Exciting changes are on the horizon at the North Carolina Aquarium
at Fort Fisher.

Officials said the aquarium is expected to undergo a new $75 million expansion and overhaul that Joanna Zazzali, the aquarium’s director, said will bring a
whole new meaning to the space.  

“This will be a ‘wow moment,’ but you’ll have plenty of other ‘wows’ as you continue your journey,” Zazzali said.

But the change comes at a cost. The aquarium
will temporarily close for three years, Zazzali said.

“We will have a minimum staff that will remain here to care
for the animals in the existing facility, and the other staff will be on site at
our pop-up aquarium at the mall,” she said.

While the aquarium is closed, a temporary location will open
in Independence Mall. Officials said the mall, located on a city bus route,
will offer a free opportunity for people who’ve never been to the aquarium
before.

“We are so excited for this new opportunity to connect in an
area of Wilmington that we don’t always reach,” an aquarium staff member said.

According to a video on the NC Aquarium Fort Fisher YouTube
page, this is the first renovation the aquarium has seen in 20 years.

A sneak peek at the new additions can be seen on the
aquarium’s social media. Zazzali said the expansion will include additional
classrooms and exhibits, a rooftop Skydeck, interactive habitats and even a new
tiger shark habitat.

Once completed, officials said the aquarium will be the largest in the state.

A hard closing date for the aquarium has not yet been
announced, officials said. Construction to transform the space the aquarium
will use at the mall is expected to take several weeks to complete before the process of moving some of the animals, equipment and staff.

Last season, Stanford basketball entered the Kyle Smith era, looking to take Stanford to the next level as a basketball program. The Cardinal had a successful first season under Smith, but it seemed like they couldn’t get their season-defining win. Then came their matchup with North Carolina.

In their first season in the ACC, Stanford hadn’t won a game on the East Coast. Having to go into an immensely tough environment against a blue blood program, it looked like they would lose another one.

Instead, Stanford’s stars rose to the occasion. Maxime Raynaud had a massive 25 points and 13 rebound performance, adding a poster dunk in the process. Duke transfer Jaylen Blakes hung 20 points on his former rivals, including the game-winning shot.

Going into Wednesday’s contest, the Cardinal have an opportunity to do it once again. After a solid start to the year, Stanford has gotten wins over No. 16 Louisville, Virginia Tech, St. Louis, Colorado, and Minnesota. Their losses have come to No. 23 Virginia, Notre Dame, Seattle, and UNLV. The Cardinal sit at 2-2 in ACC play, and have been hot in recent games.

North Carolina has had their own great start to the year. With wins over No. 19 Kansas, No. 18 Kentucky, Ohio State, Georgetown, Florida State, and Wake Forest, the Tar Heels look like a top team in the nation. However, losses against No. 11 Michigan State and SMU prove that they can be toppled.

An interesting point to make is about recent play. The last time Stanford was at home, the Cardinal took down Louisville in one of the best wins of the Kyle Smith era. The last time North Carolina had to go on the road, they got run out of the gym by SMU.

North Carolina still has a 64.8% chance to win, but it’s not as high as many would have expected, given UNC’s history. That’s because Stanford has a legit chance of taking down the Tar Heels, especially at home.

Last year, Stanford won due to a couple of things. First, their stars played at their best. They got a combined 45 points out of their two biggest stars, which helped to guide the Cardinal to victory. Second, their ability to make free throws.

Stanford went 13-of-14 from the line, which is key in a close game. Stanford dominated the blocking battle, winning it 7-2, and letting their defense come up with some big stops. They also got a lot out of Donavin Young, who stepped up in the big moment. Finally, they stopped North Carolina’s bigs, which was a big key to victory.

Stanford has to mimic those specific things to get a win on Wednesday. Stanford needs Ebuka Okorie to score the ball well, and have an overall good game. They need to make free throws, just like they did against Louisville.

Stanford needs Oskar Giltay to give good minutes, and block as many shots as possible. They are going to need a lot out of Donavin Young, just like last year. And finally, they will need Chisom Okpara to slow down Caleb Wilson from dominating the game for his own team.

