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Governor, Trump Official Talk Offshore Drilling
Gov. Roy Cooper says he had a good conversation with a top Trump administration official over plans to expand offshore drilling.
Cooper said he talked to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke about concerns that drilling could cause catastrophic damage to the state's $3 billion tourism and fishing industries.
The Democratic governor says residents of North Carolina need to make their opposition clear to the federal government.
The plan has bipartisan opposition: Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster met with Zinke on Friday and shared similar concerns.
North Carolina Early Childhood Investment Focus At Forum
Early childhood education and health care and their connections to a strong economy and well-trained workforce are the key issues before participants at the annual Emerging Issues Forum put on by North Carolina State University.
The two-day conference in downtown Raleigh will attract 700 people for discussions on how to fund such early-age programs from the public and private sectors, as well as on their long-term benefits for children.
Speakers at the "kidonomics" forum include Gov. Roy Cooper, SAS chief executive Jim Goodnight, other elected and corporate officials, early childhood education experts and regulators.
Campaign For Poor Holds 1st National Action
The renewed version of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to lift poor people is holding its first national mobilization, with actions planned in 32 states and the nation's capital.
Low-income people, clergy and activists in the Poor People's Campaign plan to deliver letters Monday to politicians in state capitol buildings.
The letter demands that leaders confront a systemic racism that they say is evidenced in voter suppression laws and poverty that hurt a larger percentage of minorities, women and children.
The campaign is led by the Revs. William Barber of North Carolina and Liz Theoharis of New York. It officially began Dec. 4, 2017, 50 years after King started the first Poor People's Campaign. King was assassinated a few months later.
DA Wants Death Penalty For Inmate Charged In Officer's Death
Prosecutors want the death penalty for an inmate accused of beating to death a correctional officer who rushed to extinguish a fire set in a prison dormitory trash can.
District Attorney Valerie Asbell last month advised a Bertie County judge she would seek the death penalty against Craig Wissink. He's accused of beating to death Sgt. Meggan Callahan with the fire extinguisher she used to douse the fire inside Bertie Correctional Institution last year.
The 36-year-old Wissink was already serving a life sentence for a June 2000 murder in Fayetteville.
North Carolina Investigators Find 6 Fires Within 3 Hours
Police and fire officials in Reidsville are investigating why they were forced to respond to six fires within a three-hour span.
Officials say the series of suspicious blazes was reported between midnight and 3 a.m. Sunday.
There have been no reported injuries in the fires.