North State Journal Vol. 6, Issue 19

VOLUME 6 ISSUE 19

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WWW.NSJONLINE.COM

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2021

the Wednesday

NEWS BRIEFING

Tropical Storm Elsa expected to hit NC Raleigh Tropical Storm Elsa could bring rain, wind, and tornadoes to North Carolina on Wednesday night and into Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

State emergency management officials are advising residents in eastern and central North Carolina to be prepared for significant rains and possible flooding.

“Residents and visitors to North Carolina should keep a close watch on the forecast for this storm,” said Gov. Roy Cooper.

The State Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh activated Tuesday to monitor the storm. The State Emergency Response Team is preparing to support local governments with any storm-related needs.

NSJ STAFF

Treasury secretary ignores requirement to testify in COVID-19 bill Washington, D.C. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen missed an April deadline to testify before the House and Senate Small Business Committees, even though she is required to do so under the coronavirus relief bill law passed

by Congress in December, Fox Business reported.

The $900 billion bill, which former President Donald Trump signed into law on Dec. 27, 2020, stipulates that the Treasury secretary and SBA administrator must testify before House and Senate committees no later than “120 days after the date of the enactment of this act.”

SB Administrator Isabella Guzman testified on May 26.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (RMO), the House committee’s ranking member, said, “While the entire country is ready, willing and eager to fight for the survival of America’s small businesses, you have ignored their plight. It is simply unacceptable.”

NSJ STAFF

Body of last missing tuber found after deadly dam accident Eden The body of the last person missing from a North Carolina river accident that killed five people has been found, weeks after a family rode inflatable tubes over a relatively small but dangerous dam.

The Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that searchers recovered the body in the Dan River near the Draper Boat Landing.

She was among a group of nine relatives from Eden and LaPorte, Indiana, who were floating down the river on June 16 when they went over the dam, which is about 8 feet high. A Duke Energy employee spotted survivors and called 911.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Pompeo to headline GOP dinner in South Carolina Columbia, S.C. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to keynote the signature fundraiser for the Republican Party in South Carolina, home to the first southern presidential primary and crucial destination for potential White House hopefuls of both major parties.

“He’s looking forward to coming down, being able to deliver some red meat and speak his mind — without having to worry about being a diplomat,” said state Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick.

Pompeo, who also served as CIA director during his four years in the Trump administration, has been making the rounds in other states with early presidential voting contests, such as Iowa and New Hampshire.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AP PHOTOS

Left, in this Wednesday, March 18, 2020, file photo, people remove belongings on campus at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Right, Nikole Hannah-Jones is interviewed at her home in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, July 6, 2021.

NORTH

STATE

JOURNaL ELEVATE THE CONVERSATION

Cooper sought eviction order approval after bypassing Council of State last year

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — Faced with an expiring executive order related to restricting evictions, Gov. Roy Cooper sought Council of State concurrence last week.

The request from Cooper for concurrence came on the oneyear anniversary of the General Assembly passing legislation urging the governor to confer with the Council of State on emergency actions. On June 29, 2020, the legislature passed Senate Bill 105, titled “Clarify Emergency Powers.” Cooper promptly vetoed the measure three days later.

As of June 30, Cooper has issued a total of 221 executive orders since taking office. Seventy-six, or almost 35%, of those orders are COVID-19 related.

The Council of State members voted not to extend Cooper’s moratorium by a party-line vote of six to three. The Council of State is made up of North Carolina’s 10 elected statewide executive offices, which includes the governor.

Democrats Attorney General Josh Stein, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and State Auditor Beth Wood voted in favor of the extension. Republicans Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,

State Treasurer Dale Folwell, Commissioner of Labor Josh Dobson Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler, Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt voted to end the order.

Following the Council of State vote, the governor issued a press release criticizing the vote, titled, “Republican Council of State Members Revoke State Evictions Protections Effective July 1.”

“It’s disappointing to see Council of State Members revoke eviction protections for people still struggling to stay in their homes,” said Cooper in the press release. “Many North Carolinians still need help and we will work to make sure landlords abide by the CDC evictions moratorium and that tenants can access rent and utility assistance from counties and the state HOPE program.”

Lauren Horsch, communications advisor to Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) said in a statement to North State Journal that “This is a step Gov. Cooper should have taken for all of his pandemic-related executive orders.”

“For more than a year Gov. See COOPER, page A2

Nikole Hannah-Jones rejects UNC Chapel Hill job despite receiving tenure

By Matt Mercer North State Journal CHAPEL HILL — Nikole Hannah-Jones, the writer of the controversial “1619 Project,” turned down a job at UNC Chapel Hill and will instead take a tenured position at Howard University.

Hannah-Jones made the announcement on CBS This Morning that she would join the private HBCU along with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

One week ago, trustees at UNC Chapel Hill approved tenure for Hannah-Jones on the last day of the previous iteration of the trustee board. The university had previously announced in April that she would join the journalism school despite the factual inaccuracies of the “1619 Project,” pointed out by Walter Hussman Jr. The school named the journalism school after Hussman following a $25 million donation. Hussman had emailed university leaders challenging her work as “highly contentious and highly controversial.”

She called the situation a “a very difficult decision, not a decision I wanted to make.”

But ultimately, she said the university’s treatment led her to instead take the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at Howard.

“To be denied it [tenure] to only have that vote occur on the last possible day, at the last possible moment, after threat of legal action, after weeks of protest, after it became a national scandal, it’s just not something that I want anymore,” she said in a statement released by her attorneys at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “I cannot imagine working at and advancing a school named for a man who lobbied against me, who used his wealth to influence the hires and ideology of the journalism school, who ignored my 20 years of journalism experience, all of my credentials, all of my work, because he believed that a project that centered black Americans equaled the denigration of white Americans.”

“It is my pleasure to welcome

NC homicide rates remain high following historically violent 2020

By David Larson North State Journal RALEIGH — Last year broke homicide records for a number of North Carolina municipalities — including Charlotte and Greensboro — and those elevated levels of violence do not appear to be dropping, according to data for the first six months of 2021 provided to North State Journal by local police departments. Compounding the issue is a simultaneous rise in law en-

forcement recruitment and retention problems.

North Carolina’s largest city, Charlotte, had 123 homicides in 2020, the most in their history. But according to Katherine Acosta, a public information officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the city has had 53 homicides in the first half of 2021, which is even higher than the 48 they had at the same point in 2020.

The murder rate in Charlotte had already been on a dramatic up-

swing, jumping from 57 in 2018 to 108 in 2019, before the 2020 record number of 123.

At the end of the year, CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings said on social media, “The number of homicides this year [2020] is devastating and unfortunate. Some people are quick to resort to deadly force as a method to solving their problems.”

The chair of UNC Charlotte’s See HOMICIDES, page A2

to Howard two of today’s most respected and influential journalists,” Howard President Wayne A. I. Frederick said in a news release. “At such a critical time for race relations in our country, it is vital that we understand the role of journalism in steering our national conversation and social progress.”

Their appointments are being supported by nearly $20 million donated by Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, as well as by an anonymous donor, to support Howard’s continued education of and investment in black journalists, the university said.

Hannah-Jones also cited political interference by conservatives because of her work on the “1619 Project.” Attorneys retained

by Hannah-Jones’ said she would not accept the job without tenure, and even cited unspecified concerns about the role of Republican members of the General Assembly.

Those claims were unfounded, said Pat Ryan, deputy chief of staff and communications director to Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden).

Ryan said that the legislature has no role in the faculty hiring decisions at UNC System schools or the terms by which faculty are hired.

“A short walk around the UNC-Chapel Hill campus should convince anybody that the ReSee TENURE, page A2

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

A2 WEDNESDAY

THE WORD: SHORT AND TO THE POINT

7.7.21 #290

3 JOHN 11

Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good.

He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.

“Liberty's story” Visit us online nsjonline.com North State Journal (USPS 20451) (ISSN 2471-1365) Neal Robbins Publisher Matt Mercer Editor in Chief Cory Lavalette Managing/Sports Editor Frank Hill Senior Opinion Editor Emily Roberson Business/Features Editor David Larson Associate Editor Lauren Rose Design Editor

Published each Wednesday

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HOMICIDES from page A1 Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Michael Turner, told NSJ in a July 5 email, criminologists are often better at counting the homicides than they are at pinpointing the reasons for any changes, because “explanatory factors are many and quite complex.”

“There is little agreement among criminologists on why homicide rates are rising,” Turner said. “Some believe it’s the increase in guns, some believe citizens have a high level of distrust of the police, some believe police have been resistant to engage in volatile situations for fear of bad press/video, and some believe hospitals could be over capacity due to COVID and are not capable of managing trauma to the same degree they did in the past.”

Whatever the reasons, this spike in homicides for 2020 was not just in North Carolina, but across the country. California announced July

TENURE from page A1 publican-led legislature doesn’t decide who teaches there,” Ryan said via email to NSJ. He also predicted that attacking Republican legislators without evidence would get them some more media coverage, and “They were right.” He said some reporters fell for an evidence-free theory about some sort of nefarious conduct by legislators.

“Ms. Hannah-Jones has a lengthy history of attacking critics and falsely claiming she never said things that were in fact published under her own name.

With trust in media at record lows, who teaches the next generation of journalists is a critically important question, and it’s up to the university to answer it,” Ryan said.

Journalism school dean Susan King said of the decision, “Of course, I’m disappointed that Nikole Hannah-Jones will not be joining the school this summer.

But I’m also aware it’s been a long six months for her and for our students.”

Not all UNC-CH students were disappointed, however.

The school’s College Republicans chapter blasted the university’s trustees in a written statement, saying, “The Board of Trustees claims to value ‘open and rigorous debate’ and ‘constructive disagreement,’ but through their actions demonstrated that there is only room for one-sided discussion. This decision [awarded Hannah-Jones tenure] is only one example of the direction higher education is heading — one in which students are losing the diverse exchange of ideas.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

“Saint John the Evangelist” by El Greco (circa 1605) is a painting in the Prado Museum, Madrid.

1, that their final 2020 numbers were 31% higher than the previous year — a 13-year high. This closely matched the national trends that showed 2020 had a 30% increase over 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. Some cities saw an even higher spike, like Chicago with a 50% increase.

In addition to Charlotte’s homicide spike in 2020, CMPD also had a rise in officer departures, with 131. But as with homicides, the 2021 numbers are on track to surpass this, with 74 officers leaving the force in the first half of the year compared with 67 at the same point the previous year.

This also follows national trends, with officer departures increasing across the country in 2020. Because of staffing shortages, Asheville announced in June that they will stop responding to 10 minor crimes, which include things like theft of under $1,000 without suspect information, fraud and scams,

In the first six months of 2021, Durham has seen 21 homicides, compared with 14 at the same point last year — a 50% increase. and simple assaults reported after the fact. According to Christina Hallingse, a public information officer with the APD, the department has lost 87 officers since Jan. 1, 2020, 84 of those being resignations, two retirements and one termination.

Asheville had a spike in homicides in 2020, too, with 10 for the small city; the record is 12. In 2021, they already have five homicides, and the summer spike is only just beginning.

Greensboro Police Department public information officer

The King James Version of the Bible has over 780,000 words. With over 32,000 words, the Book of Jeremiah is the longest, followed by Genesis and Psalms, which also top 30,000 words each. Psalms has the most chapters.

Overlooked sometimes are the shortest books of the Bible. There are five books with fewer than 500 words: Third John, Second John, Philemon, Obadiah, and Jude. Over the next five weeks, we will take a look at these succinct books, starting with Third John, which contains less than 300 words and has only 14 verses.

The Third Epistle of John is the thirdto-last book of the Bible, with only Jude and Revelation following. This book is a personal letter send from John to a man named Gaius. The letter encourages Gaius, telling him to “follow not that which is evil, but that which is good” and warns him of a man named Diotrephes who John accuses of “prating against us with malicious words.” Ultimately, this short book teaches us that when Christians “walk in truth” there is joy and that unlike Diotrephes, we should welcome everyone to the church.

Ron Glenn told NSJ that the summer will largely determine the ultimate homicide number for Greensboro, which had its highest number of homicides in the city’s history in 2020, at 61.

Glenn said the city had seen 22 homicides this time last year, and after the first half of this year, they’ve seen 19 — a slight decrease from the pace of their record year.

Down I-40 in Durham, they are seeing a steep rise in homicides so far in 2021, a year after a 2020 that saw the most shootings in their history. Lt. G.L. Minor of Durham Police Department’s public affairs unit told NSJ in a July 6 email that in the first six months of 2021, there have been 21 homicides, compared with 14 at the same point last year — a 50% increase.

One factor in the killings, which has not always been highlighted, is the overwhelming racial disparity among victims. In Asheville’s 10 homicides from 2020, eight victims

were black. In Greensboro, 51 of the 61 victims were black and only seven white, despite white and black citizens each making up a little over 40% of the city’s population. In California’s recent announcement on their 2020 spike, they said 33% of homicide victims in 2020 were black, despite only making up 6.5% of the state’s population.

According to the CDC’s most recent mortality data, this disparity makes homicide the No. 1 cause of death for black males under 44, at about 35% of deaths for those 1–19 and 28% for those 20–44. For comparison, only 5% of deaths in white males 1–19 and 3% of deaths in white males 20–44 are from homicide.

Turner, the UNC Charlotte criminologist, said there was one note of optimism: “Although 2020 seems to have been a record increase in homicide rates, these rates remain lower than what they were in the early to mid 1990’s.”

In hunt for infrastructure deal, every Dem has leverage The Associated Press WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a crucial moment for Democrats, party leaders are hunting for a sweet spot that would satisfy their rival moderate and progressive wings on legislation to finance President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar agenda.

With virtually no votes to spare and saber rattling by both Democratic factions, leaders are finding their search for middle ground arduous — even though the president’s push for infrastructure projects and family-centered initiatives is his top domestic priority.

With Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., winning the spotlight by issuing demands on crucial issues, plenty of centrists and liberals are now using that same playbook. In a procession of meetings with White House officials and congressional budget writers, progressives have insisted that the emerging measures be big and aggressive.

“We’re all Joe Manchin right now,” said House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth of Kentucky.

The leverage every Democrat has flows from simple arithmetic. Expecting unanimous Republican opposition to much of Biden’s package, they need total unity in the 50-50 Senate — plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote — and can lose only a very few House votes.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently floated an enormous $6 trillion proposal for infrastructure, climate change, health care

AP PHOTO

In this June 24, 2021, file photo President Joe Biden, with from left, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and a bipartisan group of senators, walks out to speak to the media outside the White House in Washington, D.C. and other programs that progressives love.

The party is hoping he can craft a budget resolution — the first step in Congress’ creaky process for churning out spending and tax bills — that Democrats can push through the Senate and House this month. Lawmakers would likely work on detailed bills providing the funds and revenue this fall.

Lawmakers, aides and lobbyists say Sanders is running

into resistance from moderates and will be lucky to come close to even Biden’s $4 trillion. And while moderates and progressives have generally refrained from sniping publicly, they’re not bashful about voicing their views.

Besides setting spending and revenue targets, a budget will be make-or-break for Democrats because under congressional rules, it would let them prevent Republicans from using Senate filibusters to kill later legislation

actually providing the money for Biden’s plans. Filibusters, or endless procedural delays, take 60 votes to overcome, a nearly insurmountable obstacle in today’s Congress.

Democrats control the House 220-211 with four vacancies and can lose no more than four of their votes to pass bills. That number will shrink to three after a Texas runoff late this month in which both remaining candidates are Republicans.

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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North Carolina Pre-K has governance issues; conflicts of interest exist in county committees Current budget funds Pre-K program at $68.3 million in recurring funds for fiscal years 2021-22 and 2022-23

PHOTO VIA N.C. DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY

Gov. Roy Cooper speaks at a COVID-19 lottery drawing announcement from the Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh.

COOPER from page A1 Cooper has used loopholes to circumvent the Council of State to act unilaterally on the majority of his executive orders, improperly consolidating all power in a single person,” Horsch said.

“Senate Republicans are committed to implementing checks on the Governor’s executive authority to prevent future abuses of the state’s Emergency Management Act.” Demi Dowdy, spokeswoman for House Speaker Tim Moore, said in a statement to North State Journal that “It’s good news for North Carolina that the governor has finally agreed with the General Assembly that he should seek the concurrence of the Council of State. Government functions best when there are checks and balances, and the people of North Carolina deserve for their leaders to be held accountable.”

Cooper made a point of his executive order aligning with that of the CDC; however, his executive order appears duplicative given that both the Biden Administration and the CDC have extended their evictions moratorium for another month through July 31. In a press statement, the CDC said their nationwide extension is “intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”

Backing the CDC’s extension, on June 29 the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to keep the CDC’s national moratorium in place through July 31. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett voted against the extension. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-nominee Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the progressive Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in favor of the extension.

The CDC’s moratorium protections apply to renters who are unable to make rent payments because of lost income, have received a federal stimulus check in 2020 or 2021, or

did not have to report income to the IRS in 2020. Also covered are renters earning less than $99,000 a year or $198,000 filing jointly.

There are also state and county-level relief programs for renters which are not reliant on an executive order, including the Housing Opportunities and Prevention of Eviction program (HOPE) established by Cooper in 2020.

North Carolina has had around $1.3 billion allotted for utility and housing assistance with $1 billion going to HOPE. The governor said in his June 29 press statement that between May 17 and June 28, HOPE has awarded another “$66 million to 19,000 households.” According to previous statements by Cooper, HOPE awarded “$132 million in assistance to landlords and utilities on behalf of more than 37,000 tenants.”

Based on that data in Cooper’s statements, HOPE’s expenditures come in at just under 20% of its $1 billion allotment.

Council of State members, NC Realtors Association weigh in Folwell had already asked earlier this month that the moratorium be allowed to expire.

He said that he supported the first issuance, but he has not supported three extensions of the order.

“I have said for over four years that the Council of State lacked the governance, transparency and ability to challenge assumptions on important matters that impact the health, livelihood and education of North Carolinians,” Folwell told North State Journal. “I really don’t think the governor was interested in extending the moratorium but wanted the political cover to place blame elsewhere. He knew last week the votes were not there.”

Folwell also said, “In my opinion, this policy was preventing renters from getting shelter.

The expiration puts us in alignment with the rest of the U.S. under the eviction moratori-

um order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

“I chose not to concur with the governor and put an end to the eviction moratorium. This moratorium is hurting landlords and potential tenants,” Robinson told NSJ in a statement.

“Landlords are being forced to shoulder the burden from the loss of income. In addition, property owners are hesitant to rent out their properties and are not listing residences due to the possibility of tenants not paying,” said Robinson. “As a result, there are some who are looking to rent, but have been unable to do so because of the longevity of the moratorium.

Robinson continued, saying, “While this policy made sense during the intense parts of the pandemic, it is no longer necessary, and the state needs to remove itself from making onesize-fits-all mandates.”

North Carolina Association of Realtors also did not want the governor’s evictions moratorium order to be extended beyond June 30. In a statement the association said it was pleased the state moratorium would be allowed to expire and thanked the Council of State for their support.

“The NC REALTORS® is pleased to learn that the moratorium on evictions in North Carolina will expire as planned on June 30. As we have noted, like many other industries, small business housing providers are struggling to recover from the pandemic and deserve to be included in the economic recovery at-hand,” the statement reads in part.

“We particularly appreciate the stance of the Council of State in supporting our hardworking small business housing providers,” reads the NC Realtor statement. “They will now be able to start rebuilding their financial wellbeing, which provides crucial stability to the rental sector of the housing economy.”

duced by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), a unit of the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, shows the average cost per child for private pre-K is over $9,615 annually or just over $916 a month on a

By A.P. Dillon 10-month classroom work calendar.

North State Journal Campbell sees county school disRALEIGH — According to a for- tricts “double-dipping” by taking mer president of the North Caroli- advantage of their control of counna Licensed Child Care Associa- ty committees to approve their own tion, there are serious governance applications ahead of outside proand transparency issues with the viders. However, he also pointed out that the rates of both public school program.

Kevin Campbell, who recently and Head Start programs are lowled Smart Kids Child Development er, $473 and $400 respectively, but Center, says there are problems that both receive other funding; with rules and within the program therefore, the total cost is actualoverseen by the N.C. Department of ly higher for non-private facilities.

Health and Human Services Divi- Some 35 school districts are apparsion of Child Development and Ear- ently receiving higher rates than the published rate. He said that there ly Education (DCDEE). are exceptions to the pubCampbell says the purlished rates, but there is pose of the program is to no clear reason given for provide high-quality edwhy some counties are reucational experiences to ceiving additional fundenhance school readiness "This is a for eligible four-year-old clear conflict ing.

Campbell said that in children, but, “DCDEE of interest, his experience with counin turn has side-stepped ty committees there is a that responsibility by es- created double-standard when it tablishing a local commit- by DCDEE comes to district applitee for each county, which, cations. He said that in among other things, are withdrawing many cases the applicasupposed to develop pol- itself from tions are not even seen by icies and procedures, pay the county committees, providers and determine being and the classrooms are which operators get to accountable assigned independently of have the classrooms.” and kicking the private sites.

Big dollar figures are According to Campattached to Pre-K in the can bell, when renewal time North Carolina. The bud- down the comes around, the district get recently proposed by sites are not reviewed nor state lawmakers includes road to $68.3 million for N.C. these county are they turned down.

“I’ve never seen an apPre-K in recurring funds for fiscal years 2021-22 committees" plication come through or a vote on the school and 2022-23.

Campbell went on to Kevin Campbell systems program,” said Campbell, adding that say that the county comdistrict applications were mittees are co-chaired handled “behind closed by an appointee of the lodoors by the contract adcal schools’ superintenministrator” and that “it’s dent and one from the a double standard, for local Smart Start Partnership, and that each county DC- sure.”

The length of contracts and the DEE then pays for a contract administrator who controls both the application process also have issues money and the information. The is- according to Campbell.

“They [DCDEE] give multisue at hand in this arrangement is in many counties that administra- ple-year contracts. Most counties tor is the county’s school system and are doing two years, because that’s that those school systems also oper- the minimum of a multiple. So they ate classrooms, which Campbell as- give them a two-year contract and then at the end of the two years, serts is a conflict of interest.

“This means they can hand off all of these providers are sweating contracts to themselves, and there is whether they will be renewed or no oversight to stop it,” said Camp- not,” said Campbell.

He went on to add that even if bell. “This is a clear conflict of interest, created by DCDEE withdraw- they’re performing excellently, they ing itself from being accountable could lose the program contract. and kicking the can down the road Campbell noted that the contract itself contains a clause that the conto these county committees.”

Another area of issue is that out- tract can be taken away at any time side private operators participat- for no reason.

“Providers, No. 1, aren’t paid ing in the Pre-K Program are often last in line for consideration. much for this and, No. 2, providers Around 52% of Pre-K classrooms don’t have any security,” said Campare in public schools and only 33% bell. “So, the legislature is trying to are in private childcare centers. The grow it [Pre-K], and DCDEE can’t remaining 15% of classrooms are in even fill slots because of those two reasons.”

Head Start sites.

Per the Rutgers’ study, 34 out of Campbell said that the North Carolina rate for Pre-K providers is 100 counties declined expansion “extremely low,” generally coming in dollars. In those counties that deat $650 per child per month, with clined expansion dollars, nearly 6,000 children were eligible for NC around 18 kids in a classroom.

A 2017 study on NC Pre-K pro- Pre-K.

NC homeschooling numbers explode during pandemic

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal RALEIGH — According to the most recent report by the state’s Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE), homeschooling numbers in North Carolina exploded during the pandemic.

DNPE’s report for the 202021 school year reveals 19,294 new homeschools were established, blowing away 9,481 new homeschools established during 201920. That’s almost a 104% jump between the two years.

The total number of homeschools 2020-21 statewide totaled 112,614, which is almost a gain of 19% over the previous year of 94,863. For 2020-21, the state’s two largest districts led the count with 10,090 in Wake County and 8,513 in Mecklenburg.

There were 179,900 homeschooled students in 2020-21, representing a 20.6% increase over the 149,173 students for previous school year. If homeschool students were their own district, it

would be the largest in the state, easily surpassing Wake County’s 2019-20 enrollment of 161,907.

Wake County is the 15th largest district in the country.

During 2020-21, Wake County had the largest homeschool student population in the state at 16,347 students and Mecklenburg was not far behind with 13,279 students. The year prior, Wake had 13,575 students and Mecklenburg had 11,148.

Public school enrollment in the state is still being finalized; however, the current information shows a 3% drop in enrollment over the pandemic. Private school enrollment rose 3.3 percent.

A recent survey of the state’s school districts conducted by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction at the request of the General Assembly shows that districts were unable to contact some 6,986 students out of a K-12 population of 1,291,497 during the 2020-21 school year.

Charter schools who partici-

pated in the survey reported being unable to contact 798 students during the pandemic out of 114,424 students.

Ten districts and 22 charter schools did not respond to the survey, and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction says that the retainment numbers do not consider the impact of summer learning programs.

Additionally, the survey shows districts expect to retain around 6% of students across K-12, with the highest retainment in high school grades nine (17%), 10 (13%), and 11 (10%). The overall retainment percentage is double that from the 2019-20 school year.

Charter schools reported a 5% average student retainment rate. Similar to district schools, the highest retainment percentages fell in grades nine (9%) and 10 (7%), but Kindergarten (6%) rounded out the top three. The previous year, charters reported an average retainment rate of 2%.

TED S. WARREN | AP PHOTO

A homeschool family is featured in this undated file photo

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Murphy to Manteo

Cheri Beasley teams with controversial Missouri Rep to fundraise

While Georgia and South Carolina both claim to have the best in the nation, North Carolinians have known for decades that you don’t have to go out of state for delicious peaches.

Montgomery County is the center of the state’s “peach belt,” with the town of Candor laying claim to being the Peach Capital of North Carolina. The town typically hosts a peach festival every July, but the event will not return until 2022.

Historical documents put the date of the first fields of peaches in North Carolina at 1904.

Roadside stands still sell fresh peaches, peach ice cream and other sweet treats.

North Carolina harvests around 1,200 acres of peaches, contributing nearly $7 million in annual sales and an average of 3.6 million pounds for the market each year.

WEST

By Matt Mercer North State Journal

Watauga County A man was arrested after he drove through Boone firing a gun, injuring one person. Two vehicles were struck during the incident, and a passenger was grazed by a bullet and taken to a hospital with injuries not considered lifethreatening. Officers conducted a traffic stop after numerous 911 calls indicated the driver of a pickup truck was firing shots randomly from the vehicle. Joseph James Navarette, 24, of Mount Airy, was taken into custody and charged with two counts of shooting into an occupied vehicle and one count of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.

counties that produce peaches counties that do not produce peaches

counties that produce peaches

PIEDMONT

Wilkes County A man suspected in a woman’s stabbing death was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy. The Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office said deputies went looking for Thomas Billings to serve him with a domestic violence order filed by a woman he had been living with. The woman, identified as Tracy Rash, was found and pronounced dead at the scene, and her car had been stolen. Wilkes County sheriff’s deputies found Billings at a family member’s home holding what appeared to be a rifle and refused to put it down. It was determined that the weapon was an air rifle.

AP

AP

4 in custody after pursuit involving stolen TV-news vehicle Chatham County Four suspects are in custody after a manhunt that stretched across two days and involved the theft of a TV news vehicle. The incident began Saturday after a state trooper pursued a vehicle for speeding in Chatham County.

The vehicle spun into a median and the individuals fled on foot. By evening, the Highway Patrol had two suspects in custody.

The third was arrested late Saturday night after he stole a car belonging to WRAL-TV and attempted to flee, crashing head-on into a state trooper’s car. No one was injured. The final person was taken into custody Sunday morning.

AP

New animal shelter to run on methane

Caldwell County A man shot his father and two sisters before setting the home they were in on fire and turning the gun on himself, police said.

The Lenoir Police Department said Ronald James Ward, 29, shot Emily Grace Ward, 15; Katlyn Nichole Ward, 18; and Ronald Albert Ward, 58, on Wednesday before he set the house on fire and shot himself. Lenoir fire and police officials and the State Bureau of Investigations continue to investigate. All four bodies have been taken to the medical examiner’s office to determine cause of death.

Police said no suspects are being sought.

Amalgamated Bank, a Washington, D.C.based bank owned by the SEIU labor union. State Sen. Jeff Jackson, Beasley’s current top challenger in the Democratic primary, also houses his campaign account at the bank.

Recently, Bush posted an antiIndependence Day tweet, saying on July 4, “When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people. This land is stolen land and black people still aren’t free.”

Members of Justice Democrats, in addition to Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman, include U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

North State Journal reached out for comment regarding Beasley’s alignment with Bush but did not receive a response by press time.

The other Democratic candidates listed in the joint fundraising committee are Odessa Kelly, who is running for a congressional seat in Tennessee; and Brittany Ramos DeBarros, who is running for a congressional seat in New York.

Former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley speaks at a luncheon in this file photo.

counties that do not produce peaches

AP

Police: 4 found fatally shot after fire, possible explosion

RALEIGH — Democratic U.S. Senate frontrunner Cheri Beasley has agreed to a joint fundraising committee with U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and two other progressive candidates, according to a Federal Elections Commission filing, dated June 14.

Bush is a member of Justice Democrats, which advocates for a “mission-driven caucus in Congress by electing more leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who will represent our communities in Congress and fight for bold, progressive solutions to our current crises.” Beasley is the only Senate candidate on the list.

Rep. Bush is a self-proclaimed democratic socialist and supporter of the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement. She defeated a 10term incumbent in the 2020 Democratic primary to win her seat representing the St. Louis area.

According to Beasley’s FEC filing, she authorized the joint fundraising account on June 18. The account is set up at

Counties that produce peaches

Murder suspect shot, killed by deputy

Police arrest man accused of randomly firing from truck

Jones & Blount

Top peach counties in NC

NC peaches are ripe for the summer

A5

Top peach counties in NC

Jackson County The new animal rescue center in Dillsboro promises to be bigger than the facility it’s replacing, and will also have a campus that uses walking trails and picnic areas. The 14,000 square foot facility will have 30 cat units and 35 dog units, doubling the previous capacity. It will be powered, in part, by the Green Energy Park that uses methane from a closed landfill to power area businesses.

The $5.6 million project should be done by February.

WLOS

Highway Patrol: 4 dead, including 2 children, in wreck Moore County Four family members including two children were killed when their vehicle hydroplaned and struck a tractor-trailer, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.

The crash happened Friday afternoon near Pinebluff in Moore County when the driver of a Honda Accord lost control and crossed a median, colliding with the truck. Authorities identified the victims as Tesmond Thomas, 28; LaTanya Jones, 26; Levi Thomas, 6; and Judah Thomas, 4. They were family members from Aberdeen. The driver of the tractortrailer sustained minor injuries, troopers said.

AP

EAST

Venomous snake captured in Raleigh Wake County A venomous snake was captured two days after it was spotted on the loose in a Raleigh neighborhood. The zebra cobra was found and safely removed. An animal control officer was called Monday to a home where a snake was spotted on a porch. But by the time the officer arrived, the snake had slithered away.

Officials warned anyone who saw the snake to stay away and call 911, saying it could spit and bite if cornered. Animal control and Raleigh police used wooden boards with special glue on them to trap the snake.

AP

Deputy fatally shoots armed person during traffic stop Sampson County A deputy fatally shot an armed person during a traffic stop. A news release from the Sampson County Sheriff’s Office said a deputy stopped a pickup truck near the town of Salemburg. “While the deputy was approaching the vehicle, he encountered an armed suspect, which led to the officer discharging his firearm.” The suspect, who was not immediately identified, died at the scene despite “life-saving measures.” The sheriff’s office did not say why the deputy initially stopped the truck and did not identify the deputy. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation will investigate.

AP

Temporary Catawba casino opens Cleveland County Catawba Indian Nation leaders were joined by local and state government officials for a ribbon-cutting at a preliminary, temporary version of its proposed casino. The modular facility containing 500 slot machines in Kings Mountain is a key step in ultimately creating the $273 million Catawba Two Kings Casino with plans for 2,600 permanent jobs and revenues for the tribe. Spurned by South Carolina in previous efforts, Catawba members sought to build a casino in North Carolina. Construction on an introductory phase of the full casino and resort is expected to begin by the end of the year.

AP

Officer on leave after gun goes off, hits man Edgecombe County A police officer is on administrative leave after his gun went off and wounded a motorist who led the officer on a chase. Tarboro police said the motorist drove off from the checkpoint after the unidentified officer smelled alcohol and marijuana. During the ensuing car chase, the motorist hit another car, got out and ran.

When the officer caught the motorist and tried to take him into custody, his gun went off.

The motorist suffered a non-life-threatening injury. The driver of the car that was struck was treated at a local hospital and released.

AP

Authorities: 3 dead, 1 injured in shooting Columbus County Three people were killed and one was injured after a shooting erupted overnight, authorities said. The Chadbourn Police Department got a call about shots fired around 3:45 a.m.

Saturday. The shots rang out in a parking lot next to a building where a “large party was in progress.” The Chadbourn Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office asked the State Bureau of Investigation to handle the case. The victims were not identified, and no further details were immediately released.

FILE PHOTO

Dr. Donald van der Vaart named to judicial post

AP

NSJ staff

ECU to use emergency funds to clear student debt from 2020 Pitt County East Carolina University is using a portion of the money it’s getting from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund to wipe out nearly $1 million in student debt. The debt forgiveness will provide relief for students facing hardships due to COVID-19 and will affect about 625 students. The $960,000 will pay outstanding student balances from summer and fall of 2020. ECU is expected to get $53.1 million in funding, including $27.3 million for student aid and $25.8 million in institutional aid. Funds also will be used to offset lost revenues in areas such as housing and dining.

AP

RALEIGH — Chief Justice Paul Newby appointed Dr. Donald van der Vaart as the new chief administrative law judge and director of the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH).

OAH is a quasi-judicial agency that provides administrative law judges to preside in contested cases of administrative law. In addition, OAH deals with the procedure which governs rulemaking for North Carolina state agencies and is designated as a 706 deferral agency of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“Dr. van der Vaart is a multidisciplined expert who has accumulated a vast amount of experience in regulatory, legal, and administrative operations,” said Chief Justice Newby. “His skill set is a great fit for directing OAH.” A licensed attorney and engineer, van

der Vaart served in the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

There, he held the positions secretary, deputy secretary, North Carolina energy policy advisor, and air quality manager.

In 2018, van der Vaart was appointed to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, and was reappointed in 2020. He serves on the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission and has authored nearly 50 papers on technical and legal topics.

Van der Vaart replaces Julian Mann, who served for over 31 years in the role and received the Friend of the Court Award from Chief Justice Newby.

“I want to congratulate Judge Mann for an impressive career of service to the citizens of our state,” Chief Justice Newby said. “I applaud Judge Mann for his steadfast dedication to OAH and his countless hours of selfless public service.”

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North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

north STATEment Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

VISUAL VOICES

EDITORIAL | FRANK HILL

‘Inflation is our friend!’

Inflation might as well be tagged, “Tax the poor!”, because it is the most insidious regressive tax ever.

DAN AYKROYD of “Saturday Night Live” had a memorable spoof of President Jimmy Carter’s anti-inflation speech in 1978, where he was ‘quoted’ as saying: “Inflation is our friend. In the year 2000, if current trends continue, the average bluecollar annual wage in this country will be $568,000. Think what this inflated world of the future will mean — most Americans will be millionaires. Everyone will feel like a bigshot.

“Wouldn’t you like to own a $4,000 suit, and smoke a $75 cigar, drive a $600,000 car?

I know I would!”

That may have sounded funny in 1978 when inflation seemed to be “transitory” to Carter administration officials but their fiscal and monetary policies cascaded out-of-control and erupted into full-scale disaster by 1981 when annual inflation hit 12% and interest rates hit 21%.

Yes, Millennials and anyone under age 50, that indeed happened in the lifetimes of your parents and grandparents. It can happen again to you if we don’t watch out.

The worst part about inflation is that it indiscriminately hits the very people who can least afford to be hit: moderate-to-low income wage-earners, poor people and elderly people who live on fixed incomes.

Higher tax rates don’t affect these people like inflation does, because many of them pay zero income taxes. Higher interest rates don’t affect these people like inflation does, because they are not financing large investments such as homes or businesses every day.

Rampant rates of inflation drive up the costs of basic human needs: such as food,

clothing and home goods. Inflation might as well be tagged, “Tax the poor!”, because it is the most insidious regressive tax ever.

Various officials, from Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, say repeatedly that this surge in prices is due to the COVID shutdown and subsequent reopening of the economy, where everything, including labor, is in short supply. Labor, of course, is in short supply due to the extended unemployment benefits pushed by President Biden and Democratic governors.

They say it is “transitory” in nature… but they sure don’t seem very convincing in their statements.

Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns and his successor, G. William Miller, both said inflation in 1978 was “transitory in nature,” but they were not convincing either. It is said Burns poured gasoline on inflation by expanding the money supply, but Miller lit the match.

Inflation exploded right after I graduated from college to 12% per annum. Thanks, Jimmy Carter and his so-called “experts.”

When “every expert” in the financial world agrees on anything, that is the time to get scared. “All the experts” said everything for the foreseeable future was “perfect” as late as July 2001, “with budget surpluses as far as the eye can see” — and then 9/11 literally hit.

Same as in early 2008; Moody’s and every other econometric projection forecast said everything was perfect in the banking system in 2007, only to be proven wrong in 20082009. Same thing as in early 2020 — and then COVID-19 hit.

Inflation may indeed be transitory due to technology that keeps driving prices down despite the enormous expansion of the money supply in the last year, $4 trillion in the spring of 2020 alone, almost five times as much as in 2009. Some analysts say that banks are not loaning a lot of reserves, which is what held inflation in check in the aftermath of the 2009 banking system collapse and subsequent money supply explosion.

However, “transitory” in nature inflation may seem to be today to the Biden “experts,” one cumulonimbus thundercloud forming on the horizon is this glaring fact: Out of all the debt issued by the U.S. government this year, very little of it was bought by any foreign government.

Most of it was purchased by the Federal Reserve — the same quasi-government entity that is flooding the world with American dollars. The Fed is expanding their balance sheet with most of the new debt the Biden Administration is revving up.

That is a recipe for disaster. When foreign sovereigns stop buying US debt, that is a telltale sign of something really going wrong.

Inflation is no friend of ours.

EDITORIAL | STACEY MATTHEWS

Democrats try revising history on ‘defund the police’ support, but it won’t work

Not only did Democrats latch on to the calls to defund the police, but in some Democratrun cities, like Asheville, police have had to scale back on the type of 911 calls they respond to because they simply don’t have the resources to do their jobs.

MANY A DUMB POLITICAL TACTIC has been tried by both major political parties over the years. But one that is quickly emerging as a top-10 contender for the most stupid is the attempt by Democrats to whitewash their support for the “Defund the Police” movement.

The campaign to pull much-needed resources from local police departments to the point they are starved out of existence was started several years ago by far-left groups like “Black Lives Matter,” but the push gained momentum after the officer-involved death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd in May 2020.

The media talked about the movement in glowing terms. Prominent Democrats fueled the anti-police fire by pouring gasoline on it. Among them were future Vice President Kamala Harris, who supported a bail fund for extremist defund-the-police “protesters,” many of whom were arrested for their role in virtually destroying entire city blocks in Minneapolis via looting, fires and violence.

Then-Democratic-presidential-nominee Joe Biden also contributed to the effort, suggesting he was open to “redirecting” police funds elsewhere — this at a time when violent crime rates were rising in Democrat-run cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Los Angeles. Local and state Democratic leaders in these areas were also rushing to cut funding.

Over the summer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called federal officers “stormtroopers” and part of then-President

Trump’s supposed “secret police” force, when they were sent in to help riot-plagued cities like Portland deal with demonstrators trying to burn down federal courthouses.

The loudest voices came from radical leftist members of the House otherwise known as “The Squad.” Most prominently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said last year during the debate in New York City on reallocating police funding that “defunding police means defunding police.”

“It does not mean budget tricks or funny math,” she went on to say. “It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”

Here we are a year later, and Democrats are now pretending like it’s Republicans who didn’t want to fund the police.

“Let’s talk about who defunded the police.

When we were in Congress last year trying to pass an emergency rescue plan for cities that were cash-strapped and laying off police, it was the Republicans who objected to it. …

They defunded the police. We funded crime intervention and a whole bunch of other things,” Biden advisor and former Democratic Congressman Cedric Richmond said during a recent interview.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki agreed, claiming that “the American Rescue Plan, the state and local funding, something that was supported by the president, a lot of

Democrats who supported and voted for the bill, could help ensure local cops were kept on the beat in communities across the country. As you know, it didn’t receive a single Republican vote.”

The attempt by the Biden administration to revise history on this issue as one where Republicans don’t support the police — simply because they oppose bloated spending bills jam-packed full of unrelated Democrat wishlist items — isn’t going to work. Not only did Democrats latch on to the calls to defund the police, but in some Democrat-run cities, like Asheville, police have had to scale back on the type of 911 calls they respond to because they simply don’t have the resources to do their jobs.

The Democrat embrace of efforts to defund the police came at a high political cost to their House members last fall. They lost 14 seats in an election that “experts” predicted would increase the Democrat majority. That they are trying to reframe the issue now ahead of the 2022 midterms is laughable and an insult to everyone’s intelligence, especially considering the overwhelming amount of evidence that proves them wrong.

The tactic is already backfiring. As it should be.

Media analyst Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

COLUMN | NAN MILLER

You’ve got to be carefully taught ACCORDING TO AN OLD E.F. Hutton ad, the best way to dazzle a party of sophisticates is to lead with expert information on investments.

There is no such ad, however, urging poetry recitations as a sure-fire entree to popularity.

Put another way,

A Massachusetts English teacher urged teachers to “take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash.”

Give stock tips at a chic affair, You’ll be the star attraction.

Cite poetry with a knowing air And halt the interaction!

My mission here is to urge readers who might bolt at the mention of poetry to bear with me as I connect the left’s success censuring great poets with their success reducing the entire white race to the sum of its crimes against humanity.

