New street lights, signage and other safety infrastructure is in place near the area where a 9-year-old boy was killed by a car, but two advocates say more needs to be done.
Pitt County Schools officials spent part of their first day back from spring break talking about the best time to resume classes for fall semester.
Pediatric doctors and nurses at Greenville’s James and Connie Maynard Children’s Hospital found themselves in a bit of a sticky situation this week.
Economic development leaders unveiling a strategic plan this week said Greenville’s metro area needs to build on strengths, identify gaps and bring the community together to compete in changing times.
Four young women will compete for the title of Miss Grifton next week ahead of the annual Grifton Shad Festival.
AYDEN — Pie lovers and math nerds united when bakery Gwendy’s Goodies concluded its first Pi(e) Week Extravaganza with a pie eating contest for the community.
The Greenville-Eastern North Carolina Alliance announced that Uconda Dunn, vice president of business development, has been named to the Southern Economic Development Council Board of Directors. She will serve a one-year term as alternate director for North Carolina.
Details are limited after a man charged with impaired driving struck another vehicle at an intersection near East Carolina University over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend.
Antiques Show & Tell: Pitt County Historical Society will present its "Antiques Show & Tell" program from 2-5 p.m. on Sunday at the Winterville Depot, 217 Worthington St. Antiques or collectibles should be submitted between 1-1:30 p.m. and will be presented in the order in which they are received. Only two items per person. The event is not a sale or a formal appraisal, but provenance, usage, collectability and possible value may be discussed. Call (252) 327-8859.
WINTERVILLE — Pitt Community College celebrated Women’s History Month last week and recognized Kimberly Williamson as the recipient of this year’s Woman of Substance Award.
Local Events
Trey Yesavage turned in another overpowering start on the mound and East Carolina broke open the game in the middle innings to earn an 11-3 win over visiting George Mason on Friday.
The Greenville Recreation and Parks Department is holding a Friday Night Futsal program.
East Carolina football coach Mike Houston announced on Thursday that tight end Desirrio Riles signed a national letter of intent with the Pirates, pushing the 2023 signing class to 28 members.
The East Carolina brand has a wide reach, with gear and apparel infiltrating parts of the country that might seem off. So the idea of building a successful program at a place where the fan base is clamoring to support a winner is part of what attracted softball coach Shane Winkler to the program.
Thursday night’s starting pitchers had virtually opposite performances through two innings of play in South Central’s 9-0 win over visiting Jacksonville in a Big Carolina 3A/4A Conference baseball clash.
Katherine Stanley is enjoying the present, but she has an eye toward her immediate future.
Elm Street tennis courts are the busiest city tennis courts in Greenville. The courts have been there since the mid-1960s. On any given day you will see more mature folks, young folks, college students, parents and children enjoying the sport of a lifetime. Numerous studies have named tennis…
Since childhood, we have been told by our doctors to eat healthy. We are assured that if we eat fruits and vegetables, we will limit our risk for disease and achieve longevity.
For more than a decade we’ve studied the problem exhaustively, we’ve talked about it almost incessantly, we’ve engaged the latest curriculum du jour, and have spent more than $50 million, yet we still can’t solve the mystery of our children’s reading proficiency. Our patience is wearing thin…
There’s a good reason why you can’t place a bet on WWE professional wrestling, even in Las Vegas. It’s because everybody smart enough to come in out of the rain understands that the matches are make-believe — not merely fixed, but scripted. That’s also why sports pages don’t report the results.
Is Ron DeSantis qualified to be president? A small but growing number of Republicans are starting to express their doubts.
House conservatives have devised a “new and improved” threat to the world economy if their demands are not met. Once again, they vow to vote against raising the cap on U.S. debt if desired cuts in government spending are not made.
A sign of the times: Wwe have a thirst for violence. It seems to act as a catharsis, a way of mitigating our fears and frustrations. Like the valve in a pressure cooker.
My husband, Peter, and I are staying in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which is, according to a lot of folks, a tourist town. Sometimes the person saying this means it is not a place they would want to spend time.
Q Several years ago, I began sweating on my forehead. It gradually became more profuse, until my entire head was soaking wet. My internist diagnosed hyperhidrosis. An antiperspirant he suggested worked, but only briefly. What is the cause of hyperhidrosis? Is there any treatment?
