Human trafficking often occurs in wealthy or relatively wealthy areas where there’s demand, access to major highways and an airport, says Mamie Adams. Asheville fits the bill, and a new Our VOICE project, coordinated by Adams, aims to tackle the problem.
When I first met Cameron Huntley in 2013, he wanted to know how to become a writer for Mountain Xpress and, eventually, other publications. What’s more, he said he might one day like to become a foreign correspondent. I was managing editor at the time, and Huntley was working for the city of Asheville. Xpress didn’t […]
Former Asheville resident, activist and writer Basil Soper will bring a new project to Asheville June 7-8: Transilient. The photo documentary, co-founded with Johanna Case, will help show that transgender people “deserve to be seen as living, breathing, feeling humans who have experienced many of the same things that cis [people who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth] people do,” says Soper.
Fifteen thousand patients visit the Minnie Jones Health Center in downtown Asheville each year. Most of them are low-income residents of the area, often under- or uninsured. More than 200 of them are transgender patients seeking care at the center, which is run by Western North Carolina Community Health Services.
A deadly pathogen can make it around the globe in 24 hours or less, and in just eight hours, one E. coli bacterium can generate more than 16 million clones that make their host very, very sick — particularly if the mother strain is one of a growing number of antibiotic-resistant superbugs that have health leaders on alert from Asheville to Beijing.
On a cool, foggy July morning, more than 300 children bustle past a row of blooming sunflowers and into Hall Fletcher Elementary as teachers hand out new pencils, the principal greets them by name, and the UNC Asheville mascot poses with them for photos. But it’s only midsummer: Why are these students filing through the doors about a month before their peers at other city schools?
Statewide, most hospitals reduced their rates for healthcare-associated infections last year, but two deaths in Lincoln County have providers on the alert.
On Tuesday, July 7, a portion of Mela Indian Restaurant’s lunch and dinner profits will raise money for Asheville teacher Laurie Joens’ ongoing treatment for breast cancer.
Asheville is a hotbed for culinary entrepreneurship, but the path to success can be rocky. What does it take beyond a tasty product or a knack for cooking to build a flourishing food business?
12 Bones Smokehouse recently released its first cookbook and will host a party on Sunday, June 14, to celebrate with Asheville fans.
Restaurants in the Enka-Candler area offer everything from down-home, stick-to-your-ribs diner food served with a helping of history to thoroughly modern artisan fare.
Hundreds of residents draw their drinking and cooking water from wells that lie within 1,000 feet of Duke Energy’s 32 coal-ash ponds in North Carolina. Nearly a dozen of them wells are located in Buncombe County.
Eleven private wells located near Duke Energy’s Asheville-area plant have been tested for coal-ash contamination as of May 19, and preliminary results on half of them show mixed results, say North Carolina environmental officials.
Jay Weatherly likes the “side-street feel” of his new High Five Coffee location, set to open in June on Rankin Avenue in downtown Asheville. The new site lies a few feet from the backdoor, kids entrance to one of the city’s oldest businesses, Tops for Shoes.
With 50 pounds of ostrich feathers, dozens of ping-pong balls, lots of gold glitter, gallons of donated black paint and a big dose of school spirit, Asheville High School hosted its annual prom at the school last night, May 16, for the first time since (as best anyone can remember, anyway) 1979 or so.
In the bumpy post-recession landscape, these service-oriented organizations face significant challenges. Xpress asked several local nonprofit consultants to comment on what those challenges are and how they can be overcome.
At tonight’s meeting, April 28, Asheville City Council members may agree to ask the local air agency to “strengthen” proposed limits on sulphur dioxide emissions at Duke Energy’s local power plant. The move comes ahead of a Wednesday, April 29, public hearing that the Western North Carolina Regional Air Quality Agency will hold to consider renewing the air permit for the Duke Energy plant.
On Saturday, April 25, at Spellbound Children’s Bookshop in Woodfin, local author Cynthia Yancey will read from her new book Zak and Niki: A First Look at Rising above Racism. The reading is one of many events featured in the YWCA of Asheville’s Stand Against Racism events.
Can a community initiative rise from the ground up, with no leaders and no set agenda? The answer is yes, and it’s apparent in newly affixed “Ole Town Candler” bumper stickers and a CleanUp Candler campaign that’s taking off via a Facebook page. And on Thursday, April 9, the initiative takes another step forward with a community meeting at Enka Middle School.
When will cleanup begin at the contaminated CTS site on Mills Gap Road? According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s project manager for the Superfund site— 2016.
The 74 homes in Southside Village are not part of the CTS of Asheville Superfund site next door, say several residents of the gated community off Mills Gap Road. In two recent letters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency backs up that assessment, saying it “does not believe contamination associated with the CTS of Asheville Superfund Site poses unacceptable risk to residents of SSV.”