The decision to devalue poetry and, by association, all things Western originated in the early 70s, when students, flush with their success protesting the Viet Nam War, decided to protest teachers who made them read poetry. My introduction to the type came on Feb. 25, 1973, when I read a Colman McCarthy op-ed titled, “Why Homer and Shakespeare? Why not Woody Guthrie?” which showcased students who balked at reading “those ancient creeps.”

I had expected to find a comeuppance for hipsters who would disown their heritage but found instead a pundit who agreed that teachers had no right to cram such “indigestibles” down the throats of students who preferred the easylistening music of Woody Guthrie.

What began as a leftist’s plea to jettison works students found boring soon became a leftist plot to jettison — or denounce — authors they found oppressive, that is, white males who’d become writers to enshrine their supremacy. In 1991, Duke professor Stanley Hauerwas captured the left’s contempt for white male authors in one line: “The canon of great literature was created by high-Anglican ass----s to underwrite their social class.”

That same year, Smith College’s Office of Student Affairs informed the student body: “As groups of people begin the process of realizing that they are oppressed, and why, new words tend to be created to express the concepts that the existing language cannot.” Cue the advent of terms like “cisgender” and “misogynoir” so students would know what to call their oppressors.

Thirty years later, leftist newspeak has incriminated, not just great poets, but their accomplices as well, who are anyone who fails to grasp “the long and ugly history of the classics as a tool of oppression and exclusion.”

When Denison University classics professor Rebecca Kennedy made that claim in 2017, she spoke for a new class of Jacobins who agree that “We Condone It by Our Silence,” and who spend whole careers “Confronting the Classics’

Complicity in White Supremacy.”

When Professor Kennedy included Homer among the writers she says appeal only to “those who are drawn to the ancient world because of the racism and misogyny,” leftists nationwide organized to ban other classics they say incite “racism, sexism...and other forms of hate.”

Perhaps there is no connection between the Kennedy harangue and the 2018 founding of #DisruptTexts, but the disrupters banned Homer because The Odyssey is “centered on the white male gaze.” Soon thereafter, a Massachusetts English teacher urged teachers to “take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash,” and another teacher boasted, “Hahaha!

Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum!”

Teachers who blacklist Homer disavow genius, but no English department ploy is so daft as the toppling of Shakespeare. The push to dethrone Shakespeare originated in the 1980s, when Women’s Studies professors took up arms against the Bard for consigning female characters to an “all-women ghetto” and for endorsing “the ideology of the family.” Women who had been charmed by Shakespeare’s quickthinking Portia or Rosalind were roundly dismissed as “reactionary” or “intransigent.”

When such nonsense was met with derision, academe’s virtue traffickers made racism their main charge — and launched the game plan that woke politicians have adopted to typecast conservatives. In 2015, English teacher Dana Dusbiber made mainstream news arguing that Shakespeare’s plays are irrelevant to “students of color” and that “as long as we continue to cling to ONE (white) MAN’S view of life...we promote the notion that other cultural perspectives are less important.” Never mind that W.E.B DuBois, James Baldwin and Maya Angelou have all noted the indelible stamp Shakespeare left on their own writing.

Teachers who cast great writers as the perpetrators of crimes against humanity call to mind the lyrics of a song from South Pacific.

The line “You’ve got to be carefully taught... to hate all the people your relatives hate” was written to shame parents who teach children to shun “people whose skin is a different shade.” An updated version of Hammerstein’s lyrics would shame scholars who teach students to denounce the white race and our Western heritage.

During World War II, England’s “average leftist intellectual” predicted — and almost seemed to will — Britain’s defeat. Orwell’s appraisal of the type fits our own leftist intellectuals: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that. No ordinary man could be such a fool.”

The difference is that leftist intellectuals here proceed unchecked, and that is the single greatest failing of the American university.

COLUMN | STEPHEN MOORE

Whatever happened to property rights?

The latest national estimate is that landlords are losing about $13 billion per month in rental payments.

I’M NO LAWYER, that’s for sure, and so I don’t have expertise on the intricacies of the law, but I am angry as a hornet by the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal “eviction moratorium.”

On Tuesday, the high court in a divided 5-4 opinion will allow the moratorium to continue until August. This moratorium allows people to stay in their apartments and other rental units and not pay the rent they agreed to.

This policy started more than a year ago when the pandemic was in full force. But the policy is unconstitutional — an affront to basic property rights and the sanctity of contracts. It should have never been allowed and implemented in the first place and certainly has no place in the law now that COVID-19 is over and there are 9.1 million open jobs in the country.

Since when can the government tell a private enterprise that it can’t collect its rightful payments from its customers? What’s next?

Politicians promising to end hunger in America by allowing poor people to go into a grocery store or 7-Eleven and taking whatever food they want without paying? This law puts all the cost of achieving a social objective — not having people lose the roof over their heads — during tough times on businesses and individuals. Amazing how humanitarian the political class is with other people’s money.

This is also a case where the left’s do-gooder edicts defy basic common sense. I am friends with several owners of apartment buildings and rental units. Guess what happened the day after these local, state and federal waivers on paying rent are implemented? Over half the tenants and, in some cases, as many as 90% of the occupants stopped paying their rent.

The latest national estimate is that landlords are losing about $13 billion per month in rental payments. But as one apartment owner tells me: “If I can’t collect the rental payments, I can’t pay the bank the mortgage on the property. I may have to default on the loan.” The latest estimates from CNBC are that more than 11 million

Americans have stopped paying their rent on time — or have just stopped paying entirely.

What is especially galling about this story is that we are creating another new de facto federal entitlement: free rent. Now apartment dwellers are indignant when the landlords try to get their monthly payments. Many hang signs outside their windows that say, “No justice, no rent” — as if the apartment owners are responsible for the social ills in our country.

The signs used to say, “No jobs, no rent,” but no one is sympathetic to that view now that jobs are aplenty from coast to coast.

Speaking of justice: How do edicts like this help in the left’s crusade of increasing affordable housing? If apartment and rental housing owners can’t legally collect rental payments, they aren’t going to build more units. They will build less.

In the court case, the losing plaintiffs argued — persuasively — that “Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it now claims.” Who elected the bureaucrats at the CDC? These are the same people who were caught asleep at the switch when the pandemic hit these shores. They were too busy studying gun violence and LGBTQ issues. These kinds of dictates should be rarely imposed, and when they are, they should come from Congress, not from a federal agency that is completely separated from the voters and thus the will of the people.

The government’s argument was that the CDC believes the regulations are necessary to “prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases.” Never mind that the pandemic is over and that anyone who wants to be protected against COVID-19 has ready access to the vaccines.

This country really is headed down the road of tyranny when the government tells our citizens they don’t have to pay their bills.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks.

BE IN TOUCH

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A7 COLUMN HAYDEN LUDWIG AND SARAH LEE

Left-wing groups flooded Georgia with ‘dark money’ and mail-in ballots in 2020 IF THERE’S SOMETHING the left has plenty of, it’s cash. When you add that largesse to liberals’ newfound love of mail-in voting — something even Barack Obama frowned upon as recently as 2008 — you have a recipe for mischief that almost certainly tilted states to favor Democrats in the 2020 election. Georgia is a prime example, and it should come as no surprise the Biden Department of Justice has chosen to sue the state over its election-reform legislation.

That lawsuit will draw attention away from the story of what happened in Georgia in 2020, when left leaning “dark money” groups flooded the Peach State with outside money. The Washington, D.C.,-based Sixteen Thirty Fund — part of a $731 million nonprofit network run by the left-wing consultancy Arabella Advisors and the 10th-biggest spender in 2020 — funneled at least $23 million into PACs and super PACs created to support Democrats both in 2020 and in the January special election, which determined control of the U.S. Senate.

Together these groups — such as Future Forward, the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, Take Back 2020, and American Bridge 21st Century — helped Joe Biden, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff turn Georgia blue for the first time in decades.

The Capital Research Center was the first to expose Arabella’s strategy. If there’s one thing that’s clear after studying this network for over two years, it’s this: When liberal donors come to Arabella, they’re expecting a political payoff.

Little wonder this partisan empire has passed through billions of dollars to radical activists, funds which came from the likes of the Gates, Buffett and Ford Foundations.

Georgia saw $28 CRC spent months million in CTCL’s tracing Arabella’s relationship to the now“Zuck Bucks,” infamous Center for supposedly Technology and Civic distributed on Life (CTCL), which redistributed $350 million a nonpartisan from billionaire Mark basis.

Zuckerberg to thousands of elections offices as COVID-19 “relief funds” just prior to Election Day. Arabella’s Center for Secure and Modern Elections helped CTCL pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into Louisiana, effectively privatizing the election by gaining unethical influence over public officials.

How much more damage did Arabella cause in battleground states like North Carolina?

Georgia saw $28 million in CTCL’s “Zuck Bucks,” supposedly distributed on a nonpartisan basis. In reality, 96% of the funds went to just 12 vote-rich counties mostly surrounding Atlanta, all of which broke for Biden.

Amber McReynolds, one of the left’s vote-bymail cheerleaders, authored a 60-page report encouraging Atlanta’s DeKalb County — which received $4 million from CTCL and gave Biden 300,000 votes — to “create a modern, lean voteby-mail program.” DeKalb officials used those funds to send absentee ballots to active and inactive voters.

Whatever one believes about the integrity of mail-in ballots, McReynolds is hardly nonpartisan. She runs the National Vote at Home Coalition (NVHC), a group created by the U.S. Postal Service workers’ union to enact vote-by-mail, automatic voter registration, and anti-voter ID policies. NVHC is funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Stephen Silberstein, a liberal mega-donor who supports dismantling the Electoral College and is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a veritable Who’s Who of the Left.

Some of NVHC’s work can be seen in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which “went rogue” under the influence of an NVHC staffer who practically ran the city’s election as its “de facto elections administrator.” That staffer had access to Green Bay’s absentee ballots days before the election.

Green Bay received $1.1 million from CTCL. See a pattern?

For her services, President Biden nominated McReynolds to the USPS governing board, touting her as an “independent,” not a Democrat.

Why? By law the USPS governing board may have no more than five members from the same political party. Confirming her as an independent frees up Biden to appoint another Democrat and makes McReynolds the deciding vote on future mail-in voting and election integrity decisions.

And McReynolds is wasting no time. She’s already attacked Arizona’s ongoing 2020 election audit and called Republican “disinformation” the “biggest election security issue we face” while arguing that federalizing elections is the only way to stop it.

What this all boils down to is that vote-bymail is the future of American elections if the professional left gets it way. Fortunately, in March Georgia lawmakers took steps to ensure the integrity of future elections by banning officials from accepting private funds. The left’s fury — and the Biden Justice Department’s lawsuit trying to stop them — proves the law is working. Elections must be transparent and above partisan influence.

Hayden Ludwig is a senior investigative researcher for the Capital Research Center (CRC).

Sarah Lee is communications director for CRC and a Georgia native.

Exclusive for the North State Journal

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North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

NATION & WORLD ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author JD Vance running for US Senate in Ohio

AP PHOTO

An asphalt patch fills the hole in the street in front of an AT&T office building Friday, June 25, 2021, where a recreational vehicle containing explosives blew up in a suicide bombing on Christmas Day, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn.

Months after Nashville bombing, slow recovery work continues

By Kimberlee Kruesi The Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For a moment, the sight of a few Christmas trees in the back of the bombed-out building took the workers aback.

There they were, still standing at the approach of summer, adorned with festive holiday decorations amid the rubble of the powerful blast months earlier.

It was now early June, nearly half a year after Nashville woke up to a Christmas Day bombing that ripped a hole in the heart of Music City’s historic downtown. A recreational vehicle had been intentionally detonated, killing the bomber, injuring three others and forcing more than 60 businesses to close.

“Frozen in time,” said Steve Prosser, an engineer taking part in the monthslong cleanup effort. On Friday, he stood near the historic Rhea Building not far from where the bomb had exploded. “I’ve never worked on a project like this. No one in Tennessee has.”

Construction crews, engineers and developers have painstakingly worked to clear away the rubble, a necessary first step before revitalization can begin. The work is slow and tedious and means workers haven’t been able to access some of the buildings until just recent weeks.

That’s when the Christmas trees, along with holiday wreaths and other winter decorations, prominently displayed in one of Nashville’s oldest buildings, were discovered. Amid

debris piled all around, the holiday decorations remained intact, virtually in pristine condition.

Outside, faux pine Christmas garland strands with red ribbons are still wrapped around the light poles that survived the blast. Together, the decorations serve as reminders of the jarring details surrounding the bombing.

According to the FBI, Anthony Quinn Warner chose the location and timing to maximize the impact of the explosion while still minimizing the likelihood of “undue injury.”

The FBI also concluded that the Antioch, Tennessee, man acted alone and set off the bomb to end his own life.

Before the RV blew up, it blared a recorded warning calling for people

to evacuate, and then the 1964 song “Downtown” by Petula Clark.

To date, 31 businesses have since reopened after closing because of the blast that took place just off Lower Broadway, a flashy business thoroughfare known for its honky tonks. City officials have slowly allowed more public access to the area as COVID-19 restrictions have eased and some of the buildings farthest from the epicenter were spared crippling structural damage.

Meanwhile, the center of the explosion remains fenced off, and will be for the remainder of the year as more than 30 buildings — many of which were built in the Civil Warera — undergo repairs and rebuilding.

“Six months ago, at this very time, we were staring at television screens trying to wrap our heads around what happened a few hours earlier,” said Betsy Williams, who ran a vacation rental business in the building across the street from where the RV was parked. “It’s been a tough six months.”

Cincinnati, Ohio The venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” officially joined the crowded Republican race for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman.

J.D. Vance, whose book was widely seen in 2016 as helping explain Republican Donald Trump’s appeal to struggling white, workingclass voters, made the announcement at the steel fabricator Middletown Tube Works in his Ohio hometown.

“We have to send people to Washington who are willing to shake the system up, to fight, to fight smart and to make our country a little bit better,” Vance said.

Vance will face former state GOP chair Jane Timken, former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, and two Cleveland businesspeople, Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno, in next year’s GOP primary.

While Vance, 36, hasn’t run for elective office before, a political action committee formed this year to encourage his candidacy got an eyebrow-raising $10 million contribution from PayPal founder Peter Thiel. Vance had worked for the billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur in California.

Vance returned to his home state to live after Trump was elected in 2016, which was the first of two times the former president carried Ohio by 8 percentage points.

Vance’s book, made into a movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close that earned the latter a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, tells of his hardscrabble, colorful upbringing in the struggling Ohio steel mill city of Middletown and his familial roots in Appalachian Kentucky.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

US forces left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell new commander The Associated Press BAGRAM, Afghanistan — The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.

Afghanistan’s army showed off the sprawling air base Monday, providing a rare first glimpse of what had been the epicenter of America’s war to unseat the Taliban and hunt down the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on America.

The U.S. announced last Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.

“We [heard] some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram ... and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett did not address the specific complaints of many Afghan soldiers who inherited the abandoned airfield, instead referring to an earlier statement.

The statement said the handover of the many bases had been in the process soon after President Joe Biden’s mid-April announcement that America was withdrawing the last of its forces. Leggett said in the statement that they had coordinated their departures with Afghanistan’s leaders.

Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.

“At first we thought maybe they were Taliban,” said Abdul Raouf, a

AP PHOTO

Vehicles are parked at Bagram Airfield after the American military left the base, in Parwan province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 5, 2021. soldier of 10 years. He said the U.S. called from the Kabul airport and said “we are here at the airport in Kabul.”

Kohistani insisted the Afghan National Security and Defense Force could hold on to the heavily fortified base despite a string of Taliban wins on the battlefield. The airfield also includes a prison with about 5,000 prisoners, many of them allegedly Taliban.

Meanwhile, in northern Afghanistan, district after district has fallen to the Taliban. In just the last two days, hundreds of Afghan soldiers fled across the border into Tajikistan rather than fight the insurgents.

“In battle it is sometimes one step forward and some steps back,” said Kohistani.

Kohistani said the Afghan military is changing its strategy to focus on the strategic districts. He insisted they would retake them in the coming days without saying how that would be accomplished.

Kohistani said the U.S. left be-

hind 3.5 million items, all itemized by the departing U.S. military. They include tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks and military ready-made meals, known as MRE’s.

“When you say 3.5 million items, it is every small items, like every phone, every door knob, every window in every barracks, every door in every barracks,” he said.

The big-ticket items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armored vehicles. Kohistani said the U.S. also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but the departing troops took heavy weapons with them. Ammunition for weapons not being left behind for the Afghan military was blown up before they left.

Afghan soldiers who wandered Monday throughout the base that had once seen as many as 100,000 U.S. troops were deeply critical of how the U.S. left Bagram, leaving in the night without telling the Af-

ghan soldiers tasked with patrolling the perimeter.

“In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area,” said Afghan soldier Naematullah, who asked that only his one name be used.

Within 20 minutes of the U.S.’s silent departure, the electricity was shut down and the base was plunged into darkness, said Raouf, the soldier of 10 years who has also served in Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The sudden darkness was like a signal to the looters, he said. They entered from the north, smashing through the first barrier, ransacking buildings, loading anything that was not nailed down into trucks.

Three days after the U.S. departure, Afghan soldiers were still collecting piles of garbage that included empty water bottles, cans and energy drinks left behind by the looters.

Pentagon cancels disputed JEDI cloud contract with Microsoft Washington, D.C. The Pentagon said Tuesday it is canceling a cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10 billion and will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon.

“With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD’s capability gaps,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The statement did not directly mention that the Pentagon faced extended legal challenges by Amazon to the original contract awarded to Microsoft.

Amazon Web Services had long been considered a leading candidate to run the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, known as JEDI. The project was meant to store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the U.S. military to improve communications with soldiers on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

The JEDI contract became mired in legal challenges almost as soon as it was awarded to Microsoft in October 2019.

The losing bidder, Amazon Web Services, went to court arguing that the Pentagon’s process was improperly influenced by then-President Donald Trump’s dislike of Amazon and its chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos.

Bezos owns The Washington Post, a news outlet often critical of Trump.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2021

SPORTS

Rodon, Turner lead All-Stars with NC connections, B4

MATT YORK | AP PHOTO

Suns point guard Chris Paul watches his shot go through the hoop during Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals in Phoenix. Paul is playing in his first NBA Finals, which started Tuesday against the Milwaukee Bucks.

the Wednesday SIDELINE REPORT NBA

Hawks elevate McMillan to full-time coach Atlanta Raleigh native and former NC State standout Nate McMillan is staying in Atlanta. The Hawks have reached an agreement with the interim coach to accept a full-time role after he led the team to an improbable run to the Eastern Conference Finals.

McMillan, 56, was named interim coach after Lloyd Pierce was fired when the team had a 14-20 record. The young Hawks posted a 27-11 mark that gave them the No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, and then Atlanta beat the Knicks in the first round and top-seeded 76ers in the second round before losing to the Bucks in six games in the conference final.

NHL

Suns face Bucks in Paul’s first NBA Finals Game 1 was set for Tuesday night in Phoenix The Associated Press TEARS WELLED in Chris Paul’s eyes. A message in black ink on his shoes said it all: Can’t give up now.

Not when, after 16 years, he will finally play for an NBA title.

Paul — the Winston-Salem native who stayed home and starred for two years at Wake Forest before embarking on a Hall of Fame career — led the Phoenix Suns into their first NBA Finals in 28 years, beating the Los Angeles Clippers

in six games.

“I was on a don’t-lose mission,” Paul said. “Just a lot of emotion. A lot of (things) going on.”

Next up for Paul and the Suns: a matchup with Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks. The two regular-season games between Milwaukee and Phoenix this season fit the same script. Both were extremely high scoring. Both went down to the wire. Both saw Phoenix win by a single point, with a free throw by Devin Booker ending up as the game-winner each time.

There was also this: Antetokounmpo couldn’t be guarded in either game.

“He has persevered through a lot — injuries, playoff heartbreak.”

Suns coach Monty Williams on Chris Paul

And now it’s the Bucks and Suns — forever tied together after Milwaukee won a 1969 coin flip after the teams’ first seasons for Lew Alcindor — in the NBA Finals, with Antetokounmpo’s sta-

tus a major question.

Game 1 was set for Tuesday night in Phoenix, and Paul — who missed Games 1 and 2 against the Clippers after testing positive for COVID-19 — is back and set to play in the NBA Finals for the first time in his career.

“He was tired,” Suns coach Monty Williams said of Paul during his 41-point effort in Phoenix’s clinching win over the Clippers. “He was still making those kind of plays, getting to the basket, 3s, orchestrating everything.

“He has persevered through a lot — injuries, playoff heartbreak.”

See PAUL, page B3

Schools, athletes, businesses enter NIL reality The NCAA is finally allowing student-athletes to monetize their name, image of likeness, opening the door to a new frontier in amateur sports

Dundon buys out Karmanos, becomes Hurricanes’ sole owner

By Brett Friedlander North State Journal

Raleigh Tom Dundon is now sole owner of the Carolina Hurricanes after buying out the remaining shares of the NHL club held by Peter Karmanos and others. The league’s board of governors unanimously approved the transaction last Wednesday.

Dundon, 49, became majority owner in early 2018 when he bought 52% of the Hurricanes and the operating rights to PNC Arena for $425 million.

Karmanos had owned the team since moving the Whalers from Hartford in 1997. Carolina has made the playoffs the past three seasons, the first three consecutive trips to the postseason since the move to Raleigh. Rod Brind’Amour won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year and signed a three-year extension after the Hurricanes won the Central Division and reached the second round before losing in five games to Tampa Bay.

THE PHONE AT Amedeo’s didn’t start ringing at the stroke of midnight last Thursday, the moment the NCAA began granting its “student-athletes” the ability to profit from their name, image and likeness.

But it wasn’t long after the Raleigh restaurant opened the next morning for the first calls to come.

“I think that same day I got hit up by three athletes and one agent,” said Dave Parker, co-owner of the NC State-centric Italian eatery.

“Since then, I’ve heard from a couple more. They’re not knocking our doors down, but I’m definitely hearing from them.”

Parker said he and his partners are still trying to figure out how to manage the new landscape and have not yet decided on who and how they plan to get involved with sponsoring college athletes.

But eventually, they’re going to get involved.

“I feel like if we don’t do something, we’re going to get left behind,” he said. “And it makes total sense.”

While Amedeo’s figured to be

KEITH SRAKOCIC | AP PHOTO

UNC’s Armando Bacot became one of the first players to capitalize on the NCAA’s new name, image and likeness rules, striking a deal with Maryland-based Jimmy’s Famous Seafood. a natural target for State athletes looking to cash in on their newfound marketability thanks to an unofficial connection to the school that dates back to the days of Jim Valvano and has its walls covered corner-to-corner with Wolfpack memorabilia, it is hardly unique.

Businesses all around the state — and all across the country, for that matter — have begun hearing from athletes now free to pursue sponsorship deals without the

threat of losing their NCAA eligibility.

Many others have decided to venture out on their own by selling promotional items such as T-shirts with their names and photos on them, doing autograph signings, doing podcasts or by monetizing their large social media followings.

Among the most notable deals struck by local athletes was one in which North Carolina basketball player Armando Bacot teamed up

with the Maryland-based Jimmy’s Famous Seafood.

It’s a feeding frenzy the NCAA, coaches and administrators fought long and hard to prevent on the grounds that paying athletes would threaten the integrity of their sports. But because of a growing number of state laws pertaining to name, image and likeness (NIL) and recent antitrust warnings See NIL, page B4

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B2 WEDNESDAY

7.7.21

TRENDING

Jalen Harris: The Toronto Raptors guard was dismissed and disqualified from the NBA on Thursday for violating terms of the NBA/NBPA AntiDrug Program. The league, teams and union are prohibited from publicly disclosing information about testing or treatment of any NBA player under the Anti-Drug Program, other than to announce a suspension or dismissal. As a firstyear player, Harris is eligible to apply for reinstatement in a year.

He averaged 7.4 points and 13.2 minutes in 13 games this season for Toronto on a two-way contract after being drafted 59th overall in 2020.

Beyond the box score POTENT QUOTABLES

NASCAR

Chase Elliott won his seventh career Cup Series road course race Sunday and claimed his second victory of the 2021 season, passing Kyle Busch on lap 46 to win at Road America in Wisconsin. Christopher Bell finished second, followed by Busch, Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin. It was the first race on the four-mile course since 1956, one of several new tracks on NASCAR’s top series this season.

NELL REDMOND | AP PHOTO

“Honestly, it reminds me of home.”

Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold on moving to Charlotte after three tumultuous seasons in New York.

JEFFREY PHELPS | AP PHOTO

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Viktor Arvidsson: The Los Angeles Kings acquired the 28-year‑old forward from Nashville in exchange for a second‑round pick this year and a third‑round pick in 2022. Arvidsson is a two-time 30-goal scorer who has spent his entire seven‑year NHL career with the Predators. He scored a career-best 61 points in the 2016-17 and 2017‑18 seasons, and he set Nashville’s franchise record with 34 goals during the 2018-19 season. He has three seasons and $12.75 million left on a seven‑year contract.

Terry Donahue: The winningest coach in Pac-12 Conference and UCLA football history who later served as general manager of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers died Sunday after a two-year fight with cancer. He was 77. Donahue has the most wins (98) of any coach in Pac-12 history and also the most wins (151) in UCLA history.

He took over as head coach at age 31 and served from 1976-95.

NHL

ALBERTO PEZZALI | AP PHOTO

“It’s absolutely brutal.”

Nick Kyrgios on the slippery grass conditions at Wimbledon that injured him and Serena Williams, and felled several others, including N.C. native John Isner and a ball girl.

PRIME NUMBER

$10M The fine levied by the NFL to the Washington Football Team after an independent investigation found the organization’s workplace “highly unprofessional,” especially for women.

Owner Dan Snyder is also stepping away from day-to-day operations for several months following lawyer Beth Wilkinson’s investigation that began last summer.

JOHN AMIS | AP PHOTO

Former Georgia and Miami football coach Mark Richt has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The 61-year‑old Richt guided the Bulldogs for 15 seasons and closed out his coaching career with three years at Miami, his alma mater. Richt said he intends to continue in his role as an analyst on the ACC Network.

KATHY WILLENS | AP PHOTO

Blue Jackets goaltending prospect Matiss Kivlenieks died of chest trauma Sunday from an errant fireworks mortar blast in a tragic accident on the Fourth of July. Police said the firework tilted slightly and started to fire toward people, including the 24-year-old Kivlenieks who was in a hot tub.

COMPETITIVE EATING

BRITTAINY NEWMAN | AP PHOTO

Joey Chestnut broke his own record to gulp to a 14th win in the men’s Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on Sunday.

Chestnut downed 76 franks and buns in 10 minutes, one more than he did in setting the men’s record last year.

It was the sixth straight win for Chestnut, who won eight in a row from 2007-14 before being upset in 2015

by Matt Stonie.

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B3

Bulls teammates headed to Olympics for Team USA Durham’s Joe Ryan and Shane Baz lead a large N.C. contingent to the Summer Games

good month. I’m just trying to stay on an even keel, go play baseball, that kind of thing, but this week’s been pretty solid.”

The Olympic experience won’t be quite the same as in previous years. COVID restrictions will be

By Shawn Krest in place in Tokyo, limiting what North State Journal the athletes can do outside of DURHAM — Durham Bulls their events.

“I don’t think we’re going to be pitcher Joe Ryan picked up a new nickname from teammate Brent able to do anything, from what Honeywell Jr.: Captain America. I’ve heard,” Ryan said. “It’s going That’s because Ryan, who is to be living quarters to the field 3-3 with a 4.11 ERA in his first and back. Anything other than year with the Bulls, is headed to that is going to be new to me and Tokyo as a member of Team USA. I’m going to be excited about.”

If he gets the chance to wanBaseball makes a one-time return to the Olympics for the first der around, Ryan knows where time since 2008. Players selected he’ll go.

“The Olympic pool,” he said. “I to the team can’t be on a major want to go off the highleauge team’s 40‑man est dive they have.” roster, meaning the Since that’s not liketeam will be a collecly to happen, Ryan and tion of up-and-coming “It’s an Baz will just focus on prospects, like Ryan the reason they’re headand Bulls teammate amazing ed to Tokyo.

Shane Baz, and veter- opportunity.

“Winning is probably ans who couldn’t catch the only thing I’ve realon with a big-league Once in a ly thought about so far,” team this year. lifetime.”

Baz said. “I’m going to “It’s an amazing opgo out there and pitch portunity,” Ryan said.

Joe Ryan, the best I can to give us “Once in a lifetime.” a chance to win.”

Ryan has already left Durham Bulls “We’re going there the Bulls once this sea- pitcher to win the gold medal,” son for his country, goRyan added. “Until the ing to Florida to help last game is over and we Team USA go 4-0 in have that medal on, I’m the Olympic qualifiers last month. Ryan started a game not going to focus on anything against the Dominican Republic else.”

Who’d expect anything less and struck out 10 in 4⅔ innings.

“It was definitely different to from Captain America. leave the team midway through the season and go with a bunch 10 others have N.C. ties of guys you’ve never met before, Ten other players on the Team practice one day and start playUSA roster have ties to North ing games,” he said.

Representing his country was Carolina. Like Ryan and Baz, a pair of veteran pitchers took the a new experience for Ryan.

“It’s baseball,” he said. “I knew mound for the Durham Bulls in it was a big deal, obviously, look- the past. Edwin Jackson was a ing down at my (Team USA) jer- Durham pitcher in 2006, and sey. I just had to clear my mind, Scott Kazmir started a pair of incontrol what I can control and jury rehab games for the team in 2008 and 2009. execute the next pitch.”

The Tar Heels also have a pair Baz also has some experience representing his country. He of alumni on the team. Catcher went to Mexico with Team USA’s Tim Federowicz played for UNC under-18 team in 2016, along from 2006 to 2008 after starring with current Olympic teammates for Apex High, and Ryder Ryan went from North Mecklenburg Nick Allen and Triston Casas.

“I’ve had the chance to throw High to UNC in 2016.

A pair of former White Sox in the minor league playoffs,” Baz said. “I’ve pitched for Team USA. prospects played for Kannapolis, It’s kind of like why you play the Winston-Salem and Charlotte on game — for the moments. Go- their way up the Chicago ladder. ing into a big pressure spot just Infielder Eddy Alvarez will be makes you better. It helps you looking for his second Olympic dig down and find something you medal after taking silver in Sochi in 2014 in short-track speed skatdidn’t know you had.”

Being named to the Olympic ing. He played for Chicago’s trio team capped a big week for Baz. of N.C. teams from 2014 to 2018.

Pitcher Anthony Carter also He was called up to Durham last month and is 1-0 with a 1.42 ERA went from Kannapolis to Winin four starts for the Bulls. Short- ston-Salem to Charlotte from ly after arriving, he was cho- 2008 to 2012, while Bubba Starsen for the MLB Futures Game ling began his pro career with the which will kick off All-Star week- Burlington Royals in 2012.

Former Major Leaguer Todd end.

“I’m thankful, grateful,” he Frazier spent part of 2009 with said. “It’s been kind of a crazy the Carolina Mudcats, and pitchfew weeks. (Making the Olym- er Anthony Gose began his move pic team) is up there. Hitting from the outfield to the mound Triple-A a few weeks ago was with Down East in 2018. Pitcher awesome. The Futures Game is Nick Martinez was with Hickory big-time too. It’s been a pretty in 2012.

DELLY CARR | WORLD TRIATHLON MEDIA

Katie Zaferes, right, and Summer Rappaport both relocated to the North Carolina and will compete in the women’s triathlon at the Tokyo Games.

Triangle triathletes ready for Tokyo Summer Rappaport and Katie Zaferes both moved to North Carolina to train

By Brett Friedlander North State Journal THE RESEARCH Triangle is famous for being a hotbed of college basketball and home to the Durham Bulls, arguably the bestknown team in minor league baseball.

What isn’t as well known is the high concentration of world-class women’s triathletes that have chosen to make central North Carolina their base of operation.

Two of the three members of the team that will represent the U.S. in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo later this month live in the Triangle. Although neither Summer Rappaport nor Katie Zaferes is originally from the region, both have found it to be an ideal location for their demanding sport.

“The Triangle has a lot of great soft surface run trails and quiet country roads for biking that makes the area a great place to train,” Rappaport said from the team’s pre-Olympic training camp in Portugal.

A Colorado native who swam and ran cross-country at Villanova, Rappaport moved to Durham when her husband’s job transferred him there in 2020.

By contrast, Zaferes’ move to Cary — also last summer — was made by choice after an extensive search for an elusive post-Olympics home base after a five-year stretch that has seen her and her husband spend most of their time out of the country training and competing.

“Google led us to Cary,” said the 2019 world champion, who grew up in Maryland and ran cross-country and track at Syracuse. “I had grown up going to the Outer Banks with my family, and it is one of my favorite places with some of my best childhood memories.

“I wasn’t really familiar with the Triangle area, (but) when we were deciding where to live it had

PAUL from page B1

JOHN BAZEMORE | AP PHOTO

Pitcher Joe Ryan, pictured during spring training with the Tampa Bay Rays, is one of two Durham Bulls who will play for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics.

On top of his absence due to COVID-19, Paul also injured his shoulder in the first round against the Lakers. Add in numerous surgeries and making the conference finals one other time, only to fall short.

“It’s been a lot, I’m telling you,” he said.

It’s a whole new setting for the 36-year-old Paul, who acknowledged one of the differences. Home teams usually practice at their training facility, but the workout on the eve of the NBA Finals is in the arena.

“It’s still basketball,” the point guard said. “I think we’re all locked into the goal at hand.”

Antetokounmpo, who was considered doubtful for Game 1, can only hope to be ready for the series.

everything we were looking for — an active community, good for our triathlon lifestyles now and having opportunity for the future. It was a place that just hit everything we wanted and more.”

Rappaport, 29, was the first triathlete to earn her spot on the U.S. team as the highest-placing American — and fifth overall — at the Tokyo ITU World Olympic Qualification event in 2019.

Zaferes, 32, joined her on the Olympic roster last month when she was chosen as a discretionary pick by USA Triathlon based on her No. 1 spot in the world Olympic qualifying rankings.

The third member of the U.S. team is 23-year-old Taylor Knibb from Washington D.C. Although Rappaport and Zaferes have developed a friendship over their years of competing together on the world circuit, their different coaches and regimens don’t provide many opportunities to train together.

But thanks to their proximity to one another, there are still times when their paths do cross.

“Because we have two different training programs and also are both away often, our time when we are both in the Triangle area hasn’t been much,” Zaferes said.

“We have managed to meet up a few times for rides, runs and an open water swim. It’s been fun to get to train a bit together while we are in the same area.”

Zaferes and Rappaport are both products of the USA Triathlon

Collegiate Recruitment Program, a project designed to introduce the sport to young athletes with diverse skill sets.

Rappaport, for example, was a competitive swimmer good enough to earn a scholarship to Villanova. During her freshman year there, on a whim, she signed up to run a 10-mile road race that turned out to be a career-defining activity.

“My swim coach was a triathlete,” she said. “(He) recognized that my time was pretty good and encouraged me to talk to the cross-country/track and field coach about walking on to the team, and he also got me in touch with the USA Triathlon Recruitment Program.”

Zaferes ran track at Syracuse, specializing in the steeplechase, an event in which she set several school records. But she also had some experience in triathlon, having competed in one with her father on Father’s Day shortly after her graduation from high school.

“What really drew me to become a triathlete was the variation in the sport,” she said. “I love training in three different disciplines, trying to be better in each component of the race. It’s so multifaceted that there are always areas to be better.”

The Olympic triathlon consists of a 1.5-kilometer (0.93-mile) swim, a 40-kilometer (24.85-mile) bike ride and a 10-kilometer (6.2mile) run.

Because of their respective athletic backgrounds, Rappaport and Zaferes agreed that cycling is the area in which they have the most room for improvement. Both, however, are good enough to be considered legitimate medal contenders in Tokyo.

After last year’s postponement, simply having the opportunity to compete is a victory.

As much as first-time Olympian Rappaport is looking forward to getting to Japan, 2016 veteran Zaferes is even more motivated after a difficult 18 months in which — beyond dealing with the coronavirus pandemic — she has also spent time recovering from a cycling crash and the death of her father.

“I am very grateful that I am getting this opportunity to race,” said Zaferes, who finished 18th in Rio. “I am really excited to use all that I have learned over the past five years. I feel like all the training, skills and experiences have just been accumulating, and come Tokyo, I will be ready.”

The two-time NBA MVP averaged 40 points on 60% shooting against the Suns this season but hyperextended his left knee during Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals against Atlanta. The Bucks went 2-0 in the two full games that Antetokounmpo missed to win that series in six games, finishing it — and earning the team’s first finals berth since 1974 — with a win on the Hawks’ home floor on Saturday night.

“We’ve got more work to do,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said during the East trophy ceremony.

The Bucks lost 125-124 in Phoenix on Feb. 10, then lost 128-127 to the Suns in overtime at Milwaukee on April 19.

Milwaukee won its lone NBA title in 1971. The Suns have never won a championship, last getting

to the finals in 1993. They also lost the finals in 1976.

No player on either team has ever won an NBA championship.

Jae Crowder went to the finals last season with Miami, then chose to sign a three-year deal with Phoenix last summer.

“I knew our potential,” Crowder said. “I knew where we could get to, the level of basketball we could play, when I first got here. I just knew it was a special group. I knew we had a chance to do something special.”

The Suns indeed have that chance.

So, now, do the Bucks.

One of them is only four wins from hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

“It’s been a lot, and I want it not just for myself but for everybody in that locker room,” Paul said.

“It had everything we were looking for — an active community, good for our triathlon lifestyles now and having opportunity for the future.”

Katie Zaferes, U.S Olympic triathlete

B4

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Wolfpack products lead MLB All-Stars with NC ties Carlos Rodon and Trea Turner will make their first All-Star appearances

18

By Shawn Krest North State Journal NC STATE’S PREVIOUS trip to the College World Series — and the last time the Wolfpack were eliminated from college baseball’s championship on the field in Omaha — came in 2013. The Wolfpack were led by one of the best pitchers in the college game in left-hander Carlos Rodon, and sparkplug infielder Trea Turner.

Eight years and one month later, Rodon and Turner will again share space on one of baseball’s biggest stages. Now in the pros, the duo will be in opposite dugouts at the MLB All-Star Game next week.

Rodon was selected to his first career All-Star team for going 6-3 with a 2.37 ERA for the White Sox so far this season. He was selected by his MLB colleagues in the player vote and will be headed to the midsummer classic in Denver, Colorado.

Rodon, who played in high school in Holly Springs before spending three years with the Wolfpack, also was a fixture in the state of North Carolina at the start of his pro career. He spent part of the 2014 season with the Winston-Salem Dash and returned in 2017. Rodon played for the Charlotte Knights each season from 2014-18. He also made a stop in Kannapolis in 2018. All told, 18 of Rodon’s 20 career minor league starts came for teams in the state.

Turner was also selected for his first All-Star appearance in the player vote after hitting .321 with 15 home runs and a National League-leading 18 stolen bases for Washington in the first half.

They may not be as memorable as Rodon and Turner’s years with the Wolfpack, but 13 other 2021

Stolen bases for Washington’s Trea Turner this season, tops in the National League

NAM Y. HUH | AP PHOTO

White Sox pitcher Carlos Rodon will play in his first All-Star Game this year in Colorado.

All-Stars saw their path to Denver this season lead through North Carolina at some point in their career.

Only one other All-Star went to a North Carolina college — Baltimore’s Cedric Mullins, who was selected by the players for his first appearance. He spent 2013 and 2014 in junior college at Louisburg College then played for Campbell in 2015.

The other 12 All-Stars all played for minor league teams in the state, led by the American League’s manager. Tampa’s Kevin Cash, who got the job heading the All-Star team by leading the Rays to the World Series last year, played a total of 121 games for the Durham Bulls in the 2005 and 2006 seasons.

He won’t be the only former Bull representing Durham next Tues-

day night. Red Sox pitcher Nathan Eovaldi, selected by MLB for his first All-Star appearance, went 0-1 for the Bulls in 2018.

San Diego’s Jake Cronenworth, chosen by the players for his AllStar debut, played for the Bulls in 2018 and 2019, hitting .334 with 10 home runs for Durham in 2019 while also starting a few games on the mound as a two-way player.

Two current Bulls will also get All-Star weekend started in the MLB Futures Game, which matches the game’s top prospects. Infielder/outfielder Vidal Brujan and pitcher Shane Baz will both participate in the game.

The Carolina Mudcats also have two alumni in the All-Star Game.

Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman, selected by the players for his seventh appearance in the game, went

1-1 in five games for the Muddies in 2011. Brewers starter Corbin Burnes went 5-0 with a 1.05 ERA for Carolina in 2017.

Like Rodon, two other AllStars played for the wide variety of White Sox minor league franchises in the state. Toronto’s Marcus Semien, voted a starter by the fans for his first All-Star selection, played 282 of his 395 career minor league games for North Carolina teams, including Kannapolis in 2011, Winston-Salem in 2012 and Charlotte in 2013 and ’14.

Arizona’s Eduardo Escobar, selected by MLB for his first All-Star trip, played 412 of his 548 career minor league games for teams in the state, including Kannapolis in 2008 and 2009, Winston-Salem in 2010 and Charlotte in 2011.

Charlotte and Winston-Salem

each contributed a player to the Futures Game, as well. Jake Burger was selected as an infielder, although he’s since been called up to Chicago from the Knights. Dash outfielder Yoelqui Cespedes was also chosen.

Texas outfielder Joey Gallo was chosen by MLB for his second appearance. He played in 106 games for Hickory in 2013.

A current Crawdad, pitcher Cole Ragans, was chosen for this year’s Futures Game.

A pair of former Greensboro Grasshoppers are All-Stars. Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto was picked by the players for his third trip. He played 96 games for the Hoppers, hitting 12 home runs in 2011. Marlins pitcher Trevor Rogers, chosen by MLB to make his All-Star debut, pitched in 17 games for Greensboro in 2018.

