Author: The Carolinian

(AP) A month after the U.S. Supreme Court severely restricted the federal government's power to oversee wetlands, the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature handed state agencies an order: Don't give the ecologically crucial waters any more protection than newly weakened federal rules provide. It might seem ironic that Republicans who often complain about the federal government would tether their state's policy to one crafted in Washington, D.C. But this time, doing

PERRY, Fla. (AP) - Hurricane Idalia made landfall Wednesday in Florida as a Category 3 storm and unleashed devastation along a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast, submerging homes and vehicles, turning streets into rivers, unmooring small boats and downing power lines before sweeping into Georgia. Almost 438,000 customers in Florida and Georgia lost power while rushing water covered streets near the coast. As the eye moved inland, high winds

Zijie Yan, an associate professor in UNC-Chapel Hill's department of applied physical sciences, was shot and killed on campus Monday. Photo: www.unc.edu NC Newsline UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student Tailei Qi, 34, has been charged with first degree murder in Monday's on-acampus shooting of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the university's Department of Applied Physical Sciences. Yan, who was identified as the victim Tuesday, served as academic advisor to Qi.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A white man wearing a mask and firing a weapon emblazoned with a swastika gunned down three Black people Saturday in a racist attack in Jacksonville, Florida. The shooter, who had also posted racist writings, then killed himself. Here's what we know about the killings: WHERE AND WHEN DID THE SHOOTING TAKE PLACE? The shooting happened Saturday afternoon at a Dollar General store in New Town,

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - With the state budget's passage now two months late, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper's administration announced Monday that it can't start the implementation of Medicaid expansion to hundreds of thousands of low-income adults in the early fall as it had wanted. State Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley said that expansion won't begin on Oct. 1, which in July he unveiled as the start date

WASHINGTON (AP) - The generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed Monday to pay $225 million to settle price-fixing charges related to sales of a major cholesterol-lowering drug. The U.S. Department of Justice said the agreement also requires Teva to divest its business making and selling the drug, pravastatin, a generic version of the brand-name medicine Pravachol. Another generic drug maker, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, agreed to pay a $30 million criminal penalty

By some measures, Jacksonville was making strides to emerge from its racist past. But the killing of three Black people by a young, white shooter was a painful and startling reminder that the remnants of racism still fester in the Florida city. What happened Saturday in Jacksonville, said 79-year-old longtime resident Rodney Hurst, "could have happened anywhere, except it did happen in Jacksonville." The shooting occurred as the community prepared

BY CARLA K. JOHNSON (AP) The number of gender-affirming surgeries in the U.S. nearly tripled from 2016 to 2019 before dropping slightly in 2020, according to a study published Wednesday. The increase likely reflects expanded insurance coverage for transgender care after the Obama administration and some states actively discouraged discrimination based on gender identity, lead author Dr. Jason Wright of Columbia University said. The dip in 2020 can be attributed to

BY JAMES POLLARD COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina's new all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion Wednesday, upholding a ban on most such procedures after about six weeks of pregnancy. The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone woman on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn, who reached the state's mandatory retirement age. The 4-1 ruling departs from the court's

BY LUIS ANDRES HENAO NEW YORK (AP) - A coalition advocating for Native American people traumatized by an oppressive system of boarding schools for Native youths plans to digitize 20,000 archival pages related to schools in that system that were operated by the Quakers. The Quakers and other faith groups - including Episcopalians, Methodists and Catholics - have in recent years either begun or increased efforts to research and atone for