CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — A leader among the North Carolina Senate Republicans who resigned this week from the General Assembly is the next chief attorney for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
University Chancellor Lee Roberts announced on Thursday the hiring of outgoing Senate Majority Leader Paul Newton as general counsel and vice chancellor at the UNC system’s flagship campus.
Newton revealed in a Tuesday news release his decision to step down from the Senate effective Wednesday “to pursue an opportunity outside of state government” that wasn’t immediately made public. During his farewell speech Wednesday on the Senate floor, Newton said he learned about a job opening several weeks ago and was offered it only on Monday.
Newton, who received undergraduate and law degrees at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a retired Duke Energy employee and executive who joined the Senate in 2017 and became majority leader after the 2022 elections. He said he is also the father of four UNC-Chapel Hill graduates.
Roberts said Newton, who begins the job April 21, “brings exceptional skills and deep experience in law, business and government to our University” and “is passionate about returning to his alma mater and contributing to our success.”
Republicans in Newton’s Cabarrus County Senate district will pick someone to fill his seat through the end of 2026. Senate Republicans also will meet to pick a new majority leader, which is considered a chief lieutenant to the chamber’s top leader, GOP Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger.
By JEFFREY COLLINS and BRITTANY PETERSON Associated Press
When Nicole Taylor and her family moved to their new home in the South Carolina mountains six months ago, the gorgeous view of Table Rock Mountain was the clincher.
She ended up with a porch-side seat to one of at least a half dozen wildfires in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Carolinas, fed by dry conditions and millions of trees that were knocked down by Hurricane Helene in 2024 and began decaying into tinderbox fuel.
Taylor watched this past weekend as smoke started to rise from the ridges across Highway 11 in Pickens County. The smoke got worse Monday, and it was pouring off the mountain Tuesday when she got a text saying she was under a mandatory evacuation.
So far no one has been hurt in the fires, which have burned more than 20 square miles (52 square kilometers) in mostly rugged, remote forests and the popular state park that includes Table Rock Mountain. Only a few dozen structures have been damaged.
But the firefighting is slow work. Sources of water to extinguish the flames are scarce, so crews depend on building fire breaks to try to stop them in their tracks, using bulldozers, excavators and even shovels and saws to strip the land of fuel.
It then becomes a waiting game, making sure embers don’t jump the break and hoping for the winds to die down or — the best relief of all — a long, soaking rain.
The long wait
Hurricane Helene slammed through Pickens County the Friday after Taylor moved into her dream home last September. The hurricane-force winds traveled hundreds of miles inland, smashing entire forests and destroying the electrical grid.
There was more than a week of what she called “prairie life.”
“We we’re like, OK, if we can make it through that, we can make it through anything. Unfortunately fire is one thing we can’t fight.”
This week Taylor decamped to wait the fire out in a hotel room in Greenville with her fiance, two children and their dogs. So far the fire has remained across the highway, but it is still too close for them to be able to go home.
“It’s been an actual whirlwind,” Taylor said of the last several days.
Rain and then fire
Six months ago Eric Young packed up his cats and left his home in Transylvania County, North Carolina, after floods and winds from Helene knocked out power, water and cell service. On Wednesday the fires in nearby South Carolina forced them all out again.
A retired environmental educator who moved there from Long Island a few years ago, he lost his car and a heater when his driveway and crawl space were inundated in September.
Now he is at a friend’s home in Charlotte, trying to keep a sense of humor about the absurdity of floodwaters followed so soon by flames.
“I thought it was nirvana here — never get anything but severe thunderstorms, the weather is temperate, very nice,” he said. “I didn’t know I’d be gut-punched twice in six months.”
Fighting the blaze
Forestry officials were worried after all those trees came down during Helene. It’s not just the fuel they create, they also hinder firefighters’ movement.
“It is nearly impossible to get through this stuff. We’ve got about five bulldozers, an excavator and saw crews to open this up and clean this,” Toby Cox, the firefighter in charge of the Table Rock fire, said about a fire break in a video briefing Thursday morning.
Extinguishing wildfires in the Carolinas takes time. A fire near Myrtle Beach that threatened dozens of homes and burned 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) in early March has been out of the news for nearly four weeks, but it is still just 80% contained and sends smoke billowing over neighborhoods when the wind shifts.