Pitcher Quinn Priester, a current Hopper, will appear in the Futures Game.

The Asheville Tourists helped produce an All-Star — Cardinals infielder Nolan Arenado was voted in by fans to start for the fourth time, making him a six-time AllStar, and played for Asheville in 2010, hitting .308 with 12 homers in 92 games.

The final star with North Carolina ties comes from a team that is no longer with us. Royals catcher Salvador Perez, a seven-time AllStar, was voted by fans to start for the fourth time. He hit .325 for the Burlington Royals in 2008.

Marks bypasses charters to buy entire Ganassi NASCAR team Trackhouse Racing will stay in Mooresville for now but plans to move to Nashville, Tennessee

By Jenna Fryer The Associated Press CHARLOTTE — Immediately after the bombshell announcement that Justin Marks had purchased Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR team, the outgoing owner took the soonto-be new boss back to the shop to address a room full of anxious employees.

“It was important to me to get in front of people and look them in the eye,” Marks told The Associated Press. “I told them, ‘I am here because I love racing and there are a lot of good things happening in this building, and I am going to work hard to preserve as much of that as possible.’”

The work begins next week for the co-owner of Trackhouse Racing, who struggled to find a charter for the team’s first year of competition and balked at paying the escalating costs of NASCAR’s equivalent of a franchise. Kaulig Racing last month bought a pair of charters for what the industry believes to be at least $10 million apiece, and after crunching the numbers, Marks just couldn’t justify the spend.

So he switched his strategy, looked at the marketplace and took his shot: Marks picked up the phone and cold-called Ganassi, the Pittsburgh-tough owner not known for suffering fools gladly. After 20 years in NASCAR with a team that never really reached the level of Ganassi’s successful IndyCar and sports car programs, Marks wondered if Ganassi was willing to cash out.

NIL from page B1 from federal government officials, the NCAA was forced to abandon the fight.

On July 1, it began allowing athletes to tap into their earning potential in accordance with the NIL rules put in place by their states.

One day later, Gov. Roy Cooper issued an executive order setting down guidelines for those attending schools in North Carolina.

“Treating these athletes fairly and uniformly will help our state remain a competitive and desirable place to get educated and compete,” Cooper said in announcing the order, which sets “a standard

Ganassi said Marks made him “an offer that required my attention” and it culminated with Wednesday’s announcement that Trackhouse Entertainment Group had bought him out of NASCAR. Marks’ deep dive into the Ganassi operation begins next week when he works from the Concord shop.

The one-car Trackhouse team with driver Daniel Suarez is currently aligned with Richard Childress Racing, and Marks told AP that Trackhouse has only “about 25” of its own employees.

He’ll need a larger workforce to field two cars next season, one for Suarez and the other Chevrolet for a driver to be named. Kurt Busch and Ross Chastain, the current Ganassi drivers, are both under consideration, but it’s been speculated that Busch will take sponsor Monster to 23XI Racing next season to help Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan expand their team.

“My goal is to retain as much of the good working groups in that company as possible. There are good people in the company,” Marks told AP on Friday. “Everything inside that building is in place to run a successful company.”

The introduction of NASCAR’s Next Gen car — designed to be affordable because spec parts will be mass-produced by outside companies — will reduce labor within all race teams and inevitably lead to attrition inside the Ganassi shop.

“The new car is going to change the workforce structure,” Marks said. “We have to look at the best way to build a company around a new car and I want to fill in as many of those positions with Chip Ganassi people.”

Just like that, Marks is major player on the NASCAR scene.

So how did a 40-year-old former

for individual institutions to use as they formalize their own policies and procedures.”

The new guidelines, which are expected to be approved by the full state legislature, allow students at state schools to profit from their NIL as long as the money they earn comes from sources other than their school and does not come on the condition of enrollment.

They must also comply with state and federal laws as they pertain to the relationship of college athletes and agents.

In turn, schools can prevent their students from entering into deals that conflict with contracts already in place by the university,

TOM E. PUSKAR | AP PHOTO

Justin Marks, who won once in 79 races as a driver in NASCAR’s top three series — a 2016 Xfinity Series victory driving for Chip Ganassi’s No. 42 — bought the two-car team from his former owner last week after determining it was a more feasible business plan than trying to buy Cup Series charters. racer buy himself a seat at the table alongside Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske, Joe Gibbs and Jack Roush?

He launched Trackhouse with Suarez as the driver and leased his charter for this season after he was outbid on four others. Marks then introduced entertainer Pitbull as co-owner of the team, which Marks hopes to relocate to Nashville, Tennessee, by 2023.

Trackhouse has many core principles ranging from success on the racetrack to connecting with the Latino market and making an impact on youth in America’s minority communities.

Marks is the first to admit he should have turned in his firesuit and helmet much earlier and shifted his focus toward his burgeoning motorsports portfolio. Marks raced in all three of NASCAR’s national series — and won an Xfinity Series race driving for Ganassi in 2016 — and scored nine sports car

victories in 67 starts. His final win in 2019 was while driving for Indianapolis 500-winning owner Michael Shank.

Marks’ financial start likely came from his father, Michael Marks, a well-known executive, founding managing partner of Celesta Capital and former minority owner of the Golden State Warriors. But Marks has been building his own portfolio, which includes the GoPro Motorplex karting facility in Mooresville that is modeled after a historic kart track in Parma, Italy.

“I’ve been positioning myself from a capital standpoint for something like this for several years,” Marks told AP. “I was just waiting for the right moment. Yeah, I’m a former race car driver, but if anything, I probably raced for too long.”

A nondisclosure agreement prevents Marks from discussing specifics of the Ganassi purchase, but if

Matt Kaulig paid $20 million-plus just for a pair of charters, then Marks at minimum paid at least double for Ganassi’s entire NASCAR organization. The purchase did not come with the Concord race shop, which is owned by Ganassi partner Rob Kauffman, who will lease the building in 2022 to Trackhouse.

But the nuts and bolts all transfer to Trackhouse, including existing employee contracts. When asked how he is paying for the purchase, Marks said he was legally bound not to discuss the details.

“Every entity has different financing, sometimes there is debt involved, sometimes it is investment,” he said. “I think everybody is excited about the new blood coming into the sport, the new ownership, and change is obviously scary for people. But I’m here for the right reasons. I’m here because I love racing.”

endorsing products or brands that are “antithetical to the values of the institution,” or using official team events or logos in their endorsements.

To help their athletes negotiate their way through the uncertain new situation, most state colleges have created initiatives and partnered with professional firms to provide them with education, monitoring, disclosure and brand-building assistance.

At East Carolina, the Student Athlete Brand Resource Education (SABRE) program has partnered the athletic department with the university’s School of Entrepreneurship to provide whatever

assistance its athletes might need and turn NIL into an educational experience.

“Our administration is going to put us in the best possible position for success with the SABRE program and give us the resources to enhance our personal brand,” Pirates quarterback and Greenville native Holton Ahlers said. “As a native of this community, I understand what being a Pirate means and the passion our fans have for the Purple and Gold.

“The NIL legislation will help all student-athletes now benefit from their personal brand and prepare for the next step in their journey with an education from a group of

experts in their field.”

While some, including Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney, have voiced their fear that the paying of players will spell the end of college athletics as we know it, others argue that NIL legislation is an idea long overdue.

“The sun came up on July 1 and the world remains firmly on its axis now that athletes can profit off their name, likeness and image,” ESPN analyst and former Duke basketball star Jay Bilas said in a social media post after the new rules went into effect. “It’s past time, it’s here. People need to embrace it and stop talking about the sky falling.”

virus dissipates l pay for this

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The cavalier manner in which China lied about the origin of the virus, covered up its spread and tried to tell the world there were only 3,341 related deaths has led to worldwide panic, economic collapse and millions of Americans needlessly being thrown out of work.

The crisis has cost the U.S. taxpayer at least $2.4 trillion in addedPerhaps debt plus trillions more in Federal Reserve backup liquidity to the COVID-19 markets and financial outlets. If the U.S. dollar were not the reserveis China’s currency, we would not be able to fund any of these emergency Chernobyl. measures without immediate fear of rampant inflation and currency depreciation.

China has to pay for their aberrant ways and decisions through economic and financial means. Diplomacy has obviously not worked to bring China into the civilized world of 21st century health, hygiene and fair trade. Totalitarian communist regimes never take the blame or express sincere regret and remorse, because that is not what totalitarian governments do. They take advantage of every weakness they find in adversaries and keep pushing until they win or the adversaries push back.

That is, unless an exogenous event happens such as the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. Some experts believe that event, not the Star Wars program of Reagan, led directly to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Perhaps COVID-19 is China’s Chernobyl.

Senators in Washington are already talking about the possibility of China forgiving $1.2 trillion in debt we owe them as one way to get China to “pay” for the damage they have caused the US. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Chinese “Jubilee” to happen but ask your elected representatives to hold China accountable in tangible financial ways for this disaster.

It is about time they are expected to operate as responsible citizens of the world like any other modern nation.

THIS WEEK, acc In order to put the crisis caused by China in perspective, zero and state and local g worldwide pandemics can trace their source to the United States over the curve in the our 231-year history. At least four in the 20th century alone can be nove — after directly traced to China: 1957 “Asian flu,” 1968 “Hongmuted Kong flu,” 1977all, tr have abided “Russian flu” and the 2002 SARS outbreak. There is evidence thatby therecom to stay at home; they massive 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic also had its origins in China. they’ve donned mask There is 100% agreement, outside China, that COVID-19 Weof need The result: a reduc originated in Wuhan Province probably from the completely transparency According to the Neal out Robbins, unregulated and unsanitary wet markets. Some believe it came of aUn Metrics and Evaluat and Chinese honesty Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior biowarfare lab run by the communist army.opinion editor administratio from our Until China adopts rigorous verifiable policing and Trump regulation of peak outbreak was r their food safety and health protocols, American business has no other scientific experts ventilators by nearly choice than to build redundant manufacturing elsewhere purely — we need to plantsAugust by nearly 12, for national security and safety reasons as well as supply and delivery know what they Here’s the problem reliability concerns. know, what they questions will a The most direct way to make China “pay” for this disaster is tothat offer First, what is the t and when U.S. tax credits to companies whodon’t will source at least half of their important because it theyThere hope to production back in the United States. is approximately $120 be open or closed, wh billion worth of American direct investment plants and equipment know what in they more in China. Chinese direct investment in the U.S. is about $65liberalized billion by soci don’t. ought to lock down f comparison.

We’ve seen case fa An investment tax credit of 30% on half of U.S. investment in China the number of identi today, or $60 billion, applied to repatriated American manufacturing and the denominato investment to the U.S. would cost the U.S. Treasury $18 billion in have tax revenue spread over a few years. $18 billion in lostpeople revenue is actually number has been ove decimal dust compared to the $6 trillion+ Marshall Plan we are now of death, particularly undertaking to save our own economy, not of defeated enemies as in the sources suggest the n past. many American people are dyi China has been cheating, stealing, pirating and pillaging Even import business now for the past 30 years. They have made no secret more that they actually have corona intend to replace the U.S. as the premier superpower in the world and of identified cases co replace the dollar as the reserve currency with their renminbi. number of people wh

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WITH MOST STATES under either shelter-in-place or stay-at-home China lied about the origin of the ONE THING IS CERTAIN; after thisthanks COVID-19 virus cavalierofmanner in which orders to local ordissipates state governments,The a majority Americans THIS WEEK, virus, according to members ofTHE theand fed ied to tell the world there were only “THIS IS DA around the globe and in the United States, China will pay for this covered up its spread t are having to adjust to what is being called the “new normal.” and state and local governments, Americans have rldwide panic, economic collapse and in it” (Psalm 118:24) catastrophe one way or another.

3,341 related deaths has led to w Some of these orders extend at least through the end of this month. ce or stay-at-home fallen into place. I understand the seriousness of the virus thetoneed the curve in the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The being thrown out of work.

I know that durin Inand order put the crisis causedVirginia’s

by Chinastay-at-home in perspective, zero millions of Americans needlessly orders go into June. ty of Americans to take precautions, but I’m uneasy with how people who simply ask muted — after all, trends can easily reverse — bu payer at least $2.4 trillion in added working from home worldwide pandemics can trace their source to theCarolina, United States over Gov.The has cost the U.S. tax Here in North Democratic Roycrisis Cooper stated during normal.” questions about the data, and when things can start getting back to have abided by recommendations and orders.

The Reserve backup liquidity to the be glad” the Bible our 231-year history. At least fourainrecent the 20th century alone be that “we debt plus trillions more Federa coronavirus press can briefing just don’t know yet”asifin the nd of this month. are treated in some circles with contempt. to flu,” stay 1977 at home; they’ve practiced socialthe distancin he U.S. dollar were notnormal the reserve and dad, Easter directly traced to China: 1957 “Asian flu,” 1968 “Hong Kong markets and financial outlets.

If will extend into May. Since when did state’s stay-at-home orders They’re treated as though we as a society simply must accept flu” without they’ve donned masks. fund any of these emergency have to be thankful “Russian and the 2002 SARS outbreak.

There is evidence that the currency, we would not be able to Perhaps If he it, questions should be asked as toIBM the Wedoes needdecide to extend FEATURE PHOTO SERVICE FORhospitalizat WALTER E. WILLIAMS questioning per stated during question what the government tells us about when it’s massive safe to begin the The result: a reduction inwithout expected Lenten and of rampant inflation and currency pandemic.

1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic also had its origins in China. measures immediate fea justification for it. And the answers should not be vague ones like “we COVID-19 t know yet” if the process of returning to normalcy.

According to theseasons University of Washington Institi For me, my faith Easter In this photo taken

by Feature Photoback Service for IBM: Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, and CEO ofmust IBM, at right, and James M. Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, left,. government There is 100% agreement, outside oftransparency China, that depreciation. do this out ofCOVID-19 an abundance of caution.” is China’s No. The government works for us, and we have the right to ask those Metrics and Evaluation model most oft cited by m ant ways and decisions through I celebra and honesty originated in at Wuhan Province probably from the has to pay forAs their aber provide a China all levels It will need tocompletely be explained in detail to the people ofmaking. this state who asked as to the questions.

And the longer stay-at-home orders are in place all over the Trump administration, the expected need for plomacy has obviously not worked Corinthians 1:4, hos whD Chernobyl. unregulated and unsanitary wet markets. believe it came of at a home economic and financial means. fromSome our to are being told remain joblessout and for anofundetermined message ofcount become a have lost the number of gue ones like “we country, and the stricter some of them get in states, such as Michigan, peak outbreak was revised down by over 120,000 world of 21st century health, hygiene affliction, so that biowarfare lab run by the communist Chinese army. to bring China into the civilized scientific amount of timeexperts why models predicting hundreds of thousands of cases wew reinventions, ousters andthe ‘seismic hope that we13,000 will bad thing? thethe more people, sitting at home feeling isolated and/or anxious about ventilators by nearly and number of ov unist regimes never take blame affliction, with the c Until China adopts rigorous verifiable policing and regulation of and fair trade.

Totalitarian are reliable. shifts’ at Big Blue over the last de- comm — we need to once again enjoy of this state who when they can get back to providing for their families, will demand August by nearly 12,000. orse, because that is not what God.” That is what their food safety and health protocols, American business has no other or express sincere regret and rem cades.

Today’s on then AI in To know date, what I’ve gone what the state hasemphasis asked and they along with answers.

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StateasRepublican have, too. living inand a free can be with those answers — and again, not vague answers, but concerns. answer First, what is the true coronavirus fatality and rate?c Arvind Krishna wanting new faces God’s example don’t and when reliability adversaries push back. gatherings, Unfortunately, when certain types of questions get asked, there is AMERICA’S COLLEGES are rife with and newerThat society kedhappens and then with details that give their statements believability. important because itthinking.” determines whether certain ent such asThe the Chernobyl this difficult T The most direct waywere to make China “pay”hope for this is to offer is, unless an exogenous they to disaster corruption. financial squeeze resulting sometimes a disturbing tendency among some people to treat thosetime. ev church services Weinberg also noted, howevdbelieve questions about We should all continue to do what we can to keep our families, be open or closed, whether we ought to pursue — that event, not the Staropportunities Wars confident we will em supposed from COVID-19 offers for a U.S. tax credits to companies who will source at least half of their meltdown in 1986.

Some experts know what theythe data and asking questioning when we cantumbled start getting back Red Hat leader who oversaw er, that IBM stock about and many more es effective immediately,” including simply Sponsored

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Chinese investment in the U.S. is about $65 billion by Perhaps COVID-19 is China’s the changes.

“Jim Whitehurst has a Since when did questioning government at all levels become a bad changes positioned Red Hat for thenumber “Academic Grievance Studies and the North State Journal for Wednesday, April 15, 2020 start getting back This is all new to Americans, and it is not normal.

Not in any way, the of identified COVID-19 cases — but eady talking about the possibility money to buy aare 3-D Weiss also quotesin Rob Endersacrifices are society pivotal role in the IBM and Red thing? That is what free citizens living comparison.

Senators Washington alb in a free were supposed Corruption of Scholarship.”

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So while stay safe, at and the denominator are likely wrong.

We don’t k le, principal of Enderle Group, who Hat Krishna. debt we owe them as one way to get health care workers Anintegration,” investment wrote tax credit of 30% U.S. investment in China of China forgiving $1.2 trillion in over. toon do,half lastof I checked. done

by Areo,among an opinion and analysis NC ranks said that Whitehurst’s early history “In the almost three years since the NSJ staff sick. the same time we shouldn’t get comfortable with this so-called “new people have actually died of coronavirus.

Some so behemoth soughtasamanufacturing newgo along in all this, y have caused US. Don’t hold your today, or $60 billion, applied to repatriated China to “pay”isfor damage digitalthe magazine.

By the way, Areo is short My first American concern we course, mythe family.

I’m th as been COO overestimated, at of Delta Air Lines meant acquisition was announced, Jim nation’s best ls become aAreopagitica, badbut ask normal.” number has given that classi lee” to happen your elected for atax speech delivered by investment to the U.S. would cost the U.S. Treasury $18 billion in growth engine and looked to breath waiting for a Chinese “Jub the virus, and I’m worried I will.

After he started outamong in a different kind of has been instrumental in articulat- worried about them catching ty were supposed Not one little bit. RALEIGH — Jim Whitehurst, tax of death, particularly elderly patients, can ountable in tangible financial ways for John Milton in defense of free speech. revenue spread over a few years. $18 billion in lost revenue is representatives to hold China acc structures fromleadership the H1N1 virus flu) during the 2009 re-establish as a (swine company and culture, evenpandemic, though who came to lead Raleigh-based ing IBM’s strategy, but also, in en- suffering Authors Helen Pluckrose, James A. sources suggest the number is dramatically under decimal dust compared to the $6 trillion+ Marshall Plan we are now this disaster. he ended up leading for up Red Hat in January 2008 and di- suring that IBM and Red Hat work I’ve been trying to take extra precautions, because all ofRed thisHat brings RALEIGH — North Carolina now cloud technology provider.”

Lindsay and Peter Boghossian say has that also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah e, to is my family.

Stacey Matthews manyas people areyears. dying home. ed operate as I’m responsible citizens of to save own economy, notmany of defeated enemies inmany the It is at about timenot they are expect well together and that our technolrected the open source and Linux undertaking way too memories of a painful experience I’ d prefer to repeat. has one of the most broad-based something drastically wrong ied I will.

After has gone and is a regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.

Even more importantly, we have no clue how m ation.

“Whitehurst was never an ideal ogy platforms and innovations procompany through an acquisition by past. the world like any other modern and competitive tax structures But what also makes me lose sleep is how easily most everyone has in academia, especially within certain Tech strategist Bill Weinberg 2009 pandemic, actually have coronavirus.

Some scientists sugges match for this project” at IBM said morehas value to our clients. stealing, Jim for business the humanities.

United States,They callby IBM in July of 2019, is now out vide China been cheating, pirating and pillaging American fields withininthe Enderle. a result, was always has decided to for stepthe down as30 IBM at IBM. l of this brings up of identified cases “As could be anheorder of magnitude according to a recent Location business now past years.

They have made no secret that they these fields “grievance studies,” where Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior likely to who be replaced by coronavirus more of a opinion President, however I am pleased Matters survey and newly refer notscholarship to repeat. is not so much based upon Whitehurst’s departure was one intend number of people have had and to replace the U.S. as the premier superpower in the world and of a series of executive changes an- he will continue working as Senior hurst from the role of president,” subject matter expert as IBM’s proreleased white paper from the Tax ost everyone has finding truth but upon attending to dollar their renminbi. said Billwith Weinberg, open source cess is to assure technical compeAdvisor the to me and as thethe restreserve of the currency nounced by IBM late last week, replace Foundation and KPMG LLP.

Fixingn.c. college corruption FAST

FACTS

Raleigh’s Whitehurst steps down as IBM president A6

Approved Logos

social grievances. Grievance scholars The Location Matters study just before the July 4th holiday bully students, administrators and other compared overall tax costs among weekend. Whitehurst remained afdepartments into adhering to their businesses of different types in ter Red Hat’s $34 billion acquisiworldview. they promote is all 50 states The whileworldview the white paper tion and then 14 months later, in neither scientific nor rigorous.

Grievance follows that report to provide a April of 2020,EDITORIAL moved over from | e studies of factors disciplines such as detailed consist look at the behind Red Hat’s CEO spot to become the sociology, anthropology, gender studies, North Carolina’s strong finish. president of IBM. He was replaced queer studies, critical race According to sexuality the report,and major at that time as Red Hat’s CEO by studies. tax reforms initiated in 2013 Paul Cormier, a 19-year veteran of In 2017 and 2018, authors contributed significantly toward Pluckrose, the open source market leader.

Lindsay Boghossian started boosting and the state’s economy and In a July 2 post on the company’s eliminated what hadacademic been a major submitting bogus papers to website, IBM chairman and CEO barrier to growth.

During the sevenqueer, academic journals in cultural, Arvind Krishna wrote that the years that followed, the state’s race, gender, fat and sexuality studies GDP rose 9.5%,ifexceeding thepass peer company was “announcing a seto determine they would ries of important leadership chang9% national average.

The state’s seriousness of and the be virus and the review accepted for need publication. economy haswho also risen from 41st that Acceptance of dubious research y with how people simply ask a decadeeditors ago to first today as a journal found sympathetic to their en thingscategory can start getting“America’s back to of CNBC’s intersectional or postmodern leftist vision s with contempt.

Top States for Business.” North of the world would prove the problem of a societylow simply must accept without Carolina also ranks first overall academic standards. on Forbes’ “Best States for ls us about when it’s safe to begin thepapers Several of the fake research Business.” Additionally, North malcy. were accepted for publication.

The Fat Carolina has experienced the thirdus, and we have the right to ask those Studies journal published a hoax highest net migration in the nation, paper Since when did that argued the term was home orders areonly in place all bodybuilding over the following Texas and Florida. questioning should be replaced hem get exclusionary in “Changes states, such as Michigan, toand North Carolina’s with “fat bodybuilding, as a fat-inclusive corporate tax structure were not government eeling isolated and/or anxious about politicized performance.”

One reviewer the sole reason for North Carolina ng for their families, will demand at all levels said, “I thoroughly enjoyedforreading this becoming more competitive article and believe it has an important business, but it was certainly a become a vels should be part as forthcoming contribution to make to as the field and this crucial of it,” said Gary J. they bad thing? again, not vague president answers,and but answer Salamido, CEO of journal.”

By Gary D. Robertson the NC Chamber.

“Reforms to “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity That is what ents believability.

The Associated Press unemployment insurance tax laws Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to hat we can to keep our families, free citizens have also allowed North Carolina Neoliberal and Choice Feminism,” was afe. But we should also still continue RALEIGH — Democratic Gov. to quickly pay off a growing federal living in a free accepted for publication

by Affilia, a Roy Cooper vetoed legislation Friecause while reasonable stay-at-home debt, reducing a debt-inflated feminist journal for social workers. The were adday that wouldsociety have ended y shouldpaper also have federal UI taxan on expiration employers consisted in part ofand adate. rewritten ditional federal benefits created restoring solvency to the state’s supposed nd it is not normal.

Not in any way,Two other passage from Mein Kampf. during the pandemic for North UI system.

Tax reform has been d remainhoax vigilant and stay safe, at including papers were published, to do, last I the Carolina’s unemployed before a game changer in terms of “Rape and Queer Performativity mfortable withCulture this so-called “new attracting new companies to program expires nationwide. His checked. at Urban Dog Parks.” This paper’s subject our state, and it’s also helped action counters trends by Republiwas dog-on-dog rape. But the dog rape incentivize companies with can governors to no longer accept paper eventually Boghossian, a presence in Northforced Carolina the supplemental payments.

Pluckrose Lindsay to prematurely out to pseudonym continueand investing in their Cooper said he blocked the under the Sister Toldjah themselves.

A Wall Street Journal writer businesses here.” measure originating from the dState and Legal Insurrection. had“The figured out what they were doing. businesses we recruit GOP-controlled legislature beSomeCarolina papers accepted to North weigh our for publication cause rejecting these federal funds in journals advocated training taxacademic competitiveness alongside now hurts the state. men dogs and punishing white male otherlike important considerations “Unemployment is declining college for historical such as students skilled workforce talent, slavery by with more people getting vacstrong infrastructure, asking them to sit inand silence on the floor in cinated and into the workforce robust educational and training chains during class and to be expected to as North Carolina has strengthresources,” Christopher Other papers learn from said the discomfort. ened work search requirements Chung, chiefmorbid executive officer as a healthy y celebrated obesity life for those receiving benefits,” Cooof the Economic Development choice and advocated treating privately per said in a statement. “The fedPartnership masturbation of North Carolina. conducted as a form of eral help that this bill cuts off will sexual violence against women. Typically, only last a few more weeks and s academic journal editors send submitted papers out to referees for review. In recommending acceptance for publication, many reviewers gave these papers glowing praise.

Political scientist Zach Goldberg ran

north STA

Executive Leadership Team as we continue to evolve our business.”

In an article for tech news site STACEY EnterpriseAI,MATTHEWS industry reporter Todd Weiss referenced the mixed emotions among analysts and insiders about Whitehurst’s exit, while some expressed shock and others shrugged it off as “business as usual.”

“As someone with a long-term commitment to the business of open source, I am disappointed to see the departure of Jim White-

strategist at Linux Pundit. “His tency in critical positions generally. leadership kept Red Hat at the A capable executive, he was simforefront of open source while si- ply poorly matched to the job overJason a progressive software commultaneously evolving the compa- seeing ny to become a premier private and pany during a time of significant hybrid cloud provider. His direc- change.”

Because the president’s role at tion deftly positioned Red Hat for COLUMN | REP. RICHARD HUDSON the 2018 acquisition by IBM as that IBM was critical, “and because behemoth sought a new growth en- [Whitehurst] lacked the backgine and looked to re-establish ground to do it, it was always a leadership as a cloud technology matter of when he was going to leave, not if,” said Enderle. provider.”

“You bring a talent like WhiteAt the same time, Weinberg told Weiss, “this shakeup at 100-yearold IBM is business as usual.

I IS SeeTHE IBM,DAY page B6 “THIS the lord has made, let us r

VISUAL VOICES

It’s okay to ask questions about when The we begin to get back to comfort normal and hope

WITH MOST STATES under either shelter-in-place or stay-at-home fallen into place. I understand th in it” (Psalm 118:24). orders thanks to local or state governments, a majority of Americans to take precautions, but I’m unea this challenging time of soc are having to adjust to what is being called the “new normal.”I know that during questions about the data, and wh working from home or losing a job, it diffi Some of these orders extend at least through the end of this month. normal are treated inmay somebecircle Governors in 26us states —as allthough but mentJune. subsidies for child care.

In- as the be glad” Bible tells to do.

However, as aa Virginia’s stay-at-home orders go into They’re treated we one of them Republicans —government have me ofte accessibility to child care is conand dad, the Easter holiday hasthe reminded Here in North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper stated during question what to end benefits sidered an obstacle for women to beagreed have thankful and the hopeful for, eareven m a recent coronavirus press briefingreturn that “we just The don’t know yet”to if the process returning back in to the norm ly, affecting moreofthan 4.7 million to work. bill alsopandemic. would Lenten and state’s stay-at-home orders will extend into May. No. The government works for require unemployment benefit re- workers, according to the Nationme,almy faith is an important part my da Easter seasons If he does decide to extend it, questions should be asked asFor to the questions.

And the longer Employment Law Project.

In ofstay-at cipients to respond to interview As I celebrated Easter with my family, justification for it. And the answers should notaparticipate be vague ones like “we country,it and stricter some ofI North Carolina, wasthe the Repubrequests and inmaking. order provide 1:4, the which reminds our Lord “com lican-controlled legislature that weekly must do this out of an abundance to of retain caution.” more people,us sitting at home message ofbenefits. Corinthians acted.

Cooper had untiloflate Sunday affliction, so thatwhen we may becan able toback comfort thos It will need to be explained in detail to the people this state who they get to provid hope wesign will it into All the Senate Democrats all to veto thethat bill law. affliction, with comfort whichand we ourselves a are being told to remain jobless and at home for or an undetermined answers. but three House Democrats voted Otherwise, it would have become once again enjoy God.”of cases amount of time why models predicting hundreds of thousands Leaders at the local and state l against the measure.

That signals law without hisevents, signature. sporting If you are celebrating the Easter season, I—urge are reliable. can be with those answers and Sen. Chuck Edwards, a Hen- enough support for Cooper to enit supplements North Carolina’s reflect thishis message andbe be comforted, that concerts, family To benefits, date, I’vewhich gone along with what the state has asked and then with details that give theirso statem veto would upheld. derson County Republican who onsure state are among God’s example and comfort in need arou mandated we country. do, but along way I’ve also had about We shouldall allthose continue to do w Even if Republican could obtain helped shepherd the questions benefits bill, the stingiestthat in the Pre- the gatherings, this difficult time.

Through faith and by helping o the votes necessary for an overhis disappointment maturely these benefits the data. stopping State Republican leadersexpressed have, too. ourselves, and our communities s church services ride, anytosuch action notpandemic ocwithofCooper’s veto. hurts our state by when sending back types confident we will emerge outwould of this strb Unfortunately, certain questions get asked, there is ask questions about the data, and many to more until at least the “It’s a some shame see Gov. Cooper money that could be injected into among Inthose this cur same spirit, I continue toofbeJuly inspired th by sometimes a disturbing tendency people to treat measures areweek understandable, 12, since lawmakers are not holdpeople inour economy with people using it incentivize after our ownnot to work neighbors helping neighbors. simply questioning the data and asking when we can start getting back This is all new to Americans, a ing floor sessions next week for steadtemporary of addressing our state’s for things like food and rent.”

InseConcord, a shape, high school senior named Tanne toCooper normal said as though they are conspiracy theorists or are people who or form.

So while we shou he supports ef- vere labor shortage,” Edwards said the July 4 holiday. So only two or money tothree buy aweeks 3-D printer andwe plastic f sacrifices are sick. otherwise don’t care if they get themselves or others the same time shouldn’t get co of supplemental bene-to make in a statement.

“With the pandemforts to make more quality childhealth care out his own home.

Since whenand didgive questioning at all levels become aofbad fitsworkers would end upof getting canceled. normal.” ic largely us, thousands care available businessesgovernment over.behind GOP legislators jobs are to bewere filledsupposed but funds hiring bonuses the living thing?for That is what freeand citizens in awaiting free society Not onewho littlepassed bit. the this veto ensures that ‘Help Want- bill last week said they were rebill felllast shortI checked. on both of those. to do, to business owners willof remain up is formy months The would havego done My legislation first concern as we alonged’ in signs all this, course, family.sponding I’m Stacey Matthews hashavalso written away with the $300-a-week Fed- to come and more jobs will be sent ing a hard time filling vacancies, worried about them catching the virus, and I’m worried I will.

After and is a regular contributor to R eral Pandemic Unemployment to other countries where our man- and consider the extra benefits a suffering from the H1N1 virus (swine flu) during the 2009 pandemic, Compensation benefit for at least ufacturers can find the workforce disincentive to return to the workI’ve beendisplaced trying toworkers take extra precautions, because all of this brings up force. The North Carolina Chamthey need.”

200,000 in the way too many a painfulBoth experience d prefer not to repeat. ber had urged Cooper to sign the benefit I’ programs already state.

That’s on memories top of theirofother bill. are is sethow to expire Sept. has state orwhat federal aid.makes A $100-a-week But also me lose sleep easilynationwide most everyone

Cooper vetoes bill that would have stopped federal benefits

additional payment for self-employed workers also would end if the bill became law.

The measure also contained $250 million in federal COVID-19 relief aid designed to eliminate the individual waiting list for govern-

4, and the North Carolina legislation directed the state to stop administering payments about 30 days after the bill became law.

So only about a month of the enhanced benefits would be eliminated.

Bill opponents said eliminating the benefits would harm people still struggling in a post-pandemic economy. The $300 benefit equates to at least $60 million entering the state’s economy each week.

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B6

ncdot CASH REPORT For the week ending 7/2 Total Cash & Bond Proceeds:

$2,582,552,355 Add Receipts:

$108,707,702 Less Disbursements:

$129,273,592 Reserved Cash:

$556,417,055 Unreserved Cash Balance Total:

$4,525,963,660

New North Carolina biogas permitting for hog farms now law

By Gary D. Robertson The Associated Press RALEIGH — A streamlined permitting process for hog farmers who also want to convert methane from waste ponds into energy will begin after Gov. Roy Cooper signed the legislature’s annual agriculture bill into law Friday.

The Democratic governor decided the measure will be enacted, despite dozens of environmental, civil rights and community groups urging him to veto the bill due to “general permit” language for biomass operations contained inside. Cooper had until July 11 to act on the measure or it would become law without him.

The farm measure was one of

The new law says environmental regulators must decide on a farm and biogas general permit application — expected to last five years — within 90 days, or it’s otherwise considered approved.

The Southern Environmental Law Center expressed disappointment that Cooper signed the bill into law, saying the measure limits community input, weakens long-standing siting restrictions and removes tax incentives for cleaner technology.

“Pollution from industrial hog operations is one of the most significant environmental justice concerns in our state. Once again, the hog industry wielded its political power to drown out the voices of families harmed by its pollution, continuing a long history of injustice in North Carolina,” SELC attorney Blakely Hildebrand said in a statement.

The pork industry backed the change, saying biogas operations on farms are very similar in scope and the federal government has encouraged it as a way to produce cleaner energy.

Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy are developing a project in which trapped gas from hog

11 that Cooper signed into law Friday, but he provided no statement on the measure with that announcement. He also vetoed a bill that would have ended additional federal unemployment benefits created during the pandemic.

The farm measure directs the Environmental Management Commission, a part of the Department of Environmental Quality, to develop a “general permit” for animal farm operations that allow the owner to construct and operate a farm digester system.

Until now, digester operators had to seek an individual permit, which can be time-consuming for the farmer and usually gives the public the chance to comment on the request at a hearing.

farms gets pumped to a refining facility proposed in Duplin County.

Critics of the change said the new permit process would narrow the timeframe for input from farm neighbors and build more disincentives for farmers to move away from lagoon-and-sprayfield waste systems and toward environmentally superior waste disposal.

That technology is still considered by the industry as economically infeasible. But opponents of the measure said the lagoon disposal methods and resulting odors keep contributing to health troubles for people living near the farms and to pollution.

Eight Senate Democrats and 14 House Democrats had joined all Republicans present in voting for the final piece of legislation.

The margins suggested there could have been enough votes to override a Cooper veto.

The North Carolina Farm Act of 2021 contains changes in a dozen categories, including increased punishments for stealing timber and clarified overtime compensation rules for state Forest Service firefighters.

Fed Disaster Payments:

$2,430,147

IBM from page B5 hurst as a turnaround manager, similar to [Louis] Gerstner at IBM,” Enderle continued. “But this isn’t a turnaround job. It is a sustaining and expansion job and, for that, you need a subject matter expert. Typically, you need a software specialist to run a software unit, not a general-purpose operational CEO. Whitehurst is the latter.”

Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT Inc., told Weiss that like many other IBM-watchers, he thought that Whitehurst was being groomed to eventually step into the CEO position when Arvind Krishna decided to retire.

“Since the Whitehurst news was one part of an announcement of other senior executive transitions and new hires, it’s hard to say whether this signals a broader shift I’m IBM’s strategy,” said King. “The fact that Whitehurst is remaining as a senior advisor is a positive point though exactly what that role will consist of remains to be seen.”

According to Weiss, the combination of IBM and Red Hat was seen as “giving IBM a leg up” and “represented a bet by IBM that open source technologies will continue to drive enterprise cloud deployments as users look to diversify beyond current public cloud leaders Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.”

AP PHOTO

This June, 27, 2012, file photo shows hogs at a farm in Buckhart, Ill.

Fallout continues from biggest global ransomware attack The Associated Press BOSTON — The single biggest ransomware attack yet continued Monday as more details emerged on how a Russia-linked gang breached the exploited software company.

The criminals essentially used a tool that helps protect against malware to spread it globally.

Thousands of organizations — largely firms that remotely manage the IT infrastructure of others — were infected in at least 17 countries in Friday’s assault. Kaseya, whose product was exploited, said Monday that they include several just returning to work.

Because the attack by the notorious REvil gang came just as a long Fourth of July weekend began, many more victims were expected to learn their fate when they return to the office Tuesday.

REvil is best known for extorting $11 million from the meat processor JBS last month. Security researchers said its ability to evade anti-malware safeguards in this attack and its apparent exploitation of a previous unknown vulnerability on Kaseya servers reflect the growing financial muscle of REvil and a few dozen other top ransomware gangs whose success helps them afford the best digital burglary wares.

Such criminals infiltrate networks and paralyze them by scrambling data, extorting their victims.

REvil was seeking $5 million payouts from the so-called managed service providers that were its principal downstream targets in this attack, apparently demanding much less — just $45,000 — from their afflicted customers.

But late Sunday, it offered on its dark web site to make available a universal decryptor that would unscramble all affected machines if it’s paid $70 million in cryptocur-

AP PHOTO

This Feb 23, 2019, file photo shows the inside of a computer in Jersey City, N.J. . rency. Some researchers considered the offer a PR stunt, while others thought it indicates the criminals have more victims than they can manage.

Sweden may be hardest hit — or at least most transparent about the damage. Its defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, bemoaned in a TV interview “how fragile the system is when it comes to IT security.”

Most of the Swedish grocery chain Coop’s 800 stores were closed for a third day, their cash registers crippled. A Swedish pharmacy chain, gas station chain, the state railway and public broadcaster SVT also were hit.

A wide array of businesses and public agencies were affected, including in financial services and travel, but few large companies were hit, the cybersecurity firm So-

phos said. The United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, New Zealand and Kenya were among countries affected, researchers said.

In a statement Sunday, deputy U.S. national security adviser Anne Neuberger urged all victims to alert the FBI. A day earlier, the FBI said in an alert that the attack’s scale “may make it so that we are unable to respond to each victim individually.”

The vast majority of ransomware victims are loathe to publicly admit it, and many avoid reporting attacks to law enforcement or disclosing if they pay ransoms unless required by law.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that he ordered a “deep dive”

by U.S. intelligence into the attack and that the U.S. would re-

spond if it determines the Kremlin is involved. In Geneva last month, Biden sought to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to end safe haven for REvil and other ransomware gangs that operate with impunity in Russia and allied states as long as they avoid domestic targets. The syndicates’ extortionary attacks have worsened in the past year.

On Monday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked if Russia was aware of the attack or had looked into it. He said no but suggested it could be discussed during U.S.-Russian consultations on cybersecurity issues. No date has been set for such consultations, and few analysts expect the Kremlin to crack down on a crime wave that benefits Putin’s strategic objectives of destabilizing the West.

Kaseya said Monday that fewer than 70 of its 37,000 customers were affected, though most were managed service providers with multiple downstream customers. Most managed service providers were apt to know by Monday if they were hit but that may not be true for many of the small and medium-sized organizations they serve, said Ross McKerchar, chief information security officer at Sophos. The MSPs are flying blind because the very software tool they use to monitor customer networks was knocked out by the attack.

The hacked Kaseya tool, VSA, remotely maintains customer networks, automating security and other software updates.

In a Monday report on the attack, Sophos said a VSA server was breached with the apparent use of a “zero day,” the industry term for a previously unknown software security hole. Like other cybersecurity firms, it faulted Kaseya for aiding the attackers by asking customers not to monitor its on-premise “working” folders for malware. From inside those folders, REvil’s code could work undetected to disable the malware- and ransomware-flagging tools of Microsoft’s Defender program.

Sophos said REvil made no attempt to steal data in this attack. Ransomware gangs usually do that before activating ransomware so they can threaten to dump it online unless they are paid. This attack was apparently bare bones, only scrambling data.

In a Sunday interview, Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola would not confirm the use of a zero day or offer details of the breach — except to say that it was not phishing and that he was confident that when an investigation by the cybersecurity firm is complete, it would show that not just Kaseya but third-party software were breached by the attackers.

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B7

2021 Chevrolet Trailblazer

PHOTOS COURTESY CHEVROLET

A smartly dressed and equipped crossover With the tech and features you want

By Jordan Golson North State Journal SAN DIEGO — I love a good crossover. And so does the rest of America, it seems: The crossover makes up more than 40% of the new car market, and there is a genuinely crazy amount of choice.

If you want something sporty or off-road capable or economical or some mixture of the three, there’s a crossover explicitly designed for you. And there’s one at every different price point, too. You can spend hundreds of thousands on an Aston Martin DBX, for example.

Or you can spend $33,145 on my test car this week, the surprisingly sporty and well-equipped Chevrolet Trailblazer Activ. Perhaps not having an ‘e’ on the word Activ saves costs.

The Trailblazer, a subcompact SUV and not the larger old Trailblazer that was discontinued more than a decade ago, starts in the low-$20,000 range and rises rapidly from there as you add all sorts of features make this vehicle a nice place to be.

