Despite stiff opposition, the N.C. Senate voted this month to double the funding for Opportunity Scholarships to boost enrollment in privately run K-12 schools; more than $200,000,000 is earmarked for kids in high-income families. 

An estimated 38 million motorists are expected to travel by roadways this Memorial Day weekend and the State Highway Patrol is working to ensure residents and visitors to our state reach their destinations safely. 

Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy (SAHC) is celebrating 50 years of conserving clean water, plant and wildlife habitat, farmland and scenic beauty in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee.

To the Editor:

In North Caroline we have a candidate for governor who is reputed to have said “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote … We want to bring back the America where Republicans and principles and true ideas of freedom rule.”  

They couldn’t be more different. But it’s not about race, religion or party affiliation. 

Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, and Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, a Republican, present strikingly different views not only on their priorities if elected governor but also on the 30,000-foot view of what North Carolina is and will be. 

In recent years, more and more states have made the decision to legalize, regulate and tax recreational cannabis products — despite federal prohibition — but North Carolina isn’t one of them, and the General Assembly doesn’t appear to be favorably inclined to support such measures despite the filing of a House effort last year. 

Applications are now being accepted for the N.C. Agriculture Manufacturing and Processing Initiative, which has been created to fund and promote the establishment of value-added agricultural manufacturing and food processing facilities in North Carolina. 

For the first time since August, North Carolina is now drought-free. Some areas of Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Macon and Dare counties remain abnormally dry, but the remaining 95 counties are now at or above normal moisture levels. 

Severe drought is gone from North Carolina and moderate drought barely holding on after an extraordinarily rainy first half of January. 

In 2023, visitation to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park grew 2.2% to reach its second-highest number ever — but the number of visits starting in the North Carolina side of the park fell 5.1% compared to 2022.