Tag Archives: North Carolina

Man charged as authorities says missing North Carolina girl presumed dead

(Reuters) – A man has been arrested and charged in North Carolina in connection with the disappearance of three-year-old Mariah Woods who went missing from her bedroom five days ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local sheriff said on Saturday.

Earl Kimrey, 32, was taken into custody on Friday in Onslow County, North Carolina, and charged with several crimes including concealing a death and obstruction of justice, the FBI and Onslow County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Kimrey also faces burglary, felony larceny and possession of stolen property charges, the statement said.

The girl is believed to be dead due to evidence gathered during the investigation, the statement said.

“At this time, the location of Mariah is unknown,” the statement said. “The searches will now shift to a recovery process.”

Kimrey, who is being held on a $1 million bond, is the live-in boyfriend of the girl’s mother Kristy Woods, local media reported.

Woods said she put her daughter to bed about 11 p.m. on Sunday, and said her boyfriend saw the girl about an hour later when the child got up and he had told her to go back to bed, WRAL, an NBC affiliate in Raleigh, North Carolina, reported.

The couple contacted the Onslow County sheriff’s office early the next morning to say the girl had disappeared, officials said.

A days-long search ensued with hundreds of police officers, military troops and volunteers searching the rural area around the family’s mobile home in Jacksonville.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; editing by Alexander Smith and Stephen Powell)

Millions of Americans await awe-inspiring total solar eclipse

By Steve Gorman and Irene Klotz

SALMON, Idaho/MURPHY, N.C. (Reuters) – Millions of Americans armed with protective glasses are taking positions along a slender ribbon of land cutting diagonally across the United States to marvel at the first total solar eclipse to unfold from coast to coast in nearly a century.

After weeks of anticipation, the sight of the moon’s shadow passing directly in front of the sun, blotting out all but the halo-like solar corona, will draw one of the largest audiences in human history, experts say.

When those watching via social and broadcast media are included, the spectacle will likely smash records.

Some 12 million people live in the 70-mile-wide (113-km-wide), 2,500-mile-long (4,000-km-long) zone where the total eclipse will appear on Monday. Millions of others have traveled to spots along the route to bask in its full glory.

Murphy, North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains about two hours north of Atlanta, is among hundreds of small towns that are preparing for a huge influx of visitors.

“The weather forecast for Monday is beautiful, probably not a cloud in the sky all day,” said Dave Vanderlaan, 61, a retired landscaper. “We’re busy, but tomorrow anybody in Atlanta who says they want to see total, they’re going to come up to this area, so it could be crazy.”

Millions of Americans armed with protective glasses are taking positions along a slender ribbon of land cutting diagonally across the United States to marvel at the first total solar eclipse to unfold from coast to coast in nearly a century.. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Millions of Americans armed with protective glasses are taking positions along a slender ribbon of land cutting diagonally across the United States to marvel at the first total solar eclipse to unfold from coast to coast in nearly a century.. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

The phenomenon will first appear at 10:15 a.m. PDT (1715 GMT) near Depoe Bay, Oregon. Some 94 minutes later, at 2:49 p.m. EDT (1849 GMT), totality will take its final bow near Charleston, South Carolina.

The last time such a spectacle unfolded from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast was in 1918. The last total eclipse seen anywhere in the United States took place in 1979.

In Depoe Bay, a town of about 1,500 people, clear skies on Sunday raised hopes that the corona would be visible and not obscured by coastal haze or cloud.

Lisa Black, from Vancouver, Canada, said she and her party planned to have breakfast on the beach and be ready with their glasses.

“And, yeah, it will be cool to be able to look out at the ocean and just have the openness when it goes totally dark,” she said.

For millions of others who can’t get there, a partial eclipse of the sun will appear throughout North America if there is no local cloud cover.

Perhaps never before have so many people had the opportunity to see a total eclipse, said Michael Zeiler, a self-described “eclipse chaser” who on Monday will notch his ninth time seeing “totality.”

Weeks of publicity have fanned excitement, he said, and may have persuaded many families to make last-minute plans for a road trip to the zone.

Zeiler, who runs GreatAmericanEclipse.com, a website devoted to the event, estimates that up to 7.4 million people with travel to the zone to observe the total eclipse, which takes place in the peak vacation month of August.

