be...

Marshall Terry/WFAE Radio Former President Donald Trump has accused Gov. Roy Cooper of blocking aid to victims of Helene in western North Carolina on his Truth Social site. Last week, Trump wrote, “It has just come out, the Democrats in Washington and the Democrat governor’s office of North Carolina were...

Hannah McLeod/Smoky Mountain News Anyone on the internet knows that it can be a place of negativity and division. But it’s also a powerful tool for connection, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Crystal Cochran harnessed that connection to build a community of volunteers that provided vital assistance to...

Emily Antoszyk/Education NC Welcome back to Consider It Mapped, where we mark our sixth installment of mapping school performance grades in North Carolina. As I sit down to reflect on the latest mapping, I am struck by how little has changed since we started investigating the data in 2014-15. We’ll...

Andrea Hsu & Miguel Macias/WUNC Radio The Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program has run out of money, it announced on Tuesday, after warnings that funding would soon run out following increased demand from hurricanes Helene and Milton. The SBA added that the pause of disaster assistance loans it offers...

Rylee Wilson/Becker’s Hospital Review UnitedHealth Group is seeing “unusually aggressive and high unit cost asks” from hospitals, CEO Andrew Witty said. On an Oct. 15 call with investors, Mr. Witty said UnitedHealth wants to find a “new way of working with hospitals.” “We want to see less abrasion in the...

Emily Walkenhorst/WRAL News Recent comments online about a Martin Middle School teacher are distractions and offensive, Wake school board and community members said Tuesday night. Online comments and Moms for Liberty — a group that describes its mission as securing “parental rights” — have targeted the teacher, who wore a...

Vicki Hyatt & Kathy N. Ross/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer From Cruso and the West Fork to Jonathan Creek and lower Crabtree, Hurricane Helene’s fury has claimed not only harvests but land. She has swept away row crops, cattle, feed and barns, and she has stripped soil from the creek and river...

Brenna Flanagan/Port City Daily Rumors swirling in the wake of recent hurricanes, some of which have led to threats toward meteorologists and disaster relief workers in western North Carolina, have also been picked up by a local candidate. Republican Natosha Tew has reposted a tweet from United States Rep. Marjorie...