Free Republic

There's a new attraction for thousands of people enjoying the long holiday weekend on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Shelly Island is a destination you won't find on a standard map. The giant barrier island suddenly formed in the Atlantic Ocean, almost overnight. CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports the mile-long island, which measures as wide as a football field, has attracted hundreds of tourists by boat for the Fourth of July. Pilot Larry Ihler told Strassmann the island "has definitely gotten bigger" and is "more built up." Strassmann set out by kayak on Monday to explore Shelly Island with County...

The United States has gotten just a little bit larger. Cape Hatteras, N.C., has a new addition to the landscape. Shelly Island is the unofficial name of a mile-long sandbank that has appeared just off the coast. And here to speak with us about it is Dave Hallac, who is superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Thanks for joining us today. [snip]

North Carolina’s law allowing magistrates to refuse to perform same-sex marriages survived a challenge Wednesday when an appeals court determined that three couples weren’t harmed enough to fight the state’s use of taxpayer money to apply the law. The Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed their lawsuit, rejecting arguments by the couples that their status as North Carolina taxpayers gives them standing to sue. Because two of the couples are already married and the third is engaged, the law hasn’t hurt their ability to wed, the judges said. “The outcome here is in no way a comment on same-sex...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Hailey Burns, a teenager who had been missing for the past year from her Ballantyne home, was found alive over the weekend and returned from Georgia to Charlotte with her family. An FBI special agent in Charlotte learned of information that led them to Burns, now 17, at a home in Duluth, Georgia, where she was found just after midnight Saturday. Michael Ren Wysolovski, 31, was taken into custody in Georgia and is facing a number of state charges, the FBI said. Wysolovski faced a judge on Monday and was denied bond after he was arrested and...

RALEIGH — More than 8,000 new jobs could be lured to North Carolina under a new corporate incentive program included in the state budget, House Speaker Tim Moore said Thursday. Moore explained a budget provision that would allow larger incentive packages for companies that invest more than $4 billion in the state and create at least 5,000 jobs. Those companies wouldn’t be subject to the state’s current cap on incentive packages. “We’re on the cusp of maybe landing a major industry in this state,” Moore said....

EDEN, N.C. – “White privilege” training in the Rockingham County school system is causing a lot of headaches. Superintendent Rodney Shotwell told Rockingham Now the state threatened to withhold federal funding when a disproportionate number of minority students were suspended in a special exceptional children’s program in 2012 and 2013, so district leaders implemented mandatory “equity training” for school staff. Now, some teachers are complaining that the training materials focused on white privilege and transgender issues violate their principles, while parents are speaking out about other teachers who are taking what they learned and imposing it on students. At a...

North Carolina is the one state where the law explicitly says you cannot revoke consent once it's given. A bill that would remove this "unacceptable loophole" has little traction. One May evening in 1977, Beverly Hester was sexually assaulted. According to the summary included in the North Carolina Supreme Court decision State v. Way, she testified that the perpetrator, Donnie Way, threatened to beat her if she didn't have sex with him while hanging out at a friend's apartment. When she tried to leave the bedroom, he allegedly slapped her in the face. Hester went on to tell the court...

DURHAM, N.C. - A North Carolina man has been arrested after police say he kidnapped a family at gunpoint and forced them to take him shopping. Durham police say on Tuesday 29-year-old Rollin Anthony Owens Jr. knocked on the door of a house in the West End neighborhood asking for money. A resident gave Rollins money, but police say he then used a gun to force the residents - a man, woman and two children - out of the house and into their vehicle. Owens allegedly made the driver take him to a convenience store, then a Target, where police...

A more than $20 million state-of-the-art commercial cold storage facility is coming to Edgecombe County and creating more than 100 permanent jobs in the region. Lionchase Holdings Inc., a privately held asset management firm, recently agreed to build a $22.7 million, 200,000-square-foot facility at the Tarboro Commerce Center, a manufacturing and distribution park, located at exit 484 off U.S. 64 in Tarboro. The Carolinas Gateway Partnership, town of Tarboro and Lionchase Holdings all were part of the agreement for the planned development. Construction is slated to start this summer with a planned completion timeline of 18 months for the new...

CHARLOTTE, NC (FOX 46) - On a day when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in Washington are asking Americans to unite, a loyal Starbucks customer says she was targeted for supporting Donald Trump. Starbucks said they are making sure this incident won't happen again. "I don't know what politics has to do with getting a cup of coffee," Kayla Hart said. Hart walked in to Starbucks on East Boulevard in Dilworth on Wednesday morning, wearing a Donald Trump t-shirt. Instead of being greeted with a smile, Kayla said the cashier laughed and her order was labeled with a...

