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National Weather Service Calls For Snow, But Not Much Impact
It may be as close to a white Christmas as North Carolina gets, and forecasters say the snow expected to fall won't amount to a lot in most areas.
The National Weather Service says there's the potential of one to two inches of snow in the western and northern piedmont, with lesser amounts to the east and south of those areas. The snow is expected to begin Friday afternoon and continue into Saturday morning.
Forecasters said travel shouldn't be impacted because of warm ground temperatures but there could be slick spots on some roads. Snow will accumulate mainly on grassy and elevated surfaces.
County Says Hackers Tried Another Attack
A North Carolina county says hackers have tried new attacks on its computer systems after it refused to pay them a ransom for frozen data.
Mecklenburg County manager Dena Diorio sent an email Thursday to county employees advising them that hackers were targeting the county primarily through fraudulent email attachments. No further damage to the systems was reported.
Diorio said the county was disabling employees' ability to open attachments generated through Dropbox and Google Docs. She advised staff to generally limit its use of attachments overall and try to conduct business by phone or in person when possible.
Prison Guard Died Amid Training, Staffing Worries
One of the three North Carolina correctional officers watching roughly 250 prisoners on the day a guard was killed had not received the four-week basic training course that includes instruction on how to subdue an attacking inmate.
The Charlotte Observer reports that just an hour before she was assaulted, 29-year-old Sgt. Meggan Callahan confided to a supervisor that she worried her officers were not prepared if an inmate attacked.
Callahan was beaten to death in April with a fire extinguisher in the understaffed unit she was responsible for guarding at Bertie Correctional Institution.
NC Regulators Want More Information On Pipeline
Another state permit needed for a proposed natural gas pipeline in eastern North Carolina is being slowed.
The state Department of Environmental Quality asked Atlantic Coast Pipeline developers this week for more information for an air quality permit for a compressor station to push gas downstream. The News & Observer reports a Dec. 15 permit issuance deadline has been suspended. That permit decision now depends on sending and reviewing the information.
Dominion Energy and other utilities want to build the 600-mile pipeline from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina, with construction slated for early 2018.
Accrediting Body Lifts Sanctions Against North Carolina HBCU
An accrediting agency has lifted its sanction on an historically black college in North Carolina for deficiencies in enrollment and financial aid.
The Daily Advance reports that Elizabeth City State University Chancellor Thomas Conway said his school has been removed from "warning status" by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Conway told a panel of school representatives and the UNC Board of Governors on Wednesday that SACS announced the move and also approved ECSU's new program in emergency management.
The school was placed on warning status in June 2016 based on problems identified in an internal audit done by UNC General Administration. The audit found, among other things, that ECSU had admitted students who didn't meet admission requirements and had awarded financial aid to students who were ineligible.
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