News Stories
A shortage of foster care providers in Pasquotank County is forcing the agency to place some children in faraway counties and even in neighboring states.
Elizabeth City’s ministry for the homeless will soon have a new permanent home of its own.
The dinner boat that Harbor Towns, Inc. plans to begin operating on area waterways later this spring won’t just be an entertainment vessel.
It is projected that by the year 2040 the world will need 75% to 100% more food to feed its population, says Zane Hedgecock.
CURRITUCK — Currituck officials have issued a boil water advisory for parts of the Sligo area following a leak to a water distribution line earlier today.
Local Events
The Northeastern girls’ basketball team kept their undefeated season rolling on Friday night at home.
HAVELOCK — Area high school wrestlers competed at the NCHSAA Women’s East Regional invitational at Havelock High School on Thursday.
The Elizabeth City State women’s basketball team fell behind early Thursday after a cold start in their home game against Virginia Union and after briefly tying it in the second quarter, they once again needed to find another gear.
Two area high school wrestling teams will be competing in this year’s NCHSAA dual team state playoffs.
There are a few things this week worth mentioning, none more so than Jeff Charles having broadcast his 1,000th ECU basketball game the other day.
The Northeastern boys’ basketball team escaped with a narrow 51-45 home win over John A. Holmes on Tuesday night.
Opinion
Your headline from a October 2021 news article sums up the city of Elizabeth City’s speed hump fiasco: “Council halts speed bump project authorized without their OK.”
During the middle of the 14th century people who believed they had displeased God beat themselves with sticks as penance for bringing on the bubonic plague.
The N.C. Local Government Commission revoked the charter of of the town of East Laurinburg. This effectively dissolved the town’s government because it had been unable to maintain adequate accounting controls, and the town had become financially insolvent. Scotland County was forced to assum…
Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a justice of the Supreme Court more than four years ago, on Oct. 6, 2018. His oath followed perhaps the ugliest Supreme Court Senate confirmation process in history — and that, given the previous examples of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, is saying something. But when it was all over, Kavanaugh settled in to the court, where he has, by all accounts, performed admirably ever since.
Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) quickly became a global punchline when his multiple, contradictory misrepresentations of his background were revealed after he was elected in November. But there’s nothing funny about Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s refusal to call on Santos to resign, as a few other Republicans have.
North Carolina faces many challenges. You and I may disagree with how to rank those challenges, or what to do about them, but we share a belief that our state could be in a better place than it is today.
Features
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus reminds us to store up treasure in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal. Matthew 6:19-21 reminds us that where you keep your treasure, there also will be the desires of your heart.
Jesus was tempted in all the ways that we are. The writer of Hebrews says that this is why we can know that we have a sympathetic High Priest. Not only will He serve us as priests do, but He understands our plight now.
So you may have seen or heard that country star Chris Stapleton will be singing the national anthem at Super Bowl LVII.
Museum of the Albemarle, Elizabeth City State University, and the Pasquotank County Library have been hard at work planning a number of educational events for Black History Month 2023.
Tiana Cortazzo likes to stay busy. Which is good, because she stays pretty busy.
State AP Stories
As mass shootings are again drawing public attention, states across the U.S. seem to be deepening their political divide on gun policies. A series of recent mass shootings in California come after a third straight year in which U.S. states recorded more than 600 mass shootings involving at least four deaths or injuries. Democratic-led states that already have restrictive gun laws have responded to home-state tragedies by enacting or proposing even more limits on guns. Many states with Republican-led legislatures appear unlikely to adopt any new gun policies after last year's local mass shootings. They're pinning the problem on violent individuals, not their weapons.
The families of five passengers killed in a plane crash off the North Carolina coast have settled wrongful death lawsuits for $15 million. Their attorneys told the court the companies that owned the plane and employed the pilot paid the money. The suits claimed the pilot failed to properly fly the single-engine plane in weather conditions with limited visibility. All eight people aboard died off the Outer Banks. The passengers included four teenagers and two adults, returning from a hunting trip. The founder of the company that owned the plane was killed, and his family wasn't involved in the lawsuits.
A man who caused evacuations and an hourslong standoff with police on Capitol Hill when he claimed he had a bomb in his pickup truck outside the Library of Congress has pleaded guilty to a charge of threatening to use an explosive. Floyd Ray Roseberry, of Grover, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to the felony charge in Washington federal court. He faces up to 10 years behind bars and is scheduled to be sentenced in June. An email seeking comment was sent to his attorney on Friday. Roseberry drove a black pickup truck onto the sidewalk outside the Library of Congress in August 2021 and began shouting to people in the street that he had a bomb.
North Carolina Democrats have introduced legislation to codify abortion protections into state law as Republicans are discussing early prospects for further restrictions. Their legislation, filed Wednesday in both chambers, would prohibit the state from imposing barriers that might restrict a patient’s ability to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability, which typically falls between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. Current state law bans nearly all abortions after 20 weeks, with narrow exceptions for urgent medical emergencies that do not include rape or incest. House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters he didn’t expect the Democrats’ bill to get considered.
Supporters of abortion rights have filed separate lawsuits challenging abortion pill restrictions in North Carolina and West Virginia. The lawsuits were filed Wednesday. They are the opening salvo in what’s expected to a be a protracted legal battle over access to the medications. The lawsuits argue that state limits on the drugs run afoul of the federal authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency has approved the abortion pill as a safe and effective method for ending pregnancy. More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than surgery.