Four young women will compete for the title of Miss Grifton next week ahead of the annual Grifton Shad Festival.
AYDEN — Pie lovers and math nerds united when bakery Gwendy’s Goodies concluded its first Pi(e) Week Extravaganza with a pie eating contest for the community.
State AP Stories
North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed Republican gun legislation that would no longer require sheriff approval before someone can purchase a handgun. His action Friday initiates his first showdown of the session with a GOP majority that is just one seat shy in the House of veto-proof margins. The bill would repeal the state’s long-standing pistol purchase permit requirement that directs sheriffs to evaluate each gun applicant's character. Cooper successfully blocked a similar proposal in 2021. Bill supporters say substantial updates to the national background check system have rendered the requirement duplicative. But Democrats warn that its repeal would create a dangerous loophole.
The Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature has given final approval to a Medicaid expansion agreement. Thursday's state House vote reverses longstanding opposition to the measure, which now goes to expansion advocate and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper for his signature. GOP legislative leaders reached a deal earlier this month, capping years of debate over whether the politically closely divided state should accept the federal government’s coverage for hundreds of thousands of low-income adults. North Carolina was one of 11 states that hadn't yet adopted expansion. The bill contains one caveat: A state budget law must be passed before expansion can be carried out.
North Carolina’s elected auditor has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for leaving the scene of a December crash in which she drove her state-owned vehicle into a parked car. Four-term Democratic State Auditor Beth Wood told a Wake County judge on Thursday that she made a “grave mistake” and should have remained at the accident. A judge sentenced Wood to about $300 in court costs and fines in the hit-and-run plea. He pointed out that Wood already had personally paid over $11,000 to cover damages to both cars. Wood said in court that she had drunk two glasses of wine at the party but was not impaired.
Mexico's president says forensic tests have confirmed that a body found in northern Mexico was that of a drug gang leader accused of murdering two Jesuit priests last year. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not say Thursday whether the tests involved a DNA match or fingerprints. The sister of accused killer José Noriel Portillo Gil, alias “El Chueco,” or “The Crooked One,” had earlier identified his body by sight. The murder of the two beloved Jesuit priests in June 2022 had shocked Mexico. The Jesuits said the suspect’s death proves the government can’t catch criminals and has lost control of parts of the country.
Proposals in several states would allow or require schools to deadname transgender students or out them to their parents without consent. Transgender kids and their families say the proposals could eliminate K-12 public schools as one of the last remaining havens to explore their identities. The stated aim of the bills is to give parents greater control over their childrens' education. Some parents and teachers argue they have a right to know. But others warn the proposals could jeopardize children's health and safety. And some teachers say the reporting requirements force educators to betray the trust of their students or risk losing their job.
An agreement to expand Medicaid in North Carolina has reached the cusp of final legislative approval following a state House vote. The House chamber voted 95-21 on Wednesday for legislation that would direct state health officials to accept Medicaid coverage for potentially 600,000 low-income adults. One more affirmative House vote is needed Thursday before it goes to the desk of longtime expansion advocate Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The Senate voted last week for the agreement reached between Republican lawmakers three weeks ago. GOP lawmakers had been skeptical for nearly a decade about accepting expansion, which originated from the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled House has advanced a previously vetoed proposal to restrict how teachers can discuss certain racial topics that some lawmakers equate to “critical race theory.” The House voted 68-49 along party lines Wednesday for legislation banning public school teachers from compelling students to believe they should feel guilty or responsible for past actions committed by people of the same race or sex. House Democrats challenged Republican claims that the bill would reduce discrimination and argued that a comprehensive history education should make students uncomfortable. Republicans are one seat short of a veto-proof supermajority and will likely need some Democratic support for the measure to become law.
Authorities in South Carolina say a former soldier shot and killed three children as they slept in their home while their mother frantically sought help. The ex-soldier then killed himself. Sumter Police Chief Russell Roark says Charles Slacks Jr. also killed an Army solider who worked with the children’s mother and happened to be at the home. Slacks and the woman were divorced, but he still had a key and let himself in around 10 p.m. Tuesday. Slacks shot the co-worker in the backyard, pushed past the mother and shot the children upstairs. They were a 5-year-old, 6-year-old and an 11-year-old.
