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A 68-year-old man was pulled under the water by a shark Wednesday in the Outer Banks — this time on Ocracoke Island. The man was swimming outside the first breaker about 25 feet offshore, directly in front of the lifeguard stand, when he encountered a gray shark about 7 feet long, Hyde County officials said. A lifeguard saw the shark pull the man under the water. He suffered several bites to his rib cage, hip, lower leg and both hands. A witness told CNN he saw a “trail of blood from water to the sand.” The victim was able to...

5. Global warming Although Frank J. Schwartz, a shark biologist with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says there’s too much natural variability in weather cycles to blame the recent shark attacks on global warming, Burgess says the link is plausible. “Clearly global climate change is a reality and it has resulted in warmer temperatures in certain places at certain times,” says Burgess. As warming is expected to increase, it will likely bring more sharks farther north and entice more people to get into the water, which will lead to more bites.

To keep conservative rebels in check, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his allies have been doling out punishments at an aggressive clip in the 114th Congress. From kicking unruly members off the Rules Committee and GOP whip team to stripping a lawmaker of his subcommittee gavel, leadership has been growing more comfortable with taking retaliatory measures to try to enforce party discipline. But several Tea Party targets haven’t gone quietly. They’ve been fighting back with help from Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan’s conservative House Freedom Caucus, which successfully pressured leaders this week to return a subcommittee gavel to one of their...

House Republicans look like they are about to cave. Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is on the brink of restoring North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows’ subcommittee chairmanship just days after it was taken away as punishment for crossing party leaders, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision. It would be a stunning reversal for Chaffetz — and, by extension, the GOP leadership — and could embolden the several dozen conservative Republicans who defy Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.). Those close to — and part of — House Republican leadership say...

Facing enormous blowback, Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Thursday reversed course and said he was reinstating Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) as a subcommittee chairman. Chaffetz stripped Meadows of his subcommittee gavel last week after the congressman joined nearly three dozen other conservatives in voting against leadership on a procedural motion that nearly scuttled a major trade package.

<p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Investigators with the Charlotte Fire Department in North Carolina say a fire at a predominantly black church is arson.</p> <p>A statement from the fire department said it took about an hour Wednesday to get the fire at Briar Creek Road Baptist Church under control. Two firefighters were treated for heat-related injuries.</p>

The hearing for a Burke County teen accused of plotting to kill Americans in support of ISIL has been continued to July 8. Justin Nojan Sullivan, 19, is charged with attempting to provide material support for terrorists and was arrested by the FBI after they searched his home in Morganton last Friday. According to a federal complaint, Sullivan was charged after having several conversations with an undercover FBI employee about planning the attacks. Sullivan's father, Rich Sullivan, said his son looked like a "deer caught in headlights" in court Wednesday. Wednesday the decision was made that Sullivan's preliminary hearing and...

Former North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan will not be mounting a challenge to her former GOP colleague, Sen. Richard M. Burr. Hagan, who was defeated by Thom Tillis in 2014, has been making calls to inform donors she will not be running for the seat that comes up in 2016, two sources familiar with the calls told Roll Call. While Hagan’s statewide name recognition and relatively strong performance in a year that saw Republicans sweep into the Senate majority would have made her a top challenger to Burr, a national Democratic strategist said there are plenty of Democrats who could...

Former North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan won’t run for Senate in 2016, disappointing Democrats counting on her to unseat Republican Richard Burr in what will be a major swing state race. Hagan was unseated by Republican Thom Tillis in 2014 after one term in the Senate, and has struggled in the polls since, but was the obvious pick to challenge Burr. She’s been calling donors and supporters to inform them she won’t run, reported Roll Call. Hagan performed relatively well in an election where Republicans secured big majorities in the House and Senate, and supporters figured she could unseat Burr...

Once upon a time, there was a teacher who undermined parents’ rights. Sound familiar? It should. This has become a common story in classrooms across America, as more liberal teachers latch on to kids’ books with homosexual themes. But for moms and dads in North Carolina, the news that their third graders were listening to gay fairy tales didn’t have the happy ending teacher Omar Currie hoped for. A homosexual himself, the elementary school teacher thought the book King and King would encourage his class to treat others with respect. What he didn’t count on was the overwhelming feeling of...

