'We're out of control': Surrendered pets overcrowding shelter

Pulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants that auction officials describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for $114,000. The white, heavy-duty miner’s pants with a five-button-fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artifacts that sold for a total of nearly $1 million at an auction in Reno last weekend. There’s disagreement about whether the pants have any ties to the father of modern-day blue jeans. Officials for Levi Strauss & Co. say any claims about their origin is speculation because they predate the first jeans the San Francisco-based company officially manufactured in 1873.

North Carolina drag performers and LGBTQ community members fear for their safety after an attack on the electrical grid in Moore County left tens of thousands without power for several days. Authorities have said two power substations were shot up by one or more people with apparent criminal intent Saturday evening. The attack cut power to a drag show happening simultaneously in Southern Pines that had been the target of protests. While police have not drawn a connection between the drag event and the outages, the incident intensified concerns in the local LGBTQ community.

Authorities in North Carolina are seeking search warrants related to the shooting of electric substations in Moore County that caused widespread power outages. FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch confirmed Thursday that the agency is seeking cell phone records that could indicate who was near the substations Saturday night. She said such search warrant applications “are a normal step in a law enforcement investigation.” Richard Maness, chief deputy of the Moore County Sheriff’s Office, told The News & Observer that detectives have requested court approval for several warrants. He declined to provide specifics. The shootings had cut power to 45,000 customers as well as schools and a hospital.

One of the world's most ruthless pirates hid in plain sight in the American colonies, according to new evidence. A historian and metal detectorist in Rhode Island says that he’s unearthed 26 silver coins with Arabic inscriptions that notorious English pirate Henry Every once seized from an armed Indian ship. The 1695 heist made Every the target of the first worldwide manhunt. Detectorists say that before he fled to the Bahamas and then vanished, Every first hid out in New England.

Duke Energy says it has completed repairs on substation equipment damaged in shootings over the weekend and restored power thousands of customers who lost electricity in a central North Carolina county.  All but a handful of households in Moore County had regained power as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, according to Duke Energy’s outage map. A peak of more than 45,000 customers lost power over the weekend. Authorities have said the outages began shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday night after one or more people drove up to two substations, breached the gates and opened fire on them. Police have not released a motive.

Populations of a vulnerable species of marine mammal, numerous species of abalone and a type of Caribbean coral are now threatened with extinction, an international conservation organization said Friday.

The impacts of climate change hit communities across the country, yet voters in rural areas are the least likely to feel Washington is in their corner on the issue. Rural Americans and experts suggest there’s a disconnect between the way leaders talk about climate change and the way these communities experience it. AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the 2022 midterm electorate, shows clear differences between urban and rural communities in voter sentiment on President Joe Biden’s handling of climate. Around 6 in 10 urban voters approve, but the figure drops to roughly 4 in 10 for rural voters.

Kari Lake, the Republican defeated in Arizona governor’s race, is formally challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs. She's asking a court to throw out certified results from the state’s most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor’s election in that county. Her lawsuit centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on Election Day in Maricopa County.  It alleged hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there’s no evidence that it's true. Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.