Many people have trekked to remote national forests and parks of Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming, while others have bought tickets to watch the show en masse in a Carbondale, Illinois, football stadium, a two-hour drive southeast of St. Louis.

In South Carolina, Charleston County’s more than 16,000 hotel rooms are booked, tourism officials say. Police expect up to 100,000 visitors to the area on Monday.

Those who live along the path, which cuts through a few population centers like Kansas City and Nashville, Tennessee, can simply walk out their homes and look skyward.

For all but the couple of minutes of totality, observers must wear specially designed solar-safe sunglasses or filters to avoid severe eye damage. It is never safe to gaze directly at a partial eclipse with the naked eye.

Unlike many other astronomical events, such as comets and meteor showers, that often fail to live up to their hype, a total eclipse is nearly a sure thing, so long as the weather cooperates, experts say.

A predictive map issued on Sunday by Weather Decision Technologies Inc shows clear skies in the West, clouds in Nebraska and northwest Missouri, and partly cloudy conditions farther east.

The sun’s disappearing act is just part of the show. As the black orb of the moon gradually nibbles away at the sun’s face, the heavens dim to a quasi-twilight, and some stars and planets emerge.

Shadows on the ground seem to deepen, sunset-like colors streak the sky at the horizon, the air grows still, temperatures drop and birds cease to chirp as they settle in trees to roost.

The last glimmer of the sun gives way to a momentary sparkle known as the “diamond ring” effect just before the sun slips completely behind the moon, leaving only the aura of its outer atmosphere, or corona, visible in the darkness.

The corona, lasting just two minutes or so during Monday’s eclipse, marks the peak phase of totality and the only stage of the eclipse safe to view with the naked eye.

The overall display as seen at each point along the eclipse path, including the partial phases before and after totality, lasts nearly three hours.

 

(Additional reporting by Jane Ross in Depoe Bay; Writing by Steve Gorman, Frank McGurty and Ian Simpson; Editing by Sandra Maler)

 

Duke University removes contentious Confederate statue after vandalism

The empty plinth where a statue of Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee once stood is flanked by statues of Thomas Jefferson and the poet Sidney Lanier at the entrance to Duke University's Duke Chapel after officials removed the controversial statue early Saturday morning in Durham, North Carolina, U.S., August 19, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Miczek

By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – Duke University removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the entrance of a chapel on the Durham, North Carolina, campus, officials said on Saturday, days after it was vandalized.

The decision to take down the statue followed discussions among students, faculty, staff and alumni about maintaining safety on campus, university President Vincent E. Price said in a statement.

“I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university,” Price said.

The prestigious university will preserve the statue of Lee, who led Confederate forces in the American Civil War of 1861-1865, and use it as an educational tool so that students can study “Duke’s complex past,” Price added.

The Confederacy, comprised of 11 Southern states, broke from the Union largely to preserve the institution of slavery.

Symbols of the Confederacy have come into focus since last weekend, when white nationalists, angered at the planned removal of a statue of Lee from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia, engaged in violent protests where a counter-protester was killed.

The Robert E. Lee statue, one of 10 outside Duke Chapel, was vandalized and defaced late on Wednesday night. Campus security discovered the damage early Thursday, according to university officials. The incident was under investigation.

“Wednesday night’s act of vandalism made clear that the turmoil and turbulence of recent months do not stop at Duke’s gates,” Price said.

“We have a responsibility to come together as a community to determine how we can respond to this unrest in a way that demonstrates our firm commitment to justice, not discrimination,” he said.

Duke will form a committee to advise the school on how to properly memorialize historical figures on campus, and to recommend teaching programs, exhibitions and forums to explore its past.

There are more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy, including 700 monuments and statues, in public spaces across the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

The large majority of these were erected long after the Civil War ended in 1865. Many went up early in the 20th century during a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement.

More than a half-dozen have been taken down since last week.

 

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

 

Power outage forces thousands to evacuate North Carolina islands

By Gina Cherelus and Jenna Zucker

(Reuters) – Police in North Carolina were issuing citations to vacationers who have yet to leave two Outer Banks islands where a power outage this week led to an evacuation order during the height of the summer vacation season, officials said on Saturday.

The outage was caused by an accident on Thursday that cut a transmission line during construction on a new bridge allowing vehicular traffic to reach Hatteras Island from the mainland. It also affected Ocracoke Island to the south, connected to the mainland only via air or ferry service.