The top-tier, off-road-kind-of Activ trim has all manner of neat

features that I like to have in any car I drive. In fact, the Trailblazer has basically every feature I look for these days, though you do have to load up with option packages to get all of them.

It has a teeny, tiny 1.3-liter turbocharged engine making an astonishing 155 horsepower and 175 lb-ft of torque. My first new car, a 2011 Mazda3, had an engine with almost twice as much displacement and made 148 horsepower and 135 lb-ft of torque. What a difference ten years of engine development (and a turbocharger) makes.

Chevy has also tucked all the features into a series of relatively reasonable packages. The aptly named $1,770 Sun and Liftgate package includes a roof-filling panoramic sunroof and a power liftgate.

The $1,620 Technology Package is a must-have, adding wireless phone charging, a Bose stereo, and adaptive cruise control.

That last one is a particularly lovely thing to find in a Chevy vehicle (though it’s still buried on a top, albeit affordable, trim) since GM has been hesitant as a company to offer advanced driver safety tech

as anything but a luxury feature.

Other brands, Toyota, for example, offer their complete safety suites as standard, not as a $345 Driver Confidence Package which includes rear parking alert, rear cross-traffic alert, and blind-spot monitoring like the Trailblazer has.

Finally, a $620 convenience package tosses in automatic climate control, an auto-dimming rearview mirror, a 120-volt residential power outlet, and USB ports for the rear-seat passengers. All in, those $5,150 in options bring you to a sticker price of $33,145.

6 or 8 months ago, I would have said you could probably negotiate that price down a bit because there’s so much choice on the market.

There’s the Hyundai Kona, the Honda HR-V, the Mazda CX-3 and CX-30, the Nissan Kicks, the Jeep Renegade, and on and on and on. Except the car market is broken. Now you’re lucky to get a car for the price on the sticker, without any “market adjustments,” otherwise known as a dealer jacking up the price on an in-demand car.

That sort of adjustment is standard practice on something like a limited edition Mustang or Corvette, not on a Toyota RAV4. But

these are strange times. Several friends have received trade-in offers on vehicles a year or two old that were more than they paid.

This means that it’s a seller’s market, and if you are in dire need of a vehicle, you might be paying a lot of money. There’s a lot of choice in this segment, and I would probably look at the competition from Hyundai, Kia and Mazda in particular before the Trailblazer.

But, now that I’ve driven it, I’d put it right up there with those other vehicles — especially if you can’t find those others or the pricing is out of whack.

The Trailblazer looks excellent on the outside, especially with the floating white roof, and it’s smartly laid out and well-considered on the inside. Fold-down the 60/40 rear seats, and there’s a ton of cargo space (it’s almost wagon-esque that way), and four people can fit comfortably for reasonable-length journeys. And for a couple, it’s a perfect city car.

It even has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a 4G LTE wireless hotspot from AT&T, ten airbags and a solid price.

Unless you have a big family, it’s easy to make the argument that a subcompact SUV like the Trailblazer is all the car you need. Maybe that’s why folks are buying so many of them.

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B8

features Former Fox, NBC star Megyn Kelly lines up SiriusXM talk show New York Former Fox News and NBC personality Megyn Kelly will host a weekday live talk show on SiriusXM this fall, building upon a successful podcast. “The Megyn Kelly Show” will broadcast for two hours at noon and feature Kelly’s viewpoints on the day’s top stories, as well as listeners’ calls and interviews, the satellite media company said Tuesday. The show will premiere Sept. 7 and the deal she struck means her radio show will become available to her podcast listeners after premiering on SiriusXM. “My team and I have been grateful to see our show, in less than a year, become one of the most successful podcasts in America — proving that there is a thirst for open, honest and more meaningful conversations about current events,” Kelly said in a statement.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

‘Voice’ stars Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton wed in Oklahoma Nashville, Tenn.

“The Voice” coaches Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton celebrated their nuptials over the Fourth of July holiday during a weekend wedding in Oklahoma. The pop star and the country star posted photos on Monday of their wedding including an image of the couple posing under a twilight sky. A representative for Shelton said they married in his home state of Oklahoma and the No Doubt singer tagged the wedding photos with Saturday’s date. In one photo, Shelton was dressed in jeans and driving a golf cart decorated with white tulle, while Stefani showed off her white boots under her wedding dress and held up a bouquet of white flowers.

The two singers announced their engagement in October.

Offices after COVID: Wider hallways, fewer desks The Associated Press GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The coronavirus already changed the way we work. Now it’s changing the physical space, too.

Many companies are making adjustments to their offices to help employees feel safer as they return to in-person work, like improving air circulation systems or moving desks further apart. Others are ditching desks and building more conference rooms to accommodate employees who still work remotely but come in for meetings.

Architects and designers say this is a time of experimentation and reflection for employers. Steelcase, an office furniture company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says its research indicates half of global companies plan major redesigns to their office space this year.

“This year caused you to think, maybe even more fundamentally than you ever have before, ‘Hey, why do we go to an office?’” said Natalie Engels, a San Jose, California-based design principal at Gensler, an architecture firm.

Not every company is making changes, and Engels stresses that they don’t have to. She tells clients to remember what worked well — and what didn’t — before the pan-

demic.

But designers say many companies are looking for new ways to make employees feel safe and invigorated at the office, especially as a labor crunch makes hiring more difficult.

That’s what drove food and pharmaceutical company Ajinomoto to overhaul the design of its new North American headquarters outside Chicago last year.

Ajinomoto’s employees returned to in-person work in May to a building with wider hallways and glass panels between cubicles, to give them more space and try to make them feel more secure. To improve mental health, the company transformed a planned work area into a spa-like “relaxation room” with reclining chairs and soft music. A test kitchen is wired for virtual presentations in case clients don’t want to travel. And a cleaning crew comes through twice a day, leaving Post-it notes to show what’s been disinfected.

“Maybe it’s over the top, but maybe it provides comfort to those that have sensitivities to returning to an in-person work environment,” said Ryan Smith, the executive vice president of Ajinomoto North America. Smith estimates 40% of the new headquarters design changed due to COVID.

Shobha Surya, an associate manager of projects and sales at Ajinomoto, is energized by the space.

“The office gives you a balance of work and home life,” she said.

“You are more focused here and don’t have any distractions.”

Surya said she’s also thrilled to be working alongside her co-workers again.

She’s not alone. Surveys show the thing employees miss most about office work is socializing and collaborating with colleagues, said Lise Newman, workplace practice director at architecture firm SmithGroup. Companies are trying to encourage that rapport by building more social hubs for employees. Some mimic coffee houses, with wood floors, booth seating and pendant lamps.

“Companies are trying to create the sense that this is a cool club that people want to come into,” Newman said.

Steelcase has divided one of its lobbies into cozy meeting spaces of varying sizes, separated by plant-filled partitions. Mobile video monitors can be wheeled in so that people working remotely can be included in discussions.

But after a year of working from home, some employees crave privacy, so Steelcase added more glassed-in booths for private calls

and cocoon-like cubicles with small sliding doors.

Mark Bryan, a senior interior designer with Columbus, Ohiobased M+A Architects, expects a more fluid office culture in the future, with different places to work on any given day. Introverts might choose a small, private room; extroverts, a table in the office café.

Some office changes reflect a new commitment to hybrid work.

Valiant Technologies, which provides tech support and other services to businesses, is letting its employees work primarily at home but has them reserve a desk for the days they want to come to the office. The New York company has removed rows of desks and put more space between the remaining ones. Employees leave their keyboard, mouse and headsets in lockers.

Megan Quick, a sales associate with Valiant, said she appreciated the company allowing her to ease back into office life this month.

“It will take a lot of time for us to readjust,” she said. “Valiant letting us set our pace for returning makes me feel safe.”

Not every design change will stick. Last summer, when Steelcase started bringing back some workers, they pushed tables in the cafeteria far apart from each other and only allowed one person per table. It made the space so depressing that no one wanted to sit there, Steelcase CEO Jim Keane said.

“An important lesson is that, yes, it has to be safe, but also has to be inspiring,” he said. “People are actually going to expect more from offices in the future.”

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Actor Will Smith pays for July 4 fireworks in New Orleans New Orleans Fireworks returned to New Orleans on Independence Day thanks to actor Will Smith. Smith picked up the roughly $100,000 tab for the pyrotechnics over the Mississippi River after learning New Orleans didn’t plan a 2021 show, city officials told news outlets. New Orleans canceled last year’s fireworks because of the coronavirus pandemic. Smith is in New Orleans working on his latest film “Emancipation.” Smith moved production of the film from Georgia to Louisiana in early April after Georgia passed a new voting law that prompted a federal lawsuit saying the overhaul was intended to deny black voters equal access to the ballot.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AP PHOTO

An employee of Ajinomoto, a global food and pharmaceutical company, walks past the company motto in Itasca, Ill., Monday, June 7, 2021.

Millions skipped church during pandemic. Will they return?

The Associated Press WALDOBORO, Maine — With millions of people having stayed home from places of worship during the coronavirus pandemic, struggling congregations have one key question: How many of them will return?

As the pandemic recedes in the United States and in-person services resume, worries of a deepening slide in attendance are universal.

Some houses of worship won’t make it.

Smaller organizations with older congregations that struggled to adapt during the pandemic are in the greatest danger of a downward spiral from which they can’t recover, said the Rev. Gloria E. White-Hammond, lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School and co-pastor of a church in Boston.

On the Maine coast, the pandemic proved to be the last straw for the 164-year-old Waldoboro United Methodist Church.

Even before COVID-19 swept the world, weekly attendance

had dipped to 25 or 30 at the white-clapboard New England church that could hold several hundred worshippers. The number further dwindled to five or six before the final service was held Sunday, said the Rev. Gregory Foster.

The remaining congregants realized they couldn’t continue to maintain the structure, and decided to fold the tent, Foster said.

“We can’t entirely blame everything on COVID. But that was just the final blow. Some people have not been back at all,” he said.

In Virginia, the Mount Clifton United Methodist Church experienced a similar fate. The church can seat more than 100 but the number of weekly worshippers dwindled to 10 to 15, even before the pandemic.

The small white church built on a hill in the Shenandoah Valley in the 1880s may be rented to another congregation, or it may be put up for sale.

“It’s a complicated picture overall, but the pandemic was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said the Rev. Darlene Wilkins, who

oversaw Mount Clifton. “It just became next to impossible to sustain.”

In the United States, the latest challenge for places of worship comes against a backdrop of a decadeslong trend of a smaller share of the population identifying as religious.

It’s too early to know the full impact of the pandemic. Surveys do show signs of hopefulness — and also cause for concern.

About three-quarters of Americans who attended religious services in person at least monthly before the pandemic say they are likely to do so again in the next few weeks, according to a recent APNORC poll. That’s up slightly from the about two-thirds who said in May 2020 that they would if they were allowed to do so. But 7% said they definitely won’t be attending.

Those findings are in line with a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. residents last summer. It found that 92% of people who regularly attend religious services expected to continue at the same or higher rate, while 7% say they will

attend in-person services less often.

Churches that are successful in reemerging from the COVID-19 lockdowns will likely be those that did a better job adapting to the pandemic, said White-Hammond.

Eight in 10 congregants in the U.S. reported that their services were being streamed online, Pew said.

Those that kept a connection with congregants and relied less on the physical passing of the plate for donations stand a better chance of emerging unscathed, White-Hammond said.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, Temple Beth El was closed during the pandemic but kept congregants in touch through events like “challah day.” Volunteers baked over 900 loaves of the bread, which were delivered to homes so worshippers could share them over a Shabbat meal.

There will be no returning to “normal” after the pandemic, said Rabbi Dusty Klass. “There were people who went home and may never come back to the sanctuary. They may just pray from their

couch. It’s up to us to make sure they have the opportunity.”

The All Dulles Area Muslim Society, whose main campus is in Sterling, Virginia, said some of its 11 locations have reopened to worshippers with safety measures.

In San Francisco, the historic Old St. Mary’s Cathedral survived when members rebuilt after a fire following the 1906 earthquake but it has struggled mightily during the pandemic to stay open.

The 160-year-old Roman Catholic church, which is heavily dependent on older worshippers and tourists, lost most of its revenue after parishes closed during the pandemic. During those “dark hours,” the Rev. John Ardis had to dismiss most of the lay staff, cut the salary of a priest and close the parish preschool.

The plaster is crumbling, the paint is peeling off the walls and dozens of its stained-glass windows need to be replaced.

“But those are secondary at the moment,” Ardis said. “Because I’m just basically trying to trying to keep the doors open.”

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B9

On ‘Sesame Street,’ Elmo gets a puppy (cue adorableness)

ago ‘Let’s create this new character because a lot of people are adopting pandemic pets.’ But we do know that a lot of families have been adopting pets during the pandemic as a source of comfort and joy,” said Wilson Stallings.

“With Elmo adopting Tango, it’s going to mirror for many of our children what they’re experiencing now at home and help them understand how best to love and take care of their furry friends as well.”

Details about Tango have been carefully considered, with internal discussions about what she should look like and what gender to pick.

Wilson Stallings, who has a longhaired dachshund at home, put her own preferences aside for the common good.

“We decided that it would really be best to make sure that the way to have her most accessible and really appeal to as many kids and families as possible is just make

her like a mixed breed,” she said.

“She could be a little of anything.

Anybody that has a pet might see a little of their pet within Tango.”

In the animated and song-filled film, Grover and Elmo go out during a playdate and come across the friendly but sad, stray pup sitting forlornly in a cardboard box.

She loves music and dancing and scratches under her chin. Even Oscar the Grouch calls her a “cute, adorable little fluffball.”

Grover warns Elmo that whenever approaching a dog, move quietly and let them sniff the back of your hand. “This is how doggies get to know you. Or, should I say, nose you,” says Grover.

Then the fuzzy monsters realize that the puppy is homeless. They decide a local pet fair is the perfect place to find her a new home. “We will find you the home you deserve, little puppy,” says Grover. The pair also name the dog after the ballroom dance because that’s what she loves to do.

Along the way, Cookie Monster offers her dog treats and Abby Cadabby cleans her off in a magical bubble bath (“It was fun to get dirty/Now hooray for getting clean”). The songs are by Paul Buckley.

Finding the pet fair empty, Elmo comes to a realization. “Elmo knows where Tango’s home could be,” he says. Grover asks, ‘Where?”

Elmo responds: “With Elmo.” But first he needs parental permission.

Elmo promises to feed, play, bathe and take Tango for walks. “We don’t need a per fair/To know we’re a great pair,” he sings. The message: Let love take you in.

Tango will remain a puppy — just like Elmo will always be 3 1/2 years old, but Wilson Stallings said her future as a recurring character is bright, with even the possibility of her own starring role someday.

“Right now, we’re just really focusing on that relationship between she and Elmo as she gets to become more familiar with all the rest of the characters on ‘Sesame Street.’ But if there are stories to be told and educational reasons to do so, we could potentially look at spinning off Tango into her own her own series.”

Defendants.

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, Commissioner, pursuant to the Order/Judgment entered in the above-captioned case on December 18, 2020 (“Order”), and by virtue of the appointment, power and authority contained in that Order, has been authorized and ordered to sell the property commonly known as 10210 Culpepper Court, Harrisburg, NC 28075 (“Property”). Said Property is secured by the Deed of Trust executed by Kenneth Strong and Earonita F. Strong, dated July 11, 2003 and recorded on August 11, 2003 in Book 15887 at Page 353 and rerecorded/modified/corrected on October 10, 2007 in Book 07845, Page 008 and rerecorded/modified/ corrected on August 30, 2010 in Book 09268, Page 135 and rerecorded/modified/corrected on February 12, 2021 in Book 14909, Page 0045 of the Cabarrus County, North Carolina Registry. The Property shall be sold together with improvements located thereon, towards satisfaction of the debt due by Kenneth Strong, and secured by the lien against such property in favor of Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as Trustee for Long Beach Mortgage Loan Trust 2004-1, Asset-Backed Certificates, Series 2004-1.

the following described real property (including all improvements thereon) located in Cabarrus County, North Carolina and described as follows:

clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold. Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination.

Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

The sale will be reported to the court and will remain open for advance or upset bids for a period of ten (10) days as required by law. If the Commissioner is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the Commissioner. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the Commissioner, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

The Associated Press NEW YORK — “Sesame Street” is about to get a whole lot cuter.

Elmo, Grover, Abby Cadabby and the rest of the Muppet gang are introducing a new character to the show this summer — a whiteand-brown puppy named Tango, The Associated Press has learned.

“We wanted to explore that special bond between children and pets by introducing this new character,” said Kay Wilson Stallings, the executive vice president of creative and production at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind “Sesame Street.”

Tango will join “Sesame Street’s” 52nd season as both an animated character and a live-action Muppet, debuting this fall on HBO Max and streaming on PBS KIDS in 2022.

The pup is first introduced in a 30-minute animated special “Furry Friends Forever: Elmo Gets a Puppy,” debuting on HBO Max on Aug. 5. She’s technically Elmo’s second pet — he has been caring for goldfish Dorothy for several years.

“He’s done quite well taking care of his goldfish,” said Wilson Stallings. “We thought he’s been successful with taking care of Dorothy and that this could be the next step in his development and his getting more responsibility and his learning and growing.”

Plans to introduce a pet on Sesame Street predated the pandemic, when animal adoptions soared.

Sesame Workshop hopes Tango leads to modeling of age-appropriate help with pets, their care and feeding.

“The timing of it is perfect. It was not like we decided six months

SESAME WORKSHOP VIA AP

This image released by Sesame Workshop shows characters Elmo and Tango in a scene from the new special “Furry Friends Forever: Elmo Gets a Puppy,” debuting on HBO Max on Aug. 5.

TAKE NOTICE

CABARRUS GENERAL COURT OF JUSTICE SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION 16 CVS 3702 NOTICE OF JUDICIAL FORECLOSURE SALE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA COUNTY OF CABARRUS Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as Trustee for Long Beach Mortgage Loan Trust 2004-1, Asset-Backed Certificates, Series 2004-1, Plaintiff, vs.

Kenneth Strong; Earonita Strong; Guardian Ad Litem for Minor, Incompetent and Unknown Heirs to the Estate of William Henry Phillips, and for Minor, Incompetent, and Unknown Heirs to the Estate of Bobby K. Strong; Patsy K. Phillips; William H. Phillips, Jr.; Rodney S. Phillips; Arlene Blackmon; KenBill Properties, Inc.; Catherine Richardson; Gwen Smith; Crystal Williams; Barbara Williams; The United States of America,

CUMBERLAND NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 21 SP 295

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Karl R. Halterman, Jr. and Sarah Elizabeth Dries (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Karl R. Halterman, Jr. and Sarah Elizabeth Dries) to David W. Allred, Trustee(s), dated June 12, 2008, and recorded in Book No. 07913, at Page 0802 in Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Cumberland

20 SP 599 NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, CUMBERLAND COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by William Nobles, Jr. to The Law Offices of H.C. Stevens, Trustee(s), which was dated February 23, 2006 and recorded on February 24, 2006 in Book 7156 at Page 759, Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county

IN THE GENERAL COURT OF JUSTICE OF NORTH CAROLINA SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION CUMBERLAND COUNTY 21SP286 IN THE MATTER OF THE FORECLOSURE OF A DEED OF TRUST EXECUTED BY FREDERICK JAMES MOORE, JR. AND ANNEIOTTE W. MOORE DATED AUGUST 31, 2000 AND RECORDED IN BOOK 5328 AT PAGE 856 IN THE CUMBERLAND COUNTY PUBLIC REGISTRY, NORTH CAROLINA NOTICE OF SALE Under and by virtue of the power and authority contained in the above-referenced deed of trust and because of default in the payment of the secured indebtedness and failure to perform the stipulation and

21 SP 275 NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, CUMBERLAND COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by Matthew Stephen Davenport a/k/a Mathew Stephen Davenport to David W. Allred, Trustee(s), which was dated December 27, 2007 and recorded on December 31, 2007 in Book 7777 at Page 673, Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for

The Commissioner will offer for sale to the highest bidder at a public auction at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 19, 2021 at 01:00 PM

County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 12:00 PM on July 19, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Fayetteville in the County of Cumberland, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: Being all of Lot 8 in a subdivision known as Oak Meadows according to a plat of same being duly recorded in Plat Book 61, Page 131, in Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 9308 Oak Meadow Court, Fayetteville, North Carolina,

BEING ALL OF LOT 34 OF BRITLEY SUBDIVISION, PHASE II, AS SAME IS SHOWN ON MAP THEREOF RECORDED IN MAP BOOK 25 AT PAGE 47, CABARRUS COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA. The above described property will be sold, transferred and conveyed “AS IS, WHERE IS” subject to liens or encumbrances of record which are superior to such Deed of Trust, together with all unpaid taxes and assessments and any recorded releases. Neither the Commissioner nor the holder of the debt secured by such Deed of Trust, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Commissioner or the holder of the debt make any representation of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health, or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such conditions expressly are disclaimed.

The Commissioner shall convey title to the property by non-warranty deed, without any covenants or warranties, express or implied.

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 1-339.29 (c) in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the judge or

To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current record owners of the property as reflected on the records of the CABARRUS COUNTY Register of Deeds’ office not more than ten (10) days prior to the date hereof are Kenneth Strong.

A cash deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchasing price will be required at the time of the sale. Any successful bidder shall be required to tender the full balance of the purchase price of bid in cash or certified check at the time the Commissioner tenders a deed for the Property or attempts to tender such deed, and should said successful bidder fail to pay the full balance purchase price of bid at that time, said bidder shall remain liable on said bid as provided for under North Carolina law.

TRUSTEE SERVICES OF CAROLINA, LLC, Commissioner c/o 5431 Oleander Drive, Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 (910) 202-2800 Phone (888) 207-9353 Facsimile

whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed

on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. 45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court

costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. 7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00),

courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 21, 2021 at 01:30 PM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated in Cumberland County, North Carolina, to wit:

($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED.

BEING ALL OF LOT 2, IN A SUBDIVISION KNOWN AS WELMAR HEIGHTS, SECTION 5, BLOCK A, ACCORDING TO A PLAT OF THE SAME DULY RECORDED IN BOOK OF PLATS 25, PAGE 16, CUMBERLAND COUNTY REGISTRY.

Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are William Nobles, Jr.

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

Said property is commonly known as 4206 Atlantic Ave, Fayetteville, NC 28306.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars

agreements therein contained and, pursuant to demand of the owner and holder of the secured debt, the undersigned substitute trustee will expose for sale at public auction to the highest bidder for cash at the usual place of sale at the county courthouse of said county at 10:30AM on July 12, 2021 the following described real estate and any other improvements which may be situated thereon, in Cumberland County, North Carolina, and being more particularly described in that certain Deed of Trust executed Frederick James Moore, Jr. and Anneiotte W. Moore, dated August 31, 2000 to secure the original principal amount of $51,300.00, and recorded in Book 5328 at Page 856 of the Cumberland County Public Registry. The terms of the said Deed of Trust may be modified by other instruments appearing in the public record. Additional identifying information regarding the collateral property is below and is believed to be accurate, but no representation or warranty is intended.

Address of property: 301 Kenleigh Dr, Fayetteville, NC 28304 Tax Parcel ID:

South

conducting the sale on July 14, 2021 at 01:30 PM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated in Cumberland County, North Carolina, to wit: Being all of Lot 18, Block “I”, in a subdivision known as Revision and Recombination of Lots 5 and 18, Block “I”, of Kornbow Lake Development, according to a plat of same duly recorded in Book of Plats 98, Page 14, Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina.

0416-29-5762 Present Record Owners: James Moore, Jr. and Annelotte W. Moore

Fre d e r i c k

And Being more commonly known as: 301 South Kenleigh Dr, Fayetteville, NC 28304 The record owner(s) of the property, as reflected on the records of the Register of Deeds, is/are Frederick James Moore, Jr. and Annelotte W. Moore.

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance «AS IS, WHERE IS.» Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale. Any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition

($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED.

Said property is commonly known as 1507 CONVERSE CT, Fayetteville, NC 28303.

Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are Matthew Stephen Davenport.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and

This conveyance is made subject to restrictive covenants, easements, and rights-of-way of record.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include,

expressly are disclaimed. This sale is made subject to all prior liens and encumbrances, and unpaid taxes and assessments including but not limited to any transfer tax associated with the foreclosure. A deposit of five percent (5%) of the amount of the bid or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale. This sale will be held open ten days for upset bids as required by law. Following the expiration of the statutory upset period, all remaining amounts are IMMEDIATELY DUE AND OWING. Failure to remit funds in a timely manner will result in a Declaration of Default and any deposit will be frozen pending the outcome of any re-sale. If the sale is set aside for any reason, the Purchaser at the sale shall be entitled only to a return of the deposit paid. The Purchaser shall have no further recourse against the Mortgagor, the Mortgagee, the Substitute Trustee or the attorney of any of the foregoing.

SPECIAL NOTICE FOR LEASEHOLD TENANTS: If you are a tenant residing in the property, be advised that an Order for Possession of the property may be issued

against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole

SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE SERVICES, INC. SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE c/o Hutchens Law Firm P.O. Box 1028 4317 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311 Phone No: (910) 864-3068 https://sales.hutchenslawfirm.com Firm Case No: 4499 - 16472

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 19-10043-FC01

in favor of the purchaser. Also, if your lease began or was renewed on or after October 1, 2007, be advised that you may terminate the rental agreement upon written notice to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time notice of termination is provided. You may be liable for rent due under the agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

The date of this Notice is June 21, 2021.

LLG TRUSTEE LLC Substitute Trustee 10130 Perimeter Charlotte, NC 28216 (704) 333-8107 09-120102

Parkway,

Suite

400

discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 21-02431-FC01

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B10 TAKE NOTICE

CUMBERLAND 20 SP 368 NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, CUMBERLAND COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by Jessie A. Montes to F. Stuart Clarke, Trustee(s), which was dated March 21, 2011 and recorded on March 22, 2011 in Book 08611 at Page 0160, Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as

21 SP 213 NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, CUMBERLAND COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by Royston Belfon and Nyasha Belfon to David W. Allred, Trustee(s), which was dated April 13, 2005 and recorded on May 16, 2005 in Book 6879 at Page 294, Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee

JOHNSTON 12 SP 1051 AMENDED NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, DAVIDSON COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by Timothy R. Price a/k/a Timothy Ray Price and May H. Price to J. LaRoss Ketner, Attorney, Trustee(s), which was dated February 17, 1997 and recorded on February 20, 1997 in Book 1022 at Page 1732, Davidson County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee

20 SP 229 AMENDED NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, DAVIDSON COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by Walter Reid Ford and Lucille V. Ford to Henri R. Mazzoli, Trustee(s), which was dated November 23, 1999 and recorded on November 30, 1999 in Book 1162 at Page 458, Davidson County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 12, 2021 at 11:00 AM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described

IN THE GENERAL COURT OF JUSTICE OF NORTH CAROLINA SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION DAVIDSON COUNTY 20SP313 IN THE MATTER OF THE FORECLOSURE OF A DEED OF TRUST EXECUTED BY LUTHER JAMES NEWBY, III AND AMY D. NEWBY DATED APRIL 29, 1999 AND RECORDED IN BOOK 1132 AT PAGE 886 IN THE DAVIDSON COUNTY PUBLIC REGISTRY, NORTH CAROLINA NOTICE OF SALE Under and by virtue of the power and authority contained in the above-referenced deed of trust and because of default in the payment of the secured indebtedness and failure to perform the stipulation and

FORSYTH 21 CVS 1405 PUBLICATION DATES: June 30, 2021 and July 7, 2021 NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE

NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 21 SP 305

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by David LaBoy and Brenda H. LaBoy (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): David LaBoy and Brenda H. LaBoy, Heirs of Brenda H. LaBoy: Renee’ LaBoy Sterling, Demond Leval LaBoy, Sr.) to Margaret C. England, Trustee(s), dated June 9, 1993, and recorded in Book No. 1784, at Page 0145 in Forsyth County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Forsyth County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:15 PM on July 14, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder

JOHNSTON 21 SP 114 NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE NORTH CAROLINA, JOHNSTON COUNTY Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by James K. Mangum, Jr. to William T. Morrison and Philip M. Rudisill, Trustee(s), which was dated September 5, 2018 and recorded on September 5, 2018 in Book 5212 at Page 416, Johnston County Registry, North Carolina.

Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee

Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 14, 2021 at 01:30 PM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated in Cumberland County, North Carolina, to wit: Being all of Lot 21, Woodcroft Revised, according to a plat of the same duly recorded in Plat Book 79, Page 25, Cumberland County Registry, North Carolina.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

Said property is commonly known as 3424 Legion Road, Hope Mills, NC 28348-8472.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent

will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 14, 2021 at 01:30 PM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated in Cumberland County, North Carolina, to wit: This conveyance is made subject to restrictive covenants easements and right-of-way of record.

Being all of Lot 143, Water’s Edge as shown on a plat of same being duly recorded in Book of Plats 43, Page 57 in the Cumberland County Registry.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

Said property is commonly known as 5709 WATERWOOD DR, Fayetteville, NC 28314.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars

(5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED. Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are All

($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED. Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are Royston Belfon and wife, Nyasha Belfon.

lawful heirs of Jessie A. Montes.

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return

any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 20-03328-FC01

of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 21-02067-FC01

Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 12, 2021 at 11:00 AM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated in Davidson County, North Carolina, to wit: BEING Lot No. 20, Block C, Section Two, DEARR PARK as more specifically set out in Plat Book 14, Page 76, as recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds of Davidson County, North Carolina, to which reference is hereby made for a more particular description.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

Said property is commonly known as 105 Converse

Drive, Lexington, NC 27292.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED. Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the

undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are Timothy R. Price.

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for

any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 16-20127-FC01

property situated in Davidson County, North Carolina, to wit: BEGINNING at an iron stake found on the north right of way of Oak Avenue in the south boundary line of Lot 112, as shown by map of property of Peeler & Beckner “Oakmont Addition” in Plat Book 2, page 101; said beginning corner being South 86° 11’ 30” East 75.00 feet from a point, the southwest corner of Lot 112 where the north right of way of Oak Avenue intersects the east right of way of Dixie Street; thence with a new line crossing in Lots 112 through 117 North 4° 00’ East 154.25 feet to an iron stake, a new corner in the line of Lots 117 and 118; thence with the line of Lots 117 and 118 South 86° 00’ East 75.00 feet to an iron stake found, corner of Lots 117, 118, 105 and thence with the rear line of Lots 106 through 111 South 4° 00’ West 154.00 feet to an iron stake, corner of Lots 111 and 112 on the north right of way of Oak Avenue; thence with the north right of way of Oak Avenue North 86 degrees 11’ 30” West 75.00 feet to the point of beginning.

the Register of Deeds of Davidson County, North Carolina.

all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are Walter Reid Ford and wife, Lucille V. Ford.

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for

any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 19-18601-FC01

The above described is the eastern one half of Lots 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, and 117 as shown by map of “Oakmont Addition”, recorded in Plat Book 2, page 101, in the Office of

For further reference, see Book 535, page 50; and Deed Book 419, page 282, in the Office of the Register of Deeds for Davidson County, North Carolina.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

Said property is commonly known as 512 Oak Avenue, Lexington, NC 27292-4532.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED. Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to

agreements therein contained and, pursuant to demand of the owner and holder of the secured debt, the undersigned substitute trustee will expose for sale at public auction to the highest bidder for cash at the usual place of sale at the county courthouse of said county at 10:00AM on July 19, 2021 the following described real estate and any other improvements which may be situated thereon, in Davidson County, North Carolina, and being more particularly described in that certain Deed of Trust executed Luther James Newby, III and Amy D. Newby, dated April 29, 1999 to secure the original principal amount of $77,688.60, and recorded in Book 1132 at Page 886 of the Davidson County Public Registry. The terms of the said Deed of Trust may be modified by other instruments appearing in the public record. Additional identifying information regarding the collateral property is below and is believed to be accurate, but no representation or warranty is intended.

Address of property: 119 Hettie Dr, Lexington, NC 27295

Tax Parcel ID: 1801600000001R Present Record Owners: L u t h e r James Newby, III And Being more commonly known as: 119 Hettie Dr, Lexington, NC 27295 The record owner(s) of the property, as reflected on the records of the Register of Deeds, is/are Luther James Newby, III. The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance «AS IS, WHERE IS.» Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale. Any and all responsibilities or liabilities

arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition expressly are disclaimed. This sale is made subject to all prior liens and encumbrances, and unpaid taxes and assessments including but not limited to any transfer tax associated with the foreclosure. A deposit of five percent (5%) of the amount of the bid or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale. This sale will be held open ten days for upset bids as required by law. Following the expiration of the statutory upset period, all remaining amounts are IMMEDIATELY DUE AND OWING. Failure to remit funds in a timely manner will result in a Declaration of Default and any deposit will be frozen pending the outcome of any re-sale. If the sale is set aside for any reason, the Purchaser at the sale shall be entitled only to a return of the deposit paid. The Purchaser shall have no further recourse against the Mortgagor, the Mortgagee, the Substitute Trustee or the attorney of any of the foregoing.

SPECIAL NOTICE FOR LEASEHOLD TENANTS: If you are a tenant residing in the property, be advised that an Order for Possession of the property may be issued in favor of the purchaser. Also, if your lease began or was renewed on or after October 1, 2007, be advised that you may terminate the rental agreement upon written notice to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time notice of termination is provided. You may be liable for rent due under the agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

The date of this Notice is June 28, 2021.

20-110495

Under and by virtue of the power and authority contained in a judgment bearing the caption “Nationstar Mortgage LLC d/b/a Mr. Cooper, Plaintiff vs. Victor Isler, Guardian of Beryl Minton, George A. “Trip” Payne, Guardian of the Estate of Beryl Minton, Bank of America, N.A., Lien Holder and Substitute Trustee Services, Inc., Substitute Trustee Defendants” 21 CVS 1405 Forsyth County and pursuant to the terms of the judgment, the undersigned Commissioner will offer for sale that certain property as described below. Said sale will be held in the City of

Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina at 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday, July 14, 2021 at the Forsyth County Courthouse door and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in the County of Forsyth, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: Being known and designated as Lot No. 2, as shown on the Map of Robert Crutchfield and John Grubbs Property, as recorded in Plat Book 17, Page 68, in the Office of the Register of Deeds of Forsyth County, North Carolina,

reference to which is hereby made for a more particular description.

personal check) in the amount of ten percent (10%) of the high bid will be required at the time of the sale.

The sale will be held open for ten days for upset bids as required by law.

This the 10th day of June, 2021.

for cash the following real estate situated in Winston Salem in the County of Forsyth, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: BEGINNING at an iron stake lying in the southern right-of-way of Clayton Street and being North 89 deg. 27’ East 557.00 feet from Forest Hills Avenue; running thence along the southern right-of-way of Clayton Street North 89 deg. 27’ East 95.01 feet to a point; running thence South 0 deg. 27’ 55” East 149.85 feet along the western boundary of lot 101, block 2255, Forsyth County Tax Maps to a point; running thence South 89 deg. 47’ 36” West 94.62 feet to a point; running thence North 0 deg. 36’ 58” West 149.28 feet to a point lying in the southern right-of-way of Clayton Street and being the point and place of beginning. Said tract being all of lot 2, Map of Nading and Waddill Property recorded in Plat book 9 page 174, Forsyth County Register of Deeds office and one-half of Waddill Street, now closed.

See also lots 2 and 102, tax block 2255, Forsyth County Tax Maps. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 320 Clayton Street, WinstonSalem, North Carolina.

sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the

purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the

Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on July 13, 2021 at 12:00 PM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated in Johnston County, North Carolina, to wit: BEING all of Lot Number 38, containing 1.15 acres, of South Plantation Subdivision, Section IV, as shown on a plat recorded in Plat Book 33, Page 351, Johnston County Registry.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

Said property is commonly known as 1818 Indian Camp Road, Clayton, NC 27520.

A cash deposit (no personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED. Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are All

The property is being sold “as is”, without warranties, subject to all taxes, special assessments and prior liens or encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Any assessments, costs or fees resulting from the sale will be due and payable from the purchaser at the sale.

A cash deposit or certified check (no

Lawful Heirs of James K. Mangum, Jr. An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return

Susan R. Benoit, Commissioner Post Office Box 2505 Fayetteville, NC 28302 (910) 864-6888

of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE SERVICES, INC. SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE /o Hutchens Law Firm P.O. Box 1028 4317 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311 Phone No: (910) 864-3068 https://sales.hutchenslawfirm.com Firm Case No: 1897 - 3951

of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 19-19739-FC02

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

B11

TAKE NOTICE

ONSLOW NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 21 SP 140

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Ned T. Chilcote (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Ned T. Chilcote, Heirs of Ned T. Chilcote: Ned Ray Chilcote, Norma Chilcote) to Shapiro & Kreisman, Trustee(s), dated May 31, 2002, and recorded in Book No. 1854, at Page 242 in Onslow County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Onslow County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse

NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 21 SP 165

door in Jacksonville, Onslow County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 10:00 AM on July 22, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Hubert in the County of Onslow, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: TRACT 2 Lying and being in Swansboro Township, Onslow County, North Carolina, and more particularly described as follows: Beginning at an iron stake standing at the northern right of way line of State Road No. 1509, said iron stake being 312 feet east of the centerline extended of a 15” concrete culvert passing under said road when measured along the northern margin of said road, said concrete culvert being approximately 1.2 mile west of the western end of Queens Creek Bridge; running thence North 26 degrees 36 minutes West 200 feet to an iron stake, thence North 63 degrees 24 minutes East 100 feet to an iron stake; thence South 26 degrees 36 minutes East 200 feet to an iron stake at the northern margin of said State Road No. 1509, thence from the margin of said road South 63 degrees 24 minutes West 200 feet to the beginning. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 656 Queens

Creek Road, Hubert, North Carolina.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and

State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed

on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

at 10:00 AM on July 22, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Maysville in the County of Onslow, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: BEING all of Lot 29, White Oak River Plantation, as same is shown on a map recorded in Map Book 52, at Page 70 of the Onslow County Registry, reference to which is hereby made for a more particular reference. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 205 Chandler Court, Maysville, North Carolina.

any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be

effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE SERVICES, INC. SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE c/o Hutchens Law Firm P.O. Box 1028 4317 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311 Phone No: (910) 864-3068 https://sales.hutchenslawfirm.com Firm Case No: 4110 - 14682

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Eric W. Patterson and Callie Patterson (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Eric W. Patterson and Callie Patterson) to John B. Third, Trustee(s), dated April 27, 2016, and recorded in Book No. 4444, at Page 41 in Onslow County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Onslow County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door in Jacksonville, Onslow County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales,

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to

this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for

WAKE

ALL PERSONS, firms and corporations having claims against WILLIAM H BROOKS aka WILLIAM HENRY BROOKS, deceased, of Wake County, N.C. (21-E-1998),

are notified to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before September 17, 2021, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make

immediate payment.

This 7th day of July 2021.

Patricia E. Heaps, Executor, c/o Lisa M. Schreiner,

Stam Law Firm, PLLC, 510 W. Williams St., Apex, NC 27502 North State Journal: June 16, 23, 30, July 7, 2021

ALL PERSONS, firms and corporations having claims against JUDITH GARRIS, deceased, of Wake County,

N.C. (21-E-1960), are notified to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before September 17, 2021, or this notice

will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment.

This 7th day of July 2021.

Janice Cantey, Administrator, c/o Lisa M. Schreiner,

Stam Law Firm, PLLC, 510 W. Williams St., Apex, NC 27502 North State Journal: June 16, 23, 30, July 7, 2021

ALL PERSONS, firms and corporations having claims against SYLVIA MELVERE BECKWITH, aka, SYLVIA M. BECKWITH, deceased, of Prince Georges County, MD,

(Wake 2021-E-1994) (PGC 118555) are notified to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before October 1, 2021, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of

the decedent are asked to make immediate payment.

This 7th day of July 2021.

Kim C. Adams, Ancillary Administrator, c/o Lisa M.

