News Stories
Emergency responders reportedly were on the scene of a multiple shooting incident at an apartment complex in Elizabeth City Wednesday evening.
Do-it-yourself home design expert Ashley Basnight, a 2013 graduate of Elizabeth City State University, will coach and mentor students competing in the second annual Viking Entrepreneurship Week that kicks off Monday at ECSU.
Registration is now underway for the 28th annual TarWheel Cycling event that will spin through Pasquotank and Perquimans counties Saturday, April 15.
The N.C. Court of Appeals has upheld a Superior Court judge's rejection of a petition by news media outlets seeking release of law enforcement camera recordings in the April 2021 shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr.
BARCO — Currituck commissioners discussed the need for a second fire and Emergency Medical Services facility in Moyock on Saturday, the final day of the board’s two-day retreat.
Local Events
The Mid-Atlantic Christian men’s basketball team earned a 76-74 comeback win over Regent at home Tuesday.
HERTFORD — It was an appropriate senior night for the Perquimans girls’ basketball team on Tuesday.
When hosting Super Bowl parties over the years, I very often put together a quiz for my guests.
Area swimmers competed at their respective NCHSAA east regional swim meet in Cary this past weekend.
BARCO — Friday night’s Northeastern Coastal Conference matchup between the Currituck and Pasquotank boys’ basketball teams came down to the final shot.
Area high school swimmers will be competing in NCHSAA east regional meets this weekend.
Opinion
In case you hadn’t noticed, North Carolina public schools, along with the children and teachers who inhabit them, are suffering mightily these days.
At the Feb. 1 funeral of her son, Tyre Nichols, RowVaughn Wells was a portrait of dignity and restraint, as she has been over the last several weeks. As she spoke, tears rolled down her cheeks and her voice broke, but she managed to convey purpose, insisting that Congress pass a federal police reform bill.
Democrats loudly complained when Republicans threw Rep. Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee. But they should have thanked them, at least quietly.
Imagine if the Republican Party rigged its presidential nominating calendar to help Donald Trump slide past states where he’s politically weak. Would that go down easily with the GOP or the press corps? That’s essentially what Democrats are doing to help President Biden — to little protest or even much media notice.
I was disappointed to hear that the dinner boat will not be coming to Hertford this year because our dock is not adequate.
The first Confederate statues were monuments to victory in a war of Southern aggression. Defeated at Appomattox, Southern whites regrouped by organizing terrorist militias and ransacking the region’s newly biracial local and state governments. As the North soured on Reconstruction and white Republicans finally abandoned the freed slaves, Southerners completed the “Redemption” of the old Confederacy with the imposition of a slavery-esque system of apartheid. Up went the statues to celebrate Dixie’s revenge.
Features
With Valentine's Day on the way, I thought about love songs, and especially great country love songs.
Genesis 8:22 reminds us that seedtime and harvest will never cease as long as the earth continues. Biblical society was agrarian, meaning people worked the land. Many of Jesus’ parables were agricultural in nature and sowing and reaping were topics understood by the Bible’s original audience.
After Jesus is run out of his hometown of Nazareth, He heads back to Capernaum. This is the town of His “bachelor pad” and where He will do more miracles than in any other place. Jesus comes into town in time to preach at the synagogue, and everyone is amazed at His great authority over the …
Jesus preached in His hometown after he had made a name for Himself in some surrounding cities. Jesus had become famous for His healing power.
“Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies.” — Proverbs 23:6
State AP Stories
Hundreds of thousands of students who have dropped off public school rolls since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are unaccounted for. An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found 240,000 students in 21 states who have gone missing from schools. They did not move out of state, and did not sign up for private school or home-school. Early in the pandemic, school staff went door-to-door to reengage kids, but most such efforts have ended. Dee says the data suggests a need to understand more about the children who aren’t in school and how that will affect their development.
A federal appeals court has sided again with North Carolina’s attorney general in a lawsuit involving a libel law that a district attorney sought to use to attempt to prosecute Josh Stein over a 2020 campaign commercial. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed on Wednesday with Stein and others associated with his political committee and said the 1931 law is most likely unconstitutional. Stein's campaign committee sued last summer because it was worried Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman’s office could soon seek indictments. The same panel granted a temporary injunction against Freeman in August. Stein is running for governor next year.
A bill increasing punishments for violent protests following the 2020 demonstrations over George Floyd’s murder passed the House despite harsh criticism from social justice advocates. Some bipartisan support for Wednesday's measure signals a potential override of any veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who issued one that blocked similar legislation two years ago. The bills have been spearheaded by Republican House Speaker Tim Moore. Wednesday's measure now goes to the Senate. Democrats who opposed the measure and representatives of advocacy groups said the changes were unnecessary or attempts to discourage minority and low-income residents from speaking out. Some amendments were approved to address concerns of Democratic lawmakers.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Senate has passed a bill requiring teachers to alert parents in most circumstances before calling a student by a different name or pronoun. Sponsors say the bill is needed to keep parents informed about what their children are being taught in public schools. Critics say it would make schools unsafe spaces for LGBTQ and questioning children to explore their identities. The proposal passed the Senate 29-18 on Tuesday. It would also prohibit instruction about gender identity and sexuality in K-4 classrooms. It now heads to the state House, where Republicans likely would need some Democratic support to push it through.
