The update comes from the Lumbee Tribal Chairman, John L. Lowery, who has discussed the land purchase and land in trust process at length, with it being confirmed that the Lumbee Tribal Holdings (the for-profit arm of the Tribe) acquired the land and has transferred it to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

Its explained how the ‘strategic’ acquisition was made to secure land that can be utilized for long-term economic development initiatives that benefit people for generations to come. It comes days after Catawba Nation Chief Brian Harris announced the tribe had filed for state recognition in North Carolina, ahead of a planned casino opening.

Future of Lumbee Tribe newly acquired land is up to the people

The actual purpose for the new site hasn’t yet been determined, as the announcement suggests the decision will be made “by the will of the Lumbee people.”

The update continues to say that if, and when, the Tribe votes for gaming, the 241-acre tract could serve as the site of a casino and resort, accompanied by a shopping outlet and additional amenities like a golf course, a Top Golf-style facility, a water park, or similar attractions.

If, however, people vote against gaming, the land can be developed into a business and industrial park designed to attract employers. It’s suggested that either of these options could lead to the creation of thousands of jobs and “be an economic boom not just for our Tribal territory but for this entire region of the state.”

The Lumbee Tribe is actually the largest in North Carolina and the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River, according to the Department of Administration.

Regardless, this property, along with the Lumbee Tribe Cultural Center, the Tribal Administration Building, and several other Tribal assets, will eventually be placed into trust with the United States Government.

The Tribe says placing land into trust transfers title to the federal government to be held on behalf of the Tribe, removing the application of eminent domain and providing protections.

Featured image: Screenshot via YouTube video

sydneypools

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The expanded AI data centers will be located in Richmond County and support Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing unit.

The project is expected to create “at least 500 new high-skilled jobs,” including data center engineers and network specialists, the company said.

Amazon is one of several Big Tech firms competing in the AI race. Oleksandr – stock.adobe.com

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, touted Amazon’s commitment as “among the largest in state history” and said it would provide “an economic boost to Richmond County.”

The rural county is located about 70 miles east of Charlotte.

“Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work and innovate, and I am pleased that North Carolina will stay at the forefront of all that’s ahead as we continue to attract top technology companies like Amazon,” Stein said in a statement.

Amazon’s chief global affairs and legal officer David Zapolsky said the “investment will position North Carolina as a hub for cutting-edge technology, create hundreds of high-skilled jobs, and drive significant economic growth.”

“We look forward to partnering with state and local leaders, local suppliers, and educational institutions to nurture the next generation of talent,” Zapolsky added.

As part of the investment, Amazon will also roll out new training programs focused on areas such as data center operations and fiber optics. The company has a growing footprint in North Carolina and has invested $12 billion in the state since 2010.

Amazon plans to spend $100 billion on capital expenditures this year. Christopher Sadowski

Amazon shares were flat in Wednesday trading.

Amazon and other Big Tech firms are pouring billions into AI infrastructure as they race to develop the advanced technology.

Led by CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon has signaled it will spend $100 million in capital expenditures this year.

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is pictured. AP

President Trump is also backing the nationwide effort and has pushed companies to boost their commitments within the US.

In January, Trump announced the $500 billion “Project Stargate” – a collaboration between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to build out AI data centers.

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In the 19th and 20th centuries, railroads revolutionized transportation in North America, permanently accelerating the pace of travel across the continent. Today, many of those railroad tracks host an assortment of historic excursion trains, inviting riders to slow down and enjoy a grand day out.

The trains below are destinations in themselves, offering a mix of spectacular sightseeing, onboard dining and glorious open-air observation cars. They traverse deserts, mountains, forests and canyons, pulled by diesel and steam into parts of nature reachable only by rail. They’re rolling lessons in geology and ecology, not to mention history. Most are accessible, none costs more than $150, and each offers a window into the diverse beauty of this continent.

ONTARIO, CANADA

Agawa Canyon Tour Train

One of Canada’s most scenic train routes starts in the town of Sault Ste. Marie, just over the Michigan-Ontario border. Initially conceived to transport the area’s timber and iron ore, the former Algoma Central Railway slices through the 1.2-billion-year-old Agawa Canyon on a route so picturesque that it’s offered some form of recreation-focused passenger service for decades.

