Liz Schlemmer

A five year decline in North Carolina students enrolling in teaching programs appears to be turning around. The University of North Carolina system saw a 16 percent uptick in education degree-seekers last year.  One college of education is seeing gains in enrollment as students return this fall.

Hundreds have gathered across the Triangle in candlelight vigils for victims of the deadly attack in Charlottesville, Virginia. One day after a car plowed into a crowd of people counter-protesting a white supremacist rally, North Carolinians gathered at various sites to remember the slain 32 year-old Heather Heyer and 19 others who were injured.

North Carolina's governor used the launch of a school supply drive on Tuesday to argue that the GOP has been inadequately funding education, forcing too many teachers to have to use their own money to buy pencils and paper for their students.

The North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship program supplies funds to help up to 6,000 low income students attend private schools. The state-run program is slated to expand in coming years. Education researchers from North Carolina State University recently evaluated the scholarship to see how it's working for parents and schools who participate.

Democrats in the State Senate are pushing for what they call fair redistricting. The legislature meets this month to redraw district maps.

Carloads of tourists rolled in, stores stocked seafood counters and kitchen workers chopped vegetables Friday as two North Carolina islands reopened to visitors after a weeklong power outage at the height of vacation season.

Power has been restored to Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands. Utility crews with Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative and its contractors completed work earlier Thursday afternoon.

Recently released research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill projects that unchecked climate change will significantly impact premature deaths associated with air pollution.

Customer satisfaction at Raleigh-Durham International Airport is on the rise, according to the airport’s latest survey. That comes as the airport is also experiencing record traffic. Ninety-nine percent of customers rated the airport as a 4 or 5 on a five-point scale. 

The latest on efforts to restore electricity to a portion of North Carolina's Outer Banks evacuated of tourists after a construction accident cut power lines (all times local).

Construction crews have determined that all three transmission cables providing power to Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands have been compromised, but portable generators may allow visitors to return soon. 

The High Point Historic Preservation Society is seeking an agreement with Guilford County to preserve a historic farmstead at no cost to the county.

The number of teen athletes who have knee surgery to reconstruct a torn anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, is on the rise, and girls have seen the sharpest increase. Researchers from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill say the results are concerning and point to the need for better injury prevention among high school and youth athletic teams.

Visitors to the Neuse River Greenway can enjoy a large field of blooming sunflowers this month. But the greenway doesn't maintain the bright field of flowers. The sunflowers are actually owned and operated by the Neuse River Resource Recovery Facility, formerly known as the wastewater treatment plant. 

Residential areas in western North Carolina have seen an increase in bear activity in the past month, including some especially unusual behavior from a couple of black bears in Asheville and Cashiers. 

For nearly 20 years, Sidney Brodie has sewn a new patch to the Durham Homicide and Victims of Violent Deaths Quilt each time a homicide occurs in the city.

He began the quilt in 1998 with the name of Shaquanna Attwater, a 2-year-old girl killed while playing on her front lawn in 1994. Today, the quilt has almost 700 names on it.

Updated at 12:45 p.m., July 7, 2017

An auxiliary bishop in Georgia has been chosen to lead Roman Catholics in eastern North Carolina.

North Carolina had the third-highest sheer number of rural traffic fatalities in the country in 2015, according to data collected by the Federal Highway Administration.

Global warming and urbanization are threatening bee populations across the country. One factor in that threat is heat. At high temperatures, bees become unable to reproduce, fly or even walk.

So researchers from North Carolina State University recently set out to see just how much heat local wild bees could handle.

A sexual education program from the Children's Home Society of North Carolina is targeting adolescent boys to prevent teen pregnancy. The Wise Guys program teaches boys between the ages of 12 to 18 about abstinence, contraception and healthy relationships.

The WakeMed mother's milk bank in Cary is seeking donations of breast milk to help feed thousands of premature infants across the East Coast.

The Central American country of Guatemala has inaugurated  its newest consulate in Raleigh to serve Guatemalans living in the Carolinas and southern Virginia.

The consulate is one of four the country is introducing in the United States this year, and it opened for business earlier this week.  Guatemalan nationals can go there to apply for passports and visas, or declare citizenship for their children. 

Duke University researchers have completed a two-year health intervention that resulted in improvements in weight, cholesterol and blood pressure to more than 1,100 Methodist clergy in North Carolina.

Filmmakers have spent less and produced fewer projects in North Carolina in the past two years.

That's when the state changed its film incentives program to a capped-grant program. Before the change, state taxpayers offered credits to filmmakers with a project cap but no statewide limit.

With temperatures into the 90s this week, county human services are receiving more requests for cooling assistance.

As many as a few dozen dogs in North Carolina have been infected with a new strain of canine influenza.  

Voters in Raleigh will decide if the city should spend more than $200 million on local road improvements. A bond package will go to referendum in the fall.