Two women convicted in federal court of fraud while working at the Chatham County Housing Authority continue to hold key positions at a locally and federally funded nonprofit that helps low-income residents. Central Piedmont Community Action Inc., based in Siler City, assists people in Chatham, Durham, Orange and other counties...

The fight over whether Republicans keep their supermajority in the General Assembly will come down to just a handful of legislative districts. There are 120 seats in the House. Almost all are preordained in terms of who will win. The GOP has 72 of them — the minimum number needed...

Flicking heads off shrimp is one of the first jobs you learn when you’re born a Davis. Joseph “Jody” Davis remembers filling up a bucket of beheaded shrimp for his grandmother for a quarter when he was just 4 years old. “It wasn’t bad money in the ’70s,” he said,...

LaChunda Hunter was sitting at her dining room table one February morning when her phone rang. It was the hospital. The doctor on the phone told Hunter that things were looking up for Legacy, the tiny, premature girl Hunter had delivered at Novant Presbyterian nine days earlier. Hunter said she...

Dollar General is backing away from the self-checkout trend in retail. The company is pulling out self-checkout stands in 300 stores that have the highest levels of shoplifting and merchandise losses. In 9,000 other stores, Dollar General is converting some or all of its self-checkout registers to regular checkout with...

People in North Carolina may have a little more riding on this year’s NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, as they will be able to legally bet on the games through their smartphone apps and computers for the first time. For the sixth straight year, the number of states allowing...

When Donald Trump appeared in Richmond the weekend before Virginia’s presidential primary, he vowed that if he’s returned to the White House, “we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” This is not new; he’s said this before. Still, this is a serious policy vow, and one...

About 30 people gathered at Navassa’s Town Hall last week, and another 18 tuned in virtually, to hear representatives from Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust make a long-awaited announcement: Cleanup of the town’s Superfund site was underway. The focus of the remediation project is a 100-acre area, the former location of...

The federal government has placed restrictive uses on the city-owned parcel, shown here in the purple-shaded area, because of its proximity to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point. Map: Brunswick County GIS The federal government has placed restrictive uses on the city-owned parcel, shown here in the purple-shaded area, because of...

As a coastal community, Wilmington’s skyline has traditionally been pretty flat. Increasingly, though, developers want to build taller and taller buildings. First, locals saw the rise of the 193-foot PPD headquarters downtown (now owned by the city and known as the Skyline Center), and then came the 13-story River Place,...

Last autumn, Brandon Tarbert — who often visits Asheville for work — stopped in a farmer’s market in his home of New Jersey, to peruse the assortment of local cheese at a vendor’s booth. He made his selection and prepared to pay the marked price for the cheese but was...

The Republican nominee for superintendent overseeing North Carolina’s public schools and its $11 billion budget has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats. Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who last week upset the incumbent Superintendent...

North Carolina’s elected labor commissioner has declined to adopt rules sought by worker and civil rights groups that would have set safety and masking directives in workplaces for future infectious disease outbreaks like with COVID-19. Commissioner Josh Dobson, a Republican, announced Wednesday that his refusal came “after carefully reviewing the...

A state lawmaker who appears to have lost last week’s primary has filed protests of the election results. The latest vote tally for a state House race in the Roanoke Rapids area shows that Rep. Michael Wray, D-Northampton, is behind by just 36 votes. If those results don’t change, social...

Asheville’s Mission Hospital has violated the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told the hospital’s CEO on Thursday, again threatening to withdraw the system’s federal funding, according to a letter obtained by Asheville Watchdog. EMTALA ensures public access to emergency services...