Conditions that favor fire outbreaks
Wildfires are unusual in the Carolinas, but not unheard of. The Great Fire of 1898 burned some 4,700 square miles (12,175 square kilometers) in the two states, an area roughly the size of Connecticut, said David Easterling, the director of the Technical Support Unit at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Spring is typically when blazes happen, according to Kathie Dello, North Carolina’s state climatologist.
This season the Blue Ridge Mountains are dry, having received only about two-thirds of the normal amount of rainfall in the last six months since Hurricane Helene. March has been full of sunny, dry, windy days.
Meanwhile the risk to people and property has increased over the years thanks to a boom in popularity of the mountains as a place to live.
“North Carolina has a lot of homes in the wildland urban interface, or more people living with a higher fire risk,” Dello said.
Any trees downed by Helene that do not burn this year will still be around for future fire seasons.
“All that storm debris will be there for years to come, increasing the fire danger considerably,” Easterling said.
The latest fire updates
The two large fires in South Carolina continued to burn Thursday. The Table Rock fire has consumed 7.1 square miles (18.4 square kilometers), and the one on Persimmon Ridge in Greenville County has burned 2.4 square miles (6.2 square kilometers).
The fires are about 8 miles (13 kilometers) apart, and emergency officials have asked almost everyone living between them to leave as a precaution. The evacuation zone extended into nearby Transylvania County, North Carolina.
In North Carolina at least eight fires were burning in the mountains. The largest — the Black Cove Fire and the Deep Woods Fire in Polk County — were each more than 10% contained. The fires have scorched nearly 10 square miles (26 square kilometers) combined but have not grown for more than a day.
¼ cup Extra virgin olive Oil (Spanish EVOO if you have it)
1 Onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced (I like to use ½ red and ½ green)
4 cloves Garlic
3 roma tomatoes, very finely diced (or 8 oz. tomato sauce)
Bay leaf
1 teaspoon paprika, sweet or smoked
1 pinch saffron threads
Salt and pepper
¼ cup white wine
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into pieces*
¼ cup fresh chopped parsley chopped, divided
2 cups Spanish Rice
5 cups Chicken Broth
½ cup frozen peas
½ lb Jumbo Shrimp or prawns, about 12 – peeled, tail on
½ lb Mussels (about 10-12), cleaned properly (beards off)
8 oz calamari rings
Lemons, for garnish
Directions
Add olive oil to a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, bell peppers and garlic and cook until onion is translucent. Add chopped tomato, bay leaf, paprika, saffron salt and pepper. Stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add white wine and cook for 10 minutes. Taste and add salt if needed.
Add chicken pieces, 2 tablespoons chopped parsley and rice to the pot. Cook for 1 minute.
Pour the broth slowly all around the pan and jiggle the pan to get the rice into an even layer. (Do not stir the mixture going forward!).
Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low. Give the pan a gentle shake back and forth just once or twice during cooking. (We don’t ever stir the rice, so that a crispy crust forms at the bottom, called a socarrat).
Cook for about 15-18 minutes (uncovered), then nestle the shrimp, mussels and calamari into the mixture, sprinkle peas on top and continue to cook (without stirring) for about 5 more minutes. Watch for most of the liquid to be absorbed and the rice at the top nearly tender. (If for some reason your rice is still not cooked, add ¼ cup more water or broth and continue cooking).
Remove pan from heat and cover pan with a lid or tinfoil. Place a kitchen towel over the lid and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
Garnish with fresh parsley and lemon slices. Serve.
By JESSE BEDAYN Associated Press/Report for America
DENVER (AP) — As Americans struggle under backbreaking rental prices, builders are turning to innovative ways to churn out more housing, from 3D printing to assembling homes in an indoor factory to using hemp — yes, the marijuana cousin — to make building blocks for walls.
“There’s not enough homes to purchase and there’s not enough places to rent. Period,” said Adrianne Todman, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under former President Joe Biden.
Businesses and lawmakers are trying to address the U.S. affordable housing crisis by turning to alternative ways to build homes. These include 3D printing houses out of concrete, building homes in a factory and shipping them to their final destination, and even using the hemp plant in construction. (AP video shot by Thomas Peipert)
One way to quickly build more is embrace these types of innovations, Todman said. “I can only imagine what our housing situation would be like now if we could have made a decision to be more aggressive in adopting this type of housing” decades ago.
