WRAL Daily Download

In the hours that followed a fatal shooting inside a UNC lab Monday, profiles of the victim and suspect emerged. They worked together in a nanoscience lab - the suspect was a student, the victim an accomplished professor. As the campus mourned the loss of a colleague, police searched for a motive and a weapon - and the students raised questions about active-shooter preparedness. Ashley Talley, WRAL's executive producer for enterprise, breaks down the latest.  

Since 2000, more than 50 tropical cyclones have impacted North Carolina. In modern history there have been five hurricanes that did billions of dollars in damage to our state and resulted in dozens of deaths including hurricanes Florence, Matthew, Floyd, Fran, and Hugo. Are hurricanes getting more intense and more frequent? What is the significance of the numerical category of a hurricane? How are they named? When are we at the highest risk of having hurricane? In this episode, we ask WRAL meteorologist Kat Campbell these questions and more.

There are no words except for it happened here. A shooting took place on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill Monday afternoon in a science building, Caudill Laboratories. One faculty member was killed. The entire campus was put on lockdown for hours as police searched for the shooter. Students and staff silently cowered in locked, dark classrooms, dorm rooms and other campus buildings until they got the all-clear. Terrified students texted their equally terrified parents letting them know what was going on. Late in the afternoon, police arrested a graduate student in connection with the shooting. In this episode a student shares her experience in lockdown and WRAL reporter Matt Talhelm gives us an update on the developing story.

North Carolina school districts are grappling with a teacher shortage, so school districts are scouring the globe to attract new educators. WRAL Education Insider Emily Walkenhorst details the unusual lengths to which recruiters are going to bring teachers to the state. 

The family and friends of Allisha Watts have been searching for her for weeks, holding vigils to keep her disappearance in the public eye. Today, the search ended with a grim discovery-her body in a cemetery in Norman, North Carolina at the Montgomery/Richmond County line. Her boyfriend, James Dunmore, the last person to see her alive according to authorities, is now charged in her murder. WRAL reporter Chelsea Donovan has been on the story from the beginning and joins us from the crime scene in this episode with what she's learned from investigators and Watts' family.

During the pandemic, school districts across North Carolina received tens of millions of dollars as part of special COVID funding to pay for things like cleaning schools, PPE, teacher retention bonuses, and technology needed for remote learning. That funding has now ended, and while some school districts still have part of the money left over, they are trying to figure out how to plug some of their budget holes going forward. WRAL Investigates senior producer Randall Kerr shares what his team learned when they looked into the situation.

A company in North Carolina dumped massive amounts of toxic chemicals into the Cape Fear River for decades, the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people. These "forever chemicals" also contaminated the air and groundwater surrounding the plant. The contamination was first revealed five years ago, but still thousands of people are being forced to use contaminated water today. It's one of the one of the most pivotal contamination stories in the United States and the subject of our newest WRAL Documentary: “Forever Chemicals: North Carolina's Toxic Tap Water" which airs Wednesday, August 23 at 7:30 P.M. In this episode, WRAL Investigative Documentary Reporter Cristin Severance and WRAL Environmental Reporter Liz McLaughlin, who co-reported this documentary together, share their investigation with us.

When we send our children to school, there are so many things we worry about. But when was the last time you thought about fire safety in the building where your kids attend class? Our WRAL Investigates team poured over thousands of pages of fire inspection reports in Wake County schools from January to July to get a fuller picture. They found 2700 violations during this time period. In this episode, WRAL Investigates reporter Sarah Kreuger explains what her team learned and what it all means.

It’s one thing to say you want to be a musician when you grow up; it’s another thing altogether to chase your dreams and make them happen. In today’s episode, we are talking to two young women from the Triangle, Abby Schiller and Brooke Hatala, who are giving it a go in Nashville. They’ve both been playing, singing, and writing music since they were adolescents, and they’ve both recently graduated from college and permanently relocated to Nashville to launch their careers as professional musicians. They share their struggles, their passion for music and their dreams for the future with us.

We all feel the pressure when someone is checking us out at a business turns the iPad around and it prompts us to tip. It started during the pandemic as a way to reward front-line workers, but the practice seems to be hanging on long after the crisis has ended. It seems like every transaction we make now comes with a request to tip at a higher rate than ever before even when the person serving us is doing little more than ringing up our purchase. According to a recent survey, 66% of Americans have a negative view on tipping. What is the correct thing to do? In this episode, WRAL’s 5 On Your Side reporter Keely Arthur helps us navigate this new world of tipping.