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Workers Mourned As North Carolina's On-The-Job Deaths Rise
Signs that more people are dying on the job has workers' advocates demanding that North Carolina's labor department do more to inspect and punish companies that imperil their workers.
Members of the AFL-CIO labor union, the NC Council of Churches and others on Friday remember the 183 North Carolina workers who died on the job in 2017, the latest year for which there are figures.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that work-related fatalities in North Carolina increased in 2017 to the highest number since the Great Recession hit in 2008.
Transportation accidents were the greatest category of workplace deaths, followed by falls and slips.
2 Guilty For Toppling UNC Chapel Hill's Confederate Statue
Two men face a day in jail after being found guilty of rioting, damaging property and defacing a Confederate monument that had stood for a century on the campus of North Carolina's flagship public university.
The News & Observer reports that the state district court judge on Thursday found Raul Jimenez and Shawn Birchfield-Finn Jimenez guilty in the toppling of the University of North Carolina monument nicknamed "Silent Sam." They also were assessed a $500 fine and community service.
Eleven others have been convicted in the August melee in which the Chapel Hill statue was toppled.
UNC Racism, Police Violence Protest Leads To Broken Window
Some students at the University of North Carolina broke a window while trying to deliver a list of demands to the school's interim chancellor.
The News & Observer reports campus police say the Chapel Hill protesters found their destination closed Wednesday, so some of them pounded on the building, shattering at least one window. No one was injured or charged.
The protesters have been demonstrating for months about the Confederate Silent Sam monument and its removal. They say police unfairly target them at events where they clash with supporters of the statue.
Energy Company Worker Hurt In North Carolina Explosion Dies
An energy company employee who was critically injured in a natural gas explosion in North Carolina has died.
UNC Medical Center spokesman Tom Hughes confirmed Thursday that 51-year-old Jay Rambeaut of Creedmoor died.
Rambeaut, who worked for PSNC Energy, was among the first on the scene in Durham when a gas leak was reported a half-hour before the explosion on April 10. Firefighters were working to get people out of nearby buildings when the explosion occurred.
A coffee shop owner died and 25 others were injured, including nine firefighters.
North Carolina Army Base: Blackout Was Part Of Training
A sprawling North Carolina Army base says a power outage that lasted for hours was part of an unannounced training exercise.
Fort Bragg officials issued a statement Thursday saying the base purposely cut power throughout the installation "to identify shortcomings in our infrastructure, operations and security." They said they didn't announce the exercise so that they could test people's "real-world reactions" to the type of problems caused by an event such as a cyber-attack.
They said normal operations would be fully restored by later in the day.
The blackout began late Wednesday on the base that includes 52,000 soldiers, lasting into the next day.
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