Schreiner, Stam Law Firm, PLLC, 510 W. Williams St., Apex, NC 27502

AMENDED NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 19 SP 924

Wake County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:30 PM on July 12, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Raleigh in the County of Wake, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: BEING all of Lot 25 River Landing Subdivision as the same is shown on plat thereof recorded in Book of Maps 1985 page 1974 Wake Registry. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 6133 River Landings Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina.

conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for

any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by

providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition expressly are disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice

of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and

State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property

pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by

providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return

of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days

but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

Under and by virtue of the power of sale containedinacertainDeedofTrustmadebyZumbuKombo and Cheryl Y. Kombo (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Cheryl Kombo and Zumbu Kombo) to CB Services Corp., Trustee(s), dated November 3, 1999, and recorded in Book No. 008454, at Page 00166 in Wake County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Wake County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the Wake County Courthouse door, the Salisbury Street entrance in Raleigh,

NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 20 SP 1616

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Melanie J. Olson, (Melanie J. Olson, Deceased) (Heirs of Melanie J. Olson: Jayson Bartlett aka Jayson Francis Bartlett, Christopher Michael Phillips, Andrew Richard Phillips, Stephen Graham Phillips and Ian Jeffrey Phillips) to Wayne A. Roper, Attorney, Trustee(s), dated the 15th day of May, 2018, and recorded in Book 017136, Page 02606, in Wake County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds of Wake County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned

NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 20 SP 1817

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Scott J. Lasso and Sarah B. Lasso (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Scott J. Lasso and Sarah B. Lasso) to Larry Alberson Fairfax, Trustee(s), dated May 4, 2001, and recorded in Book No. 008909, at Page 00265 in Wake County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Wake County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the Wake County Courthouse door, the Salisbury Street entrance in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:30 PM on July 12, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following

AMENDED NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 21 SP 127

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by John A. Moore (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): John A. Moore) to Roy Kelly, Trustee(s), dated October 3, 2008, and recorded in Book No. 013267, at Page 00881 in Wake County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Wake County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the Wake County Courthouse door, the Salisbury Street entrance in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:30 PM on July 19,

AMENDED NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 18 SP 1158

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Rafael Alvarado and Yulma Y. Alvarado (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Rafael Alvarado and Yulma Yanet Alvarado) to Brock & Scott, Trustee(s), dated March 30, 2006, and recorded in Book No. 011888, at Page 02445 in Wake County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Wake County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the Wake County Courthouse door, the Salisbury Street entrance in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, or the

NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE 20 SP 450

Under and by virtue of the power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust made by Diana Campbell (PRESENT RECORD OWNER(S): Diana A. Campbell, Trustee under the Diana A. Campbell Living Trust dated June 12, 2008) to M. Patricia Oliver, Trustee(s), dated November 5, 2007, and recorded in Book No. 12824, at Page 2355 in Wake County Registry, North Carolina, default having been made in the payment of the promissory note secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Substitute Trustee Services, Inc. having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust by an instrument duly recorded in the Office of the Register of Deeds Wake County, North Carolina and the holder of the note evidencing said indebtedness having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the Wake County Courthouse door, the Salisbury Street entrance in Raleigh,

Subject to restrictions recorded in Book 2782 at Page 255 of the Onslow County Registry.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and

Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the Wake County Courthouse door, the Salisbury Street entrance in the City of Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:30 PM on July 12, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in the County of Wake, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: BEING all of Lot 63, Section 2, Canterbury Woods Subdivision, as shown on map recorded in Book of Maps 1985, Page 1650, Wake County Register of Deeds. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 106 Haversham Court, Cary, North Carolina.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in NCGS §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by NCGS §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to

real estate situated in Raleigh in the County of Wake, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: Beginning at a point in the southern right of way line of Fernwood Drive, the northwestern corner of Lot No. 39 as shown on the map hereinafter referred to; running thence South 19 degrees 15’ West 193 feet to a point, the southwestern corner of said Lot 39; thence North 86 degrees West 104 feet to a point; thence North 36 degrees 45’ West 100 feet to a point, the southernmost corner of Lot No. 41; thence North 43 degrees 15’ East 207.7 feet to a point in the southern right of way line of Fernwood Drive, the easternmost corner of Lot No. 41; thence in a southeasterly direction along the southern right of away line of Fernwood Drive 100 feet to the point of beginning, and being Lot No. 40 according to plat of annex B to Brookhaven Subdivision as recorded in Book of Maps 1960, Page 312, Wake County Registry. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 3513 Fernwood Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina.

This conveyance is made subject to restrictive convenants as recorded in Book 1519, Page 171, Wake County Registry.

2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Raleigh in the County of Wake, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: All of that certain piece, parcel or tract of land situated in St. Mary’s Township, Wake County and more particularly described as follows: Being all of Lots 22 & 23, Section 3, Block D, Echo Heights Subdivision, as depicted in Map Book 1958.

Beginning at or including Page 15. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 611 Lakeview Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Tax Map or Parcel ID No: 4971 Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:30 PM on July 19, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Raleigh in the County of Wake, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: Being all of Lot 4 according to a plat of survey entitled “A Minor Division of Lot 1 creating Lots 3 and 4 for Robert A. and Annie Mae Leach” dated May 19, 2000 by M. M. Weeks Land Surveying and recorded in Book of Maps 2000, Page 1580, Wake County Registry. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 9957 Fanny Brown Road, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and

Wake County, North Carolina, or the customary location designated for foreclosure sales, at 1:30 PM on July 12, 2021 and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following real estate situated in Raleigh in the County of Wake, North Carolina, and being more particularly described as follows: Located in Wake County, North Carolina and being all of Lot 11, Moorlands Subdivision, as shown on that plat dated December 10, 2001 by Withers & Ravenel Engineering & Surveying, Inc., entitled “Moorlands” and recorded in Book of Maps 2002, Pages 516-518, Wake County Registry. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 1313 Caistor Lane, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to

this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for

any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be

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North State Journal: June 30, July 7, 14 and 21, 2021.

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effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

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B12

North State Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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Stanly County Journal

JOSE LUIS MAGANA | AP PHOTO

Celebrating America Fireworks explode over Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol, at the National Mall, during the Independence Day celebrations in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, July 4, 2021.

WHAT’S HAPPENING NC Board of Elections chooses Stanly BOE members Stanly County On June 29, the Stanly County Board of Elections announced that Bill Rigsbee, Joanne Hesley, Frank Sparger and Curtis Sherrill Smith were appointed to their board.

The North Carolina Board of Elections appointed the Stanly BOE members at a recent meeting in Raleigh. The chair of the Stanly Board of Elections has not yet been announced, but according to the statement, “will be appointed at a later date by the Governor.”

SCJ

Man wins $25K a year for life Montgomery County Jerry Ewings of Candor was a big winner in a lottery drawing earlier this year, when his Quick Pick numbers were chosen in a drawing for second prize in May. The Lucky for Life prize was $25,000 a year for life. He bought the winning ticket at the Quik Check in Candor and beat 1.8-million-to-one odds. Despite the name of his prize, Ewings will not be receiving $25,000 a year. He chose the $390,000 lump sum payout, which came to $275,926 after taxes.

WCCB

Baggies of meth found at swimming area Davidson County A local family was picking up trash at the Buddle Creek Swimming Area last week when they found multiple baggies of a substance that was later determined to be crystal meth.

One baggie was found in an open area, about 14 feet from the water. Another was found, by a three-year-old, underneath a life jacket stand. Police investigated and plan to destroy the drugs.

MY FOX 8

Stanly school board recesses after heated public-comment period on masking Board says schools should not have mask mandate when students return in August

By Jesse Deal Stanly County Journal ALBEMARLE — While the atmosphere within the packed crowd at last week’s Stanly County Board of Education meeting was initially civil, the tone of the final 30 minutes took a contentious direction, and a recess was called to restore calm.

Prior to the meeting, seven attendees had signed up to speak at the podium located at the front of the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room. The first five addressed the school board with concerns about the district’s mask policy, asking for an immediate end to required mask-wearing for students and teachers currently attending summer school.

When it was confirmed that the final two citizens who had registered to speak had already left by the time their names were called, controversy erupted within the crowd as Chairman Jeff Chance concluded that the public comment section of the meeting was finished.

Superintendent Dr. Jarrod Dennis began to address the next item on the board’s agenda but paused when multiple people in the crowd raised their voices to ask about the rest of the time allotted for public comments.

“We’d like to use our seven minutes, please,” one attendee said.

Citing the school board’s official policy on public comments, Chance reminded the crowd that only those who signed up to speak could do so.

“You can wait — we all showed up tonight to speak,” another attendee said. “Y’all are not God to sit up there and dictate. We put you in this place, and these kids have dealt with this for over a year.

You can listen to what they have to say for the seven minutes that are ours anyway.”

Chance responded by saying that per board protocol, no one else would be able to speak at the podium.

“Protocols are stupid; do you see what protocols have got you?

Just remember this coming voting season,” the attendee retorted.

Following various cries from the crowd for board members to resign, Chance called a 10-minute recess and a large section of the crowd subsequently exited the

“The North Carolina Schools Toolkit covered the 202021 school year and is set to expire, along with the governor’s mask mandate, on July 31. Therefore, we as a district do not anticipate, nor are we planning at this time, for our students to return to school in August under any kind of a mask mandate.”

Stanly School Board Chair Jeff Chance building. The board members returned to their seats following the recess before yielding their final comments and immediately moving into a closed session.

In regard to the board’s current mask policy, Chance had read aloud a statement from the board earlier in the meeting: “The North Carolina Schools Toolkit covered the 2020-21 school year and is set to expire, along with the gov-

Health director says 38% of Stanly adults now fully vaccinated About 6% of 12- to 17-yearolds vaccinated

By David Larson Stanly County Journal ALBEMARLE — In a county-produced show, Stanly Spotlights, county manager Andy Lucas discussed COVID-19 with the Stanly County health director, David Jenkins. Jenkins talked about how the disease has

affected the county and recommended that all eligible citizens get vaccinated.

Jenkins also discussed the various roles the health department has had to play since the pandemic hit Stanly in March 2020.

“But a lot of what we’re responsible for is education — educating the public — making them aware of the mandates, the executive orders, how they can best protect themselves from

COVID-19,” Jenkins told Lucas.

To do this, Jenkins said they had to speak with the area schools, businesses, organizations and local governments to make sure everybody was on the same page. As the situation progressed, he said they also tracked the data and trends within the county. Testing and contact tracing, which is figuring out whom an infected person had been near and notifying them, also became key parts of

ernor’s mask mandate, on July 31.

Therefore, we as a district do not anticipate, nor are we planning at this time, for our students to return to school in August under any kind of a mask mandate.

“North Carolina Public School Superintendent Catherine Truitt put out a similar statement today, and in it she also supports each LEA — or local district — having the choice to decide for themselves whether students should or should not wear masks in the classroom,” the board’s statement continued.

In a June 30 press release from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Truitt’s statement reads: “Knowing that school districts are entering the new school year with higher vaccination rates for adults gives me hope that we will see mask mandates removed for K-12 students in the fall. As a proponent for local control, I believe this should be a local decision – one made by school boards in tandem with parents, based on what’s best for their student population.”

With the July 6 meeting cancelled due to its placement near the July 4 holiday, the next Stanly County Board of Education meeting is set for Aug. 3 at 7 p.m. in the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room.

their role.

“And more recently, vaccinating — we’re really excited about vaccines and where we are with that,” Jenkins said. “To this date, Stanly County Health Department itself has vaccinated over 15,000 people.”

The conversation then turned to providing information on areas where there may be confusion for the public, like how to compare COVID-19 with the seasonal flu. Jenkins said they get that question a lot. He cited data from Johns Hopkins University saying the fatality rate from COVID-19 is 1.8%, while the flu death rate is about 0.1%, making COVID-19 18 times See VACCINE, page 2

Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

2 WEDNESDAY

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WEEKLY FORECAST

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“Join the conversation” Stanly County Journal ISSN: 2575-2278

Publisher Neal Robbins

Editor David Larson

Sports Editor Cory Lavalette

Senior Opinion Editor Frank Hill

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VACCINE from page 1 more deadly.

“In North Carolina, since 2016, which has been about five years of data, we’ve had 12 deaths associated with flu; whereas, since the beginning of the pandemic, March of 2020, we’ve had 143 deaths associated with COVID-19,” Jenkins said.

Lucas asked how Jenkins would respond to those who say that not all deaths that are being counted as COVID-19 deaths are due to COVID-19 but only may be a contributing factor. Jenkins admitted that in many of the deaths this is the case, but that

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in around 90% of the deaths, the Center for Disease Control considered COVID-19 the “fundamental cause.”

For those with comorbidities, especially things like hypertension, diabetes and dementia, the disease can push a bad medical condition to a more dangerous level. But the No. 1 thing individuals can do to protect themselves, Jenkins said, is to get a vaccine. He said they are safe and effective, even against newer strains that are emerging, like the delta variant.

“Right now, as a percent of population of adults, 38% of all adults in Stanly County are ful-

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ly vaccinated,” Jenkins said, adding that nearly 70% of the 65-and-older population are vaccinated.

Lucas responded, “And I think that’s obviously good news because they’re probably the most vulnerable that are living with us.”

The county as a whole, including children, is around 30% vaccinated, Jenkins said. Children are much less likely to be fully vaccinated — only 6% of 12- to 17-year-olds are in Stanly County. But the shots were only recently approved for this age group, so Jenkins said these numbers will likely rise.

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“To this date, Stanly County Health Department itself has vaccinated over 15,000 people.”

David Jenkins, Stanly health director

Published each Wednesday by North State Media LLC 1550 N.C. Hwy 24/27 W, Albemarle, N.C. 28001 (704) 269-8461 INFO@STANLYJOURNAL.COM STANLYJOURNAL.COM

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DEATH NOTICES

♦ Billy Ray Hathcock, 64, of Albemarle, died June 26. ♦ Colin Michael Peters, age 59, of Albemarle, died June 28. ♦ Holden Drake Banemanivong, of Albemarle, died June 29. ♦ Doris Ann Mullis, 76, of Oakboro, died June 30. ♦ Bobbie Elaine Troublefield Burleson, of Albemarle, died July 1. ♦ Esther Margaret Kipp Mayer, 104, of Albemarle, died July 4.

DYLAN LOVAN | AP PHOTO

John Rogers receives a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Taylorsville, Ky., on Thursday, June 17, 2021.

WEEKLY CRIME LOG ♦ Austin, John Virgil (W /M/43) Arrest on chrg of 1) Sexual Battery (M) and 2) Communicate Threats (M), at 28566 Nc 73 Hwy Lot #5, Albemarle, NC, on 7/5/2021 ♦ Miller, Jason Robert (W /M/47) Arrest on chrg of 1) Driving While Impaired (M), 2) Reckless Driving To Endanger (M), and 3) Poss Opn Cnt/ cons Alc Psg Area (i) (M), at 126 S Third St, Albemarle, NC, on 7/4/2021 ♦ Reyes, Orbin Concepcion (U /M/26) Arrest on chrg of 1) Driving While Impaired (M) and 2) Reckless Drvg-wanton Disregard (M), at 24/27@ frog Pond, Albemarle, NC, on 7/4/2021 ♦ Colson, Taris Laverne (B /M/56) Arrest on chrg of 1) Resisting Public Officer (M), 2) Possess Drug Paraphernalia (M), and 3) Fail Reprt New Address-sex Off (F), at 116 S Main St, Norwood, NC, on 7/4/2021 ♦ Reese, Randy Ray (W /M/26) Arrest on chrg of 1) Resisting Public Officer (M), 2) Break/ enter Terrorize/injure (F), 3) Possess Stolen Motor Vehicle (F), 4) Receive Stolen Goods/ prop (m) (M), 5) Possession Of Firearm By Felon (F), and 6) Flee/elude Arrest W/mv (f) (F), at Randon Pr @austin

Road, Albemarle, NC, on 7/4/2021 ♦ Jackson, Bruce Renard (B /M/59) Arrest on chrg of Resisting Public Officer (M), at 126 S Third St, Albemarle, NC, on 7/3/2021 ♦ Harvell, Brittany Alexus (W /F/23) Arrest on chrg of Resisting Public Officer (M), at 8099 Nc 200 Hwy/county Line Rd, Midland, NC, on 7/3/2021 ♦ Case, Damion Michael (W /M/21) Arrest on chrg of Fel Prob Viol Out Of County (F), at 126 South 3rd St, Albemarle, NC, on 7/3/2021 ♦ Spencer, Shakiyla Kaliesha (B /F/30) Arrest on chrg of Simple Assault (M), at 145 E Red Cross Rd/gaddis Rd, Oakboro, NC, on 7/3/2021 ♦ Plowman, Bret James (W /M/34) Arrest on chrg of 1) Att Breaking Or Enter Bldg (m) (M) and 2) First Deg Tresp Enter/remain (M), at 110 North Oak Ave, Albemarle, NC, on 7/2/2021 ♦ Depew, Anthony Jh-naun (W /M/24) Arrest on chrg of Sex Offender/child Premises (F), at 129 W Third St/college St, Oakboro, NC, on 7/2/2021 ♦ Akers, Steven Edward (W /M/39) Arrest on chrg of 1)

Larceny After Break/enter (F) and 2) Conspire B&e Bldgfelony/larceny (F), at 126 S 3rd St, Albemarle, NC, on 7/1/2021

♦ Todd, Derrick Wayne (W /M/41) Arrest on chrg of Communicate Threats (M), at 126 S Third St, Albemarle, NC, on 6/29/2021

♦ Franklin, Daniel Lee (W /M/30) Arrest on chrg of Assault And Battery (M), at 49547 Quail Trail Rd, Norwood, NC, on 7/1/2021

♦ Knotts, Johnny Charles (W M, 58) Arrest on chrg of Second Deg Sex Exploit Minor(F), at 126 S Third St, Albemarle, on 06/28/2021

♦ Waldroup, Justin Wayne (W /M/36) Arrest on chrg of 1) Cruelty To Animals (f) (F) and 2) Abandonment Of An Animal (M), at 126 South Third Street, Albemarle, NC, on 7/1/2021

♦ Brown, Giorgio Marcus (B M, 33) Arrest on chrg of Obtain Property False Pretense, F(F), at 781 Leonard Av, Albemarle, on 06/28/2021

♦ Parker, Jimmy Jaquavis (B /M/21) Arrest on chrg of Possession Of Firearm By Felon (F), at 126 S 3rd St, Albemarle, NC, on 7/1/2021 ♦ Efird, Benjamin James (W /M/30) Arrest on chrg of 1) Driving While Impaired (M) and 2) Flee/elude Arrest W/mv (F), at West Main / Poplingrove, Albemarle, NC, on 6/30/2021 ♦ Akers, Steven Edward (W /M/39) Arrest on chrg of 1) Breaking And Or Entering (f) (F), 2) Larceny After Break/ enter (F), and 3) Inj Prop Obt Nonferr Metal-f (F), at 126 South Third Street, Albemarle, NC, on 6/30/2021

♦ Thao, Steve Sai (A M, 30) Arrest on chrg of Sex Act: Sub Parent/custodian (F), at1700 Woodhurst Ln, Albemarle, on 06/29/2021 ♦ Akers, Steven Edward (W M, 39) Arrest on chrg of Felony Probation Violation (F), at806 Club House Rd/spiral Dr, Albemarle, on 06/30/2021 ♦ Stanback, Vernon Junior (B M, 40) Arrest on chrg of Communicate Threats (M), at126 S Third St, Albemarle, on 06/30/2021 ♦ Carver, Amanda Leigh (W F, 37) Arrest on chrg of Habitual Larceny, F (F), at 781Leonard Av, Albemarle, on 07/01/2021 ♦ Apperwhite, Sherry Michelle (W F, 46) Arrest on chrg of Awdwikisi (F), at 155

WSouth St, Albemarle, on 07/02/2021 ♦ Neddo, Arlene Louise (W F, 33) Arrest on chrg of First Deg Tresp Enter/remain, M(M), at 781 Leonard Av, Albemarle, on 07/03/2021 ♦ Lilly, Jakaila Charmoni (B F, 21) Arrest on chrg of Simple Possess Sch Vi Cs (m), M(M), at 209 Us 52 North/efird St, Albemarle, on 07/05/2021 ♦ Efird, Joseph Solomon (W M, 28) Arrest on chrg of Misdemeanor Larceny, M (M), at781 Leonard Av, Albemarle, on 07/05/2021 ♦ Rios, Jose Daniel Bonilla` (W M, 34) Arrest on chrg of Driving While Impaired (M),at 833 Nc 24-27 Bypass E, Albemarle, on 07/05/2021 ♦ Long, Amanda Danielle (W F, 42) Arrest on chrg of Misdemeanor Larceny, M (M), at781 Leonard Av, Albemarle, on 07/05/2021 ♦ Rios, Jose Daniel Bonilla` (W M, 34) Arrest on chrg of Assault On Female (M), at 126S Third St, Albemarle, on 07/05/2021

Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

OPINION

3

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor VISUAL VOICES

COLUMN | REP. RICHARD HUDSON

Remembering what we celebrate on July 4th

On April 12, 1776, North Carolina became the first colony to officially support separation from Great Britain.

Today, we must continue to lead the nation in the defense of our liberties.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We all know this phrase from the Declaration of Independence. It’s been drilled in our heads from civics classes to speeches, especially around each July 4th holiday — and rightfully so. Since our nation’s founding, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have defined the American dream.

This Independence Day, those ideals and our country have come under attack. But I am and will always be proud to be an American and am thankful for all those who have fought and sacrificed for our country.

That’s why in Congress, I have worked to defend our unalienable rights.

Life is the first fundamental right outlined in our founding document.

As a dad, I believe every life has value, and I am proud to be pro-life.

Sadly, this unalienable right has fallen under renewed attack as radical abortion advocates push for on-demand abortion, up until and even after birth, paid for by your tax dollars. For decades, the Hyde Amendment has prohibited tax dollars from funding abortions, and received overwhelmingly bipartisan support. In fact, the Hyde Amendment has been renewed every year since 1976, under majorities and presidents of both parties, including President Barack Obama.

But in a radical shift in policy, President Joe Biden recently released his budget which did not include pro-life protections or the Hyde Amendment. Americans must not be forced to violate their conscience to pay for abortions. That’s why just last week, House Republicans demanded a vote on the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. It’s a sad commentary this bill even needs to be considered. But in the face of new threats from those who support abortion, I will never stop demanding we protect the lives of the most vulnerable in our community.

Liberty is another principle I will always defend, just as North Carolinians have done since before our founding. On April 12, 1776, North Carolina became the first colony to officially support separation from Great Britain. Today, we must continue to lead the nation in the defense of our liberties — especially our right to keep and bear arms.

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration has also declared war on the Second Amendment as they push policies that would have no impact on violence but would limit your freedoms and those of all lawabiding citizens. Also last week, I took to the House floor to highlight the

importance of the 2nd Amendment. As crime rises across our country, legal gun ownership has reached record highs, and these millions of Americans deserve to have theirs rights protected. That’s why I’m leading efforts to push back against new regulations from the ATF and expand concealed-carry reciprocity. The Second Amendment is the right that allows us to defend all our other rights, and it should not be infringed.

Finally, the pursuit of happiness is also something I care deeply about.

What the Founders meant by this term is the opportunity for upward mobility. This is also a topic that was in the news last week in discussions about our border. Every year, legal immigrants flock to the United States for their own pursuit of happiness that is found in our nation of liberty.

I welcome these immigrants who come legally to America, the greatest nation in the world. However, recently we have seen the dangers posed to our nation by illegal immigration.

In the last week, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each took a trip to the border to see the Biden Border Crisis firsthand. The Biden administration’s plan to halt the construction of the wall and reinstate catch-and-release has had disastrous consequences. In the last month, Border Agents encountered 180,000 illegal immigrants at the border, the highest number in 21 years.

Unchecked illegal immigration allows cartels to maintain control and traffic families and drugs into the United States. These consequences of open border policies threaten the rights of all legal immigrants and citizens to pursue their own happiness – something that goes against our nation’s founding. Last week, I highlighted policies that have worked and can work again to secure our border and protect our country. In order to maintain the pursuit of happiness for everyone, we must solve this border crisis.

The principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not just hollow words on an old, tattered document. Instead, they exemplify our country and must be fought for every day. As your congressman, I will always defend your rights from those who would seek to destroy life, threaten our liberties or endanger your pursuit of happiness as an American citizen. On this July 4th, I hope you have been able to enjoy time with family and friends, celebrating the rights we enjoy as Americans and all the things that make our country the greatest on Earth. Happy Independence Day!

COLUMN | DAVID HARSANYI

Tucker Carlson says the NSA is spying on him.

Sadly, it’s plausible When asked about the hacking, Brennan claimed that “nothing could be further from the truth.

I mean we wouldn’t do that.

I mean, that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

TUCKER CARLSON says a “whistleblower” in the National Security Agency tipped him off that the agency was planning to leak emails and texts to get him off the air over a story he’s working on. Sounds rather fantastical. We’ve seen no evidence or corroboration of the accusation. My initial instinct should be to dismiss conspiratorial claims about domestic espionage. As it happens, though, I’ve been alive for the past two decades.

And history tells us it is wholly conceivable that intelligence and lawenforcement agencies would spy on a television personality. They spy all the time. They do it illegally. They do it for partisan reasons. They do it to lawmakers. They do it to journalists.

It wasn’t that long ago when former President Barack Obama’s director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied to Congress about the agency’s snooping on American citizens. “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden in 2013. “No, sir,” Clapper said under oath, “ ... Not wittingly.” Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed this as a lie.

It was John Brennan’s CIA that ran an illicit spying operation against the United States Senate, with five agents breaking into Senate Intelligence Committee files. He then lied about it to lawmakers and the public. When asked about the hacking, Brennan claimed that “nothing could be further from the truth. I mean we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.” Do you think people who hack into Senate files — and get away with it — will have any ethical compunction about spying on a TV personality?

Obama also weaponized the NSA for partisan reasons, abusing its foreign-intelligence-collection authority to spy on pro-Israel JewishAmerican groups and lawmakers in connection with its Iran-deal negotiations. It was also Obama’s FBI that fabricated FISA-warrant applications — 390 problems were found in 39 of the 42 applications, “including unverified, inaccurate, or inadequately supported facts, as well as typographical errors,” according to a subsequent inspector general’s report — to spy on the opposition campaign over trumped-up “collusion” charges that were largely propelled by a partisan oppo-research document.

Journalists? It was former Attorney General Eric Holder who invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News reporter, shopping a flimsy case to three judges before finding a pliant one that allowed him to name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The same Obama administration spied on more than 20 Associated Press phone lines. Who knows how many other journalist phone lines this happened to?

Former President Donald Trump’s Justice Department followed suit, collecting the phone records of Washington Post reporters, and tried to obtain email records in an effort to smoke out leakers. The Biden administration — staffed with many of the same people who had unmasked political opponents, though they had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations — defended the Trump DOJ’s actions.

Not one person paid any real price for any of the actions above. The Brennans and Clappers of the world were rewarded for their corruption with lecterns on cable television, from which they proceeded to lecture American people about the importance of patriotism and integrity. And just as the specter of terrorism or “Russia!” gave agencies the justification for domestic spying, today, it seems, they have “white supremacy.”

Even as left-wing rioters and looters were active in American cities across the country in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security was writing reports claiming white supremacists were the most “persistent and lethal threat” in the United States. With the ginned-up, government-led hysteria about right-wing forces gathering to topple our democracy — and Carlson constantly being thrown in with that lot by liberals — is it beyond the imagination that intelligence agencies would find a way to intercept a popular personality’s emails and texts while he’s working on a story?

Again, Carlson’s accusation may not amount to anything. I have no idea. The onus of proof is on him. But we have little reason to dismiss the possibility out of hand. After all, our intelligence agencies have spent decades abusing their power and corroding the public’s trust.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of the book “First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History With the Gun.”

Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

4

SPORTS Chase Elliott celebrates his victory in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

SIDELINE REPORT NFL

Lawrence signs $36.8M rookie contract with Jags Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback and No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence signed his four-year rookie contract Monday, clearing the way for him to attend the start of training camp in three weeks. Under the NFL’s rookie slotting system, Lawrence’s deal was projected to be worth $36.8 million and included a $24.1 million signing bonus. He will count $6.7 million against the salary cap in 2021. Lawrence went 34-2 at Clemson, recording the third-best winning percentage by a starting quarterback (minimum 30 starts) in college football since 1978.

NBA

Clippers’ Beverley suspended for a game next season for shoving Paul New York Patrick Beverley was suspended one game without pay by the NBA on Saturday after shoving Chris Paul in the back in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals. The Los Angeles Clippers guard will miss the first game of the 2021-22 regular season that he is eligible to play. Kiki VanDeWeghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, ruled that Beverley committed an unsportsmanlike act when he came up behind Paul and forcefully shoved him in the fourth quarter of last Wednesday’s game. Beverley drew a technical foul and was ejected.

AP PHOTO

Elliott learns to savor wins in season of growth The Cup Series’ defending champion got back to Victory Lane for his second win of the year

By Jenna Fryer The Associated Press CHASE ELLIOTT heard the roar of the crowd begging for more burnouts, and NASCAR’s most popular driver refused to disappoint his supporters.

He knew his tires couldn’t hold up for a second smoke show at Road America, but Elliott didn’t care following his seventh career road course victory in the first Cup race at the Wisconsin track since 1956.

There was no statement being made Sunday, and Elliott said he certainly does not resent the success of new teammate Kyle Larson.

The Cup Series’ reigning champion, so grouchy these days, has learned to savor the good times.

“When the day comes that I don’t appreciate it, I should probably go do something else,” Elliott said. “You have to enjoy these moments. They’re way too hard to get.

You don’t know if or when you’ll ever get another one. If the fans want a burnout, I’m going to give them a burnout.”

As the crowd of rabid Wisconsin racing fans roared its approval, Elliott burned down the tires on his Chevrolet then ran out of gas in a Fourth of July celebration.

He doesn’t know why the crowd adored him as it did because Elliott said he has no connection to the state.

Doesn’t matter.

Elliott is the three-time reigning most popular driver voted by fans, and last year he capped his meteor-like career with his first Cup title. Elliott is simply adored everywhere but too humble to see it as bright as the spotlight is shining on him right now.

It’s made it a strange year be-

“When the day comes that I don’t appreciate it, I should probably go do something else.”

Chase Elliott cause Larson is the top dog at Hendrick Motorsports right now.

Elliott re-fired the organization after its six-race winning streak was snapped last week, but Larson has carried the load.

Larson has a Cup-best four wins this year, not including the non-points $1 million All-Star race, and Elliott’s win Sunday at Road America was just his second of the season.

But there’s no jealousy, Elliott insisted.

“I think it’s great our company’s having success,” Elliott said. “It’s

making all of us better. It’s pushing us to be better.”

No current Cup driver is harder on himself when he doesn’t deliver, so Elliott with just two wins has been prickly. No one knows why he seems so over it all the time, but good friend Ryan Blaney said his reserved, private buddy has wallowed in defeats since they were kids.

“That hasn’t changed,” Blaney emphasized.

He brushed it off last week when asked by AP about his demeanor, saying he’s allowed bad moods.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who won 15 of his own most popular titles sandwiched between the Elliotts, said the 25-year-old champion is still settling into the spotlight.

“He’s pretty young and still has a lot to figure out,” Earnhardt said.

“I don’t expect him to be perfect. … He just does his own thing. It’s good enough for him, and like it or you don’t like it, it doesn’t really matter.”

Players compete during the 3-on-3 basketball test event at Aomi Urban Sports Park in Tokyo ahead of the Summer Olympics.

The blacktop basketball is a new addition to this year's Games.

TENNIS

Full Wimbledon crowds allowed from quarterfinals to finals Wimbledon, England Crowds at Wimbledon’s Centre Court and No. 1 Court can increase to 100% capacity, up from 50%, for the singles quarterfinals through the end of the tournament. The All England Club said Sunday that will mark “the first full outdoor stadiums at a sporting event” in Britain since the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year. Wimbledon was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the first time in 75 years that the oldest Grand Slam tennis tournament was not held.

COLLEGE SPORTS

Ex-Marshall great Pennington appointed to university board Huntington, W.Va. Former Marshall quarterback Chad Pennington has been appointed to the university’s Board of Governors. Gov. Jim Justice made the appointment last week, board Chairman Patrick Farrell announced. It must be confirmed by the West Virginia Senate. Pennington played at Marshall from 1995 to 1999 and was a Heisman Trophy finalist in his senior season. He led the Thundering Herd to a berth in the 1995 Division I-AA championship game, then won three straight MidAmerican Conference titles, including a 13-0 record in 1999. Pennington played 11 seasons in the NFL with the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins.

EUGENE HOSHIKO | AP PHOTO

3-on-3 basketball set to make Olympic debut The American men failed to qualify

By Eddie Pells The Associated Press THE LATEST STOP on the perennial search for the younger, attention-span-challenged audience for the Olympics might look familiar — the blacktop, and 3-on-3 basketball.

Not a pickup game, mind you.

Once the Olympics gets hold of this version of street hoops, it will only share a faint resemblance to anything happening on an urban playground.

For one, there will be no Americans — at least none playing in the men’s tournament. Another differ-

ence is that these games will have refs, a scoreboard and each team gets one sub.

But some of it might look familiar. Games are first to 21 or whoever is winning after 10 minutes.

Teams have to clear the ball back to around the 3-point line after rebounds. Inside buckets are worth one and “3s” are worth two. The teams have coaches but they are for behind-the-scenes stuff and not allowed on the court.

In addition to trying to capture more young eyes, one of the IOC’s stated missions in bringing 3-on3 basketball to the big stage was to expose more of the world to the sport. In at least one respect, this mission has been accomplished.

Mongolia will bring one of the eight teams in the women’s field.

Mongolia is not a newcomer to the Olympics, but it has always fielded competitors in individual sports, such as wrestling and boxing. This will be the first time the country has entered a team sport into the Summer Games.

It seemed a foregone conclusion that the U.S. would field a team in the sport it invented. Not to be on the men’s side.

Unlike the 5-on-5 version, a win at the World Cup for the U.S. in 2019 did not secure an Olympic spot. And the Americans, led by former Purdue star Robbie Hummel, suffered a stunning upset to the Netherlands in May that knocked them out of the race for one of the last Olympics spots. It means the world’s second-ranked team, behind Serbia, will be watching the sport’s Olympic debut from home.

France’s Laetitia Guapo, the top-ranked female player in the world, was still playing 5-on-5 in 2018.

“I wanted to have a backup,” she said.

8 Teams that qualify in both the men’s and women’s 3-on-3 basketball tournaments It turns out, 3-on-3 fits her game quite nicely.

She calls the ranking as the world’s top player “a reward for my determination,” and says Tokyo could just be an appetizer. The next Olympics are in Paris, and the 25-year-old Guapo says she hasn’t ruled out a shot at the marathon, maybe at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

Teams will play round robin, sometimes two games a day, from July 24-27. The semifinals and finals all take place July 28. All the action is at Aomi Urban Sports Park, an outdoor venue with a covered half court. It’s also the home of the new sport of climbing.

Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

5

Stanly County student-athletes, coaches recognized The school board honored the best of the county’s high school sports

By Jesse Deal Stanly County Journal

CURTIS COMPTON | ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION VIA AP

Nate McMillan, center, was named the Hawks’ full-time coach after leading Atlanta to the Eastern Conference Finals.

“This could be the start of something that is consistent.”

Nate McMillan, Hawks coach

Hawks reach agreement to make McMillan full-time coach The Raleigh native and NC State alumnus led Atlanta to the Eastern Conference Finals

By Charles Odum The Associated Press ATLANTA — Atlanta Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk moved quickly to lock down Nate McMillan as the full-time coach, reaching an agreement to remove the interim tag only two days after the team’s season ended.

The deal comes after McMillan, in his interim role, led the team to an improbable run to the Eastern Conference finals.

Schlenk said Monday that “an agreement in place in principle” was reached earlier in the day with the Raleigh native and NC State alumnus. “We’re just drawing up the contract,” Schlenk said.

The team is expected to officially announce the deal on Tuesday. Details were not immediately available.

McMillan, 56, was named interim coach after Lloyd Pierce was fired when the team had a 14-20 record. The Hawks enjoyed an immediate turnaround under McMillan.

They played better late in games, protecting leads while posting a 27-11 mark that gave them the No. 5 seed in the East-

ern Conference playoffs. It was Atlanta’s first playoff berth since 2017.

The Hawks were underdogs in beating the New York Knicks in the first round and No. 1 seed Philadelphia in the conference semifinals before falling to the Milwaukee Bucks in six games in the conference final.

Schlenk said McMillan’s consistent message worked with a young team led by point guard Trae Young.

“I just believe he’s unbelievably consistent,” Schlenk said. “There’s no back and forth. Once he says this is what we’re going to do, he’s consistent with it, and because of that consistency, I believe the players believe in it. When somebody tells you something one day and the opposite the next day, it’s hard to have that trust. But with him, he’s unbelievably consistent with his views, and his guys bought into it.”

McMillan encouraged the Hawks to add toughness to their game. His leadership was the addition needed to make winners of a team built around such draft picks as Young, John Collins, Kevin Huerter, De’Andre Hunter and Cam Reddish. Collins (Wake Forest) and Reddish (Duke) played collegiately on Tobacco Road like McMillan.

“They’ve been a great group all season long,” McMillan said after Saturday’s loss to the Bucks end-

ed Atlanta’s season.

“It was a huge challenge for them once coach Pierce was let go. I challenged those guys to be better, to do better, to sacrifice, to commit to each other, and they did.”

McMillan said he believes Hawks owner Tony Ressler is committed to long-term success.

“This could be the start of something that is consistent,” McMillan said. “... Tony just talked about his commitment to this team and this organization to continue to win. They want to win here. He wants to build a winner. He’s willing to do whatever it takes. That was his message to the team.”

Schlenk said he knew McMillan was the right choice to be the full-time coach even before the playoffs.

“At some point during the regular season I went to Nate and told him the job was his if he wanted it, and we both agreed to wait until after the season to formalize it,” Schlenk said.

There was reason to question McMillan’s interest in the fulltime position. He was reluctant to accept the interim job, agreeing only after being assured by Pierce that it was the right decision.

McMillan joined Pierce’s staff after he was fired as Indiana’s coach. He also is a former head coach in Portland and Seattle.

ALBEMARLE —Stanly County Schools Athletic Director Beverly Pennington recognized student-athletes and coaches representing four area high schools for their 2021 postseason championship achievements during the Stanly County Board of Education meeting June 30.

As their respective players stood in the center of the room, each of the four coaches addressed their teams in front of the school board.

South Stanly softball head coach David Poplin was the first to make a speech, praising his team that fell short in the state championship series but were still the 2021 1A West Region champions.

“This was a great bunch,” Poplin said. “When COVID-19 hit and we got shut down the year before, I had a lot of players who were un- “This young proven and untested. We didn’t man has know how we were going to get there, but we had a plan. So my been a bright assistant coach Matt Little and I shining tested them. We only had 13 players, but we challenged them to the light for utmost daily and they responded. Albemarle It’s been a privilege and a great High ride.”

West Stanly softball head School.” coach Craig Carter, who recently announced his retirement from coaching after leading the Colts Albemarle to another 2A state championship track and field victory, spoke next of his team. head coach “Quite honestly, it’s been an honor, and I’m thankful to have Bernard Henry been part of this program,” Carter on 1A state said. “Over the years while I was men’s triple coaching against them, they were always a tough program and had a jump champion lot of phenomenal athletes — that Ali Currie was no different over the last four years. We were blessed as a coaching staff to have these girls, and they deserve all the credit. A lot of these girls are honor students, so that speaks highly of them.”

Albemarle track and field head coach Bernard Henry spoke of 1A state men’s triple jump champion Ali Currie.

“This young man has been a bright shining light for Albemarle High School,” Henry said. “When everything shut down with COVID-19, he didn’t have a full year. But he came back this year and said, ‘Coach, let’s go get it.’ He was a leader on our team. … His mom and dad did a great job. I really didn’t do much but put him in the right opportunity and challenge him.”

North Stanly track and field head coach Teresa Davis concluded the athletic ceremony portion of the meeting by addressing 1A state women’s triple jump champion Taegan Lowder.

“In 34 years of coaching, Taegan is a star and one of the hardest workers I’ve had at North Stanly High School,” Davis said. “She only gives 100%, and not only is she a really good athlete, but she is a really good person. She’s going to NC State next year, and they will be lucky to have her. She’s not going to be running track or anything right now — we hope maybe club — but she is a really good role model for our young ladies.”

Cowboys return for 20th anniversary of HBO’s ‘Hard Knocks’ It will be the third time “America’s Team” has been featured on the show

By Joe Reedy The Associated Press THE DALLAS COWBOYS will be featured for the third time in the 20th anniversary season of “Hard Knocks.” HBO and NFL Films announced Friday that the five-episode season will debut on Aug. 10 at 10 p.m. Eastern.

The Cowboys are the first team to make three appearances on the training camp documentary series. The first was in 2002 and the most recent was in 2008.

“America, America’s game and America’s Team had a tough 2020.

I feel like this is a perfect happenstance of football, the Cowboys and hopefully the country,” said NFL Films’ Ken Rodgers, the senior coordinating producer of “Hard Knocks.” “I’m sure the Cowboys want to put their difficult season behind them more than anyone.”

Dallas went 6-10 last season in Mike McCarthy’s first year as coach. Quarterback Dak Prescott suffered a dislocated right ankle and compound fracture that forced him to miss the final 11 games.

Prescott’s return from injury will be one of the storylines to watch, as well as how McCarthy can rally a team to believe in him and his staff.

The show is also likely to feature running back Ezekiel Elliott along with wide receivers Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup and CeeDee Lamb. On defense, first-year coordinator Dan Quinn tries to mold a group that includes defensive end

LM OTERO | AP PHOTO

Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott, center, stands with coach Mike McCarthy as they watch drills during a June practice. The Cowboys will be featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” this preseason for the third time.

DeMarcus Lawrence and linebackers Jaylon Smith and Micah Parsons, who was picked in the first round of April’s draft.

This will mark the first time the series has its first episode air after a team has played a preseason game. The Cowboys play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, on Aug. 5.

The trip to Canton will also be special for everyone associated with

NFL Films because Steve Sabol was recently enshrined posthumously into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The longtime NFL Films president, who died in 2012, is part of the third father-son duo in the Hall; his father, Ed, was inducted in 2011. “Hard Knocks” was a Sabol brainchild and remains as relevant today as it was when it started.

“He loved what this show represents because it shows how our business and company could change and adapt,” Rodgers said.

“So many people had seen NFL Films for what he had created in the 1970s — the slow motion, ball in the air, wired for sound and orchestral music style. What ‘Hard Knocks’ proved more than any other program, maybe in our history, is that we are not one type of

filmmaking company. We are filmmakers that can adapt to any style, any format and on any network.”

This will be the 16th season for the show, which started in 2001 with the Baltimore Ravens. HBO and NFL Films have an agreement to continue the series through 2024. Last year featured two teams for the first time when the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers shared equal billing.

ment. area.”

EMPHIS, Tenn. — Faced For Nutbush resident He also cited a widespread fear the threat of overburdened of being unnecessarily exposed to fear of contracting the itals, states across the country matched with the worry th virus. onverting convention centers, Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, Julythe 7, 2021 “All around, people are scared,” could lose stores that are ts facilities and performance the neighborhood. Offici he said. es into backup treatment sites Their fears are not unfounded. ven’t said if stores would oronavirus patients.

In this majority-black city along the Gateway facility was What some Memphis, Tenthe Mississippi River, lawmakers If they did, shopping wo e, residents don’t get is why in and community leaders have been come more difficult for re r city, a shopping center in the sounding the alarm over what they especially for those who ar dle of a predominantly black, see as a disturbing trend of the vi- have no means of transpo income residential neighborrus killing African Americans at a to stores located farther aw d has been chosen.

