With just hours left for Congress to come up with a funding deal, government observers say a government shutdown seems likely. This will mean certain non-essential employees will be furloughed, services will cease and more.

On a Friday night in late July, Axe to Grind got a visit from the local police. Zaidoon Al-Zubaidy, co-owner of the Hamlet cafe, was presenting a local band in the back room. When he learned there were officers out front, he joked with his staff that a night out isn’t successful until the cops are called, but still, he was concerned. He had a packed house, and he didn’t want a scene. …

Arthur Durham is keenly aware of the impact that gunfire and other street violence can have on a community. As a boy growing up in Philadelphia, that was the world he lived in. His mother battled heroin addiction, and his father was absent. Now, he’s bringing the expertise he has accumulated from his childhood and work in Philadelphia and New York to Greensboro, where a new violence interrupter program is being launched.

It’s been a little more than a year since  the  launch  of the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline number , 988, and North Carolina saw a  31% increase  in calls for support during that time.  While the national hotline isn’t exactly new, the shortened number is. The previous 10-digit number was replaced by the easier-to-remember 988 in the hope that it will become as recognizable as the universal emergency number 911. 

When a South Charlotte mom was looking for a psychiatrist to prescribe medication for her teenage daughter’s depression last year, she described sitting with her phone and going down the list of doctors listed as in network with her insurance company. Some weren’t taking new patients. Others never returned her messages. And a few said their first appointment was months away. 

A few months ago, Jemonde Taylor stood, like a proud shepherd, on a bank and looked down at a section of Walnut Creek that runs through Southeast Raleigh’s Rochester Heights community, where he s the rector at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church. As the chair of Raleigh’s Stormwater Advisory Committee, Taylor values wetlands’ vital role in flood mitigation, air and water purification, and wildlife habitat, among other things. For these reasons, he’s concerned about the potential loss of intermittent wetlands.

As state-designated advocates for North Carolina’s older residents, the  Senior Tar Heel Legislature  has a 30-year history of advocacy — and relatively limited clout in recent times. Now its leaders are working to become a more aggressive, diverse force for change in legislative sessions to come.

RALEIGH — State and local law enforcement officers will be out in force as part of the Labor Day Booze It & Lose It campaign, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Enduring threads of North Carolina’s past — such as bygone industries and separate public schools for whites, Blacks and Native Americans — still affect older state residents, as harmful holdovers and even, in some cases, as positive forces

Whitney Parker has had enough.  The Snow Hill resident lives close enough to the GFL Sampson County Regional Landfill to see the daily operations from his house.  Parker said that for decades, the landfill has cast an imposing  shadow over his community and destroyed its quality of life.