Just in time for the big Labor Day weekend, the Bodie Island Spit at Oregon Inlet in North Carolina reopened today to off-road vehicles. The area, one of the most popular ORV fishing spots in Cape Hatteras National Seashore, has been closed to beach drivers and pedestrians for most of the summer to protect nesting shorebirds as required in a legal agreement.

Seven miles of new power lines from Kitty Hawk to Nags Head are scheduled to be installed starting next week, a nine-month project that is expected to double the electrical capacity available on the Outer Banks.

The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch for much of North Carolina, effective until 5 p.m.

The weather service included the following counties in the watch:

*Alamance

*Anson

*Beaufort

*Bertie

*Bladen

*Camden

*Carteret

*Chatham

*Chowan

*Craven

*Cumberland

*Currituck

*Dare

*Davidson

*Duplin

*Durham

*Edgecombe

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C.

Elizabeth City State University will hold a street naming ceremony Sept. 9 in honor of one of its board of trustees.

The road outside the Mickey L. Burnim Fine Arts Center will be named Norman L. Mebane Drive, in gratitude for a donation from Mebane to the ECSU Foundation, according to a news release from the school.

An Elizabeth City man faces 11 federal counts of making homemade child pornography, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

The body of a 21-year-old farm worker, the victim of an accidental drowning, was found in a sand mining pit in Pasquotank County late Monday, said Sheriff Randy Cartwright.

The victim’s name has not been released pending notification of relatives in Mexico, he said.

A missing person in Pasquotank County is believed to have drowned in a sand mining pit off Pitts Chapel Road, said Pasquotank County Sheriff Randy Cartwright. The bottom of the pool in the mining pit, cluttered with debris such as old tires, metal parts and glass, has been determined to be unsafe for a dive team, Cartwright said.

Authorities have warrants on file charging a Chesapeake man with two counts of misdemeanor death by vehicle after the pickup truck he was driving drifted across N.C. 94 in Tyrrell County on Friday and struck a minivan.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. If a graceless humbling cleanses the soul, the Washington Redskins were rendered spotless, then hermetically sealed Saturday night at Bank of America Stadium.

Just as the long-awaited final environmental impact statement is about to be released, another glitch may have developed in the planning process to replace the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge.