Ted Clifford/Asheville Watchdog Following the sale of Asheville’s Mission Health system to HCA Healthcare in 2019, nurses and doctors left in large numbers, practices closed, regulators sanctioned the hospital multiple times, and the public has clamored for information. But lately, that information has been harder to get. Beginning earlier this...

Gareth McGrath/USA Today Network North Carolina’s love-hate relationship with hardened structures along the oceanfront is heating up. From the Outer Banks in the north to Ocean Isle Beach in the south, many portions of North Carolina’s 320 miles of oceanfront are dealing with erosion woes that are threatening homes, infrastructure...

Emily Sawaked/Port City Daily After months of public pushback over the city’s attempt at enacting an historic overlay district, as defined by its Historic Preservation Commission, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill preventing the city from having and creating an HPC and district. However, Southport found a workable...

Morgan Casey/Border Belt Independent  Viv Tolson Wayne rang the large dinner bell on her front porch along Britt Road in St. Pauls. The crowd on her front lawn hushed their conversations and turned toward the 75-year-old, who wore a red T-shirt and white cowboy hat. On that April day, Tolson...

Shaun Gallagher & Monica Casey/WRAL News Raleigh’s mayor and chief of police are both in support of a new curfew for teenagers after a weekend of violence and disorder during Fourth of July celebrations in the Glenwood South and Brier Creek areas. The hours of the proposed curfew would be...

Kyle Perrotti/Smoky Mountain News Following what appears to have been a successful ban on camping and fires on the popular Max Patch Bald in northern Haywood County, the U.S. Forest Service has extended the policy another three years. Overuse at Max Patch had been a growing issue beginning around 2010....

Katie Myers/BPR News Just before the July 4 weekend, President Donald Trump issued a presidential pardon to a Hendersonville mechanic who was convicted of violating the Clean Air Act in 2022. The pardon came alongside 10 others, most of whom were Clean Air Act violators around the country. Matthew Sidney...

Matthew Sockol/WNCN A lawsuit from the North Carolina Department of Justice alleging Meta harmed children will go to trial, state officials said. In 2023, North Carolina joined 29 other states in taking legal action against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, accusing the company of making its platforms addictive...

Kip Tabb/Outer Banks Voice Hoping to add stronger enforcement measures to a proposed ordinance regulating the sale of enhanced or synthetic Kratom products, the Dare County Commissioners, at their July 7 meeting, postponed action on that ordinance until Aug. 3. The original ordinance would have banned the sale of all...

Amy Diaz/WFDD Radio Randolph County Commissioners approved a slate of new members to serve on the public library board of trustees on Monday despite community pushback. Back in December, commissioners dismissed all of the trustees after they voted to keep a book about a transgender boy in the children’s section....

Rachel Keith/WHQR For the first time in 30 years, the Upperman family isn’t awarding any new scholarships at UNCW. Linda Upperman Smith said the way the university wanted to rewrite the language around the application wouldn’t have been in line with her father’s wishes. Born and raised in Wilmington, Linda...

Cory Vaillancourt/Asheville Citizen Times   North Carolina Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley helped write federal disaster recommendations that could push flood insurance business toward private companies, even as he and his family held as much as $190,000 in stock in private companies tied to the flood insurance market. President...

Mebane Rash/Education NC Public schools continued to serve more than 1.5 million students across North Carolina in the 2025-26 school year — or about 84% of market share, a percentage that is about the same as previous years. Market share is a term used to describe how many students are...

Ted Clifford/Asheville Watchdog  Beginning Tuesday, Mission Hospital will no longer require nurses to have a four-year Bachelor of Science Nursing degree or obtain one within five years of being hired. Instead, nurses will be required only to have a two-year Associate Degree in Nursing. “Our commitment to nursing excellence remains...

Kip Tabb/Coastal Review Online As the Manns Harbor Bridge over the Croatan Sound nears its 70th birthday, it’s getting what North Carolina Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Pablo Hernandez recently called “the first major renovation that I’m aware of in my 28-, almost 29-year career here in Dare County.” The...