(The Center Square) – Carolinas wildfires in areas where Hurricane Helene knocked down trees by the tens of thousands have complicated extinguishing efforts.

The Black Cove Fire in North Carolina’s Polk County on Monday was moving toward neighboring Henderson County. It’s one of three in the county that got only a douse of rain early in the day, with one-tenth expected overnight into Tuesday.

Chinook helicopters from the U.S. Forest Service have supplied drops to help the battle since the weekend. The fires started late last week.

According to published reports, the Deep Woods Fire has burned more than 2,500 acres and the Black Cove Fire more than 2,000 acres – each with no containment. The Fish Hook Fire, at Lake Adger, has burned 199 acres and has about 50% containment.

A power line down sparked the Black Cove Fire. Investigations are ongoing for the others.

Multiple areas have had mandatory evacuations. Six structures have been burned in Polk County just west of Charlotte.

In South Carolina’s mountains, fires are at the Table Rock State Park in Pickens County and on Persimmon Ridge in Greenville County. Table Rock is reported more than 2 square miles and Persimmon Ridge more than 1.25 square miles.

Evacuations in South Carolina are voluntary. There have been no reports of structures burned.

Helene struck the Carolinas mountains in September, coming ashore in Delke Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26 and moving north. Most of its damage was in North Carolina, where governors past and present – Roy Cooper in October, Josh Stein since taking office in January – estimated damage at $53 billion and $60 billion, respectively.

California was devastated by wildfires in January. According to the California Department of Fire and Forestry Protection, the 2025 incident report includes nearly 600 wildfires, 29 fatalities and more than 58,000 acres burned. It also says more than 16,000 structures have been destroyed.

(The Center Square) – Citing national security, foreign influence on higher education in America and transparency, a report from Americans for Public Trust says a North Carolina private university received more than $94.1 million in foreign money last year.

Duke University, in Durham, was only behind Cincinnati ($237.1 million), Cornell ($203.8 million), Harvard ($150.1 million), Stanford ($125.9 million), Juilliard ($119.9 million), Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($106 million) and Texas A&M ($102 million). Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit report author, said elected leaders need to “crack down on reporting lapses” at the institutions,

“For far too long, a staggering amount of foreign money has flowed into our colleges and universities with little to no transparency or oversight,” Sutherland said in a release. “Much of these foreign funds can be traced back to countries that have well-established adversarial relationships with the United States or engage in direct or indirect malign activities against our country. It is no coincidence that, in the same time period, we’ve seen a rise in anti-American demonstrations and radical ideas being cultivated at these institutions.”

The DETERRENT Act, shepherded in the U.S. House of Representatives by Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner of Washington, is billed as “defending education transparency and ending rogue regimes engaging in nefarious transactions.” It expands oversight and disclosure requirements related to foreign sources and institutions of higher education.

The bill was filed Feb. 15 and includes reporting to the Department of Education. Since then, President Donald Trump has called for the elimination of the department though not all its activities. Those, such as Pell Grants, would be transferred to another oversight authority.

The top three countries in giving in 2024 were Qatar ($342.8 million), China ($176.6 million) and Saudi Arabia ($175.2 million).

Foreign gifts and contracts exceeding $250,000 to American colleges and universities must be disclosed, per federal law. Americans for Public Trust says “fewer than 300 of the approximately 6,000 U.S. institutions self-report foreign money each year.”

The nonprofit accuses “bad actors” of using “foreign funding to influence research, campus policies, and the curriculum to push anti-American narratives.” It further said, “some of the largest foreign contributors to U.S. schools include countries with histories of espionage, intellectual property theft, and efforts to sow discord in America.”