“I’m so upset. Hatteras Island had to evacuate this morning so much for vacation this summer. I really feel bad for my sister’s loss of money,” Twitter user @bridge_please wrote on Saturday.

About 3,700 tourists and nearly 1,400 cars were ferried off Ocracoke as of Saturday, according to the Hyde County website. The evacuation order there went into effect on Thursday.

On Hatteras, in Dare County, officials could not estimate how many people had left by car or boat since the order went into effect there on Saturday morning. About 50,000 people were affected, county spokeswoman Dorothy Hester said.

The Hyde County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday warned that it would issue citations to any visitor who failed to comply, but spokesman Colby Sawyer did not know how many tickets had been written.

“We initially had quite an issue getting the people to leave,” Sawyer said. “A lot of people did not heed that warning and did not evacuate.”

Residents and vendors have been allowed to stay on the island, said Hyde County spokesman Donnie Shumate on Saturday, who said it was uncertain when full service would be restored.

Crews were having trouble inspecting the damaged line, Shumate said. “Until that happens, we can’t even get an estimate on how long it could be,” he said.

Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative, which provides power to Hatteras, was using generators to provide partial electric service but conservation measures were in effect. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency on Thursday for the two islands.

Representatives of the power company or PCL Construction, which is building the new bridge, could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus and Jenna Zucker in New York; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Trump administration drops North Carolina ‘bathroom bill’ lawsuit

FILE PHOTO: A sign protesting a North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

(Reuters) – The Trump administration on Friday dropped a lawsuit accusing North Carolina of discriminating against LGBT residents after the state replaced its “bathroom bill”, although a key civil liberties group vowed to keep fighting the new law in court.

In a two-sentence court filing the Justice Department said it had dropped its lawsuit, filed last year by the Obama administration, because the North Carolina legislature had replaced it with a new law called House Bill 142.

The filing marks the first significant move in a complicated legal battle challenging the state’s nondiscrimination laws since the replacement of the original law, known as House Bill 2 or more commonly as the “bathroom bill.”

House Bill 2’s most controversial provision was the requirement that in state-run buildings transgender people use the bathrooms, changing rooms and showers that corresponded to the sex on their birth certificates rather than their gender identity.

A number of businesses and sports leagues boycotted North Carolina because they saw the year-old law as discriminatory against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Civil liberties groups also protested the move.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the law in March of last year. That was followed in May by the Justice Department’s own suit against House Bill 2.

James Esseks, the ACLU’s LGBT Project Director said the new law is flawed because it keeps a ban on cities and counties from creating their own nondiscriminatory ordinaces until 2020 and relegates to the state legislature the power to regulate bathroom access. The legislature has purposefully not taken any action to define access, he said.

House Bill 142 “leaves transgender people in limbo and that’s intentional,” Esseks said. “This does not fix the problem. It creates confusion.”

Esseks said his group planned to amend their lawsuit soon to challenge the new bill.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler and Chizu Nomiyama)

NCAA again weighing North Carolina as host after bathroom law repeal

FILE PHOTO - A bathroom sign welcomes both genders at the Cacao Cinnamon coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina, U.S. on May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – The National Collegiate Athletic Association said on Tuesday it will again consider allowing North Carolina to host championship games after the state replaced a law it deemed discriminatory against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

The NCAA had stripped North Carolina of championship events to protest the law, which required transgender people to use bathrooms matching the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity and limited protection against discrimination of LGBT people.

Last week, state legislators in Raleigh passed a new law that repealed the bathroom measure. But they also banned cities from enacting their own anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people until 2020 and permanently blocked local legal protections for transgender people in restrooms.

The NCAA said those restrictions concerned its board of governors, who had preferred a full repeal of the year-old law known as House Bill 2.

A majority of the board “reluctantly” voted to permit the state to be considered for championship games in light of the new measure, the NCAA said.

“This new law has minimally achieved a situation where we believe NCAA championships may be conducted in a nondiscriminatory environment,” the governing body for U.S. college athletics said in a statement.

The announcement came hours after the North Carolina Tar Heels’ men’s basketball team clinched the national title Monday night. Coach Roy Williams had opposed HB 2, which prompted the NCAA to move two rounds of the Division I men’s tournament out of hoops-crazed North Carolina.