The University of Wisconsin System has joined a number of universities across the country in banning the popular social media app TikTok on school devicies. UW System officials made the announcement Tuesday. A number of other universities have banned TikTok in recent weeks, including Auburn, Arkansas State and Oklahoma. Nearly half the states have banned the app on state-owned devices, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Dakota. Congress also recently banned TikTok from most U.S. government-issued devices over bipartisan concerns about security. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. Critics say the Chinese government could access user data.
North Carolina’s elected state auditor has apologized for leaving the scene of a Raleigh accident last month after she drove her state-issued vehicle into a parked car. Monday's statement by Democratic Auditor Beth Wood is her first comment about charges against her that were made public last week. Wood called her decision “a serious mistake” and says she will continue serving as auditor. Wood was first elected to the job in 2008. Raleigh police cited Wood for a misdemeanor hit-and-run and another traffic-related charge. Her court date is later this week. Wood says the collision happened after she left a holiday gathering Dec. 8.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will study whether to toughen regulation of large livestock farms that pollute waterways. The agency hasn't revised its rules dealing with the nation's largest hog, poultry and cattle operations since 2008. Farm manure and fertilizer runoff fouls lakes and streams. It's a leading cause of harmful algae blooms. EPA says it reconsidered its intention to leave existing rules in place after an environmental group filed a lawsuit. The agency says it will gather information on how bad the pollution is and what new methods might bring improvements.
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National & World AP Stories
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has fired the chairman of the governing Conservative Party for a “serious breach” of ethics rules in failing to come clean about a tax dispute. Sunak had faced growing pressure to sack Nadhim Zahawi amid allegations he settled a multimillion-dollar unpaid tax bill while he was in charge of the country’s Treasury. The prime minister acted after a standards probe found Zahawi had breached the ministerial code of conduct. It said he had failed to disclose details of his dispute with tax authorities and the fact he had paid a penalty. The case is a test for Sunak, who has vowed to restore order and integrity to government after three years of turmoil.
Israeli police have sealed up the east Jerusalem home of a Palestinian attacker who killed seven people and wounded three outside a synagogue. It was one of several punitive measures approved by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet overnight. The move came following a deadly weekend in which seven Israelis were killed and five others wounded in two separate shootings in Jerusalem, in one of the bloodiest months in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem in several years. The measures threatened to further raise tensions and cast a cloud over a visit next week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The shootings followed a deadly Israeli raid in the West Bank on Thursday that killed nine Palestinians, most of them militants.
It has been over 11 weeks since Ukrainian forces wrested back part of Kherson province from Russian occupation. But liberation hasn't diminished the hardship for residents, both those returning home and the ones who never left. In the peak of winter, the rural village not far from an active front line has no power or water. The sounds of war are never far. Still, residents have slowly trickled back to Kalynivske, preferring to live without basic services, dependent on humanitarian aid and under the constant threat of bombardment than as displaced people elsewhere in their country. They say staying is an act of defiance against the relentless Russian attacks intended to make the area unlivable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians, including plans to beef up Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, in response to a pair of shooting attacks that killed seven Israelis and wounded five others. The announcement cast a cloud over a visit next week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and threatened to further raise tensions following one of the bloodiest months in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in several years. Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet approved the measures in the wake of a pair of shootings, including an attack outside a synagogue in which seven people were killed.
The Memphis police chief has disbanded the city’s so-called Scorpion unit after some of its officers beat Black motorist Tyre Nichols to death. The chief on Saturday cited a “cloud of dishonor” from newly released video of the fatal encounter. Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis acted a day after the harrowing video emerged. She said she listened to Nichols’ relatives, community leaders and uninvolved officers in making the decision. The nation and the city are struggling to come to grips with the violence by the officers, who are also Black. The video renewed doubts about why fatal encounters with law enforcement keep happening despite repeated calls for change.
Damar Hamlin released a video Saturday in which he says he’s thankful for the outpouring of support and vows to pay it back, marking the first time the Buffalo Bills safety has spoken publicly since he went into cardiac arrest and needed to be resuscitated on the field in Cincinnati on Jan. 2. Hamlin said now was “the right time” to speak after the Bills’ season ended and because he needed time to recover and gather his thoughts. The 5 1/2-minute video was posted on Hamlin's social media accounts.
The 67 minutes of body camera and surveillance footage released in the death of a Memphis man at the hands of police give a glimpse of a harrowing night that oscillates between brutality and nonchalance. After capturing horrific images of Tyre Nichols being punched, kicked, shocked, pepper-sprayed and dragged by officers, he is left bloodied in the street, unattended to, as officers chit-chat, complain, laugh and even exchange a fist-bump and back pat. The video's release has spurred protests around the country. Nichols, who was Black, is to be laid to rest at a funeral on Wednesday. Five officers, also Black, have been arrested and charged with murder.
Authorities say three people were killed and four others wounded in a shooting at a multi-million dollar short-term rental home in Los Angeles early Saturday. The shooting happened just after 2:30 a.m. in the upscale Beverly Crest neighborhood. Los Angeles police say the three who were killed were in a vehicle. Police Sgt. Bruce Borihahn says investigators don't have any information on suspects in the shootings. Two people who were shot were taken to the hospital in private vehicles and two were transported by ambulance. Borihahn says two victims are in stable condition and two are listed as critical. This is at least the sixth mass shooting in California this month.
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