Today, it’s the Agawa Canyon Tour Train, which offers full-day excursions that give riders ample time to take in the scenery both onboard and on foot. The train leaves at 8 a.m. for a four-hour, 114-mile run through the Canadian Shield wilderness, with a prerecorded onboard commentary highlighting points of interest along the way. At mile 102, the train descends 500 feet to the canyon floor (accessible only by rail), where passengers can disembark for 90 minutes to explore Agawa Canyon Park’s trails, panoramic lookout and waterfalls before the trip home.

The train runs Friday to Monday in August, when tickets cost 150 Canadian dollars (around $104), and daily during peak foliage season (166 dollars). Riders can preorder food, bring their own, or upgrade to the new Stone Gardner “theater car,” with its swivel lounge chairs and a giant rear window (500 dollars, including breakfast, lunch and drinks). Also on offer: Indigenous-led cultural tours of the canyon, plus special train outings with onboard guides from both the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Center and Entomica Insectarium, possibly the world’s only aviation-and-entomology-themed train tour.

CALIFORNIA

The Skunk Train

In 1885, the California Western Railroad was built to help extract timber from the forests of Mendocino County in Northern California. A century and a half later, the railroad is an accessible and scenic way to view the region’s remaining old-growth redwoods, the tallest living things on earth.

Nicknamed for the pungent gas-powered railcars it adopted in the 1920s, the Skunk Train carries sightseers in (now odorless) vintage passenger coaches — plus a repurposed, open-air freight car — along two scenic routes into Redwood Country, one departing from each end of the line. From Willits, the Wolf Tree Turn excursion offers a two-hour, 16-mile round-trip into the Noyo River Canyon, thick with 1,500-year-old redwoods; at the halfway point, riders can step off and marvel at the route’s eponymous wolf tree, one of the forest’s oldest and largest. (Tickets from $65, March to December, with trains running four to five times a week during summer and fall.)

At the other end of the line, the Pudding Creek Express parallels an estuary on its 3.5-mile run from Fort Bragg to Glen Blair Junction, a trackside clearing in a redwood grove. The return trip is flexible: Catch the same train back after a quick stretch of the legs (a 1.5-hour round-trip), take a later train, or make the return journey on foot along a gravel path (guided walking tours and rail-biking excursions are also available). Trips run year-round (from $50) on a varied schedule, and are sometimes pulled by the Super Skunk, a restored Baldwin steam locomotive. On select weekend nights, the Junction turns into the Glen Blair Bar, a watering hole hidden among the redwoods with live music, games and s’mores — and only reachable by the Skunk Train.

WEST VIRGINIA

Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad

West Virginia is a hotbed of heritage railroading. One mainstay is the Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad, which takes sightseers into the Trough, a canyon deep in the Appalachian Forest that’s accessible only by rail or on foot. The route packs both a scenic and historic punch: George Washington named the canyon during his 1748 surveying expedition, and its steep ridges are a nesting habitat for bald eagles, which onboard guides help riders spot from the train.

The Potomac Eagle’s regular run is a 35-mile round-trip from the town of Romney into the Trough, complete with a scenic bridge crossing. Passengers stay onboard the train, whose five classes of service range from bench-seats-and-B.Y.O.-lunch to four levels of onboard dining, each with its own vintage diner. Two open-air observation cars round out a train set regularly hauled by a restored 1950s diesel wearing the colors of the Baltimore & Ohio, the railroad’s onetime operator.

In addition to the standard three-hour Trough trip (adult tickets from $74, April to November), plus Sunset Trough trips on select summer evenings, the Potomac Eagle runs occasional all-day excursions to Petersburg, where riders can join a tour of the nearby stalactite-streaked Smoke Hole Caverns.

SINALOA & CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

El Chepe

Passenger rail is having a moment in Mexico, with the new Tren Maya in the Yucatán and the coast-to-coast Tren Interoceánico kicking off an ambitious plan to revitalize intercity rail across the country. But for a dedicated Mexican sightseeing train excursion, take El Chepe, better known as the Copper Canyon train.

The 390-mile Copper Canyon line opened in 1961 after 60 years of construction, linking the desert city of Chihuahua to Los Mochis on the coast and traversing a canyon system larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon. The railway is an engineering marvel, rising from sea level to a peak elevation of 7,800 feet; in one of its 86 tunnels, the tracks descend 100 feet while making a 180-degree turn inside the canyon’s walls.