Critics of the new law, signed by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper after being approved by the Republican-controlled legislature on Thursday, called the NCAA’s announcement disappointing.

They argue the state is continuing to discriminate against LGBT people with a measure they have dubbed “HB2.0.”

“After drawing a line in the sand and calling for repeal of HB 2, the NCAA simply let North Carolina lawmakers off the hook,” Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement.

The Atlantic Coast Conference, another major collegiate athletic league, also has restored North Carolina’s eligibility to host championship sporting events.

Cooper and top Republican lawmakers, Senate Leader Phil Berger and House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore, said in statements they were pleased by the NCAA’s move.

After a year of boycotts by corporations, conventions and concerts, elected officials said the revised measure addressed discrimination concerns while still protecting safety and privacy in government restrooms.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

College league ends North Carolina boycott after bathroom law revoked

FILE PHOTO: A sign protesting a North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

(Reuters) – The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), a major collegiate athletic league, said on Friday it has restored North Carolina’s eligibility to host championship sporting events after the state repealed restrictions on bathroom access for transgender people.

The ACC move was the first organization to end the kind of boycotts imposed on North Carolina by various athletic and business entities in a protest against last year’s enactment of the so-called bathroom law, denounced by opponents as discriminatory.

After months of political wrangling, the Republican-controlled legislature on Thursday repealed that law, which required transgender individuals entering restrooms, locker rooms and showers in public buildings to use facilities that matched their sex at birth, as opposed to their gender identity.

The statute, widely known as HB 2, also barred local governments in the state from enacting their own anti-discrimination protections in housing, employment and other areas on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

In its place, the HB 2 repeal prevented local jurisdictions from enacting such anti-discrimination measures until 2020.

The HB 2 repeal also reserved for state lawmakers sole authority to regulate access to “multiple occupancy restrooms, showers or changing facilities” in the future.

The repeal was signed into law by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, the former state attorney general who opposed HB 2 from the outset and unseated the former Republican governor last year in large part over political and economic fallout from the bathroom bill.

The new measure drew sharp condemnation from civil rights advocates, who saw it as a largely empty political gesture.

The move by the ACC was a hopeful sign for supporters of the repeal who hoped it would be enough to persuade boycotting organizations to end protests that cost North Carolina’s economy hundreds of millions of dollars.

“This compromise was a first step to repairing our state’s reputation and economy, and it’s encouraging to see the ACC put North Carolina back on its list,” Cooper said afterward.

In boycotting North Carolina, the ACC followed the lead of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which had made a similar decision a few days earlier.

The NCAA board is also considering a return to North Carolina, NCAA President Mark Emmert said on Thursday. A decision was expected in the coming days, he said.

In basketball-crazed North Carolina, the withdrawal of NCAA tournament games and the National Basketball Association All-Star game, which had been awarded to Charlotte, reverberated throughout the state.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Eric Meijer)

North Carolina lawmakers reach deal to repeal transgender bathroom law

A sign protesting a North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

(Reuters) – North Carolina Republican lawmakers said late on Wednesday they had reached a deal to repeal the state’s controversial law prohibiting transgender people from using restrooms in accordance with their gender identities.

The compromise, reached with Democratic Governor Roy Cooper and set to go before the legislature for a vote Thursday morning, would still ban local municipalities, schools and others from regulating bathroom access.

It would also effectively forbid cities from offering their own job and restroom protections to vulnerable groups for nearly four years.

“Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy,” the state’s top Republican lawmakers, Senate leader Phil Berger and House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore, said in a statement released late Wednesday.

The pair announced the deal at an impromptu news conference.

The compromise with Cooper, a staunch opponent of the bathroom law, was reached hours before the state was reportedly set to lose its ability to host any NCAA basketball championships.

The college athletic association is one of numerous organizations to sanction or boycott North Carolina in the wake of the law’s passage last year.

Cooper said earlier this week that the measure could end up costing the state nearly $4 billion.

He said he supported the compromise. “It’s not a perfect deal, but it repeals House Bill 2 and begins to repair our reputation.”

But it remained unclear whether the compromise would be acceptable to those who believe North Carolina was unfriendly to the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

In an impassioned news conference before the deal was announced, several leading LGBT activists decried its provisions, including the bar on municipalities regulating employment practices and “public accommodations”.

“This is a dirty deal,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. He vowed to continue fighting North Carolina in court and in the public sphere if the new measure passes and is signed by Cooper.