“For people who don’t higher rate. ty and state officials are conNutbush resident Patricia Har- car, what do they do?” ask ed that an influx of patients ris wondered aloud if city officials ris, who spoke to The Ass m Memphis, as well as nearby were “trying to contaminate” the Press while lugging a bott sissippi, Arkansas and rural but the provincial capital has been

By Kathy tergent, a package of bott neighborhood.

Tennessee, willGannon strain hospirelatively peaceful.

The Associated Press ter and other items from t Activist Earle Fisher, an AfriTheir fears are echoed across The consulates of Uzbekistan, ADRIAN SAINZ | AP PHOTO A Lot to her car. She note can American Memphis pastor, country: KABUL, Governors, mayors Afghanistan — A surge Tajikistan, India and Pakistan have grocery store recently clos understands the anxiety.

“This health of experts in numerous 3, 2020 photo, reduced April their services, Balkh pro- shows Gateway Shopping Center Taliban wins in northernThis Af- Friday, vincial governor’s spokesman Mughanistan has caused some counis an honest and reasonable con- her house and she already es are also researching and in Memphis, Tenn. nir Farhad said Tuesday.

He said tries to close their consulates in cern and skepticism,” Fisher said. travel farther to get to Gat tructing makeshift medical region, while across the border Turkey and Russia had closed their “When we do things “I think it’s par for the course for ities. the in Tajikistan, reservists are being consulates and their diplomats had got to consider the people black people to be righteously a Chinese restaurant and other Lee has disclosed a few: the Mun New York City, they’re turncalled up to reinforce the southern left the city. skeptical of governmental inter- neighborhood,” she said. “W Center in Nashville, o the Javits Center convention a Turkish officialthe said businesses. border, according to officialssic andCity However, the consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif reportsthe on Tuesday.

Locating a treatment center for vention that did not consult with need to make the neighb Convention Center, in Chicago, McCormick Chattanooga BORDER TROOPS OF THE STATE COMMITTEE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE REPUBLIC OF TAJIKISTAN VIA AP was open Expo and wasCenter “carrying ac- coronavirus patients there pos- people on the ground first.”

Nearly 1,000 Afghan worse than it already is.” the Knoxville —onall e Convention Center; and in soldiers cepting visaresidential applications neighand oth- es the Taliban advances by away In two this handout photoresidents released bysay: Border Troops the State Committee for NationalU.S. Security the Cohen, Rep.of Steve Doug of McGowen, the city’s chief problems, sites from dy, Utah,have the fled Mountain Amercrossing the border into Tajikistan, er consular requests.” The official, Republic of Tajikistan on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, Afghanistan’s government soldiers sit at a bridge operating officer, said the Gate- phis Democrat, said the d could potentially expose them borhoods.

Expo Center. who was not identified by name in Itnext according to reports from Tajikito Tajikistan-Afghanistan border in Tajikistan. way site was being considered be- doesn’t make sense. to the virus amid concerns that The line Gateway Shopping Cenhe U.S. stan.

Army Corps of Engiwith briefing rules, said Anka“I’m sure there are othe thewas Nutbush neighborhood s has beenA scouting locations monitoring the security sit- blacks are contracting COVID-19 cause it could potentially accomstatement from the Tajikter gov-in ra end to the decades-long conflict. day they used seven of the crosshave left Afghanistan. uation and was taking “required ernment said President Emomawork, and they Tennessee, and officials here of Memphis is different. The cen- at higher rates; and it could force modate hundreds of beds. He said that would With their victories in ings along the two countries’ shared Kremlin spokesman Dmitry measures” for the safety of Turkish li Rakhmon ordered the mobilizathose rather t compiled a list of 35 possi- ter features a Save A Lot grocery some of the stores they rely on to if it were converted to a treatment have used northern and southerninto Afghanistan, the Tal- neighbo Peskov said there was “heightened 910-kilometer and personnel. tion of They 20,000haven’t military reservists to missions a residential site, it border. would hold only mildly ill a Rent-A-Center, a Fami- close. backup sites. re- store, The Taliban have made relent- iban are putting pressure on proHe did not elaborate and the concern” over the fighting but that strengthen its border with Afghansaid.control of coronavirus who could Nutbush andtroops commua beauty ed the whole vincialbe cities Cohen and gaining less territorial winspatients since midhas noresident plans to send conflicting reportssupply on the shop, Turkish Russia istan. list, but Gov. Bill ly Dollar,

6

Taliban wins close consulates; Tajikistan reinforces border

The Afghan military exodus Consulate could not be immediatecomes as the Taliban have over- ly reconciled. The consulate in Marun most districts in northeastern zar-e-Sharif could not be reached Badakhshan province. Many fell by phone.

The Tajik government said Afwithout a fight but along the province’s northern border with Tajik- ghan troops were being allowed to istan, hundreds of Afghan forces cross on humanitarian grounds but crossed over, seeking safety in Ta- the border posts on the Tajik side were in control of Tajik forces and jikistan.

The consulates of Turkey and there was no fighting with Taliban Russia have reportedly closed in from the Tajik side.

The Taliban march gains moMazar-e-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, and Af- mentum only days after the Unitghanistan’s fourth-largest city. Iran ed States vacated Bagram Airfield, said it has restricted activities at just an hour’s drive north of the capital,aKabul, a sure sign that its consulate hasSalman, son of—King Salman, Associated Press in the city. Therebin the to majority of American troops been fighting in Balkh province, assented the deal.

PEC, oil nations agree o nearly 10M barrel cut

to assist Tajikistan, once a part of the Soviet Union.

“We have repeatedly said many times that after the withdrawal of the Americans and their allies from Afghanistan, the development of the situation in this country is a matter of our heightened concern,” Peskov said. “We’re monitoring it very closely and are noting that destabilization is taking place, unfortunately.”

Meanwhile, Tajikistan’s state news agency Khovar said 1,037 Afghan military personnel had entered Tajikistan while fleeing for their lives. The report said Mon-

April, when President Joe Biden announced the last 2,500-3,500 U.S. soldiers and 7,000 allied NATO soldiers would leave Afghanistan.

Most have left quietly already, well before the announced deadline in September. The full withdrawal is not expected to be completed until the end of August — and not before an agreement on how to protect Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport is reached.

Months-old peace talks being held in Qatar between Taliban and a fractious Afghan government have all but stopped, even as both sides say they want a negotiated

key transportation routes.

The Afghan government has resurrected militias mostly loyal to Kabul-allied warlords but with a history of brutal violence that has raised the specter of civil war, similar to the fighting that devastated Kabul in the early 1990s.

Taliban wins in northern Afghanistan are particularly significant because that part of the country is the traditional stronghold of U.S.-allied warlords and the scene of the Taliban’s initial widespread losses in 2001 when the U.S.-led coalition launched its battle to unseat the religious movement.

“I go with the consent, so I UBAI, United Arab Emiragree,” the prince said, chuckling, — OPEC, Russia and other roducing nations on Sunday drawing a round of applause from ized an unprecedented pro- those on the video call.

But it had not been smiles and ion cut of nearly 10 million els, or a 10th of global supply, laughs for weeks after the soopes of boosting crashing pric- called OPEC+ group of OPEC mid the coronavirus pandemic members and other nations failed ers difficult,” the GAO said in a reBy Margaret Stafford in March to reach an agreement a price war, officials Press said. port issued in March. “Specifically The Associated (supervisors) told us that enumerThis could be the largest re- on production cuts, sending pricators were often turned away from CENSUS from TAKER Linda Rothes tumbling. Saudi Arabia sharply ion in production OPEC accessing multi-unit buildings begovernment-issued criticized Russia days earlier over perhaps field’s a decade, maybe lon- iPhone cause of the pandemic.” kept directing her back to apartwhat said U.S. Energy Secretary Nathan Bean, a census superviments in San Francisco that she al- it described as comments of the kingdom, which Brouillette, who sor in Chicago, said that even when ready knew werecredited vacant. Whencritical she he was able to reach property manident Donald Trump’s that per-werefinds did find apartments oc- itself trying to appease agers by phone last summer, they cupied, in shegetting was sometimes Trump, a longtime OPEC critic. l involvement duel- turned would often say, “’We aren’t going away because of the pandemic.

Even U.S. senators had warned parties to the table and helpto answer your calls. We aren’t go“I had a few landlords who said, to end ‘It’s a price war between Saudi Arabia to find a way to ing to answer your questions.’”

COVID. You can’t come in,’” boost prices as American shale di ArabiaRothfield and Russia.

How much renters were unsaid. firms face far-higher production il prices have as the turned dercounted, if they actually were In a collapsed national headcount missed, will not be known until Deby natural disasters, costs. American troops had been navirus upside and down the COVID-19 SAUDI ENERGY cember and early next year with the political turmoil and halta deadly virus, deployed to the kingdom for the ss it causes have largely release of a survey that measures apartment renters proved particulobal travel and slowed down first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, In this photo released by Saudi Energy Ministry, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud, Minist the accuracy of the count. larly hard to count last year. That over concerns of Irani- Energy of Saudi Arabia, third right, chairs a virtual summit ofThe r energy-chugging theCensus Group of 20already energy Bureau hasminister has former censussectors takers andattacks exantoretaliation amid regional ten- his office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Friday, April 10, 2020, toreleased as manufacturing. has failed coordinate a response plummet 2020 census figures to used perts worried that It the tally stated account the oilfor industry prices due to an oversupply in the market and a downturn infor global demand due to the pandem deciding how many congresall of them. in sions. sional seats each state gets, and Overlooking people in the na“They’ve spent over the last U.S., which now pumps more those numbers showed how just a tion’s 44 million rental homes carmonth waging war on American e than any other country. dozen people being counted or ries a potentially high price. Bepraise.

Andrés ut somecause producers have been oil producers while we are defend- that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the deal but its president, few overlooked made a big difference. the census helps determine “The size of the cu Manuel López Obrador, had said the United Arab Emirates would ing theirs.

This is not how friends ctant to how ease$1.5 supply.

The carIf 89 more people hadpure been tallied, trillion in federal money is precedented, but,a then ag Friday that he had agreed with cut another 2 million barrels of treat friends,” said Sen. Kevin nd other nations on Sunday New York would not have lost spent each year, the lower numbers ERIC RISBERG | AP PHOTO congressional 26 peoplethe had corona isseat. theIf impact would mean less government help a Republican from North oil a day between them atop the Trump that the U.S. will compened to allow Mexico to cut only Cramer, in Minnesota, the Go- said M to payafor schools,aroads Census taker Rothfield up at andeal. apartment building she was unable access in San cannot been on demand,” sate to what Mexico addmissed to having OPEC+ The three countries Dakota, before the Linda OPEC+ deal. looks 000 barrels month, stick-and medpher State would lost a seat. icalan services in those communities. on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. medhave Ghulam, an energy an did not immediately acknowledge the proposed cuts.

U.S.Francisco, producers have already point for accord initially Numbers used for redrawing Around 36% of homes in the Raymond James.

“The big Oil Deal with OPEC been reducing output. The Amer- the cut themselves, though Zanhed Friday a marathon congressional and legislative disU.S. after are occupied by renters, up Butready Ghulam Plususing is done.

This will hunattended theknocking video confericana Petroleum Institute o conference between na-census tricts will not be until and Au- others administrative re-save won’t waste their time on included were undercounted by 1.1%,laudbut the ganeh from 33% during 23 the last of thousands of energy global saying it ence. s. The nations agreed ed Sunday’s gust.jobs it may not be enough. from the Internal Revenue vacant units, the agency said in a cords dreds rate was higherpact, for some tenants. decade together ago.

Rice, who worked as least a cen-a tempo Service theUnited Social Security Black renters between ages statement.

Rentersbarrels typically have lower “This is at inorthe States,”AdTrumpJan said Officials said other planned cuts will help getmale other nations’ stateut 9.7 million a day taker in lief Denver, saidenergy she wasindustry asking or tosus “We stand were, however, able to in- ministration, 49 were undercounted self-response rates than homeownfor the in a tweet.

“I neighbors would like thank in the deal, meaning owned30 oiland production to follow theby would ughout May and June. was prohibited postaland workers for information or frustrated form8-million-barrel-per-day the landlords or managers cut and Hispanic male so the government relies more theshe global economy. This i congratulate President Pu- that lead of12.2%, U.S. producers that arerenters try- an he groupers, reached the deal just on census takers knocking on their between ages 18 and 29 were un- that enumerators would be visiting using a last-resort statistical tech- from contacting apartment manis too big to be letget to fail and tin of Russia and King Salman of from July through the end of the ing to adjust to plunging demand. s beforedoors, Asian markets reagers on her own so she could said Jeri Green, a former se- dercounted by 8.6%, according to and asking for their cooperation nique. liance showed responsibil Saudi Arabia.” year and a 6-million-barrel cut for Brouillette said the U.S. did not ned Monday and as internaSome 60% of census supervi- information on occupied units and nior adviser at the Census Bureau, the Leadership Conference Educa- prior to the start of the operation,” thisunits agreement,” said Per M The by Kremlin said President beginning inthat 2021. commitments of its own 16 remove vacant from the daal benchmark crude tomake the Governmenthemonths statement said, adding bu- sors surveyed Fund. who servedBrent as a consultant the tion tabase, other census tak- of ana Office for a study reau officials confident in the tal Accountability Delays the able pandemNational duringproduction the Nysveen, the head Vladimir Putin held a joint callsparing “This willwere enable the rebalanccuts,from but was to ed at just overUrban $31 aLeague barrel ers from theirEnergy. time. When on 2020 census operations report- King work census ic caused the—Census Bureau to ing 2020 census.

Rystad “Even tho with Trump and Saudi Sal- wasting ofofthe oil takers. markets and the exobvious that plunging American shale producers show the In cases where renters did not ed that their census takers had dif- she tried it, her supervisor told her, “This is a population that was eliminate a step ahead of the demand because of the pandem- pected rebound of prices by $15 man to express support of the production cuts are small ggle. at risk of being missed prior to door-knocking phase where cen- respond to census questionnaires, ficulties completing caseloads be- “’Your job is to knock on doors,’” she It also saidtoPutin barreltakers in the short term,” ic it’s is expected to slashmeet U.S.with oil proideo aired by theGreen Saudi-owned said.sep- what the market needed a cause deal. they were unable get intospoke or census were unable to in- said sus supervisors build- per COVID,” said. “We know postpone the stock arately with Trump about the oil our statement from Nigeria’s duction. lite channel Al-Arabiya “It killed productivity,” Rice buildi apartment buildings. them, the Census Bureau oil ing managers or landlords to find aterview a challenge for the Census Bureau don’t count them cor-the wor “The pandemic had to use other, less reliable methout which apartments va- ministry. accurately that enumerate renters.” Iranian problem, market andmade othercommuissues. said. “If you straints Oil Minister Bijanwere Zanwed the tomoment Saudi rectly, you don’t give them a voice.” nication Analysts with the building manag- cautious to count had them. initially Those methods occupied, so census takers ods During the Abdulaziz 2010 census, renters now avoided.” offered Mexico blocked ganeh cant alsoor told state television rgy Minister Prince

Census takers worry that apartment renters were undercounted

& CREMATORY 522 North 2nd St. P.O. Box 7 Albemarle, NC 28002 Phone 704-983-1188

460 Branchview Dr. NE P.O. Box 367 Concord, NC 28026 Phone 704-786-1161

13575 Broadway Ave. P.O. Box 100 Midland, NC 28107 Phone 704-888-5571

www.hartsellfh.com

12115 University City Blvd.

P.O. Box 219 Harrisburg, NC 28075 Phone 704-247-1722

Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

7

obituaries Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, April 15, 2020

7

‘Superman,’ ‘Lethal Weapon’ obituaries director Richard Donner dies

Weapon.” The film was a smash, spawning several sequels and a TV show.

“He was a master storyteller,” Gibson said in 2017. “He was humble. He had this sign over this door that said ‘Leave your ego at the door,’ and there was no ego around him. It was hard for me to walk into the room, actuBy Lindsey Bahr ally.”

The Associated Press Donner followed up with the Bill Murray hit “Scrooged” in FILMMAKER RICHARD 1988 and “Lethal Weapon 2” the DONNER, who helped create the next year. modern superhero blockbuster Born Richard Donald with 1978’s “Superman” and masSchwartzberg on April 24, tered the buddy comedy with the 1930, in New York City, Donner “Lethal Weapon” franchise, has changed his name when he set died. He was 91. out to become an actor.

Donner died Monday in Los “I would have been an out-ofAngeles, his family said through Jason Tony Merle Danny work actor now if it wouldn’t have a spokesperson. been for the Luther great director Marty Donner gainedEfird fame with his Smith Helms Ritt,” Donner said. first feature, 1976’s “The Omen.”

ASON EUGENE “GENE” ONY MONROE SMITH, 72, of ERLE LORRAINE AUSTIN PAUL LUTHER, He ANNY recalled Ritt telling him, A then-unheard-of offer followed: EFIRD, 94, went home to be with Rockwell, NC, went to be with HELMS, 72, of Marshville, of Norwood, passed away “Your 65, problem is you can’t take $1 million to direct 1978’s “Superhis Lord Tuesday, April 7, 2020, at his his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ passed away Wednesday, April 8, unexpectedly Thursday, April 9, direction,” and suggesting he man.” home Donner channeled his love in Stanfield. on Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 2020 at McWhorter Hospice House 2020 at Atrium Health Stanly in pursue directing instead. of the character into making the Gene was born October 9, 1925, in his home surrounded by family. A in Monroe.

Albemarle.

“And because hangfilm, repeatedly facing offlate with Cabarrus County to the Simeon private family service will be held.

Lorraine was born April 28, 1947 Mr. Luther wasI’d bornbeen March 27, ing with him a little bit, he said, producers over the need for speJason Efird and the late Sarah Ella Online condolences can be made at in Monroe to the late Homer David 1955 to the late Robert Fulton and ‘You’re assistant cial effects convince Burris that Efird.would In addition to his stanlyfuneralhome.com Austin and Jewell Delphia-Jane Helenmy Tucker Luther. on the next show,’ andwas that turned mywife, life the audience a superhero parents, hethat was preceded in death by Tony was born August 11, 1947 Austin. She was also preceded in Danny survived by his around,” DonnerLuther said.of“I never wife,fly.

Jewell Efird;role, sisters, in Stanly County to the late Pearlie death by brothers, A.D. and Teddy Denise Burleson Norwood; could his really In Little the title Mary Lambert, Fannie Almond, Asbury Smith and Emmer Lee Austin; and sister, Joy Austin. sons, Jeremy (Karen) Luther and went back to acting.”

Donner cast Christopher Reeve, Minnie Furr, Wilma Smith. He was the son in law of Pat The family will receive friends Jody Luther; step-sons, He started workingBryan in televiwho was associated withBurleson “Super-and Aileen andlife. brothers, Homer and Mick Cagle where he worked at from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, Friday, Whitley and Gregg (Anita)ofWhitley; sion, directing episodes “Gilliman” for theHuskey; rest of his Efird, Getus Efird and the fish house for many years until April 10, 2020 at Hartsell Funeral Grandchildren, DanielMason” Luther and gan’s Island,” “Perry and By the 21st century, theWayne genreEfird, Sr. he opened Anchor House Seafood Home of Albemarle. The funeral Hunter Zado, Zone.” as well as his brother, “The Twilight was dominating the box office in private funeral service will be in Rockwell. He and his wife Becky service will be at 11:00 am on Bob Luther Jr (Lorena), uncle Jack Away from the camera, Donthe U.S.Aand thriving overseas. held on Saturday, April 11, 2020 owned and operated Anchor House Saturday at Pleasant Hill Baptist Luther and several other loved nieces, ner was known for his extraorThe heads of Marvel Studios and at Love’s Grove United Methodist for 25 years before retiring in 2009.

Church in Marshville, officiated nephews and cousins. dinary kindness generosity, DC Entertainment—producers Church Cemetery in Stanfieldof Mr. Smith was a charter member

by Rev. John Miller and Rev. Leon Danny recentlyand retired from covering one most of today’sbysuperhero fare— officiated Rev. Jim White.

Burial and deacon at Open Door Baptist Whitley. She will lie in state for 30 Charlottecollege Pipe andtuition Foundryfor after “Goonies” star (Jeff Cohen, now both worked for Donner when will follow at the Love’s Grove United Church in Richfield. He loved the minutes prior to the service. She will a dedicated 37 years and worked entertainment attorney) and they were starting outCemetery, in HollyMethodist Church 4360 Lord and his family abundantly. Tony be laid to rest in the church cemetery. anthere with his sons and several other paying rehab for wood. Polk Ford Road, Stanfield. was a wonderful husband, father, and She is survived by her beloved friendsfor andlife-saving family members. another (actor Feldman).

StevenSurvivors Spielberg, proincludewho son Gerald grandfather and could fix anything husband of 47 years, Paul Helms Danny lovedCorey spending time at (Gail) Efird wrote of Albemarle; he put his hands on. of the home; son, Alex (Deanna) his lake house his family and Donner toldwith The Associated duced Wayne “The Goonies,” in a daughter Efirdhad (Mark) Hartsell Mr. Smith is survived by his wife Helms of Pageland; daughter, Paula Press friends well as vacationing with his in aas1985 interview that the statement that,Lisa “Dick such a of Stanfield; granddaughters, Becky Cagle Smith of the home, (Cristin Brandt) Helms of Mint Hill; young family.cast Danny and Denise helped him enjoyed through powerful command of his movKelly Efird Lauren sons Walter Smith and Robbie grandchildren, Mason, Grant, and thelistening to beach music and loved to production. ies, and was soBarbee giftedand across so greatSmith; daughter Kayla Henderson Raegan Helms; brothers, Boyce, shag dancehad everykids chance “I never of they my could own, many Hartsell genres. (Justin) I can’tCrump; believeand he’s CHARLIE RIEDEL |and INVISION VIA AP grandsons, Ian Patrick Simmons and (Brandon); grandchildren Danielle, Royce, Tim Austin; sisters, get.

He was an amazing father, loving and they became like my family,” gone, but his husky, hearty laugh Elliot Jacob Simmons.

Dustin, and Steele Smith, Keaton Patricia Mullis, and Angel Tarleton. grandfather and great friend to will stay with me always.”

Richard Donner arrives at a tribute event in his honor on June 7, he said.

Memorials may be made to Love’s and Ella Henderson; brother David Memorials may be made to the many. He will never be forgotten.

Along with his wife, DonDonner “Superman” 2017,Smith; in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Grovefollowed United Methodist Church, PO sisters Kay Kriechbaum, Alzheimer’s Association, 4600 Park A celebration of life will be was also a the passionate with an “Inside NC Moves,” in Boxindie, 276, Stanfield, 28163-0276.

Karen Stevenson, Ruby Eudy, and Rd., Suite 250, Charlotte, NC 28209. ner announced once current animal advocate, rescuing dozens 1980 and “The Toy” with RichDorothy Smith (Nick).

COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. overFuneral the years and than $1 billion in box ard Pryor in 1982. In 1985, he ed moreHe is preceded in death by of- ing moviemaking from Richard of dogs Hartsell Home of fightagainst isthe captivity of killer made the kids’ adventure classic fice receipts. brothers Joe Smith, Wayne Smith, Donner and falling in love with ingAlbemarle serving the Luther She said Smith, a director’s personali“The Goonies” and “Ladyhawke,” Claude Wade Smith, Robert him has made me personally and whales. family.

Though a few of Donner’s films Smith, and sister Morris. professionally a better producer reveals itselfMary onscreen. which would introduce him to his ty often Memorial contributions can be and a happier, loving person,” she generated Oscar nominations, he “If you look at Dick’s movies, future wife, Lauren Shuler Donto larger Open Door Church continued, calling “Ladyhawke” was never nominated. But he got Dick made is fun, thanBaptist life, loud, ner. at 44563 Richfield, NC his chance to thank the academy their “personal love story.” with Hwy a big52,mushy heart,” The two married the follow- strong, to Hospice & Palliative said. or“His confidence, hisCare “I’m the hawk and he’s the — and his many friends and coling year. In 1993, they founded she 28137 of Cabarrus at 5003 Hospicewolf,” she said. leagues — at that tribute. hisCounty humor are what The Donners Company, which fearlessness, Kannapolis, NC 28081.

“This industry is my friend, In 1987, Donner cast Mel Gibpeople adore him and has has produced such hits as “Dead- makeLane, pool,” “The Wolverine” and the wrapped around me like a pro- son and Danny Glover as a mis- and it’s been the greatest gift in matched police pair in the bud- the world to me,” Donner said.

“X-Men” franchise. Adjusted for tective cloak.

“The combination of learn- dy-cop action film “Lethal “You guys are all my Oscar.” inflation, his films have generat-

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Pauline Tucker

AULINE ELIZABETH ALMOND TUCKER, 98, passed away peacefully at Trinity Place, Albemarle, NC on April 11, 2020.

Pauline was born on March 22, 1922 in Cabarrus County, NC to the late John Richard Almond and Alice Ada Ann Lambert Almond.

She is survived by her three daughters, Gay Michel (Jack), Oak Island, NC; Pamela Rushing (Foreman), Oakboro, NC; Kathy Hunt (Marc), Albemarle, NC; her son, Chris Tucker (Chris Lear), Washington, DC. She will be greatly missed by her five grandchildren, Heather Rushing Chaney (Shannon), Michael Rushing, Elizabeth Michel Hartzog (Craig), Jack Michel, Jr. (Jenn), and Woody Hunt as well as seven great-grandchildren. She also leaves behind cherished nieces and nephews.

The family expresses its sincere gratitude to the staff and caregivers at Trinity Place for the care they provided Pauline.

A private graveside service will be held on Monday, April 13, 2020. A celebration of Pauline’s life and legacy will be held this summer.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the BrightFocus Foundation at www. brightfocus.org.

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Shirley Haire

HIRLEY MAE HAIRE, 73, of Albemarle passed away on April 11, 2020 at Atrium Health Stanly. The family will hold a private graveside service for Mrs. Haire.

Shirley was born December 12, 1946 in Washington, DC to the late Charles Richard Bateman and Elizabeth Mae Mulligan Bateman.

Shirley is survived by her husband of 30 years Vaughn Smith of Albemarle; sister Sandra Painter of Gainesville, VA; half-brother Robert Bateman of Stevensville, MD; step-children Heather Smith of Jacksonville, FL and David Smith of New London, NC; 4 step-grandchildren; nieces Cyndi Hentschel of Leesburg, VA and Cheryl Hardy of Aylett, VA; 16 grandnieces and nephews; and Gus the dog. Stanly Funeral and Cremation Care of Albemarle is serving the Haire family.

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Linda Hatley

INDA TUCKER HATLEY, 69, of Albemarle, passed away Monday, April 13, 2020.

Linda was born September 18, 1950 in Concord to the late Jacob and Claris Tucker. She was also preceded in death by her brother, Terry Lee Tucker, and her twin sister, Brenda Tucker Strickland. We know Brenda and Linda are in Heaven watching over us and laughing.

Linda was a loving mother, sister, and “Nana.” She was a very giving and loving person. Linda would always do anything she could for others, especially her family. She enjoyed working at FastShop #5, Locust. Linda will be forever loved and greatly missed.

Survivors include her son, Alan Hatley and wife, Angela, of Albemarle; brother, Ronnie Tucker and wife, Linda, of Midland; granddaughter, Leslie Hatley; 1 niece; and 2 nephews.

The family will receive friends from 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Thursday, April 16, 2020 at Hartsell Funeral Home in Albemarle. Linda will be laid to rest during a private committal service at Bethel United Methodist Church, Midland.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a memorial donation to Bethel UMC, 12700 Idlebrook Rd, Midland, NC 28107.

Holden Banemanivong

HOLDEN DRAKE Jerry BANEMANIVONG, of Albemarle, passed away Tuesday, Fincher June 29, 2021 at Atrium Health ERRY passed from MainFINCHER in Charlotte. this life on April 3, born 2020 at 8:05 Holden was February 10, pm. He was surrounded by his family 2021 to Smith and LeighAnne and holding the hand of the love of Banemanivong. his life.

Jerry is preceded in death survived his by threeHolden siblings,is two brothers,by Billy parents, Smith and LeighAnne Gilbert Fincher, and Larry Richard Banemanivong; brother, Weston Fincher, and one sister, Barbra Joyce Banemanivong; sister, Gracelyn Moore.

Banemanivong; He is survived by his grandparents, wife, Eleanor KateSengdara Fincher of and the home, daughter, Youan Cindy Fincher Jacobs ofLarry Wingate Banemanivong, and Linda NC.,Litaker. son and daughter in law, Tommy (Tiffany) Fincher of New London The family would like to extend NC.,aStep Children, Jimmy (Lisa) special thanks to the NICU staff Lanier of Locust NC, Wanda (Bob) at Levine’s Children’s Hospital Krimminger of Locust NC., Eric and the Ronald McDonald House (Sharon) Lanier of Charlotte NC., of Charlotte. (Gera) Whitson Grandchildren-Trey Hartsell Funeral Home of Midland, Step-grandchildren, of Albemarle is serving the Zach (Brittney) Washington, Aaron Banemanivong family.

Online (Kinsey) Washington, Caleb (Nayeli) condolences may be Setzer, made at Washington, Beth (Robbie) www.hartsellfh.com Matthew ( April ) Wallace, Step

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great-grandchildren, Britlyn-Eve Washington, Robert Setzer, George (Sara) Setzer, Tracy (Rob) Setzer Bumgardener, Katie Underwood, Andrew Underwood, Step great great grandchild, Waylon George Setzer and brother Donald Lewis Fincher of Albemarle, NC. Jerry Fincher will be laid to rest on Wednesday April 8,2020 at 11:00 am at Canton Baptist Church. Anyone interested in attending, please RSVP at 704-796-2412. Dr. Phil McCray and Pastor Tommy Fincher will officiate.

Doris Mullis DORIS ANN MULLIS, 76, of Oakboro passed away Wednesday, June 30, 2021.

Born October 9, 1944 in Stanly County, NC she was the daughter of the late Fred Love and Dallie Blake Love. She was a caregiver and was a member of Red Cross Baptist Church. She dearly loved her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

She was married to the late Thomas “Bud” Mullis. Survivors include her son Aubrey Mullis of Oakboro and daughter Lori Mullis of Oakboro, 2 sisters Nellie Drye of Stanfield, Beatrice Blackwelder of Stanfield, and a brother, J. D. Love of Georgeville, 3 grandchildren, Cole Mullis, Jessica Lynch, and Elizabeth Goodwin, and 4 great-grandchildren, Devin Bent, Trey Lynch, Marley Dye, and Hunter Dye.

Celebrate the life of your loved ones. Submit obituaries and death Celebrate the life of your loved notices to be published in SCJ at ones. Submit obituaries and death notices to be published in obits@stanlyjournal.com

SCJ at obits@stanlyjournal.com

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Southern Piedmont Cremation Services provides a basic cremation service for families who have experienced the loss of a loved one and do not desire a traditional funeral or farewell ceremony.

When your loved one passes simply call our office and our professional team will come as quickly as possible and bring your loved one into our care.

Phone: 704-985-4851

Fax: 704-550-5508

Email: care@spcremation.com

8

Stanly County Journal for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

STATE & NATION

Microsoft exec: Targeting of Americans’ records ‘routine’

By Erick Tucker The Associated Press WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony last week by a senior executive at the technology company.

Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.

“Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress

MARK LENNIHAN | AP PHOTO

This May 6, 2021 photo shows a sign for Microsoft offices in New York. Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year. That’s according to congressional testimony being given Wednesday, June 30, by a senior executive at the technology company. and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.

Since then, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, called for an end to the overuse of secret gag orders, arguing in a Washington

Post opinion piece that “prosecutors too often are exploiting technology to abuse our fundamental freedoms.” Attorney General Merrick Garland, meanwhile, has said the Justice Department will abandon its practice of seizing reporter records and will formalize that stance soon.

Burt is among the witnesses at

a Judiciary Committee hearing about potential legislative solutions to intrusive leak investigations.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in opening remarks at the hearing that the Justice Department took advantage of outdated policies on digital data searches to target journalists and others in leak investigations. The New York Democrat said that reforms are needed now to guard against future overreach by federal prosecutors — an idea also expressed by Republicans on the committee.

“We cannot trust the department to police itself,” Nadler said.

Burt said that while the revelation that federal prosecutors had sought data about journalists and political figures was shocking to many Americans, the scope of surveillance is much broader. He criticized prosecutors for reflexively seeking secrecy through boilerplate requests that “enable law enforcement to just simply assert a conclusion that a secrecy order is necessary.”

Burt said that while Microsoft Corp. does cooperate with law enforcement on a broad range of criminal and national security investigations, it often challenges surveillance that it sees as unnec-

essary, resulting at times in advance notice to the account being targeted.

Among the organizations weighing in at the hearing was The Associated Press, which called on Congress to act to protect journalists’ ability to promise confidentiality to their sources. Reporters must have prior notice and the ability to challenge a prosecutor’s efforts to seize data, said a statement submitted by Karen Kaiser, AP’s general counsel.

“It is essential that reporters be able to credibly promise confidentially to ensure the public has the information needed to hold its government accountable and to help government agencies and officials function more effectively and with integrity,” Kaiser said.

As possible solutions, Burt said, the government should end indefinite secrecy orders and should also be required to notify the target of the data demand once the secrecy order has expired.

Just this week, he said, prosecutors sought a blanket gag order affecting the government of a major U.S. city for a Microsoft data request targeting a single employee there.

“Without reform, abuses will continue to occur and they will occur in the dark,” Burt said.

MARK HUMPHREY | AP PHOTO

In this Aug. 7, 2019, file photo, the Kingston Fossil Plant smokestacks rise above the trees behind homes in Kingston, Tenn.

Tennessee Valley Authority considers replacing coal with gas

By Travis Loller The Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The nation’s largest public utility is looking at shutting down three of its five remaining coal-fired power plants, saying they are old and no longer practical. But despite President Joe Biden’s goal of a carbon-pollution-free energy sector by 2035, the Tennessee Valley Authority, an independent federal agency, is considering replacing the lost megawatts from coal with another carbon-producing fuel — natural gas.

At a public hearing this week on the proposed closure of the Kingston Fossil Plant, TVA Senior Manager of Enterprise Planning Jane Elliott stressed the fact that gas provides reliability and flexibility as a fuel that can be called upon at any hour of any day. Solar generates energy only about 25% of the time, Elliott said, so “you have to add more solar to get the same amount of energy from gas.”

Gas is also currently cheaper

than solar, Elliott said, although prices are falling and solar should become cheaper towards the end of the decade.

Samantha Gross, director of the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative, said reliability and flexibility are real considerations, but TVA already has lots of that with its current gas and hydroelectric plants. Any new gas plants will likely be around for decades, long past Biden’s 2035 goal to decarbonize.

“That’s important,” Gross said of the goal. “We’re fried if we don’t do it.”

Scientists have warned that failing to meet that target will only lead to more intense and more frequent extreme weather events, as well as droughts, floods and wildfires.

TVA’s Kingston and Cumberland plants together produce around 3,900 megawatts of electricity. The utility is not looking to replace electricity lost from the shut down of its smaller Bull Run plant, but for the other two, the

utility is studying three replacement alternatives. Two of them are different types of gas plants.

The third option is for renewables — most likely solar — plus storage.

The utility already has plans to add 10,000 megawatts of solar power to its system by 2035, but that won’t be a replacement for the coal plants. Utility spokesperson Scott Brooks said most of that will go to large industrial customers like Google that want to power their facilities with renewables.

Marilyn Brown is a professor of energy policy at Georgia Institute of Technology who served on the TVA board of directors from 20102017. She said what’s missing from TVA’s proposals is decreasing the need for new electrical generation altogether. That can be done through stronger investments in energy efficiency and demand response — which involves helping customers change their usage patterns to flatten peak demand periods.

Demand response can drop a load just as quickly as firing up

a gas turbine to meet that load, Brown said. “Why not help people control their thermostats and appliances when generation is in short supply?” As an example, she said, studies have found you can cycle off air conditioning for 17 minutes in an hour without any noticeable difference.

One challenge is that TVA does not sell electricity directly to homes. Instead, that’s done through 153 local power providers. But Brown said it’s a challenge they could overcome. Going all-in on gas would be a backwards solution, but “the risks are low, and they know how to do it,” Brown said. “The issue is getting the utility to move in a direction it’s not as familiar with.”

Meanwhile, critics say TVA already has failed to accurately weigh the environmental impacts of a separate proposal to add new gas turbines at its Paradise plant in Kentucky and Colbert plant in Alabama. TVA’s draft environmental impact statement states these additions will not negatively

affect greenhouse gas emissions or climate change because the utility is reducing emissions elsewhere in the system.

A group of seven environmental organizations has written to TVA, calling their analysis flawed and a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. “If building new gas-fired power plants does not negatively impact climate change, nothing does,” the letter states.

TVA President Jeff Lyash said earlier this year that the utility is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2035, compared to 2005 levels. He said they will not be able to meet the 100% reduction goal without technological advances in energy storage, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors.

The utility has its own aspirational goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Any final decision on whether to shut down the coal plants and what to replace them with will have to be approved by TVA’s board.

VOLUME 3 ISSUE 41 | WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2021

Twin City Herald

JOSE LUIS MAGANA | AP PHOTO

Celebrating America Fireworks explode over Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol, at the National Mall, during the Independence Day celebrations, in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, July 4, 2021.

WHAT’S HAPPENING Bystanders save child in near drowning Forsyth County Bystanders at an apartment complex’s pool in Lewisville acted quickly to help save a young girl who nearly drowned in an accident. The girl, whose name and age were not released, was playing in the shallow area of the pool last Wednesday when suddenly, other apartment residents at the pool saw her underwater and unresponsive. They pulled her from the water and performed CPR. Firefighters from Lewisville Fire Department Station 11 were less than a minute away and took over the life-saving efforts. The girl was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

MY FOX 8

Local company to host free tech program Forsyth County Sightsource, a company based in downtown Winston-Salem, is helping to prepare people for possible careers in tech industries. Interested people can begin signing up for the course, called Empower, which is scheduled to begin in August.

It’s an eight-week course to help prepare people for software development jobs. Anyone over age 18 with a high school diploma is eligible to take the courses. It will run from Aug. 2 to Sept. 24.

WXII

W-S woman dies in crash Forsyth County A Winston-Salem woman was killed in a crash in Greensboro that injured three other people.

Makieya Rae Smith, 20, of Winston-Salem was killed when the car she was riding in as a passenger went off the road and hit the Philip J. Weaver Education Center in Greensboro early Saturday morning. Another 20-yearold Winston-Salem woman and a third Winston-Salem woman around age 20 were also passengers and injured in the crash, as was the driver, a 22-year-old Greensboro woman. Alcohol and high speed were factors in the crash.

MY FOX 8

Forsyth Tech gives new high school grads free year of school Tuition, fees, books covered in new program available to class of 2021 TCH staff FORSYTH TECH offered a graduation present to everyone in North Carolina’s Class of 2021. The school announced that all graduates in the state will get a free year of education at their school, if they want it.

The school’s Class of 2021 College Commitment offers free tuition, fees and books to all new high school graduates.

Since most degree and certificate programs offered at Forsyth Tech are two-year programs, the College Commitment covers costs for half of a prospective student’s higher education.

The program builds on governor Roy Cooper’s Longleaf Grant program, which provides $2,800 to cover tuition costs at community colleges in the state.

“Thanks to the great leaders here at Forsyth Tech, and the combined use of state, federal and local funds, high school graduates who choose Forsyth Tech as their academic home for the next year or two will be able to attend for free,” Cooper said in video remarks at the school’s official announcement of the program.

Other state and local funds helped to support the offer, as did a donation by Truist for the Hope and Opportunity Scholarship.

“It’s certainly not every day that you hear a college creating a bold program together for students in a public-private partnership. As a parent myself, I can

only imagine the excitement that other parents might be feeling as they learn about this transformational chance for their graduating seniors to get their first year of college for free, right here in our community,” said vice chair of the Forsyth Tech Board of Trustees Paul Wiles.

In order to take advantage of the offer, new graduates need to be enrolled at Forsyth Tech at least half time, which means six or more credits per semester, and complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or the school’s alternative FAFSA form.

“We are not offering free college with stipulations. When we say any 2021 high school graduate, we mean anyone who graduates from any high school, including home schools, in North

“When we say any 2021 high school graduate, we mean anyone” Forsyth Tech president Janet Spriggs Carolina,” school president Janet Spriggs said.

The school hopes the program will help boost enrollment, currently at around 7,300, to over 8,000, which would top pre-pandemic levels. Spriggs said the school is also looking for ways to continue to offer the program for future years’ graduating classes, including finding partnerships with local companies.

Glazed over: Krispy Kreme rises 23.5% in Wall Street return The Associated Press INVESTORS, it turns out, were in the mood for donuts.

Shares of the Krispy Kreme chain returned to Wall Street and rose 23.5% Thursday, despite getting off to a bit of a lackluster start.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company known for its glazed doughnuts priced its initial public offering of 29.4 million shares at $17 a piece. That’s well below the $21 to $24 it was seeking. It raised $500 million and plans to use proceeds to pay down debt.

The stock trading on Nasdaq under the “DNUT” ticker symbol opened Thursday at $16.30 but then moved higher before finishing the day at $21.

The initial tepid reaction may have been an indication that Wall Street was unsure if a business selling doughnuts and coffee is the right pick when people have become increasingly health conscious.

Krispy Kreme announced in May that it was going to go pub-

lic for a second time. After initially going public in 2000, the company was purchased in a $1.35 billion deal by JAB Holding in 2016 and taken private.

The Luxembourg-based investment firm, also owned Keurig Green Mountain, Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Caribou Coffee as well as stakes in non-coffee based businesses such as bagel shop operator Einstein Noah, beauty products maker Coty and high-end shoe seller Jimmy Choo.

