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NC Islands Ready For Visitors' Return After Power Outage
Businesses on two North Carolina islands are gearing up for the return of tourists after a weeklong power outage that struck at the height of summer tourism season.
Visitors will be allowed to return to Hatteras and Ocracoke islands at noon Friday.
Power was cut to both islands a week ago during a construction accident. Workers building a new bridge drove a steel casing into underground transmission lines.
An estimated 50,000 tourists were ordered to leave the islands. Power was restored Thursday.
General Assembly Finishes Session, Returns Soon
The North Carolina General Assembly ended a one-day session that was supposed to be largely about overriding Gov. Roy Cooper's pending vetoes but instead pivoted toward passing several bills left over from this year's session.
The House adjourned Thursday evening, nearly an hour after the Senate went home. The two chambers hit a logjam over an environmental measure, while the House appeared to have second thoughts about a bill giving the legislature more power over rulemaking by state agencies.
The Republican-controlled legislature still passed bills on regulatory and tax matters and a local measure designed to fix a problem in Cleveland County school board elections.
Top NC Prosecutor Sheds 9 Percent Of Lawyers, Shifts Work To DAs
North Carolina's Democratic attorney general is responding to budget cuts imposed by Republican lawmakers by laying off about 9 percent of his agency's attorneys and telling local prosecutors they'll have to take over more courtroom tasks.
Attorney General Josh Stein on Thursday described his response to legislators deciding in June to cut $10 million from his budget despite objections from police chiefs and district attorneys. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's office operations were also cut.
Stein says this week's layoffs represent a third of the required cut and he's lining up funding promises from other state agencies to avoid more. He's asking lawmakers to restore $3 million.
Lowe's To Lay Off Delivery Workers Across The Country
The North Carolina-based Lowe's has announced a further reduction in jobs.
The Charlotte Observer reports that the home-improvement retailer confirmed Thursday that it will lay off an undisclosed number of delivery workers across the country, as the company shifts to third-party delivery.
The company said in an email that it had been using a combination of delivery services at the affected stores, which are in markets where increased delivery demand exceeds current capacity. Those markets have not been identified.
Two North Carolina stores will be affected.
US Prosecutors Seek Records Of Unregulated Chemical In River
Federal prosecutors are investigating a company and its discharges of a little-studied chemical into a North Carolina river that supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people.
The state Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday it received a subpoena last week for records involving discharges into the Cape Fear River of the unregulated chemical GenX. The river is the main source of the water utility serving about 200,000 people in and around Wilmington, about 100 miles downstream of the Chemours plant near Fayetteville.
Bridge Renamed For Former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice
An interstate bridge has been named after a former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice.
The Greensboro News & Record reports the state Board of Transportation named the bridge after Henry E. Frye on Thursday. The bridge over Interstate 73/74 was previously known as Green Lake Road Bridge and is located in Richmond County, where the 85-year-old grew up.
Frye was one of the first black lawyers in the South to serve as assistant U.S. attorney, and was later elected to the state legislature. He was named to the state Supreme Court in 1983 by then-Gov. Jim Hunt and served 17 years, as the court's first black associate justice, and later, chief justice.
Copyright 2017 WFDD. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. AP contributed to this report.
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