So what are these new ways of building homes? And can they help reduce the cost of new housing, leading to lower rents?
Factory-built housing put together in a week
In a cavernous, metal hall, Eric Schaefer stood in front of a long row of modular homes that moved through the plant, similar to a car on an assembly line.
At a series of stations, workers lay flooring, erected framing, added roofs and screwed on drywall. Everything from electrical wiring to plumbing to kitchen countertops were in place before the homes were shrink-wrapped and ready to be shipped.
The business in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Fading West, has pumped out more than 500 homes in its just over three years of operation, each taking just five to seven days to build, even in the coldest winter months, Schaefer said.
Once assembled in the plant, the narrow townhouse-style homes with white trim, balconies and front porches, are about 90% done. At their final destination they are move-in ready within six weeks, Schaefer said.
The company works with towns, counties and housing nonprofits to help address the shortage of affordable homes, mostly for workers who’ve been squeezed out by sky-high prices in ritzy mountain towns.
That includes Eagle, Colorado, not far from the Vail ski resort, where Fading West worked with Habitat for Humanity to install modular homes at affordable rents for teachers and other school district employees. The homes tend to be on the smaller side, but can be multifamily or single family.
“You can build faster. The faster you build — even at a high quality — means the lower the price,” Schaefer said. “We see this as one of the pieces to the puzzle in helping solve the affordable housing crisis.”
There’s a hefty upfront cost to build the factory, and part of the challenge is a lack of state and federal investment, he said. A patchwork of building codes governing how a structure can be built also makes it difficult, requiring changes to the construction depending on the town or county it is being sent to.
Manufactured housing is similar to modular housing, but the units are constructed on a chassis — like a trailer — and they aren’t subject to the same local building codes. That’s part of the reason they are used more broadly across the U.S.
Roughly 100,000 manufactured homes were shipped to states in 2024, up from some 60,000 a decade earlier, according to Census Bureau data. Estimates of modular homes built annually often put them below 20,000.
3D printing is innovative but still ‘a long game’
Yes, there’s technology to 3D print homes.
A computer-controlled robotic arm equipped with a hose and nozzle moves back and forth, oozing lines of concrete, one on top of the other, as it builds up the wall of a home. It can go relatively quickly and form curved walls unlike concrete blocks.
Grant Hamel, CEO and co-founder of VeroTouch, stood inside one of the homes his company built, the wall behind him made out of rolling layers of concrete, distinct to a 3D printer. The technology could eventually reduce labor costs and the time it takes to build an abode, but is farther off than manufactured or modular methods from making a dent in the housing crisis.
It’s “a long game, to start chipping away at those prices at every step of the construction process,” Hamel said.
The 3D printers are expensive, and so are the engineers and other skilled employees needed to run them, said Ali Memari, director of the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center, whose work has partly focused on 3D printing. It’s also not recognized by international building codes, which puts up more red tape.
The technology is also generally restricted to single-story structures, unless traditional building methods are used as well, Memari said
It’s “a technology at its beginning, it has room to grow, especially when it is recognized in code,” Memari said. “The challenges that I mentioned exist, and they have to be addressed by the research community.”
A hemp-and-lime mixture called hempcrete has ‘a bright future’
Hemp — the plant related to marijuana — is being used more and more in the construction of walls.
The hemp is mixed with other materials, most importantly the mineral lime, forming “hempcrete,” a natural insulation that’s mold- and fire-resistant and can act as outer wall, insulation and inner wall.
Hempcrete still requires wood studs to frame the walls, but it replaces three wall-building components with just one, said Memari, also a professor at Penn State University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Memari is now helping oversee research into making hempcrete that doesn’t need the wood studs.
As much as a million hemp plants to be used for hempcrete can grow on one acre in a matter of months as opposed to trees, which can take years or decades to grow.
The plant is part of the cannabis family but has far less of the psychoactive component, THC, found in marijuana. In 2018, Congress legalized the production of certain types of hemp. Last year, the International Code Council, which develops international building codes used by all 50 states, adopted hempcrete as an insulation.
