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...

Brighton McConnell/WCHL Chapelboro Johnny Mariakakis keeps a binder filled with newspaper clippings and photos of floods around the line of businesses at his Mariakakis Plaza. Having been at Eastgate facing 15-501 for decades, he’s seen plenty of floods — but never anything like last July’s Tropical Storm Chantal. He said...

Moss Brennan/Watauga Democrat Watauga County is No. 1 in the state for AI usage, according to a report by Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute, with an estimated 47.2% of working-age residents using the technology — more than double the average for similar-sized North Carolina communities. The 2026 U.S. AI Diffusion report...

Paul B. Johnson/The High Point Enterprise The state budget passed late last week by the N.C. General Assembly includes $4.5 million for the High Point Market, continuing a string of state appropriations for the home furnishings trade show dating back 20 years. The $34 billion state spending plan includes money...

Kelly Kenoyer/WHQR North Carolina’s proposed budget is stripping NC Legal Aid and other civil defense organizations of a significant financial resource. The funding comes from NC IOLTA, or Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts. Basically, any time an attorney holds money for a client, the interest is put into a shared...

Emily Sawaked/Port City Daily Oak Island’s planning board denied a proposal to rezone the town-owned Yaupon Fishing Pier and adjacent oceanfront event space, a move staff said would provide flexibility for future redevelopment of the properties. While board members supported updating the town’s development ordinance to recognize event spaces and...

Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio Even as Charlotte pushes back on new toll lanes for Interstate 77 South, the state is considering adding more express lanes to the north. The N.C. Department of Transportation said it’s in talks with toll lane operator Cintra to add another toll lane through north Mecklenburg and...

Ahmed Jallow/NC Newsline As North Carolina expands the number of statewide remote charter schools, lawmakers are proposing to change how those schools receive state funding. A provision in the proposed state budget would replace a funding method based on the school district where a statewide remote charter school’s administrative office...

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,...

Alex Littlehales/WRAL News The technology company delivering and operating Raleigh’s first automated parking garage is in “advanced” talks to find and build similar garages specifically for driverless cars in other cities, as redevelopment is currently underway on a prime plot of real estate downtown. “We have an equity group actively...

Abraham Kenmore/CityView Later this year, workers should start to demolish many of the permanent exhibits at the U.S. Army Airborne & Special Operations Museum (ASOM)—the first part of a two-phase project to totally revamp one of the U.S. Army’s most public-facing museums and one of Fayetteville’s top tourist destinations. The...