Until recently, El Chepe (short for Chihuahua al Pacifico), was one of Mexico’s few passenger trains, and a regular, no-frills train — El Chepe Regional — still traverses the full length of the line. Since 2018, it’s been joined by the El Chepe Express, a deluxe tourist train with a panoramic-windowed bar car (first class gets an open-air terrace bar and preferred access to the domed restaurant car), which runs between Los Mochis and the mountain town of Creel. The full nine-hour, one-way trip starts at 2,900 pesos, or around $143 (first class is 5,400 pesos), though shorter segments (and multi-night itineraries) are also bookable; El Fuerte to Creel, which includes most of the line’s 39 bridges, is the essential scenic stretch.

Built in 1880 and now a National Historic Landmark, this 64-mile narrow-gauge line — which bills itself as the “longest and highest” steam railroad in North America — runs between Antonito, Colo., and Chama, N.M., crossing the state border 11 times as it traverses aspen forests, high plains and steep canyons. (Fans of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” might recognize the Cumbres & Toltec from the film’s opening chase scene.)

The train hugs a sheer cliff face as it navigates the line’s two scenic high points, skirting the rim of the 800-foot Toltec Gorge and zigzagging through the 10,015-foot Cumbres Pass, the highest railroad mountain pass in the United States; the alpine meadows at the summit can see snow flurries even in summer.

A variety of excursions depart from each terminus between May to October, most including lunch at the halfway point; a one-way trip along the full route takes seven hours, plus a one-hour return trip by bus (tickets from $135). There are four classes of service, including the mahogany-paneled parlor car, but all riders can enjoy the open-air gondola car — not to mention a GPS-activated historical guide app and the distinctly analogue thrill of being hauled by one of five restored steam locomotives.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Mount Washington Cog Railway

P.T. Barnum called it “the second greatest show on Earth” when it opened in 1869, but the Mount Washington Cog Railway is brimming with superlatives. It’s the second-steepest railway on the planet, as well as the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway, which uses a rack-and-pinion system to ascend the highest peak in the Northeast. Its summit — a subarctic tundra — has been known to see record weather events, like the highest surface wind ever directly observed (231 miles per hour, in 1934) and temperatures as low as -47 degrees Fahrenheit (before wind chill).

Yet, the “Cog” runs year-round, offering hourlong winter round-trips from Marshfield Base Station (2,700 feet), partway up the mountain to Waumbek Station (3,900 feet), where hot refreshments are provided and firepits are s’mores-ready.

From May to October, trains depart hourly for the summit (6,288 feet), where riders can explore the Tip Top House, the original summit hotel (now a museum). Biodiesel locomotives power most trips, but some are still pushed up the mountain by coal-fired steam engines; tickets range from $52 in winter to $99 for a steam-hauled, three-hour round-trip in summer.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.

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On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction. His company was moving a large amount of Ether, a popular digital currency, from one account to another.

Thirty minutes later, Mr. Zhou got a call from Bybit’s chief financial officer. In a trembling voice, the executive told Mr. Zhou that their system had been hacked.

“All of the Ethereum is gone,” he said.

When Mr. Zhou approved the transaction, he had inadvertently handed control of an account to hackers backed by the North Korean government, according to the F.B.I. They stole $1.5 billion in cryptocurrencies, the largest heist in the industry’s history.

To pull off the astonishing breach, the hackers exploited a simple flaw in Bybit’s security: its reliance on a free software product. They penetrated Bybit by manipulating a publicly available system that the exchange used to safeguard hundreds of millions of dollars in customer deposits. For years, Bybit had relied on the storage software, developed by a technology provider called Safe, even as other security firms sold more specialized tools for businesses.

The hack sent crypto markets into a free fall and undermined confidence in the industry at a crucial time. Under the crypto-friendly Trump administration, industry executives are lobbying for new U.S. laws and regulations that would make it easier for people to pour their savings into digital currencies. On Friday, the White House is scheduled to host a “crypto summit” with President Trump and top industry officials.

Crypto security experts said they were troubled by what the heist revealed about Bybit’s safety protocols. The losses were “completely preventable,” one security firm wrote in an analysis of the breach, arguing that it “should not have happened.”

Safe’s storage tool is widely used in the crypto industry. But it is better suited to crypto hobbyists than exchanges handling billions in customer deposits, said Charles Guillemet, an executive at Ledger, a French crypto security firm that offers a storage system designed for companies.

“This really needs to change,” he said. “It’s not an acceptable situation in 2025.”