Confusion over the legality of growing hemp and the price tag of the machine required to process the plant, called a decorticator, are barriers to hempcrete becoming more widespread in housing construction, Memari said.
Still, he said, “hempcrete has a bright future.”
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Associated Press video journalist Thomas Peipert contributed to this report from Buena Vista, Colorado.
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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
More people have been asked to leave their homes in the North Carolina and South Carolina mountains as wildfires spread and the forecast for the rest of the week is not encouraging — dry and windy.
A half-dozen large fires are burning in the Blue Ridge Mountains, putting a lot more gray into the landscape and spreading smoke into places like Greenville.
Millions of fallen trees from September’s Hurricane Helene are both providing fuel for the wildfires and blocking the logging roads and paths firefighters use to fight the blazes and create fire breaks.
Dry conditions, wind and trees downed by Hurricane Helene fueled wildfires in North Carolina and South Carolina, where evacuation orders were in effect Tuesday. (AP Video)
Firefighters have managed to save most of the structures near the fires. Only one injury has been reported — a firefighter in North Carolina got his leg caught under a tree, officials said. At least 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) have burned.
Discouraging forecasts
There is rain in the forecast for the weekend, but it isn’t the kind of soaking downpour that can knock a fire out on its own, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ashley Rehnberg in Greer, South Carolina.
“Hopefully that will at least calm things down briefly,” Rehnberg said.
The bright spot in the forecast for the next week is there is no especially dangerous day where the winds and the dry weather reach potentially disastrous levels like in Los Angeles in January or Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in 2016.
Forestry agencies in North Carolina and South Carolina are already figuring out how to rotate teams of firefighters into and out of the mountains for what could be a long fight.
“Burn bans are in place and people need to follow them,” Rehnberg said. “Even if we do get rain, the weather is going to continue to be a problem as far as we can forecast.”
South Carolina fire update
South Carolina fire officials called for their first round of evacuations Tuesday night. Two fires are burning — a larger one inside Table Rock State Park in Pickens County that has burned 3.6 square miles (9.3 square kilometers) and another one on Persimmon Ridge in Greenville County has burned 1.6 square miles (4 square kilometers).
The fires are about 8 miles (12.5 kilometers) apart and winds are strong enough that authorities decided to evacuate the area between the two fires.
North Carolina fire update
About two dozen homes and outbuildings have been destroyed in Polk County, spokesperson Kellie Cannon said in the latest update.
Three fires have burned at least 9.6 square miles (25 square kilometers) in Polk County and in neighboring Henderson County.
Late Tuesday, a wildfire started in far western North Carolina not far from Bryson City. Police were evacuating some people as the fire spread to nearly 1 square mile (1.6 square kilometers).
Authorities tell people to stop burning
The fires in South Carolina have been caused by humans.
Authorities from local fire chiefs all the way to South Carolina’s governor are urging people to heed burn bans in both states and stop setting fires to burn garbage or at campsites.
“We have people going out in the woods and in their backyards and starting fires when the wind is blowing and everything is dry,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said. “We just have to use common sense. People get out in nature and they forget how dangerous it can be.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina government cashed in early when it came to reaping fiscal benefits from authorized sports wagering in the ninth-largest state.
A report presented Wednesday to the North Carolina State Lottery Commission, which regulates the betting, says the state expects to have collected $131.3 million in taxes from sports betting operations for the first full year of operations through March 10.
That amount goes well beyond estimates of state legislative researchers as the bill worked its way through the General Assembly that enacted it in 2023. They had projected tax revenues could reach $100 million annually within five years. The calculation is based on the law’s 18% rate upon gross wagering revenue, which is essentially betting revenue minus paid winnings.
On March 11, 2024, licensed operators began taking bets on smartphones and computers under the 2023 state law permitting and regulating such gambling. At the time, North Carolina became the 30th state to offer mobile sports better, along with the District of Columbia.
The windfall is connected to big betting. For the first full year of North Carolina operations, over $6.8 billion in bets were made, resulting in $729.3 million in gross wagering revenue for the eight licensees, according to the commission report.
“It was a very successful year in my opinion,” Sterl Carpenter, the lottery’s chief business development officer who helped get sports wagering off the ground, told the commission. “Things went extremely well.”