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National & World AP Stories
An explosion at a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania Friday killed five people and left six people missing. West Reading Borough officials said a number of other people were injured by the explosion at the R.M. Palmer Co. plant about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The explosion just before 5 p.m. sent a plume of black smoke into the air, destroying one building at the facility and damaging a neighboring building with apartments. Chief of Police Wayne Holben says the cause of the explosion remains under investigation. A spokesperson says eight people were taken to Reading Hospital Friday evening.
Emergency officials in Mississippi say 23 people have been killed by tornadoes that tore through the state on Friday night, destroying buildings and knocking out power as severe weather produced hail the size of golf balls moved through several southern states. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency confirmed 23 deaths early Saturday with dozens of injuries and four people missing throughout the state. The agency says in a Twitter post that search and rescue teams from numerous local and state agencies were deployed along with personnel to assist those impacted by the tornadoes. The rural towns of Silver City and Rolling Fork have reported severe destruction as the tornado swept northeast at 70 mph without weakening.
Recent moves by President Joe Biden to pressure TikTok and approve oil drilling in an untapped area of Alaska are testing the loyalty of a young voters. And that's a group that's largely been in Biden's corner. Youth turnout surged surged after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. These voters helped Biden eke out victories in swing states in 2020 and helped Democrats pick up a Senate seat last year. But the 80-year-old president has never been the favorite candidate of young liberals itching for a new generation of American. leadership. As Biden gears up for an expected reelection campaign, a potential TikTok ban and fresh oil drilling could weigh him down.
Hundreds of women are traveling weekly to the southern tip of Illinois to secure an abortion. It's something no longer available to millions of women living in a 1,800 mile stretch of 11 Southern states that have mostly banned pregnancy terminations since last June, when the Supreme Court stripped away constitutional protections for women to end pregnancies. Clinics in the southern Illinois region are struggling with the growing demand. The waitlist has grown from two days to nearly three weeks at one clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois. A doctor there says, "We are on this teeter-totter of what can we do here to make more space for the people who are going to be fleeing their home state.”
Pope Francis has updated a 2019 church law aimed at holding senior churchmen accountable for covering up cases of sex abuse. He has expanded the norms to cover lay Catholic leaders and reaffirmed that vulnerable adults can also be victims of abuse when they are unable to consent. Francis reaffirmed and made permanent the temporary provisions of the 2019 law that were passed in a moment of crisis for the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy. That law had been praised at the time for laying out precise mechanisms to investigate complicit bishops and religious superiors, but its implementation has been uneven and the Vatican has been criticized by abuse survivors for continued lack of transparency about the cases.
The Iraqi province of Diyala has seen a spike in bloody attacks over the past month that killed at least 19 civilians, including women and children. At least one instance appears to have been a Shiite revenge attack against Sunnis over an Islamic State group attack. But other violence, residents say, is by Shiites against Shiites as rival militias, backed by tribal and political allies, struggle over influence and over lucrative criminal activities like smuggling. The bloodshed is straining ties among communities in Diyala, an ethnically and religiously diverse province north of Baghdad. It also raises questions about the sustainability of the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of IS.
Gordon Moore, the Intel Corp. co-founder who set the breakneck pace of progress in the digital age with a simple 1965 prediction of how quickly engineers would boost the capacity of computer chips, has died. He was 94. Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation say Moore died Friday at his home in Hawaii. Moore made his famous observation three years before he helped start Intel in 1968. It's now known as “Moore’s Law." Moore later became known for his philanthropy when he and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Berlin voters on a proposal Sunday that would force the German capital to drastically ramp up its climate goals. The referendum calls for Berlin to become climate neutral by 2030, meaning that within less than eight years the city would not be allowed to contribute further to global warming. An existing law sets a deadline for achieving that goal at 2045, which is also Germany’s national target. The center-right Christian Democratic Union, which won a recent re-run election in the capital, opposes the ambitious target but would be bound to implement it if the referendum passes. The grassroots group that initiated the vote has received considerable financial support from U.S.-based philanthropists who say it could become a “model for the rest of the world.”
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