On Twitter Wednesday night, San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co., which has publicly opposed North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law, urged lawmakers to reject what it called a “backroom” deal.

(This version of the story corrects Griffin quote in paragraph 12, replacing “bill” with “deal”)

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

North Carolina in stalemate over bathroom law as NCAA deadline looms

FILE PHOTO: A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access adorns the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, North Carolina May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – North Carolina’s leading Republican lawmakers and Democratic governor hit a fresh impasse on Tuesday over a fix for a state law that restricts bathroom access for transgender people, putting lucrative hosting duties for NCAA championships at risk.

State Senate leader Phil Berger and House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore held an evening news conference to announce a tentative deal to repeal the bathroom measure, which has spurred boycotts by corporations, conventions and concerts.

They credited Governor Roy Cooper with making the proposal, but the governor’s office quickly issued a statement saying no suitable compromise had been reached.

The stalemate came hours after a local sports official said the NCAA would not let North Carolina host college sports championship events through 2022 unless there are changes to the law commonly known as House Bill 2 by Thursday.

“If HB 2 has not been resolved by that time, the NCAA will have no choice but to move forward without the North Carolina bids,” Scott Dupree, executive director for the Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance, said in a statement on Twitter.

He said a “contact very close to the NCAA” had confirmed the impending deadline.

Asked for comment, NCAA spokeswoman Gail Dent referred to a statement by the governing body for U.S. college athletics last week on the one-year anniversary of the law. In it, the NCAA maintained HB 2 did not assure a discrimination-free atmosphere for events.

North Carolina is the only state that bars transgender people from using government-run restrooms that match their gender identity. The law also limits protection from discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

A prior repeal bid failed during a one-day special legislative session in December.

By then, the NCAA had stripped North Carolina of championship events scheduled for the current academic year in protest of the law, including two rounds of this month’s Division I men’s basketball tournament.

The organization has said it would begin selecting sites this week for events through spring of 2022.

On Tuesday, Berger and Moore announced a deal that would repeal HB 2 and give the state the authority to regulate multi-occupancy bathrooms and shower facilities, which they said would safeguard privacy. But Berger told reporters they spoke with Cooper on their way to the news conference, and the governor denied making the proposal.

Cooper spokesman Ford Porter accused the lawmakers of a political stunt. He said the governor objected to a provision that he said would allow discrimination to persist by permitting people to sue over claims of their “rights of conscience” being violated.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Tom Brown and Bill Trott)

NAACP calls for boycott of North Carolina over voting, bathroom laws

Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP, speaks at the 46th NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena, California, U.S. on February 6, 2015. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/File Photo

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Friday said it would not hold its convention in North Carolina and urged other organizations to boycott the state in protest of laws adopted by the Republican-led legislature.

The civil rights groups described the move as the first step in an economic boycott that could be expanded in North Carolina and replicated in other states that enact laws limiting voting rights and protections for gay and transgender people.

NAACP leaders asked artists, religious groups, educators and sports leagues to join the effort.

“If we demonstrate the power of the purse, then we will demonstrate the power of democracy,” the NAACP’s president and CEO, Cornell William Brooks, told reporters in Raleigh.

Brooks did not provide a timeline for a wider boycott, but the organization said an internal task force would explore it.

The NAACP said it was calling for the boycott in response to North Carolina laws such as House Bill 2, which bars transgender people from using government-operated bathrooms that match their gender identity and bans cities from setting a minimum wage above the state level.

The organization said state lawmakers need to create fair election districts that do not dilute the black vote and repeal a new measure seen as weakening the executive powers of newly elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

“What has happened in North Carolina makes this state one of the battlegrounds over the soul of America,” said the Rev. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter.

Conventions, corporations and sports leagues including the National Basketball Association already relocated events or halted new jobs planned for North Carolina after lawmakers passed H.B. 2 last March, costing the state more than $560 million, according to the online magazine Facing South.

So far, however, efforts to repeal the measure have failed.

Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican, said Cooper should take a stance against the NAACP’s boycott.

“It’s time for him to show some leadership as North Carolina’s governor, condemn William Barber’s attempt to inflict economic harm on our citizens, and work toward a reasonable compromise that keeps men out of women’s bathrooms,” Berger said in a statement.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Leslie Adler)