“I would say that we are very encouraged by the results,” commissioner Cari Boyce said.
With a population of 11 million, North Carolina had been considered an attractive market for interactive wagering companies seeking to open. Before the law was implemented, sports gambling was legal in North Carolina only at three casinos operated by two American Indian tribes.
Under the law, registered customers within the state’s borders can bet on professional, college or Olympic-style sports. The law allows for future in-person wagering through sportsbooks beyond those already located at the tribal casinos.
Close to $500 million in the sports wagering revenues during the past year were considered “promotional wagers” — incentives for new customers offered by the companies once an initial bet is made. With those amounts removed, the complete months with the highest betting totals were November, December and January — a period that features college and professional football playoffs, as well as college basketball and pro hockey and hoops.
The tax revenues collected partly go to athletic departments at most University of North Carolina system schools, amateur sports initiatives and gambling addiction education and treatment.
6 tablespoons butter (room temperature and cut into small pieces)
2 teaspoons flour (I use gluten-free flour)
1 cup salted peanuts or nut of choice (optional)
Directions
Line a 9×13 pan (or quarter sheet pan) with parchment paper. Lightly grease with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
Melt the sugar, corn syrup, and salt together in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. (A stainless steel pot works best. An enameled dutch oven pot will make the temperature harder to control and can lead to overcooking.)
Bring the syrup mixture to a boil and boil until it reaches 244F. Wash down the sides of the pot to remove any sugar crystals if needed, but there’s no need to stir once it’s boiling.
Meanwhile, add the egg whites to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat on medium-high speed for 2 minutes until starting to thicken/foam.
When the syrup mixture reaches 244F, slowly pour in ⅓ of the syrup while mixing on low speed. Pour the syrup in very slowly and carefully and be sure it’s being mixed the whole time.
Put the remaining syrup in the pot back on the stove and cook over medium heat until it reaches 264F.
With the mixer running on low, pour the rest of the syrup (slowly and carefully) into the egg whites.
Continue mixing on medium-high speed for 5 minutes, or until the mixture is stiff and starts to clump around the whisk. It won’t form completely stiff peaks but will thicken quite a bit.
With the mixer running on low, stir in the vanilla, and ½ the butter and flour. Mix in the rest of the butter/flour, then stir in the nuts.
Pour into the prepared pan and smooth into an even layer. Sprinkle with more nuts if desired. Allow to cool for at least 4 hours and preferably overnight.
Slice into pieces with a greased knife. You may have to grease the knife in-between slices. Wrap with candy wrappers if desired, or store in an airtight container between pieces of wax paper or parchment so the pieces don’t stick to each other. Enjoy!
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A top lieutenant to North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger announced on Tuesday his resignation from his Senate seat, creating a leadership vacancy as the Senate enters a more intense work period this year.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Paul Newton is retiring effective Wednesday evening “to pursue an opportunity outside of state government,” according to a statement from Senate Republicans. His specific plans weren’t immediately released.
Newton’s departure will mean that Republicans in the 34th Senate District will choose someone to fill his seat through the end of 2026. Senate Republicans also will have to meet to pick a new majority leader.
The majority leader presides at caucus meetings in which the majority party discusses policy issues and votes and is usually closely allied with the Senate president pro tempore — the position held by Berger.
Newton, 64, a former Duke Energy state president in North Carolina from Cabarrus County, joined the Senate in 2017 and was elected by his GOP colleagues after the 2022 elections to the majority leadership post.
As a majority leader or a committee chair, Newton helped get enacted laws that extended the GOP’s conservative tax policies; eliminated the three-day grace period for mail-in absentee ballots postmarked by the day of the election; and set greenhouse gas reduction mandates on electric power plants operated by Duke Energy.
“It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve the people of Cabarrus County for nearly a decade,” Newton said. “During that time, I’ve been able to play a small role in so many consequential pieces of legislation that have made an incredible impact on the lives of North Carolinians.”
In the statement, Berger called Newton a “valued voice and leader” who “provided a calm presence and wise counsel to many legislators during his time in Raleigh. He was always willing to tackle the tough subjects and never wavered from his convictions.”
The Senate’s bill-filing deadline was Tuesday. The Senate aims to approve a two-year state government budget proposal next month.