Watching this video of Justin Sullivan says a lot about self-training for an ISIS lone wolf, something we have continually warned about. The Morganton teenager told an undercover FBI agent he planned to kill as many as 1,000 Americans in support of ISIS, according to documents released Monday. Neighbors now reveal that Justin Nojan Sullivan, 19, was training to become an ISIS lone wolf and was arrested Friday at his home, according to a release from the North Carolina U.S. Attorney’s Office. Sullivan’s destructive pattern of statues(?) and his desire to kill his parents is not foreign to Islam where...

Sixteen hours after killing nine people inside a Charleston, South Carolina, church, 21-year-old Dylann Roof was treated to a free meal from Burger King by the Shelby, North Carolina, police officers who arrested him. This is according to Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford, who told the Charlotte Observer that Roof complained of hunger before officers bought him the burger. Turns out he only had time for a single bag of chips while leading police on a manhunt. Ledford said that Shelby police had two interactions with Roof: arresting him with guns drawn, and buying him lunch. They then turned him...

A 19-year-old American was charged on Monday with conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic State group (ISIS), after allegedly planning to carry out assassinations and attacks in its name. Justin Nolan Sullivan, a self-described Muslim convert, was arrested without incident on Friday at his home in Morganton, North Carolina in possession of an unlicensed silencer, the Justice Department said. It alleged Sullivan planned to buy a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle at a gun show on Saturday "to kill a large number of US citizens on behalf of ISIL [ISIS]". ISIL is the acronym the US government uses for...

The North Carolina Republican Party elected its first black chairman Saturday, June 6, in an upset victory over the candidate backed by Gov. Pat McCrory and other top leaders in the GOP establishment. “I’m humbled by the win, and it speaks volumes to the delegates who have made their voices be made known,” Hasan Harnett said. As for whether his victory will help broaden the party’s base to more black voters, he added: “I think it’s a good start and there’s much more work to be done.” Collins had been endorsed by McCrory, U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis...

President Barack Obama will deliver a eulogy on Friday for the pastor gunned down last week along with eight of his parishioners in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the White House said Monday. Obama will travel to Charleston for the funeral of Reverend Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, who the president considered a friend and who was a well known leader in South Carolina, where he also served as a state senator. “Michelle and I know several members of Emanuel AME Church. We knew their pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who, along with eight...

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has just made an enormous political mistake. Just days after being put on accreditation probation in the wake of a massive academic fraud scandal, they decided to fire wrestling coach C.D. Mock. His firing comes under suspicious circumstances and has serious First Amendment implications. The university is claiming that C.D. Mock was fired because of his teamÂ’s performance. It is true that his team has not finished higher than fourth at the ACC Championships since 2008. But there is more to the story. Coach Mock is not your ordinary wrestling coach. He is also...

The House Republican crackdown has reached a new level of severity. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz has stripped North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows of his subcommittee chairmanship, just days after he defied leadership on the House floor by voting against a party-line procedural motion. “Sometimes the coach needs to make a change on the field,” Chaffetz (R-Utah) told POLITICO Saturday. “He’s still a valuable contributor, and I really like Mark Meadows, he’s a good person. But I need to make a change.” Losing a subcommittee chairmanship midway through a congressional session is among the most serious punishments...

<p>A North Carolina mother of three young children has traveled to Iraq to join the Kurdish Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS terrorists.</p> <p>Samantha Johnston, 25, of Emerald Isle, N.C., is the only known American woman on the ground assisting in the fight against ISIS.</p>

Jerry Richardson and his Carolina Panthers have donated $100,000 to the families of the nine Emanuel AME Church shooting victims. The Charlotte-based NFL team announced the gift in a letter dated Friday to state Rep. Bakari Sellers, who’s collecting donations on behalf of the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund. The donation provides $10,000 to each of the families to help defray funeral costs and other expenses. The other $10,000 goes to the Calhoun Street church as a memorial honoring the victims. “Our hearts are one with those who grieve the loss of these individuals,” Richardson wrote. The NFL team owner is...

I realize we’ve been hitting the South Carolina shooting and the disgusting, racist criminal who allegedly perpetrated the murders rather often since yesterday morning. Unfortunately, nothing as serious and tragic as this can unfold in America today without immediately becoming mired in multiple levels of political muck, generally before the first facts are even verified. In this case, the process continued well into the evening and will surely roll forward in the weeks to come. One aspect of the church shooting, however, seemed to offer at least a slim ray of hope in an otherwise dismal day. A consortium of...