If Stanford can achieve all these things, Stanford could be in position to come away with yet another huge win over UNC.

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Republicans took control of elections administration in mid-2025 and, in some counties, they have quickly moved to enact two longtime party goals: Eliminating Sunday hours and campus polling places during early voting.

Those decisions have now led to political disputes in a handful of counties statewide, which will be up to the GOP-majority State Board of Elections to settle in a meeting Tuesday.

The state board is scheduled to review and vote Tuesday on early voting plans in a dozen counties, including Cumberland, Harnett, Wayne and others. All failed to receive unanimous support at the county level so now require final approval by the state elections board.

The plans are for the March primaries only. But the outcomes Tuesday could give clues to how willing the state board might be to allow similar strategies in November.

Republican state lawmakers’ most recent effort to target Sunday voting — part of wider-ranging changes to state election law passed in 2013 — was struck down in federal court as unconstitutional for being motivated by intentional racial discrimination. Black voters use Sunday voting disproportionately more than white voters.

 At the time, Republican lawmakers argued in court that they should be allowed to target Black voters because the majority of Black voters are affiliated with the Democratic Party. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit strongly disagreed, striking down the law in a harshly worded ruling, calling it “the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.”

Republicans haven’t tried seriously since then to eliminate Sunday voting statewide. Some did cosponsor a bill at the legislature to do so in 2025, but GOP leaders didn’t allow it up for a vote. It remains to be seen whether new county-by-county efforts to target Sunday voting will meet similar legal fates.

So far, two small-scale efforts to target Sunday voting have been allowed in the state. WRAL reported in August that GOP officials in Davidson and Union counties asked to cut back on Sunday voting for the 2025 municipal elections, which the state elections board approved in 3-2 votes along party lines.

“I do not want us to regress back to a previous time,” Democratic board member Siobhan Millen said at the time, as she voted against those plans. 

Most of the board’s Republicans offered no explanation for eliminating Sunday voting for that handful of 2025 races, WRAL reported at the time. Republican board member Stacey Eggers said he thought it was important to let elections workers get some rest.

Details of the plans

Sunday voting isn’t the only contentious topic on agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. Attempts to eliminate on-campus voting sites at N.C. A&T University, UNC-Greensboro and Western Carolina University are up for discussion. So are other contentious plans from areas including Cumberland, Harnett and Wayne counties.

The state board already approved early voting plans for most of North Carolina’s 100 counties, since most counties approved their plans in a bipartisan, unanimous fashion. Every county elections board has three Republicans and two Democrats.

Tuesday’s meeting is meant to focus on the dozen counties where March early voting plans didn’t win unanimous approval, due to political or logistical disputes.

In Cumberland County, for example, there are multiple competing issues. The county election board’s professional staff suggested using five early voting sites, all in Fayetteville. The board’s political appointees, however, want seven sites. Complicating matters further is that the board’s political appointees also don’t fully agree on where to put those extra sites. All agree with having at least five sites in Fayetteville and one in Hope Mills. But there’s a dispute over whether to put a sixth site in Fayetteville, or to open one in Spring Lake instead.

Disputed early voting plans from Guilford and Jackson counties, meanwhile, revolve around the efforts to eliminate college campus polling places. Other counties are fighting over Sunday voting, including Wayne and Pitt counties, home to Goldsboro and Greenville.

In Pitt County, the GOP majority on the county elections board says only a few dozen dozen people have bothered showing up to vote on Sundays in each of the past few primary elections. Paying to keep the sites open for such little return isn’t a good investment for the county, they argue in filings to the state, not to mention the fact that there are fewer and fewer people who want to help work at local polling places.

“Pitt County, like every other county in the state, is seeing a significant drop in civic engagement, particularly with election workers,” the board’s Republicans wrote to the state. “Finding workers to manage and work in locations, especially on Sundays, is extraordinarily difficult.”

In Harnett County, the dispute is over an attempt to shut down the polling place at Western Harnett High School in Lillington and replace it with two new sites, one at the Benhaven Community Center and the other at the Anderson Creek fire department.