The daughter of a South Florida Lyft driver who went missing more than a week ago has confirmed that the man has died. Lindsay DiBetta posted on Facebook on Tuesday that the family would be announcing information on services for her father, 74-year-old Gary Levin, in the next few days. Levin went missing Jan. 30 after dropping off a customer north of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. His family reported him missing when he didn’t return home. Levin’s red 2022 Kia Stinger was spotted in Miami, Okeechobee and Gainesville, in north Florida last week. It was stopped Thursday night in North Carolina, and the driver is being held on $2 million bond.
Former longtime North Carolina state Sen. Jerry Tillman has died at age 82. A funeral home confirmed Monday that Tillman died Saturday at a Greensboro health facility from natural causes. The Randolph County Republican was a retired public schoolteacher, administrator and coach first elected to the Senate in 2002. He served as a Senate majority whip, education budget writer and finance committee co-chair after Republicans took over the Senate. Tillman often pressed for legislation that promoted school choice and tax relief. He retired in mid-2020. A funeral is set for later this month in Archdale.
Republican lawmakers are accusing China of deliberately surveilling sensitive U.S. military sites with a suspected spy balloon. And they say the Biden administration has given Beijing an intelligence opening by not downing the balloon during its high-altitude drift through American airspace. Democrats are defending Biden and they note that there were similar incursions while Donald Trump was president. A missile from an F-22 fighter jet downed the balloon on Saturday off the South Carolina coast. A U.S. official tells The Associated Press that those involved in the recovery of the balloon are planning to take it to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for further analysis.
Amid high egg prices, social media users are claiming that common chicken feed products are preventing their own hens from laying eggs. Some have gone a step further to suggest that feed producers intentionally made their products deficient to stop backyard egg production and force consumers to buy eggs at inflated prices. But experts say high egg prices are caused by bird flu and inflation. And while feed quality can affect egg production, there are more mundane explanations for backyard flock owners’ reported low egg yields, including environmental reasons like cold weather or insufficient light, rather than a broad conspiracy.
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National & World AP Stories
The death toll from the catastrophic earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria rose to more than 15,000 as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of collapsed homes in the stricken zone, Turkey’s disaster management agency. The agency said Thursday 12,391 people had been confirmed killed in Turkey after Monday’s early morning earthquake and series of aftershocks, which brought down thousands of buildings in southeastern Turkey. On the other side of the border in Syria, another 2,902 people have been reported to have been killed. Rescue workers continued to pull living people from the damaged homes but hope was starting to fade amid freezing temperatures more than three full days since the quake hit.
Hundreds of thousands of students who have dropped off public school rolls since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are unaccounted for. An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found 240,000 students in 21 states who have gone missing from schools. They did not move out of state, and did not sign up for private school or home-school. Early in the pandemic, school staff went door-to-door to reengage kids, but most such efforts have ended. Dee says the data suggests a need to understand more about the children who aren’t in school and how that will affect their development.
Police have charged a bus driver with first-degree murder after he drove his vehicle at a high speed into a day care center north of Montreal, killing two children, injuring six and leaving authorities searching for a motive.
Children are stuck in orphanages across Haiti, unable to leave the increasingly volatile country and start new lives with adoptive parents. The problem is a Washington policy change that is allowing some Haitians to more easily gain entry to the U.S. That has set off a rush for Haitian passports and Haiti's single passport office is overwhelmed. People with appointments for adopted children cannot squeeze through the aggressive crowd swarming outside the office or secure new appointments. Couples in the U.S. that have had adoptions approved worry their children will succumb to hunger, cholera or gang violence before they can get them out of Haiti, where conditions are deteriorating rapidly.
BANGKOK (AP) — Shares fell Thursday in Asia after Wall Street gave back some of its recent gains on persisting uncertainty over interest rates and inflation.
The fire chief in Ohio's small town of East Palestine says Wednesday that evacuated residents can safely return to the area where crews burned toxic chemicals after a train derailed five days ago near the Pennsylvania state line. Authorities in East Palestine had warned that burning vinyl chloride that was in five of the derailed tanker cars would send hydrogen chloride and the toxic gas phosgene into the air. They said Wednesday subsequent air monitoring hasn’t detected dangerous levels inside or outside the mile-radius evacuation zone, which stretched into Pennsylvania. Many nearby residents left shortly after the derailment, and others were ordered out before the controlled release of the chemicals because of concerns about serious health risks from it.
For years, the people of Aleppo bore the brunt of bombardment and fighting when their city, once Syria’s largest and most cosmopolitan, was among the civil war’s fiercest battle zones. Even that didn’t prepare them for the devastation and terror wreaked by this week’s earthquake. The natural disaster piled further suffering on Aleppo and Syria more broadly. Many also say that the earthquake has been more terrible than the war in its destruction and aftermath. In the words of Wissam Zarqa, an opposition supporter: “The destruction of natural disasters is all pain and nothing else but pain.”
With concerns about war, drought and the environment raising new worries about food supplies, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization has christened 2023 as the “Year of Millets” — grains that have been cultivated in all corners of the globe for millennia but have been largely pushed aside. Such grains are getting a new look at a time when drought swept across much of eastern Africa; war between Russia and Ukraine raised prices of foodstuffs and fertilizer from Europe’s breadbasket; worries rose about environmental fallout of cross-globe shipments of farm goods; and many chefs and consumers want diversify diets.
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