Associated Press

Trump triggered a bipartisan backlash during a campaign appearance in North Carolina when he played down the economic impact of surging gas prices. Republican candidates are struggling with the additional burden of Trump’s weak approval ratings, an unpopular war in Iran and an affordability crisis that Trump and his GOP allies in Congress had promised to fix.

The majority of eastern North Carolina is still locked in moderate to severe drought, causing ongoing stress to regional agriculture and keeping wildfire risks elevated.

Whatley faces a challenging contest against Cooper. Trump’s involvement in midterm races creates a balancing act for Republicans like Whatley, who must maximize support from the president’s core supporters without alienating other voters who’ve soured on the administration amid inflation and the war in Iran.

A North Carolina pastor who led the opening prayer at a recent campaign stop for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley is a registered sex offender, twice sentenced to prison. Records show pastor Daimon L. King was convicted in 1998 and again in 2010 for offenses involving children.

Scientists and investors are restoring a 23-square-mile tract of peatland in North Carolina to help curb climate-warming emissions and restore native habitat. Ditches have drained water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfire and unleashing huge volumes of carbon dioxide.

BIOX took over the former White Oak Farm site last year, which was home to a catastrophic one-million-gallon hog-waste spill back in 2022. But Sound Rivers officials say the environmental threat never stopped.

A North Carolina district attorney says a 17-year-old girl who recorded a livestream of a shooting that killed three people at a San Diego mosque and who disseminated the attackers’ white-supremacist writings has been charged with murder by aiding and abetting.

A grand jury in Louisiana has declined to indict a former law enforcement officer who was accused of planning to kill Black people in a mass shooting at a New Orleans festival. The Louisiana Attorney General’s Office said Christopher Gillum was released from custody after a grand jury found in June that there was not enough evidence to charge him with a crime.

Edwards, who is serving his second term, said that he made the decision to drop his reelection bid after “much prayer and reflection” and that he would complete the current term.

The National Science Foundation had directed the removal of most of the system’s instruments from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland by 2027 — a decision scientists said came with no warning and no scientific review.