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Law and the Courts News Top Story

Lawmakers mull letting cities, counties post public notices online, rather than in newspapers

The oft-debated subject pits the decline of local newspapers against the public’s access to information. The fourth generation of his family to publish a newspaper, Lockwood Phillips has a reporter's sensibility for offhandedly recalling moments when journalism served its local community.

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Education Top Story

GOP bill to limit topics of discussion in public schools wins state House approval

Parents, Democratic lawmakers decry censorship and "chilling effect on education" A controversial bill that would restrict how the state’s public school teachers discuss race, gender and sexuality was approved by the state House by a 68-49 party line vote on Wednesday, and is now headed to the state Senate.

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Law and the Courts News Top Story

‘Kayla’s Law’ domestic violence bill clears committee with bipartisan vote

The proposal would allow survivors of domestic violence to testify remotely against their alleged abusers and increase the statute of limitations for prosecution of misdemeanor domestic violence. Kayla Hammonds was afraid to go to court. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing her ex-boyfriend in the courtroom alone, so she’d bring her sister for moral support.

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Environment Top Story

Key questions unanswered as Smithfield Foods unveils new plan to capture hog farm methane

Giant pork producer asks Northamption County officials to sign off on proposal that would transport gas to Virginia, but declines to disclose key details Smithfield Foods and its affiliate Cardinal Bio-Energy plan to build two large swine gas projects in Northampton County and inject the gas into the Transco Pipeline, which will carry it out of the state and into Virginia.

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News Policy Watch Investigates Top Story

‘Beyond anything that most of us could have imagined’: Health officials, lawmakers tackle youth mental health crisis

Marcella Middleton grew up in foster care in Colorado and North Carolina and was taken to therapists and put on medications at a young age. “A lot of people who really weren’t experienced were trying to diagnose me,” she told a town hall on the youth mental health crisis in Winston-Salem last week.

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Health News Top Story

Monday numbers: The youth mental health crisis

Last week, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services held its eighth in a series of state-wide town halls on mental health. Held in Winston-Salem, the discussion focused on the crisis in youth mental health apparent in North Carolina and across the nation.

“Behavioral health is essential to health,” DHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley told the standing-room-only crowd in the Forsyth County Board Commissioners chamber Thursday. “For far too long we have divided up physical and behavioral health. And for far too long we just didn’t fund and support behavioral health in a way that made it foundational. And we’re changing that - one conversation at a time, one strategy at a time.”

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Education Top Story

State House committee advances latest version of anti-Critical Race Theory legislation

Republicans defend bill as promoting equality, while Democrats forecast chilling impact on honest classroom discussions Rep. Ken Fontenot, a Wilson County Republican, vigorously defended House Bill 187 this week, contending that the bill restricting how educators teach about race, gender and sexuality, would prevent educators from teaching racially divisive doctrines.

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Electric transmission lines
Environment News Top Story

The nation’s biggest electric capacity market needs fixing, critics say

The nation’s largest grid operator is warning that it might not have enough electric generation in the future to guarantee reliability.  And it comes as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission convenes a forum on the multibillion-dollar capacity market PJM operates to ensure there’s enough power to meet demand even during grid emergencies, such as during Winter Storm Elliott last year.

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Law and the Courts News Top Story

Déjà vu: NC Supreme Court rehears arguments in voter ID case 

For the second time in two days, the Republican-majority high court rehears arguments in a case decided by a Democratic majority just months ago The North Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether a voter ID law passed in 2018 was intended to discriminate against prospective voters of color.

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Law and the Courts News Top Story

State Supreme Court revisits redistricting rulings it issued in just months ago

A Democratic court majority struck down maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, but a new GOP majority has been asked to do an about-face. State Republican legislators Tuesday brought their argument that courts cannot bar partisan redistricting to a friendlier state Supreme Court than the one that ruled against them last year. 

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Higher Ed Top Story

‘Good, serious ideas’: Commission on university governance talks transparency, amplifying student voices

Should students and faculty have more prominent voices on boards of trustees at UNC System schools? Should the system’s board of governors elect members geographically, be more transparent and open to public input? And will any of these suggestions matter to a Republican dominated legislature resistant to such changes? These were a few of the questions members of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina tackled in its third public listening session on Monday. The session, held at the Charlotte Area Chamber of Commerce, drew a sparse but vocal crowd – typical of the listening sessions held so far.

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Health News Policy Watch Investigates Top Story

North Carolina’s maternal mortality rate increased sharply during the pandemic, according to newly released data 

CDC information shows that maternal mortality in North Carolina for women within 42 days of giving birth increased from a rate of 22 per 100,000 births in 2019, to 29 per 100,000 in 2020, and to 44 per 100,000 births in 2021, according to data released by the investigative news organization MuckRock. “It’s a huge jump, especially in such a short period of time,” said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, a Duke University researcher who studies health equity. Black women continued to be more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.

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Law and the Courts News Top Story

Monday numbers: Nearly 19,000 children in NC have a parent who’s imprisoned

Data obtained through a records request illustrates how many parents are in North Carolina prisons — and how many kids have parents behind ...
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Education News Top Story

Lawmakers are making more school boards partisan, and getting more Republicans elected

One local bill at a time, state lawmakers have nearly tripled the number of partisan school boards across the state over the last decade — often over the objections of school board members themselves.  It’s a move some board members say is turning their school system from a hyperlocal, traditionally apolitical governing board into a contentious microcosm of national political debates.

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Congress News Top Story

Powell signals higher interest rates. Here’s why Friday’s jobs report will affect Fed’s decision.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said this week that interest rate increases could be higher and come faster if Friday’s unemployment data shows the nation’s labor market isn’t cooling off. Stock indexes fell after his comments.

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Congress COVID-19 News Top Story

Lawmakers hear theories on COVID-19 origins in U.S. House hearing

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans mostly agreed Wednesday that scientists and the intelligence community should fully investigate the origins of COVID-19 without political interference over whether the virus emerged from nature or through a lab leak.

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