The company allowed Krispy Kreme to continue to be independently operated from its headquarters in Winston-Salem.

Krispy Kreme, which was founded in 1937, has more than 1,100 shops around the world, with about 300 of those in the U.S. Since then, the company has opened more than 100 international locations as well as 30 to 40 new domestic stores each year, remodeled existing stores, looked at ways to diversify its menu and moved its headquarters from Winston-Salem to Charlotte.

The chain operates in 30 coun-

MARK LENNIHAN | AP PHOTO

Krispy Kreme CEO Mike Tattersfield, center, applauds during the company's IPO at the Nasdaq Opening Bell, Thursday, July 1, 2021 in New York. tries. In the quarter that ended April 4, its revenue jumped 23% to $321.8 million, while its net loss narrowed to less than $1 million, from $10.9 million in the same period a year earlier.

The underwriters of the offering have a 30-day option to buy up

to an additional 4.4 million shares at the IPO price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

Krispy Kreme shares continued to be heavily traded on Friday, but the stock fell 8.9 percent, about a third of its Thursday gains and finishing the week at $19.12

Twin City Herald for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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♦ ALEXANDER, ERIC TYRONE was arrested on a charge of IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at 207 N GREEN ST on 7/4/2021 ♦ BAINES, COREY LAMONTE was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 2235 WAUGHTOWN ST on 7/4/2021 ♦ BALTAZAR, ANTHONY ROVAL was arrested on a charge of WEAPON -POSSESSION & DISCHARGE OF FIREARMS at 2599 THURMOND ST/W TWENTY-SIXTH ST on 7/4/2021 ♦ Banwo, Frances Shavon (F/41) Arrest on chrg of 1) Possession Control Substance Jail (F), 2) P/w/i/s/d Sched Iii (F), 3) Possession Control Substance Jail (F), and 4) Drug Paraphernalia (M), at 201 N Church St, Winstonsalem, NC, on 7/4/2021 15:20. ♦ COLON, CARLOS DANIEL was arrested on a charge of COMMUNICATE THREATS at 2841 TRENT ST on 7/5/2021 ♦ Cook, Demarco Markese (M/36) Arrest on chrg of 1) Poss Cocaine Fel (F), 2) Drug Paraphernalia (M), and 3) Probation Violation (F), at 2800 Indiana Av, Winstonsalem, NC, on 7/2/2021 15:12. ♦ Crosby, Dallas Vance (M/24) Arrest on chrg of Assaultpoint Gun, M (M), at 2013 W Academy St, Winston-salem, NC, on 7/1/2021 13:36. ♦ CROSSON, RAYMOND JAVON was arrested on a charge of P/W/I/S/D MARIJUANA at 199 W NORTHWEST BV/N TRADE ST on 7/3/2021 ♦ CRUZ, MOISES LOPEZ was arrested on a charge of

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OPINION | DAVID HARSANYI

Tucker Carlson says the NSA is spying on him.

Sadly, it’s plausible TUCKER CARLSON SAYS a “whistleblower” in the National Security Agency tipped him off that the agency was planning to leak emails and texts to get him off the air over a story he’s working on.

Sounds rather fantastical. We’ve seen no evidence or corroboration of the accusation.

My initial instinct should be to dismiss conspiratorial claims about domestic espionage. As it happens, though, I’ve been alive for the past two decades. And history tells us it is wholly conceivable that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies would spy on a television personality. They spy all the time. They do it illegally. They do it for partisan reasons. They do it to lawmakers. They do it to journalists.

It wasn’t that long ago when former President Barack Obama’s director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied to Congress about the agency’s snooping on American citizens. “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden in 2013. “No, sir,” Clapper said under oath, “ ... Not wittingly.” Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed this as a lie.

It was John Brennan’s CIA that ran an illicit spying operation against the United States Senate, with five agents breaking into Senate Intelligence Committee files. He then lied about it to lawmakers and the public.

When asked about the hacking, Brennan claimed that “nothing could be further from the truth. I mean we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would

do.” Do you think people who hack into Senate files — and get away with it — will have any ethical compunction about spying on a TV personality?

Obama also weaponized the NSA for partisan reasons, abusing its foreignintelligence-collection authority to spy on pro-Israel Jewish-American groups and lawmakers in connection with its Irandeal negotiations. It was also Obama’s FBI that fabricated FISA-warrant applications — 390 problems were found in 39 of the 42 applications, “including unverified, inaccurate, or inadequately supported facts, as well as typographical errors,” according to a subsequent inspector general’s report — to spy on the opposition campaign over trumped-up “collusion” charges that were largely propelled by a partisan oppo-research document.

Journalists? It was former Attorney General Eric Holder who invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News reporter, shopping a flimsy case to three judges before finding a pliant one that allowed him to name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The same Obama administration spied on more than 20 Associated Press phone lines. Who knows how many other journalist phone lines this happened to?

Former President Donald Trump’s Justice Department followed suit, collecting the phone records of Washington Post reporters, and tried to obtain email records in an effort to smoke out leakers. The Biden administration — staffed with many of the same people who had unmasked political opponents, though they had no genuine role

in counterintelligence operations — defended the Trump DOJ’s actions.

Not one person paid any real price for any of the actions above. The Brennans and Clappers of the world were rewarded for their corruption with lecterns on cable television, from which they proceeded to lecture American people about the importance of patriotism and integrity. And just as the specter of terrorism or “Russia!” gave agencies the justification for domestic spying, today, it seems, they have “white supremacy.”

Even as left-wing rioters and looters were active in American cities across the country in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security was writing reports claiming white supremacists were the most “persistent and lethal threat” in the United States. With the ginned-up, government-led hysteria about right-wing forces gathering to topple our democracy — and Carlson constantly being thrown in with that lot by liberals — is it not beyond the imagination that intelligence agencies would find a way to intercept a popular personality’s emails and texts while he’s working on a story?

Again, Carlson’s accusation may not amount to anything. I have no idea. The onus of proof is on him. But we have little reason to dismiss the possibility out of hand. After all, our intelligence agencies have spent decades abusing their power and corroding the public’s trust.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of the book “First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History With the Gun.”

DEATH NOTICES

WEEKLY CRIME LOG ♦ ABAD, LORENZO SOREQUE was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT-SIMPLE at 4412 S MAIN ST on 7/4/2021

MONDAY

IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at SB 421/NC 66 SOUTH_SB 421 RA on 7/3/2021 ♦ DAVIS, JEFFREY LYNN was arrested on a charge of OPEN BEER / WINE IN VEHICLE at 3179 PETERS CREEK PW on 7/4/2021

Arrest on chrg of 1) Order For Arrest (M), 2) Fail To Appear/ compl (M), 3) Fail To Appear/ compl (M), 4) Fail To Appear/ compl (M), and 5) Ofa-ftarobbery With Dangerous Weapon (M), at 201 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 6/30/2021 10:00.

♦ Davis, Tayshon Dangelo (M/25) Arrest on chrg of Possession Control Substance Jail (F), at 201 N Church St, Winston Salem, NC, on 7/3/2021 09:00.

♦ HUTCHINS, DONALD SETH was arrested on a charge of IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at 833 PRINCE EDWARD RD on 7/4/2021

♦ Dixon, Daniel Page (M/36) Arrest on chrg of 1) Breaking/larc-felony (F) and 2) Larceny After B&e (F), at 201 N Church St, Winstonsalem, NC, on 6/30/2021 10:30.

♦ Jones, John Tracy (M/47) Arrest on chrg of 1) Asslt On Off/st Emp (M), 2) Communicate Threats (M), and 3) Disorderly Conduct (M), at 2565 Lewisvilleclemmons Rd, Clemmons, NC, on 6/30/2021 11:19.

♦ FRYE, ASHLEY BROOKE was arrested on a charge of IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at NC 66 SOUTH/SB 421_NC 66 SOUTH RA on 7/3/2021

♦ JONES, MARILYN HERBIN was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT-SIMPLE at 2735 WAUGHTOWN ST on 7/4/2021

♦ GILLIARD, FRANKIE JOWAHSKI was arrested on a charge of WEAP-POSS BY FELON at 1500 SIXTEENTH AND ONE-HALF ST on 7/4/2021

♦ Khemlani, Shane Sunder (M/45) Arrest on chrg of 1) Child Abuse (M) and 2) Child Abuse (M), at 130 Robert West Rd, Kernersville, NC, on 7/1/2021 19:16.

♦ GOINS, DEANNA LOUISE was arrested on a charge of IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at 1499 NEW WALKERTOWN RD on 7/3/2021

♦ Manning, Gerald Ernest (M/48) Arrest on chrg of 1) Breaking/larc-felony (F) and 2) Larceny After B&e (F), at 201 N Church St, Winstonsalem, NC, on 7/2/2021 16:00.

♦ Goins, Kane Mayson (M/18) Arrest on chrg of Larcenyfelony, F (F), at 9275 Weigh Station Rd, Rural Hall, NC, on 7/1/2021 10:15. ♦ GRAGG, VEDER DALE was arrested on a charge of POSS COCAINE FEL at 2812 PIEDMONT CR on 7/4/2021 ♦ HENDERSON, EVERETTE LORENZA was arrested on a charge of POSS COCAINE FEL at 620 BURTON ST on 7/4/2021 ♦ HEVEROH, ERIC JAMES was arrested on a charge of PROBATION VIOLATION at 300 N SPRUCE ST on 7/3/2021 ♦ Huffin, Franklin (M/33)

♦ MARROW, CHARLES was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 619 ONTARIO ST on 7/3/2021 ♦ MCLAIN, CORRIE ANDERSON was arrested on a charge of FUGITIVE at 1522 N LIBERTY ST on 7/4/2021 ♦ MEDELSANCHEZ, MICHELLE DENISE was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT-SIMPLE at 5306 OAK RIDGE PL on 7/5/2021 ♦ Mertes, Timothy William (M/41) Arrest on chrg of Poss Stolen Goods (F), at 201 N Church St, Winstonsalem, NC, on 6/30/2021

13:40. ♦ MOORE, DOMONIQUE ADRELL was arrested on a charge of AFFRAY at 3799 OGBURN AV/AKRON DR on 7/3/2021 ♦ Pack, Joel Michael (M/40) Arrest on chrg of 1) Assault On Female (M) and 2) 2nd Degree Trespass (M), at 6204 Ramada Dr, Clemmons, NC, on 7/2/2021 20:43. ♦ POLLARD, ROBERT DENARD was arrested on a charge of LARCENY-FELONY at 911 ELMHURST ST on 7/3/2021 ♦ RAFAEL, ENSLY AZUCENA was arrested on a charge of IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at 700 SALISBURY RIDGE RD on 7/3/2021 ♦ RICHARDSON, LENNIE REGINALD was arrested on a charge of COMMUNICATE THREATS at 125 LINVILLE RD on 7/4/2021 ♦ Shannon, Warnetta Dorethea (F/33) Arrest on chrg of Possession Control Substance Jail (F), at 201 N Church St, Winston Salem, NC, on 7/4/2021 14:05. ♦ Smith, Dominique Rashad (M/26) Arrest on chrg of Robbery (F), at 1802 Water St, Greensboro, NC, on 7/2/2021 23:45. ♦ TWIGG, SHANNON LOUISE was arrested on a charge of 2ND DEGREE TRESPASS at 625 W SIXTH ST on 7/5/2021 ♦ WILLIAMS, AMONT RAJSHAAD was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 100 BLK MLKJR DR on 7/5/2021 ♦ YOUNG, TIMOTHY AARON was arrested on a charge of 2ND DEGREE TRESPASS at 715 W FIFTH ST on 7/5/2021

♦ William Henry Barker, Jr., 92, of Kernersville, died July 5, 2021. ♦ Ronald “Randy” Campbell, 69, of Colfax, died July 4, 2021. ♦ Frederick “Fred” Jackson Cumming, Jr., 86, of Salemtowne, died July 4, 2021. ♦ Cora Mae Kirkpatrick Daniels, 81, of Winston-Salem, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Gus (Konstantinos) James Floros, 99, of Winston-Salem, died July 2, 2021. ♦ Timothy “Tim” Ray Gordon, 61, of Winston-Salem, died July 1, 2021. ♦ Betty Josephine Cox Grogan, 92, of Winston-Salem, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Lydia Bell Holcomb Hauser, 89, of Forsyth County, died July 4, 2021. ♦ James “Butch” Forest Langley, 80, died June 30, 2021. ♦ James Dewitt Mathis, 96, of Advance, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Walter Lee Miles, 89, of WinstonSalem, died July 1, 2021. ♦ Peter Preston Page, 67, of Mt. Airy, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Colleen Sink Reed, 88, of Winston-Salem, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Howard Roosevelt Riddle, 86, of Marshall, died July 3, 2021. ♦ Donald Raeford Robertson, 87, of Winston-Salem, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Louise R. Rose, 94, died July 1, 2021. ♦ Arvid Leroy Rydberg, 85, of Kernersville, died July 3, 2021. ♦ Larry Davis Shelton, 72, of Pfafftown, died July 1, 2021. ♦ William Henry Shouse, 82, of Forsyth County, died July 4, 2021. ♦ Timothy William Southard, 64, of Winston-Salem, died June 30, 2021. ♦ Barbara Jeanette Tuttle, 54, of Forsyth County, died July 3, 2021.

Twin City Herald for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

3

SPORTS

SPONSORED BY

Seven states have laws that will go into effect July 1 that will set rules for name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes.

SIDELINE REPORT NFL

Lawrence signs $36.8M rookie contract with Jags Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback and No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence signed his four-year rookie contract Monday, clearing the way for him to attend the start of training camp in three weeks. Under the NFL’s rookie slotting system, Lawrence’s deal was projected to be worth $36.8 million and included a $24.1 million signing bonus. He will count $6.7 million against the salary cap in 2021. Lawrence went 34-2 at Clemson, recording the third-best winning percentage by a starting quarterback (minimum 30 starts) in college football since 1978.

NBA

Clippers’ Beverley suspended for a game next season for shoving Paul New York Patrick Beverley was suspended one game without pay by the NBA on Saturday after shoving Chris Paul in the back in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals. The Los Angeles Clippers guard will miss the first game of the 2021-22 regular season that he is eligible to play. Kiki VanDeWeghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, ruled that Beverley committed an unsportsmanlike act when he came up behind Paul and forcefully shoved him in the fourth quarter of last Wednesday’s game. Beverley drew a technical foul and was ejected.

PAUL SANCYA | AP PHOTO

Elliott learns to savor wins in season of growth The Cup Series’ defending champion got back to Victory Lane for his second win of the year

By Jenna Fryer The Associated Press CHASE ELLIOTT heard the roar of the crowd begging for more burnouts, and NASCAR’s most popular driver refused to disappoint his supporters.

He knew his tires couldn’t hold up for a second smoke show at Road America, but Elliott didn’t care following his seventh career road course victory in the first Cup race at the Wisconsin track since 1956.

There was no statement being made Sunday, and Elliott said he certainly does not resent the success of new teammate Kyle Larson.

The Cup Series’ reigning champion, so grouchy these days, has learned to savor the good times.

“When the day comes that I don’t appreciate it, I should probably go do something else,” Elliott said. “You have to enjoy these moments. They’re way too hard to get.

You don’t know if or when you’ll ever get another one. If the fans want a burnout, I’m going to give them a burnout.”

As the crowd of rabid Wisconsin racing fans roared its approval, Elliott burned down the tires on his Chevrolet then ran out of gas in a Fourth of July celebration.

He doesn’t know why the crowd adored him as it did because Elliott said he has no connection to the state.

Doesn’t matter.

Elliott is the three-time reigning most popular driver voted by fans, and last year he capped his meteor-like career with his first Cup title. Elliott is simply adored everywhere but too humble to see it as bright as the spotlight is shining on him right now.

It’s made it a strange year be-

“When the day comes that I don’t appreciate it, I should probably go do something else.”

Chase Elliott cause Larson is the top dog at Hendrick Motorsports right now.

Elliott re-fired the organization after its six-race winning streak was snapped last week, but Larson has carried the load.

Larson has a Cup-best four wins this year, not including the non-points $1 million All-Star race, and Elliott’s win Sunday at Road America was just his second of the season.

But there’s no jealousy, Elliott insisted.

“I think it’s great our company’s having success,” Elliott said. “It’s

making all of us better. It’s pushing us to be better.”

No current Cup driver is harder on himself when he doesn’t deliver, so Elliott with just two wins has been prickly. No one knows why he seems so over it all the time, but good friend Ryan Blaney said his reserved, private buddy has wallowed in defeats since they were kids.

“That hasn’t changed,” Blaney emphasized.

He brushed it off last week when asked by AP about his demeanor, saying he’s allowed bad moods.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who won 15 of his own most popular titles sandwiched between the Elliotts, said the 25-year-old champion is still settling into the spotlight.

“He’s pretty young and still has a lot to figure out,” Earnhardt said.

“I don’t expect him to be perfect. … He just does his own thing. It’s good enough for him, and like it or you don’t like it, it doesn’t really matter.”

Players compete during the 3-on-3 basketball test event at Aomi Urban Sports Park in Tokyo ahead of the Summer Olympics.

The blacktop basketball is a new addition to this year's Games.

TENNIS

Full Wimbledon crowds allowed from quarterfinals to finals Wimbledon, England Crowds at Wimbledon’s Centre Court and No. 1 Court can increase to 100% capacity, up from 50%, for the singles quarterfinals through the end of the tournament. The All England Club said Sunday that will mark “the first full outdoor stadiums at a sporting event” in Britain since the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year. Wimbledon was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the first time in 75 years that the oldest Grand Slam tennis tournament was not held.

COLLEGE SPORTS

Ex-Marshall great Pennington appointed to university board Huntington, W.Va. Former Marshall quarterback Chad Pennington has been appointed to the university’s Board of Governors. Gov. Jim Justice made the appointment last week, board Chairman Patrick Farrell announced. It must be confirmed by the West Virginia Senate. Pennington played at Marshall from 1995 to 1999 and was a Heisman Trophy finalist in his senior season. He led the Thundering Herd to a berth in the 1995 Division I-AA championship game, then won three straight MidAmerican Conference titles, including a 13-0 record in 1999. Pennington played 11 seasons in the NFL with the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins.

EUGENE HOSHIKO | AP PHOTO

3-on-3 basketball set to make Olympic debut The American men failed to qualify

By Eddie Pells The Associated Press THE LATEST STOP on the perennial search for the younger, attention-span-challenged audience for the Olympics might look familiar — the blacktop, and 3-on-3 basketball.

Not a pickup game, mind you.

Once the Olympics gets hold of this version of street hoops, it will only share a faint resemblance to anything happening on an urban playground.

For one, there will be no Americans — at least none playing in the men’s tournament. Another difference is that these games will have

refs, a scoreboard and each team gets one sub.

But some of it might look familiar. Games are first to 21 or whoever is winning after 10 minutes.

Teams have to clear the ball back to around the 3-point line after rebounds. Inside buckets are worth one and “3s” are worth two. The teams have coaches but they are for behind-the-scenes stuff and not allowed on the court.

In addition to trying to capture more young eyes, one of the IOC’s stated missions in bringing 3-on3 basketball to the big stage was to expose more of the world to the sport. In at least one respect, this mission has been accomplished.

Mongolia will bring one of the eight teams in the women’s field.

Mongolia is not a newcomer to

the Olympics, but it has always fielded competitors in individual sports, such as wrestling and boxing. This will be the first time the country has entered a team sport into the Summer Games.

It seemed a foregone conclusion that the U.S. would field a team in the sport it invented. Not to be on the men’s side.

Unlike the 5-on-5 version, a win at the World Cup for the U.S. in 2019 did not secure an Olympic spot. And the Americans, led by former Purdue star Robbie Hummel, suffered a stunning upset to the Netherlands in May that knocked them out of the race for one of the last Olympics spots. It means the world’s second-ranked team, behind Serbia, will be watching the sport’s Olympic debut from home.

France’s Laetitia Guapo, the top-ranked female player in the world, was still playing 5-on-5 in 2018.

“I wanted to have a backup,” she said.

It turns out, 3-on-3 fits her game

8 Teams that qualify in both the men’s and women’s 3-on-3 basketball tournaments quite nicely.

She calls the ranking as the world’s top player “a reward for my determination,” and says Tokyo could just be an appetizer. The next Olympics are in Paris, and the 25-year-old Guapo says she hasn’t ruled out a shot at the marathon, maybe at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

Teams will play round robin, sometimes two games a day, from July 24-27. The semifinals and finals all take place July 28. All the action is at Aomi Urban Sports Park, an outdoor venue with a covered half court. It’s also the home of the new sport of climbing.

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Twin City Herald for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

STATE & NATION

Microsoft exec: Targeting of Americans’ records ‘routine’

By Erick Tucker The Associated Press WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony last week by a senior executive at the technology company.

Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.

“Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.

Since then, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, called for an

MARK LENNIHAN | AP PHOTO

This May 6, 2021 photo shows a sign for Microsoft offices in New York. Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year. That's according to congressional testimony being given Wednesday, June 30, by a senior executive at the technology company. end to the overuse of secret gag orders, arguing in a Washington Post opinion piece that “prosecutors too often are exploiting technology to abuse our fundamental freedoms.” Attorney General Merrick Garland, meanwhile, has said the Justice Department will abandon its practice of seizing reporter records and will formalize that stance soon.

Burt is among the witnesses at a Judiciary Committee hearing

about potential legislative solutions to intrusive leak investigations.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in opening remarks at the hearing that the Justice Department took advantage of outdated policies on digital data searches to target journalists and others in leak investigations. The New York Democrat said that reforms are needed now to guard against future over-

reach by federal prosecutors — an idea also expressed by Republicans on the committee.

“We cannot trust the department to police itself,” Nadler said.

Burt said that while the revelation that federal prosecutors had sought data about journalists and political figures was shocking to many Americans, the scope of surveillance is much broader. He criticized prosecutors for reflexively seeking secrecy through boil-

erplate requests that “enable law enforcement to just simply assert a conclusion that a secrecy order is necessary.”

Burt said that while Microsoft Corp. does cooperate with law enforcement on a broad range of criminal and national security investigations, it often challenges surveillance that it sees as unnecessary, resulting at times in advance notice to the account being targeted.

Among the organizations weighing in at the hearing was The Associated Press, which called on Congress to act to protect journalists’ ability to promise confidentiality to their sources.

Reporters must have prior notice and the ability to challenge a prosecutor’s efforts to seize data, said a statement submitted by Karen Kaiser, AP’s general counsel.

“It is essential that reporters be able to credibly promise confidentially to ensure the public has the information needed to hold its government accountable and to help government agencies and officials function more effectively and with integrity,” Kaiser said.

As possible solutions, Burt said, the government should end indefinite secrecy orders and should also be required to notify the target of the data demand once the secrecy order has expired.

Just this week, he said, prosecutors sought a blanket gag order affecting the government of a major U.S. city for a Microsoft data request targeting a single employee there.

“Without reform, abuses will continue to occur and they will occur in the dark,” Burt said.

Tennessee Valley Authority considers replacing coal with gas

By Travis Loller The Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The nation’s largest public utility is looking at shutting down three of its five remaining coal-fired power plants, saying they are old and no longer practical. But despite President Joe Biden’s goal of a carbon-pollution-free energy sector by 2035, the Tennessee Valley Authority, an independent federal agency, is considering replacing the lost megawatts from coal with another carbon-producing fuel — natural gas.

At a public hearing this week on the proposed closure of the Kingston Fossil Plant, TVA Senior Manager of Enterprise Planning Jane Elliott stressed the fact that gas provides reliability and flexibility as a fuel that can be called upon at any hour of any day. Solar generates energy only about 25% of the time, Elliott said, so “you have to add more solar to get the same amount of energy from gas.”

Gas is also currently cheaper than solar, Elliott said, although prices are falling and solar should become cheaper towards the end of the decade.

Samantha Gross, director of the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative, said reliability and flexibility are real

MARK HUMPHREY | AP PHOTO

In this Aug. 7, 2019, file photo, the Kingston Fossil Plant smokestacks rise above the trees behind homes in Kingston, Tenn. considerations, but TVA already has lots of that with its current gas and hydroelectric plants. Any new gas plants will likely be around for decades, long past Biden’s 2035 goal to decarbonize.

“That’s important,” Gross said of the goal. “We’re fried if we don’t do it.”

Scientists have warned that failing to meet that target will only lead to more intense and more frequent extreme weather events, as well as droughts, floods and wildfires.

TVA’s Kingston and Cumberland plants together produce

around 3,900 megawatts of electricity. The utility is not looking to replace electricity lost from the shut down of its smaller Bull Run plant, but for the other two, the utility is studying three replacement alternatives. Two of them are different types of gas plants. The third option is for renewables — most likely solar — plus storage.

The utility already has plans to add 10,000 megawatts of solar power to its system by 2035, but that won’t be a replacement for the coal plants. Utility spokesperson Scott Brooks said most of that will go to large industrial custom-

ers like Google that want to power their facilities with renewables.

Marilyn Brown is a professor of energy policy at Georgia Institute of Technology who served on the TVA board of directors from 2010-2017. She said what’s missing from TVA’s proposals is decreasing the need for new electrical generation altogether. That can be done through stronger investments in energy efficiency and demand response — which involves helping customers change their usage patterns to flatten peak demand periods.

Demand response can drop a load just as quickly as firing up a gas turbine to meet that load, Brown said. “Why not help people control their thermostats and appliances when generation is in short supply?” As an example, she said, studies have found you can cycle off air conditioning for 17 minutes in an hour without any noticeable difference.

One challenge is that TVA does not sell electricity directly to homes. Instead, that’s done through 153 local power providers. But Brown said it’s a challenge they could overcome. Going all-in on gas would be a backwards solution, but “the risks are low, and they know how to do it,” Brown said. “The issue is getting the utility to move in a direction it’s not as

familiar with.”

Meanwhile, critics say TVA already has failed to accurately weigh the environmental impacts of a separate proposal to add new gas turbines at its Paradise plant in Kentucky and Colbert plant in Alabama. TVA’s draft environmental impact statement states these additions will not negatively affect greenhouse gas emissions or climate change because the utility is reducing emissions elsewhere in the system.

A group of seven environmental organizations has written to TVA, calling their analysis flawed and a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. “If building new gas-fired power plants does not negatively impact climate change, nothing does,” the letter states.

TVA President Jeff Lyash said earlier this year that the utility is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2035, compared to 2005 levels. He said they will not be able to meet the 100% reduction goal without technological advances in energy storage, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors.

The utility has its own aspirational goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Any final decision on whether to shut down the coal plants and what to replace them with will have to be approved by TVA’s board.

VOLUME 6 ISSUE 19 | WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2021 | RANDOLPHRECORD.COM

THE RANDOLPH COUNTY EDITION OF THE NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Randolph record

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Aaron Nixon drives a 5065 E John Deere tracker during the Millboro 4th of July Parade on John Brown Road in Millboro on July 3, 2021.

COUNTY NEWS County adopts $146-million budget The Randolph County Board of Commissioners adopted a fiscal year 2021-22 budget that increased county-wide spending by 8.7% from the prior year’s $134.4 million budget. The county’s property tax rate of 63.27 cents per $100 remained unchanged from the previous fiscal year.

Over 30% of county is vaccinated The Centers for Disease Control reported that 43,649 Randolph County residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Over 64% of the county’s citizens over 65 years of age are vaccinated. The CDC estimates that 47% of the total U.S. population is now vaccinated. In the past week, just 927 people were tested for COVID-19 in Randolph County, which includes those needing testing for travel.

There were 20 positive cases and no hospitalizations reported in the last week in Randolph County.

Zoo ends reservation requirement The N.C. Zoo ended the requirement for visitors to make reservations ahead of the 4th of July holiday weekend.

Reservations will no longer be required after July 1. The zoo will still require visitors who are not fully vaccinated to wear face coverings and to practice social distancing. When the zoo reopened in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, reservations were required to limit the number of visitors to the zoo, which is outside of Asheboro.

In recent months, the zoo has welcomed an elephant, a polar bear and 12 red-wolf pups.

New Trinity Middle School to open in the fall The opening of the new Trinity Middle School means the end of an era for one local school and a name change for another. When Wheatmore High School opened for the 2009-10, to alleviate overcrowding at Trinity High School, Braxton Craven School and Archdale-Trinity Middle School became the middle school feeders to both high schools. This August, Archdale-Trinity Middle School will become Wheatmore Middle School and Braxton Craven School will not reopen.

The name change to Wheatmore Middle will also mean the school colors will shift to the red and white of Wheatmore.

Celebrating freedom is a local tradition

By Matt Mercer North State Journal MILLBORO — Taking the scenic route home can take you through some interesting places in North Carolina. Taking the scenic route in 1999 led Tony Trogdon to start a Randolph County tradition that has lasted 22 years — an Independence Day parade.

Trogdon and his wife, Sondra, took a drive to Mount Airy in 1999 on the Fourth of July. They decided to take the long way home and found themselves in the middle of a parade in the town of Shoals in Surry County. The Trogdons

saw classic cars, trucks, bicycles, floats, and emergency vehicles parading along a rural route. After the experience, Tony was inspired to replicate the parade in his home territory of Millboro, an unincorporated area of Randolph County east of Randleman and north of Franklinville.

Trogdon said his goal was to start the parade in 2000: “I contacted DOT and asked them about blocking the road in Millboro for a parade and was told I could not do that.”

Undeterred, Trogdon contacted then-Sheriff Litchard Hurley who found a way to block a short stretch of road to accommodate

the first parade, which included about 35 participants. Now the parade spans three miles beginning at the Faith Temple Church then down Mack Linberry Road and Tom Brown Road ending at Bethany Methodist Church. This year’s parade included over 120 participants.

Over the next two decades, the parade has grown into a community event. One of the highlights each year has been a hotdog supper following the parade.

That tradition was put on hold last year due to the COVID-19 restrictions imposed by local and

“People were calling us wanting the parade to go on.”

Sondra Trogdon

See TRADITION, page 2

Retired Archdale mayor focused on doing ‘right things’ Stone steps down after almost 30 years in local government

By Bob Sutton Randolph Record ASHEBORO — Once Bert Stone became involved in Archdale’s local government, her passion grew to such a level that it was hard for her to turn away.

“It has been a really good run,” she said. “That people thought so much of me means so much. I’m just plain old ‘Bert.’”

She held the title of Archdale’s mayor for more than 20 years, elected to a series of two-year terms. The past few weeks have been particularly rewarding, as many have acknowledged her commitment to the community.

Stone announced her retirement in late April. Her last day in the position was June 30. The city council appointed mayor pro tem Lewis Dorsett to fill out the remainder of Stone’s term. The first city council meeting with the change in leadership is scheduled for July 27.

Stone’s time in city government spanned nearly three decades.

She spent eight years as a council member before the next step.

“I’ve been here ever since,” she said. “It has been good for me.”

Upon the retirement of J.J. Warren in 2000, the council selected Stone as mayor to finish the term. She became Archdale’s first female mayor.

Now 82, she said it felt like a good time to step away from that role.

“It’s just time,” she said. “Archdale is growing. There is a lot of things floating around.”

Given her longevity in the role, there were numerous special occasions and accomplishments while

BERT STONE, FILE PHOTO

she was directly involved in the city’s government.

Some came with a personal connection for Stone.

She said the formation of Creekside Park was something dear to her heart. What began on 17 acres of donated land has grown to more than 100 acres, something she refers to as a “crown jewel” for the community.

She was instrumental in the park’s development after the death of her first husband, Bruce Lance.

“He always had a vision of a park,” Stone said.

There also was the building of a new city hall, a facility that has provided the community with the means to handle a variety of business.

Stone, whose real name is Bertha Anne, became simply known as “Bert” years ago. She moved

from South Carolina (the Darlington and Florence area) to Archdale in the spring of 1969. Several weeks later, the community became incorporated in July of that year.

“I watched it grown from infancy,” Stone said.

She embraced the small-town feel that comes with living in Archdale. She said that could be a double-edged sword at times because pretty much all the residents know who she is.

Stone was married to her second husband, Joseph Stone, for 18 years. He died in 2012.

Randolph County commissioner Kenny Kidd said Stone oversaw an important cycle of activity in her community.

“In recent years the Archdale/ Trinity corner of the county has certainly been one of the larger

growing parts of our county,” Kidd said. “Under her watch, [the council] made sure we had some reasonable and responsible growth in that area.”

Kidd said from the county perspective that Stone served as an ideal role model as a leader. That’s reflected in Archdale.

“It’s a nice little gem for Randolph County,” Kidd said.

Stone said with the makeup of the council together for more than 15 years that the continuity had been good and there were strong working relationships formed.

Archdale’s territory is in Randolph County, with the exception of a small sliver in Guilford County.

“I had no idea I had such an impact on my community because I just felt I was doing the right things,” she said.

Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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ISSN: 2575-2278 North State Journal (USPS 20451) Publisher (ISSN 2471-1365) Neal Robbins

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Published each Wednesday by North State Media LLC 1550 N.C. Hwy 24/27 W, Design Editor Albemarle, Lauren RoseN.C. 28001

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Published each Wednesday (704) 269-8461

by North State Media, LLC INFO@STANLYJOURNAL.COM 3101 Industrial Dr., Suite 105 STANLYJOURNAL.COM Raleigh, N.C. 27609 TO SUBSCRIBE: 704-269-8461 online at nsjonline.com TOorSUBSCRIBE: 704-269-8461 or Annual online at nsjonline.com Subscription Price: $50.00 Periodicals Postage Paid at Raleigh, Annual Subscription Price: $50.00N.C. and at additional mailing offices.

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DEATH NOTICES

♦ Christopher Enos Burris, 40, of Oakboro,X DEATH NOTICES ♦ Inez Dalton Wall, 79, died June 26, 2021 at Randolph Hospital.

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

PHOTOS COURTESY ASHEBORO/RANDOLPH CHAMBER

♦ Williams, Denishia Lorren Crush Energy celebrated the opening of their new business at 1438 East Dixie Dr. in Asheboro on (B /F/30)Nutrition Arrest on chrg and of 1) Pwimsd Marijuana (F), 2) July 1. The store offers healthy shakes, energy teas, and health and wellness coaching. Attending the event were (left Maintain Veh/dwell/place Cs to right) Asheboro Mayor Pro Tem Walker Moffitt, Jacob Koontz, Aiden Koontz, Easton Johnson, owners Amy and (f) (F), 3) Possess X

Jamie Johnson, Logan Jones, Jillian Stern, Grace Runyon and Asheboro/Randolph Chamber Chair Kelly Heath.

♦ Betty Louise Russell, 92, of Denton died July 3, 2021 at Randolph Hospital.

Nutrition Xtreme celebrated the opening of their new location at 1017 South Fayetteville St. (Hillside Shopping Center) in Asheboro on June 29. They have been in business since 2013 and offer healthy smoothies, energy teas, and health and wellness coaching. Attending the event were (left to right) Susan Robbins, Asheboro/ Randolph Chamber Chair Kelly Heath, Asheboro City Councilmen Charlie Swiers and Walker Moffitt, owners Barb and Gary Nance, Audrey Macintosh, Stevie Robbins, Kimber Folden, Chamber ambassador Rhonda Ratcliffe, and Kristen Toscano.

♦ Edward Alvin Brown, 91, died July 4, 2021, in Raleigh. ♦ Margaret Donise Bain Fields, 89, of Pleasant Garden died June 27, 2021 at her home. ♦ Herman Wesley Garren, 74, of Asheboro, died July 3, 2021, at his home. ♦ William Lee Flowers, 54, of Sophia, died July 1, 2021, at High Point Medical Center.

See OBITS, page 7 ♦ Jeffrey Nicholas Johnson, 40, of Denton, died June 28, 2021. ♦ Nellie Mae Lucas Beane, 95, of Asheboro, died June 30, 2021, at Vidant Beaufort Hospital in Washington, NC.

WEEKLY CRIME LOG ♦ Sherman, Jeremy Dylan (W M, 18), Arrest on charge of sexual exploitation of a minor (2nd Degree) (F), at 6188 Quaker Dr, Pleasant Garden, on 06/29/2021 ♦ Toomes, Nicholas James (M, 28), Arrest on charge of Felony Larceny, at 300 Providence Ch Rd, Randleman, on 06/29/2021 ♦ Van Vliet, Kyle Hunter (M, 21), Arrest on charge of Communicating Threats (M), at 1001 Dusty Path Dr, Asheboro, on 6/29/2021 ♦ Brady, Christopher Leon (M, 40), Arrest on charge of Sexual Exploitation of a minor (F), at 513 Hunt Forest Ct, Pleasant Garden, on 06/28/2021

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♦ Moore, Norman Shane (M, 41), Arrest on charge of Breaking or Entering (M), Assault on a Female (M), and Simple Assault (M), at 6144 Muddy Creek Rd, Archdale, on 06/28/2021 ♦ Sherman, Jeremy Dylan (M, 18), Arrest on charge of Contributing to the Deliquency of a Juvenile (M) and Resisting a Public Officer (M), at 6188 Quaker Dr, Pleasant Garden, on 06/28/2021 ♦ Brundage, Harold James III (M, 37), Arrest on charge of Felony Possession of Cocaine, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia (M), and Driving with a revoked license (M), at 618 Uwharrie St, Asheboro, on 06/30/2021 ♦ Henderson, Michael Edward Jr. (M, 32), Arrest on charge of Simple Possession of Controlled Substance and Possession of Drug Parahernalia (M), at 4543 Walker Mill Rd, Sophia, on 06/30/2021

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

State House member Pat Hurley throws candle during the Millboro 4th of July Parade on John Brown Road in Millboro.

TRADITION from page 1 state governments. The Trogdons say they hope to bring that part of the event back next year.

Tony and Sondra are lifelong Randolph County residents. He graduated from Randleman High School in 1966, and she graduated from Eastern Randolph in 1969. The couple has been married for 51 years and have two sons and a daughter who help put the parade on each year.

The COVID-19 restrictions put a damper on the parade last year, but according to Sondra, rain has never stopped the event: “It got down to just a few days before July 4th last year, and people were calling us wanting the parade to go on.”

The couple decided to continue the tradition with some safety modifications, which continued this year.

“It is special because it is so much an old-fashioned Ameri-

can parade, where children and adults are welcome,” said state Rep. Pat Hurley, who has participated in the parade for many years. “People along the route on the two-lane roads are out in front of their homes standing or sitting with American flags everywhere.”

Hurley made sure to appeal to the children by throwing candy from a convertible during the parade.

The Trogdons still lead the

event but are happy the community members have embraced the event and are taking ownership of the parade. Sondra says both Bethany Church and Faith Temple open their fellowship halls to attendees, provide parking and help turn the hot-dog supper into a community covered-dish supper.

“This event was started for the people; it wasn’t for me,” said Tony. “I’ve always tried to help the children in my community.”

Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

OPINION Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor VISUAL VOICES

COLUMN | REP. TED BUDD

We must get North Carolina back to work

We simply cannot continue to pay people to stay home.

LAST MONTH, the National Federation of Independent Businesses reported that 46% of small businesses currently have unfilled job openings. Our country is still down 7.1 million jobs from our pre-lockdown boom, and 9.5 million jobs remain unfilled nationwide.

While well-intentioned, the federal government’s enhanced unemployment benefit of $300 extra dollars each week has incentivized workers to stay at home and not get back into the workforce. Essentially, these additional payments constitute a “stay-at-home bonus.”

Based on these facts, Republican governors across the U.S. have stopped accepting the extra bonus funding from the federal government. However, North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper refused this straightforward solution and intends to keep paying North Carolinians to stay home until September.

Given that Gov. Cooper will not end the additional unemployment payments altogether, I introduced a solution in Congress that would help. It’s called the Back to Work Bonus Act. Instead of paying folks a $300 per week bonus to stay home until September, my bill would end these payments and provide a $900 one-time bonus to a worker who gets back into the workforce before Aug. 14. The cost of the bonuses would be taken from already appropriated unemployment funding, creating a net-cost savings to the taxpayer. Bottom line: My proposal would convert the current stay-at-home bonus into a back-to-work bonus. If our governor won’t remove a bad incentive, I want to reverse it.

My bill is a specific solution to a specific problem. We simply cannot continue to pay people to stay home. For workers who stayed in the workforce throughout the pandemic, I want to cut their taxes so they get to keep more of their own hard-earned

money. I want to get the economy booming again like it was during the Trump years. I’m working to stop the overspending in Washington that causes inflation to soar and eat away at a family’s buying power. But above all, our No. 1 priority needs to be getting folks back to work as quickly as possible.

I’m proud to say that key North Carolina stakeholders have signed onto my plan. The North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association represents our state’s $27.3 billion hospitality industry. They endorsed my bill saying, “the labor shortage in North Carolina has reached critical levels and restaurants are having to shut their dining rooms for days, not due to restrictions but rather to lack of staff. The North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association supports Rep. Budd’s Back to Work Bonus Act to help encourage and incentivize as many people as possible to safely return to work.”

Greater Winston-Salem, Inc., a collaborative coalition of economic stakeholders in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, also endorsed the Back to Work Bonus, saying, “We believe this legislation can speed up our economic recovery, encourage individuals to reenter the workforce, and keep our region moving forward while ensuring that families have the resources they need.”

As summer heats up, we have to continue to ensure that economic prosperity is available to everyone, starting with getting folks back to work. All of the good intentions and government spending in the world cannot replace the productivity and dignity of a job. I will continue to do my part in Washington, D.C. to get more North Carolinians back on the job as quickly as possible.

Rep. Ted Budd represents the 13th Congressional District, which includes Randolph County.

COLUMN | DAVID HARSANYI

Tucker Carlson says the NSA is spying on him.

Sadly, it’s plausible When asked about the hacking, Brennan claimed that “nothing could be further from the truth.

I mean we wouldn’t do that.

