News

Wrexham AFC, the lower-division Welsh soccer team co-owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, will play its first U.S. game in Cary this summer.

Driving the news: Wrexham, which features in the popular FX Series "Welcome to Wrexham," will be playing in a 7-on-7 soccer tournament in Cary with a grand prize of $1 million, ESPN reported.

On June 23, 1957, seven young Black activists walked into the Royal Ice Cream Parlor in Durham, a white-owned and segregated business in a Black neighborhood.

• Led by Douglas E. Moore — a young Methodist minister and classmate of Martin Luther King Jr. — Mary Clyburn, Claude Glenn, Jesse Gray, Vivian Jones, Melvin Willis and Virginia Williams walked into the shop and asked to be served, knowing it would end in their arrests.

The death of a 12-year-old girl, killed in a hit-and-run on Hillsborough Street two days after Thanksgiving last year, shook the city of Raleigh and ignited concerns about safety on some of the city's most popular roads.

Driving the news: Her tragic death was one of many caused by car accidents last year. 2022 saw the highest number of pedestrian deaths in at least eight years, city police data shows.

With developers swarming on downtown Raleigh, two state-owned properties could demand tens of millions of dollars in the near future.

• The two buildings — the old DMV headquarters on New Bern Avenue and the Division of Employment Security offices on Wade Avenue — are slated to be sold and will likely attract major projects because of their locations.
• Together they account for more than 21 acres of potential new construction space downtown.

Every Democrat in North Carolina's legislature has signed onto a pair of identical bills that would codify Roe v. Wade, House and Senate Democrats announced in a release Tuesday.

• Why it matters: Democrats' show of unity is a signal that the party intends to remain united on abortion, even as moderate Democrats face pressure to back the abortion restrictions Republicans propose this session.

North Carolina Republicans are eyeing abortion restrictions that go beyond the state's 20-week ban, and for the first time in years, the party has a fair shot at passing them into law.

• But lawmakers have yet to decide how far they'll go.

Rents in Raleigh are still much higher than they were before the pandemic. But since the second half of last year, they've been on a steady downward trajectory.

By the numbers: In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average asking rent in Raleigh was $1,494, up 8.6% from a year earlier, per economic research firm Moody's Analytics.

North Carolina state officials waited six weeks to revoke State Auditor Beth Wood's ability to drive a state vehicle over her December hit-and-run, a spokesperson for the state Department of Administration said Friday.

• Why it matters: The move came Tuesday, nearly a week after Wood's misdemeanor charge for her role in the hit-and-run came to light, rather than right after the incident.