FULL TITLE: Principal withheld diploma from senior class president who refused to read school-written speech and instead read his own remarks at graduation A North Carolina high school withheld a diploma from a graduating senior who refused to read a commencement speech prepared for him and instead read his own written remarks, it was reported on Thursday. Marvin Wright was permitted to write a speech and read it at last Friday's graduation ceremony by virtue of his being the senior class president at Southwest Edgecombe County High School, according toWRAL-TV. 'I really worked hard on this speech,' he said. But...

American college campuses are becoming more and more like the old communist states where people enjoyed freedom of speech—but only so long as they didn’t question some aspect of the official orthodoxy. Any such “deviationism” was apt to land them in severe trouble with the authorities, who encouraged loyal citizens to report it. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn recounted many cases of that in The Gulag Archipelago.) Duke University Divinity School professor Paul Griffiths is the latest faculty member to fall victim to the taboo against speaking out against “progressive” beliefs. His thoughtcrime: daring to say that a “racial equity” seminar would be...

A prep school math teacher in North Carolina was arrested for having inappropriate sexual contact with three male students, police said. Erin Elizabeth McAuliffe, 25, is scheduled to make her first court appearance on Monday in Nash County District Court on three counts of sexual activity with a student and one count of indecent liberties with a minor.

A Turkish textile company that purchased the assets of the former Microfibres firm is seeking $125,000 worth of incentives from the city of Winston-Salem and plans to create up to 390 jobs, according to a story in the Winston-Salem Journal. The newspaper reports that the Winston-Salem City Council will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. June 19 for Tukek Holdings Inc, which has requested the incentives to offset the costs of a startup called HPFabrics Inc. Tukek plans to invest $3.85 million over five years to upgrade the former Winston-Salem facility of Microfibres. The local jobs would pay $31,310,...

A group says ‘Charlotte Pride’ is pushing them out of the Gay Pride Parade because they support President Trump. "I’m very proud of my country, proud of my president, and was once proud of my community," said Brian Talbert, who said he’s proud to be gay and proud to be a republican. ... A spokesperson for the organization said in written statement, "Charlotte Pride reserves the right to decline participation at our events to groups or organizations which do not reflect the mission, vision and values of our organization, as is acknowledged in our parade rules and regulations by all...

An airline passenger was arrested Thursday after he opened the plane's galley door as it was taxiing and jumped onto the tarmac at a North Carolina airport, authorities said. Tun Lon Sein was seated on American Airlines Flight 5242 just before takeoff, when he suddenly stood from his seat and attempted to open the aircraft's main door before he was halted by a flight attendant, whom he then tried to bite, federal air marshals said in a criminal complaint, according to CNN. Following the struggle, Sein was able to pry the door open and escape onto the tarmac, before airport...

Christian clergy helped a Muslim mosque open in a Pentecostal church. "It's open faith; we're brothers," Ali Mohammad, an organizer of the mosque, tells North Carolina's News & Observer. The Muslims are stripping the church of its Christian roots, including removing any crosses and handing them over to pastors in the area. When they opened on Saturday, Christian clergy, including Pastor Jim Melnyk of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, participated in the ceremony. Other pastors from Methodist and Baptist congregations were also present. "I see it as an important statement of community, that we take each other's faiths seriously," Melnyk says....

My husband began a new job west of Charlotte, NC recently. We are not familiar with the area yet, but what we have seen feels very busy and chaotic. Are there any Freepers from the area that can tell us about some good places to live west of Charlotte with a slower pace? Thank you in advance!

You don’t see a Kagan-Breyer-Ginsburg-Sotomayor-Thomas majority often in U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but today that quintet joined together to deal a blow to North Carolina Republicans. In the decision in Cooper v. Harris, the eight-member pre-Gorsuch roster upheld a district court’s ruling that two congressional districts in North Carolina were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, putting an end to one part of a six-year saga that began with redistricting in 2011.

ROBESON COUNTY, N.C. — Looking back, the sign-stealers were a portent of sorts, an early indication that 2016 would be like no election in recent memory. While it is not uncommon for people to steal campaign signs from other people's lawns in the heat of an election campaign, normally people confiscate the signs of candidates they oppose. But something quite different happened in Robeson County, N.C., as Donald Trump started to gain traction in the presidential campaign. As Bo Biggs, treasurer of the county's Republican Party, tells it, "People were stealing [Trump] signs to put them in their own yard."...