I mean, that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

TUCKER CARLSON says a “whistleblower” in the National Security Agency tipped him off that the agency was planning to leak emails and texts to get him off the air over a story he’s working on. Sounds rather fantastical. We’ve seen no evidence or corroboration of the accusation. My initial instinct should be to dismiss conspiratorial claims about domestic espionage. As it happens, though, I’ve been alive for the past two decades. And history tells us it is wholly conceivable that intelligence and lawenforcement agencies would spy on a television personality. They spy all the time. They do it illegally. They do it for partisan reasons.

They do it to lawmakers. They do it to journalists.

It wasn’t that long ago when former President Barack Obama’s director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, famously lied to Congress about the agency’s snooping on American citizens. “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden in 2013. “No, sir,” Clapper said under oath, “ ... Not wittingly.” Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed this as a lie.

It was John Brennan’s CIA that ran an illicit spying operation against the United States Senate, with five agents breaking into Senate Intelligence Committee files. He then lied about it to lawmakers and the public. When asked about the hacking, Brennan claimed that “nothing could be further from the truth.

I mean we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the — you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.” Do you think people who hack into Senate files — and get away with it — will have any ethical compunction about spying on a TV personality?

Obama also weaponized the NSA for partisan reasons, abusing its foreign-intelligence-collection authority to spy on pro-Israel Jewish-American groups and lawmakers in connection with its Iran-deal negotiations. It was also Obama’s FBI that fabricated FISA-warrant applications — 390 problems were found in 39 of the 42 applications, “including unverified, inaccurate, or inadequately supported facts, as well as typographical errors,” according to a subsequent inspector general’s report — to spy on the opposition campaign over trumped-up “collusion” charges that were largely propelled by a partisan oppo-research document.

Journalists? It was former Attorney General Eric Holder

who invoked the Espionage Act to spy on a Fox News reporter, shopping a flimsy case to three judges before finding a pliant one that allowed him to name the reporter as a co-conspirator. The same Obama administration spied on more than 20 Associated Press phone lines. Who knows how many other journalist phone lines this happened to?

Former President Donald Trump’s Justice Department followed suit, collecting the phone records of Washington Post reporters, and tried to obtain email records in an effort to smoke out leakers.

The Biden administration — staffed with many of the same people who had unmasked political opponents, though they had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations — defended the Trump DOJ’s actions.

Not one person paid any real price for any of the actions above.

The Brennans and Clappers of the world were rewarded for their corruption with lecterns on cable television, from which they proceeded to lecture American people about the importance of patriotism and integrity. And just as the specter of terrorism or “Russia!” gave agencies the justification for domestic spying, today, it seems, they have “white supremacy.”

Even as left-wing rioters and looters were active in American cities across the country in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security was writing reports claiming white supremacists were the most “persistent and lethal threat” in the United States.

With the ginned-up, government-led hysteria about rightwing forces gathering to topple our democracy — and Carlson constantly being thrown in with that lot by liberals — is it beyond the imagination that intelligence agencies would find a way to intercept a popular personality’s emails and texts while he’s working on a story?

Again, Carlson’s accusation may not amount to anything. I have no idea. The onus of proof is on him. But we have little reason to dismiss the possibility out of hand. After all, our intelligence agencies have spent decades abusing their power and corroding the public’s trust.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of the book “First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History With the Gun.”

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Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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SPORTS Chase Elliott celebrates his victory in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

SIDELINE REPORT NFL

Lawrence signs $36.8M rookie contract with Jags Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback and No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence signed his four-year rookie contract Monday, clearing the way for him to attend the start of training camp in three weeks. Under the NFL’s rookie slotting system, Lawrence’s deal was projected to be worth $36.8 million and included a $24.1 million signing bonus. He will count $6.7 million against the salary cap in 2021. Lawrence went 34-2 at Clemson, recording the third-best winning percentage by a starting quarterback (minimum 30 starts) in college football since 1978.

NBA

Clippers’ Beverley suspended for a game next season for shoving Paul New York Patrick Beverley was suspended one game without pay by the NBA on Saturday after shoving Chris Paul in the back in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals. The Los Angeles Clippers guard will miss the first game of the 2021-22 regular season that he is eligible to play. Kiki VanDeWeghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, ruled that Beverley committed an unsportsmanlike act when he came up behind Paul and forcefully shoved him in the fourth quarter of last Wednesday’s game. Beverley drew a technical foul and was ejected.

AP PHOTO

Elliott learns to savor wins in season of growth The Cup Series’ defending champion got back to Victory Lane for his second win of the year

By Jenna Fryer The Associated Press CHASE ELLIOTT heard the roar of the crowd begging for more burnouts, and NASCAR’s most popular driver refused to disappoint his supporters.

He knew his tires couldn’t hold up for a second smoke show at Road America, but Elliott didn’t care following his seventh career road course victory in the first Cup race at the Wisconsin track since 1956.

There was no statement being made Sunday, and Elliott said he certainly does not resent the success of new teammate Kyle Larson.

The Cup Series’ reigning champion, so grouchy these days, has learned to savor the good times.

“When the day comes that I don’t appreciate it, I should probably go do something else,” Elliott said. “You have to enjoy these moments. They’re way too hard to get.

You don’t know if or when you’ll ever get another one. If the fans want a burnout, I’m going to give them a burnout.”

As the crowd of rabid Wisconsin racing fans roared its approval, Elliott burned down the tires on his Chevrolet then ran out of gas in a Fourth of July celebration.

He doesn’t know why the crowd adored him as it did because Elliott said he has no connection to the state.

Doesn’t matter.

Elliott is the three-time reigning most popular driver voted by fans, and last year he capped his meteor-like career with his first Cup title. Elliott is simply adored everywhere but too humble to see it as bright as the spotlight is shining on him right now.

It’s made it a strange year be-

“When the day comes that I don’t appreciate it, I should probably go do something else.”

Chase Elliott cause Larson is the top dog at Hendrick Motorsports right now.

Elliott re-fired the organization after its six-race winning streak was snapped last week, but Larson has carried the load.

Larson has a Cup-best four wins this year, not including the non-points $1 million All-Star race, and Elliott’s win Sunday at Road America was just his second of the season.

But there’s no jealousy, Elliott insisted.

“I think it’s great our company’s having success,” Elliott said. “It’s

making all of us better. It’s pushing us to be better.”

No current Cup driver is harder on himself when he doesn’t deliver, so Elliott with just two wins has been prickly. No one knows why he seems so over it all the time, but good friend Ryan Blaney said his reserved, private buddy has wallowed in defeats since they were kids.

“That hasn’t changed,” Blaney emphasized.

He brushed it off last week when asked by AP about his demeanor, saying he’s allowed bad moods.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who won 15 of his own most popular titles sandwiched between the Elliotts, said the 25-year-old champion is still settling into the spotlight.

“He’s pretty young and still has a lot to figure out,” Earnhardt said.

“I don’t expect him to be perfect. … He just does his own thing. It’s good enough for him, and like it or you don’t like it, it doesn’t really matter.”

Players compete during the 3-on-3 basketball test event at Aomi Urban Sports Park in Tokyo ahead of the Summer Olympics.

The blacktop basketball is a new addition to this year's Games.

TENNIS

Full Wimbledon crowds allowed from quarterfinals to finals Wimbledon, England Crowds at Wimbledon’s Centre Court and No. 1 Court can increase to 100% capacity, up from 50%, for the singles quarterfinals through the end of the tournament. The All England Club said Sunday that will mark “the first full outdoor stadiums at a sporting event” in Britain since the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year. Wimbledon was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the first time in 75 years that the oldest Grand Slam tennis tournament was not held.

COLLEGE SPORTS

Ex-Marshall great Pennington appointed to university board Huntington, W.Va. Former Marshall quarterback Chad Pennington has been appointed to the university’s Board of Governors. Gov. Jim Justice made the appointment last week, board Chairman Patrick Farrell announced. It must be confirmed by the West Virginia Senate. Pennington played at Marshall from 1995 to 1999 and was a Heisman Trophy finalist in his senior season. He led the Thundering Herd to a berth in the 1995 Division I-AA championship game, then won three straight MidAmerican Conference titles, including a 13-0 record in 1999. Pennington played 11 seasons in the NFL with the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins.

EUGENE HOSHIKO | AP PHOTO

3-on-3 basketball set to make Olympic debut The American men failed to qualify

By Eddie Pells The Associated Press THE LATEST STOP on the perennial search for the younger, attention-span-challenged audience for the Olympics might look familiar — the blacktop, and 3-on-3 basketball.

Not a pickup game, mind you.

Once the Olympics gets hold of this version of street hoops, it will only share a faint resemblance to anything happening on an urban playground.

For one, there will be no Americans — at least none playing in the men’s tournament. Another differ-

ence is that these games will have refs, a scoreboard and each team gets one sub.

But some of it might look familiar. Games are first to 21 or whoever is winning after 10 minutes.

Teams have to clear the ball back to around the 3-point line after rebounds. Inside buckets are worth one and “3s” are worth two. The teams have coaches but they are for behind-the-scenes stuff and not allowed on the court.

In addition to trying to capture more young eyes, one of the IOC’s stated missions in bringing 3-on3 basketball to the big stage was to expose more of the world to the sport. In at least one respect, this mission has been accomplished.

Mongolia will bring one of the eight teams in the women’s field.

Mongolia is not a newcomer to the Olympics, but it has always fielded competitors in individual sports, such as wrestling and boxing. This will be the first time the country has entered a team sport into the Summer Games.

It seemed a foregone conclusion that the U.S. would field a team in the sport it invented. Not to be on the men’s side.

Unlike the 5-on-5 version, a win at the World Cup for the U.S. in 2019 did not secure an Olympic spot. And the Americans, led by former Purdue star Robbie Hummel, suffered a stunning upset to the Netherlands in May that knocked them out of the race for one of the last Olympics spots. It means the world’s second-ranked team, behind Serbia, will be watching the sport’s Olympic debut from home.

France’s Laetitia Guapo, the top-ranked female player in the world, was still playing 5-on-5 in 2018.

“I wanted to have a backup,” she said.

8 Teams that qualify in both the men’s and women’s 3-on-3 basketball tournaments It turns out, 3-on-3 fits her game quite nicely.

She calls the ranking as the world’s top player “a reward for my determination,” and says Tokyo could just be an appetizer. The next Olympics are in Paris, and the 25-year-old Guapo says she hasn’t ruled out a shot at the marathon, maybe at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

Teams will play round robin, sometimes two games a day, from July 24-27. The semifinals and finals all take place July 28. All the action is at Aomi Urban Sports Park, an outdoor venue with a covered half court. It’s also the home of the new sport of climbing.

Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

White’s no-hitter propels Randleman to 2A state title The Tigers rally from a game 2 loss earlier in the day to earn the second state championship in school history

By Brett Friedlander North State Journal RYAN WHITE had only one thing in mind when he took the mound for the final inning of Saturday’s NCHSAA 2A championship series finale at Burlington Athletic Stadium.

Win the state title for his Randleman High School baseball

team.

Finishing off the no-hitter was just a bonus.

The junior right-hander struck out 11 and walked only two while pitching the Tigers to a 4-0 victory against Rutherfordton-Spindale Central that clinched the second state championship in school history.

White’s masterful performance provided an exclamation point to a long day that saw Randleman bounce back from a loss earlier in the day to win the decisive game of the best-of-three series.

“Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about it,” White said of his

no-hitter. “My goal was just to win the state championship and do the best I could.”

The Tigers (19-2) scored all their runs in the bottom of the third.

Kaden Ethier got things started with a one-out single to center before Owen Strickland walked and Trey Way loaded the bases with a single.

Hunter Atkins plated the first two runs with a single up the middle against R-S Central starter Hayden Wheeler before Brooks Brannon doubled in two more off reliever Kael Snethen.

That was all the offense White needed, as he retired the final nine

5 Hilltoppers in order over the final three innings.

He got the final out on a grounder to short, setting off a joyous dogpile in the middle of the diamond.

Randleman’s Kaden Ethier leaps on top of the dogpile after the final out of the Tigers’ 2A state championship clinching win “It was awesome,” Randleman coach Jake Smith said of White, whose no-hitter was the second one thrown in a state final series game at Burlington this year. Carter Boyd of Reagan High School threw his in Game 1 of the 4A series against Fuquay-Varina.

“I knew about the third or fourth inning, he was really feeling it,’ Smith said. “He had all three pitches working. He was commanding both sides of the plate. I’m so happy for him. He works his tail off every day and it paid off tonight.”

Randleman had a chance to close out the series earlier Saturday after winning Game 1 9-5 on Friday on the strength of a seven-run

third inning rally.

But despite a solid pitching performance from Way, R-S Central (17-3) forced the deciding game with a 2-1 victory. Snethen provided the winning margin with a tie-breaking home run to left in the bottom of the third.

The teams returned to the field several hours later for a game that ended just before midnight.

Tigers coach Smith credited his players for having the focus and stamina to endure the marathon, but added that the large contingent of Randleman fans also played a role in winning the school’s first title since 2011.

“It’s almost 12 o’clock and the stands are still full,” he said. “It means a lot. The support throughout the city is unbelievable. The kids know it and they really feed off it. It’s a special place.

“I’m so proud of these young men, all of them,” he said. “They’ve worked so hard. It’s been a crazy year from start-to-finish.”

PHOTOS BY PJ WARD-BROWN | RANDOLPH RECORD

Randleman’s Kaden Ethier leaps on top of the dogpile after the final out of the Tigers’ 2A state championship clinching win Saturday against R-S Central.

Randleman’s Hunter Atkins hits a base hit against Southwest Onslow in the bottom of the 5th inning during the NCHSAA 2A East 2nd round playoff game at Brookshire field in Randleman on June 17, 2021.

Randleman’s Ryan White delivers to the plate in the top of the seventh inning during his no-hitter against R-S Central in the 2A state championship series Saturday

Tokyo Olympics shaping up as TV-only event with few fans There are still unanswered questions remaining about how many spectators will be able to attend events just over two weeks before the Games begin The Associated Press TOKYO — The pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics are shaping up as a TV-only event with few spectators — if any — being allowed when they open in just over two weeks.

Japan’s Asahi newspaper, citing multiple unidentified government sources, said Tuesday the opening ceremony at the 68,000-seat National Stadium is likely to be limited to only VIP guests. The Olympics open on July 23.

The newspaper said other large venues are likely to have no spectators. Smaller venues are expected to allow some spectators.

Tokyo organizers and the International Olympic Committee are expected to announce the policy after a meeting likely on Thursday.

Two weeks ago, they announced that venues could be filled up to 50% capacity with a ceiling of 10,000. But surging virus numbers in Tokyo are forcing a rollback.

The IOC earns almost 75% of its income from TV rights and will still generate $3 billion to $4

billion in income from a television-only event.

Fans from abroad were banned months ago.

Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top government medical adviser, has said the least risky Olympics would be with no spectators. He also said it was “abnormal” to hold the Olympics during a pandemic.

Asahi said the no-spectators policy could apply to events that take place after 9 p.m. and to larger venues where 50% of capacity exceeds 5,000.

VIPS, sponsors and others dignitaries will be allowed to attend the opening ceremony and other venues, but the newspaper said these numbers could also be reduced. The newspaper said this “special category” was about 10,000 people.

Organizing committee chief executive Toshiro Muto said two weeks ago that VIPs would be allowed into venues — over and above any spectator cap — and were classified as “organizers” and not spectators.

“There are many stakeholders of the IOC and so forth. People related to key clients. And for those people they are regarded as organizers of the games and they are not spectators,” Muto said.

Yoshiro Mori, the former president of the organizing committee, in an interview with Japanese television TBS, said he suggested an Olympics without spectators to

CARAWAY SPEEDWAY

Bigger crowds at Caraway as season passes midpoint SHUJI KAJIYAMA | AP PHOTO

In this May 11, 2021, file photo, athletes compete in the men’s 400-meter T20 race during an athletics test event for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics Games at National Stadium in Tokyo. other politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

“I had said we should develop plans based on no spectators,” he said.

Mori, a former prime minister, was forced to step down five months ago as president of the organizing committee after he was criticized for making “inappropriate” comments about women.

About 11,000 Olympic athletes and 4,400 Paralympians will be entering Tokyo, along with tens of thousands of coaches, administrators, broadcasters and media.

The decision on spectators could come on the same day, Thursday, that IOC President Thomas Bach arrives in Tokyo.

Bach is to self-isolate for three days in a five-star Tokyo hotel.

The government is also expected this week to extend quasi-state of emergency measures which end on Sunday.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government on Tuesday reported 593 new coronavirus cases. It was the 17th straight day that cases were higher than they were a week earlier. On Saturday, the capital reported 716 new cases, the highest in five weeks.

$3-4B Estimated revenue generated by the IOC from TV rights

By Bob Sutton Randolph Record ASHEBORO — The racing season has sped past the midway mark at Caraway Speedway, and there are encouraging signs, general manager Darren Hackett said.

The ninth card of the season produced one of the bigger crowds of the year for Saturday night’s Rusty Harpe Memorial.

“It hit pretty much what I had in mind,” Hackett said of a turnout of about 3,000 spectators. “So far, I’m satisfied.”

What might not have been anticipated was the winner of the SMART Star race. That was Concord’s Gary Putnam, who claimed the 100-lap feature in the No. 77 car.

Putnam passed Caleb Heady with about a dozen laps remaining on his way to his first victory since 2015.

“It fits my driving style,” Putnam said of the track. “I’m just thankful for all the help and support my friends give me and my family.”

Putnam, who had the fastest time in qualifying, became the fifth different race winner in five events in the Southern Modified series this year. There were 17 cars entered.

Heady ended up second, followed by Joey Coulter, Brian Loftin and Jimmy Wallace.

John Smith was the leader at the halfway mark.

Other winners were Winston-Salem’s Dylan Ward (Late Models), Davidson’s James Civali (602 Modifieds) and Asheboro’s Johnny Baker (Mini Stocks).

Caraway has held nine events this year, with one other rained out. Saturday night’s car count was listed at 43 entrants. The next race night comes July 24 with the Hot Summer Clash.

Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

6

Baker becomes first female officer on sheriff’s Emergency Response Team Randolph Record staff ASHEBORO — The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office has a female on its Emergency Response Team for the first time in the unit’s history. Deputy Traci Baker completed a rigorous training-and-testing battery to join the team. The tests determined her ability serve high-risk search warrants, handle barricades and take part in other tactical exercises.

Members of the team are expected to attend advanced law enforcement training courses and become proficient with spe-

cialized equipment to deal with dangerous criminals and situations.

Baker began her career with the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office after she completed basic law enforcement training in 2009 in the detention center in the Transportation Division. She transferred to School Based Programs as a CARE instructor in September of 2009 and then to Evidence in August of 2016. Baker was then promoted to detective in November 2018, and in January of 2019, she transferred back to School Based Programs as a CARE instructor. Deputy

RANDOLPH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

Randolph County Sheriff deputy Traci Baker trains with the Emergency Response Team. Baker became the first female member of the team in July.

Baker is also the current Junior Sheriff’s Academy director.

“I am incredibly proud of Deputy Baker for her perseverance, dedication and motivation to

achieve this monumental goal,” said Sheriff Greg Seabolt.

Baker also became the first female firearms instructor in 2017.

She now teaches aspiring law en-

forcement recruits as the lead firearms instructor for Randolph Community College’s Basic Law Enforcement Training.

Baker’s path to the Emergency Response Team started in October 2020 when she competed for a spot on the team. Physical fitness testing and marksmanship were key elements of the initial competition. Current members of the team then voted to offer Deputy Baker a position.

From October 2020 until May 2021, Deputy Baker worked as a probationary member. On May 6, 2021, Deputy Baker completed her mandatory probationary period and became a permanent ERT operator.

“While she doesn’t think being a female on the Emergency Response Team makes her any different or special, Deputy Baker is glad to serve as motivation for other women in law enforcement,” said Lieutenant Eric Wilson, team commander.

“I honestly don’t even think about it because I’m not treated any differently as a female,” said Baker. “I wanted to challenge myself and become part of this team.”

ERIC RISBERG | AP PHOTO

Census taker Linda Rothfield looks up at an apartment building she was unable to access in San Francisco, on Wednesday, June 30, 2021.

Census takers worry that apartment renters were undercounted

By Margaret Stafford The Associated Press CENSUS TAKER Linda Rothfield’s government-issued iPhone kept directing her back to apartments in San Francisco that she already knew were vacant. When she did find apartments that were occupied, she was sometimes turned away because of the pandemic.

“I had a few landlords who said, ‘It’s COVID. You can’t come in,’” Rothfield said.

In a national headcount turned upside down by natural disasters, political turmoil and a deadly virus, apartment renters proved particularly hard to count last year.

That has former census takers and experts worried that the tally failed to account for all of them.

Overlooking people in the nation’s 44 million rental homes carries a potentially high price. Because the census helps determine how $1.5 trillion in federal money is spent each year, the lower numbers would mean less government help to pay for schools, roads and

medical services in those communities.

Around 36% of homes in the U.S. are occupied by renters, up from 33% during the last census a decade ago.

Renters typically have lower self-response rates than homeowners, so the government relies more on census takers knocking on their doors, said Jeri Green, a former senior adviser at the Census Bureau, who served as a consultant to the National Urban League during the 2020 census.

“This is a population that was at risk of being missed prior to COVID,” Green said. “We know it’s a challenge for the Census Bureau to accurately enumerate renters.”

During the 2010 census, renters were undercounted by 1.1%, but the rate was higher for some tenants. Black male renters between ages 30 and 49 were undercounted by 12.2%, and Hispanic male renters between ages 18 and 29 were undercounted by 8.6%, according to the Leadership Conference Education Fund.

Delays from the pandem-

ic caused the Census Bureau to eliminate a step ahead of the door-knocking phase where census supervisors meet with building managers or landlords to find out which apartments were vacant or occupied, so census takers won’t waste their time knocking on vacant units, the agency said in a statement.

“We were, however, able to inform the landlords or managers that enumerators would be visiting and asking for their cooperation prior to the start of the operation,” the statement said, adding that bureau officials were confident in the work of census takers.

In cases where renters did not respond to census questionnaires, or census takers were unable to interview them, the Census Bureau had to use other, less reliable methods to count them. Those methods included using administrative records from the Internal Revenue Service or the Social Security Administration, asking neighbors or postal workers for information or using a last-resort statistical technique.

Some 60% of census supervisors surveyed by the Governmental Accountability Office for a study on 2020 census operations reported that their census takers had difficulties completing caseloads because they were unable to get into apartment buildings.

“The pandemic made communication with the building managers difficult,” the GAO said in a report issued in March. “Specifically (supervisors) told us that enumerators were often turned away from accessing multi-unit buildings because of the pandemic.”

Nathan Bean, a census supervisor in Chicago, said that even when he was able to reach property managers by phone last summer, they would often say, “’We aren’t going to answer your calls. We aren’t going to answer your questions.’”

How much renters were undercounted, if they actually were missed, will not be known until December and early next year with the release of a survey that measures the accuracy of the count.

The Census Bureau already has

released 2020 census figures used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets, and those numbers showed how just a few dozen people being counted or overlooked made a big difference. If 89 more people had been tallied, New York would not have lost a congressional seat. If 26 people had been missed in Minnesota, the Gopher State would have lost a seat.

Numbers used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts will not be ready until August.

Jan Rice, who worked as a census taker in Denver, said she was frustrated that she was prohibited from contacting apartment managers on her own so she could get information on occupied units and remove vacant units from the database, sparing other census takers from wasting their time. When she tried it, her supervisor told her, “’Your job is to knock on doors,’” she said.

“It killed our productivity,” Rice said. “If you don’t count them correctly, you don’t give them a voice.”

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Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

7

obituaries

Rebecca Ann “Becky” Hamlet 1741-2021

Rebecca Thomas “Becky” Hamlet, age 79, of Asheboro died Sunday, July 4, 2021 at Randolph Hospice House.

Mrs. Hamlet was born July 9, 1941 the daughter of William and Alma Parks Thomas.

Becky was a native of Randolph County and a Seagrove High School graduate, Class of 1959.

She was a member of Fayetteville Street Baptist but had attended Pleasant Garden Baptist over the past several years. She worked as an administrator at Randolph Packing Company and she and her husband Don, were Antique collectors and dealers. She will be greatly missed.

She is survived by her husband: Don Hamlet; sons: Craig (Lisa) Hamlet of Asheboro, NC and Rex Hamlet of Asheboro, NC; grandson, Drew (Shannon) Hamlet; grandson, Cody (Ashley) Hamlet; grandson, Matthew Hamlet; granddaughter, Natalie Hamlet; grandson, Thomas Hamlet; great grandchildren, Lucas and Isaac.

The family will receive friends Thursday, July 8, 2021 from Noon-1:45PM at Pugh Funeral Home, 437 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro, NC. The funeral will follow Thursday at 2:00 PM in the Funeral Home Chapel, with Rev. Michael Barrett officiating. Burial will be in Randolph Memorial Park, Asheboro.

Memorials may be made to Pleasant Garden Baptist Church, 1415 Neelley Rd., Pleasant Garden, NC 27313.

Michael Eugene Trucks 1973 - 2021

Michael Eugene Trucks, age 47, of Asheboro died Saturday, July 3, 2021, at Randolph Hospice House in Asheboro.

Michael was born November 5, 1973, the son of Clement Trucks and Lenda Smith. He was a native of Montgomery County and a 1992 graduate of East Montgomery High School. He enjoyed riding motorcycles, fourwheelers and loved to fish. He had worked as a welder/fabricator for Alamance Iron Works of Greensboro for many years. He is preceded in death by a son: Christopher Adam Bullard.

Michael is survived by his wife: Misty (Bullard) Trucks, one daughter: Kaylen Trucks, father Clement Trucks, mother Lenda Smith (Billy), brother Wesley Trucks (Karen) and sister Jennifer Britt (Jody). Michael is also survived by several nieces and nephews as well as many close friends.

Family will receive friends on Tuesday, July 6, 2021, from 6:008:00pm at Pugh Funeral Home in Asheboro.

The funeral will take place at the Pugh Funeral Home Chapel, 437 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, at 11:00AM with Rev. Mike Greene and Rev. Tony Sedberry officiating. Burial will follow at Randolph Memorial Park, Asheboro.

In lieu of flowers, please make donations to Michael and Misty Trucks’ Go Fund Me account at https://gofund.me/23b553f0

Jennifer Louise Pugh

David Lee Thompson

1980 - 2021

1940 - 2021

Kathryn “Kathy” Needham

Jennifer Louise Pugh, age 40, of Asheboro passed away on Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital.

Jennifer was born in Asheboro on December 22, 1980 to Joe and Cathy Criscoe Pugh. She was preceded in death by her mother, Cathy Pugh, sons, Shawn and Trent Pugh, brother, Shawn Pugh, and sister, Christy Lanier.

Jennifer loved her dogs.

She is survived by her father, Joe Pugh of the home; brothers, Jody Pugh (Tammy) of Asheboro and Robbie Pugh (Amanda) of Asheboro; sister, Misty Lanier of Farmer; and grandparents, Louise and Wendell Martindale of Seagrove.

The family will receive friends on Saturday, July 3, 2021 from 1:30-3:00 pm at Pugh Funeral Home, 437 Sunset Avenue in Asheboro. Funeral services will follow on Saturday at 3:00 pm in the Pugh Funeral Home Chapel with Joe Loflin officiating.

Burial will be held in the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery.

David Lee Thompson, age 81, of Trinity went home to be with his Lord and Savior on Wednesday, June 30, 2021 at his home.

Mr. Thompson was born in Randolph County on June 23, 1940 to Henry and Aggie Tysinger Thompson and was a 1958 graduate of Asheboro High School. David served his country in the U.S. Army Reserves.

He was retired from Carson’s Furniture in Archdale and prior to that, he was a Manager with Oakwood Homes. David was a member of Landmark Baptist Church. He was a fun man who never met a stranger and he loved to work in his garden. In addition to his parents, David was preceded in death by his brother, Dempsey Thompson.

He is survived by his wife, Linda Chavis Thompson; daughter, Sherry Thompson Lewis (Michael) of Sophia; stepdaughter, Sharon Cook (Barry) of Asheboro; granddaughter, Hannah Sky Lewis; step granddaughter, Deandrea Russell; sisters, Loucille Russell of Greenville, Ruby Hill of Asheboro, Gladys Smith of Sophia, Faye Whitting (Jeff) of Greensboro, and Hellen Barrett (Frank) of Asheboro; and God children, Timmy and Michelle Sports both of Charlotte.

The family will receive friends on Sunday, July 4, 2021 from 2:00 - 4:00 pm at Landmark Baptist Church, 2816 Spoons Chapel Road in Asheboro. Funeral services will follow on Sunday at 4:00 pm at Landmark Baptist Church with Pastor Troy McBee and Rev. Frank Barrett officiating.

Burial will be held at the Smyrna Grove Community Church Cemetery.

Memorials may be made to Landmark Baptist Church, 2816 Spoons Chapel Rd., Asheboro, NC 27205.

Pugh Funeral Home in Asheboro is serving the Thompson family.

Kathryn ¨Kathy¨ Cherry Needham, age 66, of Asheboro, passed away Tuesday, June 29, surrounded by her family, in her home, after a brave battle with glioblastoma.

Kathy was born March 19, 1955 to the late Charlie Woolard Cherry and Ollie Hunt Cherry in Pitt County.

Kathy was a 1973 graduate of Asheboro High School, where she continued to be an avid Blue Comet supporter. She graduated college from Forsyth Technical Community College with a degree in Radiology Technician and spent many years devoted to healthcare. She retired from being the mammogram queen of Randolph Hospital. She was known for her ability to put patient’s at ease with her loving smile, laugh and gentle spirit.

Kathy was a lover of all people, never met a stranger, fed every stray cat and loved her family. She was well known for sending cards, and it was evident how many lives she touched through her card ministry by the thousands she received over the last 13 months.

Kathy is survived by her husband of 41 years, Larry Needham, of the home, daughters, Nikki Cherry Crofoot and husband Andy, Katie Lopienski and husband John, and her #1 caretaker, Suzanne Needham, all of Asheboro. Kathy is also survived by her three precious grandchildren who she was so proud of, Madison Arroyo, Judson Lopienski and Ruby Fern Crofoot, all of Asheboro. She is survived by her mother Ollie Hunt Cherry, of Clemmons, sisters, Karen Cherry Houston, of Asheboro, and Karol Cherry, of Clemmons.

Also survived by her special aunt JoAnn Hammer of Asheboro.

There will be a celebration of life for Kathy, on Saturday July 3 at 11 AM on the lawn at First United Methodist Church, 224 North Fayetteville Street Asheboro, with Reverend Lynda Ferguson and David Cash officiating. Please come dressed casual with a smile, as Kathy would’ve wanted, and bring a chair.

Memorials may be made in Kathy’s honor to Our Daily Bread Soup Kitchen, PO Box 682, Asheboro, NC 27204 or to the Asheboro City Schools Education Foundation (memo: scholarship fund in memory of Kathryn Cherry Needham) to be given to a student planning to major in the medical field, P.O Box 1103, Asheboro, NC 27204.

Pugh Funeral Home in Asheboro is serving the family.

Alvah “Jimmy” Ingold 1929 - 2021

Cecelia Story Walker 1946 - 2021

Cecelia Story Walker age 75, of Asheboro died Saturday, July 3, 2021, at her residence.

Mrs. Walker was born January 24, 1946, in Asheboro, the daughter of Cecil W. Story and Mary Slack Story.

Cecelia was a Special Education Teacher’s Assistant. A former Sunday School teacher, she was of the Baptist faith.

She is survived by her husband of 56 years: Rev. Calvin “Mitchell” Walker, one daughter: Terri Chaney of Lawrenceville, GA and four sons: Dennis (Kim) Walker, Scott (Sherry) Walker, and Andy (Jennifer) Walker all of Asheboro, NC and Matt Walker of San Diego, CA,, three sisters: Lurlene Millikan and Tina (Harold) Hopkins both of Asheboro, NC, and Lynn (Pat) Walker of Cary, NC, 9 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.

In addition to her parents, she is predeceased by her sister, Linda Baldwin and brother, Larry Story.

The funeral will be Wednesday, July 7th at 2:00 PM at the Pugh Funeral Home Chapel, 437 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro with Rev. Jeff Freeman officiating. Burial will follow in Grays Chapel United Methodist Church Cemetery, Franklinville. The family will receive friends 1 hour prior to the service at Pugh Funeral Home, Memorials may be made to Hospice of Randolph, 416 Vision Dr., Asheboro, NC 27203, www. hospiceofrandolph.org.

Martha Lena Yow Anderson 1940 - 2021

Martha Lena Yow Anderson, age 80, of Asheboro passed away on Thursday, July 1, 2021 at Randolph Hospice House.

Mrs. Anderson was born in Thomasville on July 5, 1940 to John and Helen Davis Yow. Martha grew up in Greensboro and was a 1958 graduate of Jamestown High School. She was retired from Farm Bureau Insurance Company. Martha was an active member of Providence Friends Meeting where she served as Treasurer for many years. In addition to her parents, Martha was preceded in death by her husband, William Anderson.

Martha was an artist and enjoyed dog shows and her flower gardens.

She is survived by her son, Corey Anderson (Wendy) of Asheboro; daughters, Connie A. Formosa (Jeff) of North Bergen, NJ and Christie A. Coutin (Pierre) of London, England; grandchildren, Luc and Marielle; brothers, John Yow, Jr. (Carol) of Liberty and Buck Yow (Amy) of Greensboro; and sister, Linda Golden of Brown Summit.

A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Memorials may be made to Providence Friends Meeting, 2054 Providence Church Road, Pleasant Garden, NC 27313 or Hospice of Randolph, 416 Vision Dr., Asheboro, NC 27203.

Pugh Funeral Home in Asheboro is serving the Anderson family.

Alvah Alvis Ingold, 91, of Asheboro, passed away at home on Saturday, July 3, 2021, surrounded by his family.

Graveside services will be conducted 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, July 7, 2021, at Oaklawn Cemetery with Dr. Billy Jarrett and Kathy Jarrett officiating.

On December 10, 1929, when the third son was born to Charley Oakwell Ingold and Eva Mae Parks Ingold, Oakwell said he would be “Jimmy.” When it came time to legally name him an aunt gets credit for naming him Alvah Alvis, although he was always known as Jimmy.

A lifelong Randolph County residence he was a veteran of the Marine Corps. He retired from public work as a sewing machine mechanic after working for numerous textile manufacturers.

After retirement he frequented flea markets and yard sales and was known for making and selling “big bloomers” (ladies novelty panties).

He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife of 63 years, Vella Mae Tucker Ingold, and his older brothers, Russell Ingold and Leonard Ingold.

He leaves wonderful memories to daughter, Patricia Ingold Wright and husband Jim; sons, Ronald Ingold, Terry Ingold and wife Debbie; grandsons, Jeremy Ingold and wife Stefanie, Matthew Ingold and wife Megan, Travis Ingold; great granddaughters who he adored, Amber Marie Ingold, Lily Lawson Ingold; sisters, Donsy Hames of Asheboro, Martha Ingold Peele of Virginia Beach, VA; and brother, Jesse Ingold.

George Michael “Phil” Beu, Jr.

1955 - 2021

1939 - 2021

George Michael “Phil” Beu, Jr., age 82, of Seagrove passed away on Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at Elmcroft of Asheboro.

Mr. Beu was born on January 26, 1939 to George Michael and Mabel Richardson Beu and grew up in Washington, DC. Phil was retired from Western Union and was very active in the Salvation Army in both Washington, DC and Asheboro, NC. He is survived by numerous cousins.

The funeral service will be held on Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 11:00 am at The Salvation Army Chapel, 345 North Church Street in Asheboro with Major Luis Viera officiating. Burial will follow in the Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church Cemetery in Seagrove.

Memorials may be made to The Salvation Army, 345 North Church St., Asheboro, NC 27203.

Margaret Elizabeth “Beth” Luck 1978 - 2021

Margaret Elizabeth “Beth” Luck, age 43, of Asheboro passed away on Saturday, July 3, 2021 at Randolph Hospice House.

Arrangements are incomplete at Pugh Funeral Home in Asheboro.

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Randolph Record for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

STATE & NATION

Microsoft exec: Targeting of Americans’ records ‘routine’

By Erick Tucker The Associated Press WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony last week by a senior executive at the technology company.

Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.

“Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress

MARK LENNIHAN | AP PHOTO

This May 6, 2021 photo shows a sign for Microsoft offices in New York. Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year. That’s according to congressional testimony being given Wednesday, June 30, by a senior executive at the technology company. and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.

Since then, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, called for an end to the overuse of secret gag orders, arguing in a Washington

Post opinion piece that “prosecutors too often are exploiting technology to abuse our fundamental freedoms.” Attorney General Merrick Garland, meanwhile, has said the Justice Department will abandon its practice of seizing reporter records and will formalize that stance soon.

Burt is among the witnesses at

a Judiciary Committee hearing about potential legislative solutions to intrusive leak investigations.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in opening remarks at the hearing that the Justice Department took advantage of outdated policies on digital data searches to target journalists and others in leak investigations. The New York Democrat said that reforms are needed now to guard against future overreach by federal prosecutors — an idea also expressed by Republicans on the committee.

“We cannot trust the department to police itself,” Nadler said.

Burt said that while the revelation that federal prosecutors had sought data about journalists and political figures was shocking to many Americans, the scope of surveillance is much broader. He criticized prosecutors for reflexively seeking secrecy through boilerplate requests that “enable law enforcement to just simply assert a conclusion that a secrecy order is necessary.”

Burt said that while Microsoft Corp. does cooperate with law enforcement on a broad range of criminal and national security investigations, it often challenges surveillance that it sees as unnec-

essary, resulting at times in advance notice to the account being targeted.

Among the organizations weighing in at the hearing was The Associated Press, which called on Congress to act to protect journalists’ ability to promise confidentiality to their sources. Reporters must have prior notice and the ability to challenge a prosecutor’s efforts to seize data, said a statement submitted by Karen Kaiser, AP’s general counsel.

“It is essential that reporters be able to credibly promise confidentially to ensure the public has the information needed to hold its government accountable and to help government agencies and officials function more effectively and with integrity,” Kaiser said.

As possible solutions, Burt said, the government should end indefinite secrecy orders and should also be required to notify the target of the data demand once the secrecy order has expired.

Just this week, he said, prosecutors sought a blanket gag order affecting the government of a major U.S. city for a Microsoft data request targeting a single employee there.

“Without reform, abuses will continue to occur and they will occur in the dark,” Burt said.

MARK HUMPHREY | AP PHOTO

In this Aug. 7, 2019, file photo, the Kingston Fossil Plant smokestacks rise above the trees behind homes in Kingston, Tenn.

Tennessee Valley Authority considers replacing coal with gas

By Travis Loller The Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The nation’s largest public utility is looking at shutting down three of its five remaining coal-fired power plants, saying they are old and no longer practical. But despite President Joe Biden’s goal of a carbon-pollution-free energy sector by 2035, the Tennessee Valley Authority, an independent federal agency, is considering replacing the lost megawatts from coal with another carbon-producing fuel — natural gas.

At a public hearing this week on the proposed closure of the Kingston Fossil Plant, TVA Senior Manager of Enterprise Planning Jane Elliott stressed the fact that gas provides reliability and flexibility as a fuel that can be called upon at any hour of any day. Solar generates energy only about 25% of the time, Elliott said, so “you have to add more solar to get the same amount of energy from gas.”

Gas is also currently cheaper

than solar, Elliott said, although prices are falling and solar should become cheaper towards the end of the decade.

Samantha Gross, director of the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative, said reliability and flexibility are real considerations, but TVA already has lots of that with its current gas and hydroelectric plants. Any new gas plants will likely be around for decades, long past Biden’s 2035 goal to decarbonize.

“That’s important,” Gross said of the goal. “We’re fried if we don’t do it.”

Scientists have warned that failing to meet that target will only lead to more intense and more frequent extreme weather events, as well as droughts, floods and wildfires.

TVA’s Kingston and Cumberland plants together produce around 3,900 megawatts of electricity. The utility is not looking to replace electricity lost from the shut down of its smaller Bull Run plant, but for the other two, the

utility is studying three replacement alternatives. Two of them are different types of gas plants.

The third option is for renewables — most likely solar — plus storage.

The utility already has plans to add 10,000 megawatts of solar power to its system by 2035, but that won’t be a replacement for the coal plants. Utility spokesperson Scott Brooks said most of that will go to large industrial customers like Google that want to power their facilities with renewables.

Marilyn Brown is a professor of energy policy at Georgia Institute of Technology who served on the TVA board of directors from 20102017. She said what’s missing from TVA’s proposals is decreasing the need for new electrical generation altogether. That can be done through stronger investments in energy efficiency and demand response — which involves helping customers change their usage patterns to flatten peak demand periods.

Demand response can drop a load just as quickly as firing up

a gas turbine to meet that load, Brown said. “Why not help people control their thermostats and appliances when generation is in short supply?” As an example, she said, studies have found you can cycle off air conditioning for 17 minutes in an hour without any noticeable difference.

One challenge is that TVA does not sell electricity directly to homes. Instead, that’s done through 153 local power providers. But Brown said it’s a challenge they could overcome. Going all-in on gas would be a backwards solution, but “the risks are low, and they know how to do it,” Brown said. “The issue is getting the utility to move in a direction it’s not as familiar with.”

Meanwhile, critics say TVA already has failed to accurately weigh the environmental impacts of a separate proposal to add new gas turbines at its Paradise plant in Kentucky and Colbert plant in Alabama. TVA’s draft environmental impact statement states these additions will not negatively

affect greenhouse gas emissions or climate change because the utility is reducing emissions elsewhere in the system.

A group of seven environmental organizations has written to TVA, calling their analysis flawed and a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. “If building new gas-fired power plants does not negatively impact climate change, nothing does,” the letter states.

TVA President Jeff Lyash said earlier this year that the utility is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2035, compared to 2005 levels. He said they will not be able to meet the 100% reduction goal without technological advances in energy storage, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors.

The utility has its own aspirational goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Any final decision on whether to shut down the coal plants and what to replace them with will have to be approved by TVA’s board.