At Bybit, the hack set off a frantic 48 hours. The company oversees as much as $20 billion in customer deposits but did not have enough Ether on hand to cover the losses from the $1.5 billion heist. Mr. Zhou, 38, raced to keep the business afloat by borrowing from other firms and drawing on corporate reserves to meet a surge of withdrawal requests. On social media, he seemed surprisingly relaxed, announcing a few hours after the theft that his stress levels were “not too bad.”

As the crisis unfolded, the price of Bitcoin, a bellwether for the industry, plunged 20 percent. It was the steepest drop since the 2022 failure of FTX, the exchange run by the disgraced mogul Sam Bankman-Fried.

In an interview this week, Mr. Zhou acknowledged that Bybit had advance warning about possible problems with Safe. Three or four months before the hack, he said, the company noticed the software was not fully compatible with one of its other security services.

“We should have upgraded and moved away from Safe,” Mr. Zhou said. “We’re definitely looking to do that now.”

Rahul Rumalla, Safe’s chief product officer, said in a statement that his team had created new security features to protect users and that Safe’s products were “the treasury backbone for some of the largest organizations in the space.”

“Our job is not just to fix what happened,” Mr. Rumalla said, “but to ensure the entire space learns from it, so this doesn’t happen again.”

Founded in 2018, Bybit operates as a crypto marketplace, where day traders and professional investors can convert their dollars or euros into Bitcoin and Ether. Many investors treat exchanges like Bybit as informal banks, where they deposit crypto holdings for safekeeping.

By some estimates, Bybit is the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, processing tens of billions of dollars every day. Based in Dubai, it does not offer services to customers in the United States.

On Feb. 21, Mr. Zhou was at home in Singapore, finishing up some work, he said in the interview.

But first, he and two other executives needed to sign off on a transfer of cryptocurrencies from one account to another. These routine transfers are supposed to be secure: No single person at Bybit can execute them, creating multiple layers of protection from thieves.

Behind the scenes, however, a group of hackers had already broken into Safe’s system, according to Bybit’s audit of the hack. They had compromised a computer belonging to a Safe developer, a person with knowledge of the matter said, enabling them to plant malicious code to manipulate transactions.

A link sent via Safe invited Mr. Zhou to approve the transfer. It was a ruse. When he signed off, the hackers seized control of the account and stole $1.5 billion in crypto.

The sudden outflows showed up on the blockchain, a public ledger of crypto transactions. Crypto analysts quickly identified the culprit as the Lazarus Group, a hacking syndicate backed by the North Korean government.

That night, Mr. Zhou went to Bybit’s Singapore office to manage the crisis. He announced the hack on social media and started a crisis protocol known at the company as P-1, pressing a button to wake up every member of the leadership team

Around 1 a.m., Mr. Zhou appeared on a livestream on X, swigging a Red Bull. He promised customers that Bybit was still solvent.

“Even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of clients assets are 1 to 1 backed,” he said in a post. “We can cover the loss.”

Those assurances were not enough. Within hours, Mr. Zhou said, about half the digital currencies deposited on the platform, or close to $10 billion, had been withdrawn. The crypto market plunged.

To limit the damage, other crypto companies offered to help. Gracy Chen, the chief executive of a rival exchange, Bitget, lent Bybit 40,000 in Ether, or roughly $100 million, without requesting any interest or even collateral.

“We never questioned their ability to pay us back,” Ms. Chen said.

Between crisis meetings, Mr. Zhou provided a running commentary on X. He shared screenshots from a health app, showing his stress levels were surprisingly normal.

“Too focused commanding all the meetings. Forgot to stress,” he wrote. “I think it will come soon when i start to really grasp the concept of losing $1.5B.”

After looting Bybit, the North Korean hackers spread the stolen funds across a vast web of online crypto wallets, a money-laundering strategy that they had also employed after other heists.

“Lazarus Group is on another level,” Haseeb Qureshi, a venture investor, wrote on X after the theft.

Security experts blamed Bybit for putting itself at risk. To authorize the routine transfer that led to the hack, Mr. Zhou said, he used a hardware tool designed by Ledger, the crypto security firm. The device was not in sync with Safe, he said. So he could not use the tool to check the full details of the transaction he was approving, always a risky practice in the crypto world.

“Safe just does not give you the kinds of controls that you would want if you’re going to be frequently making operational transfers,” said Riad Wahby, a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a co-founder of the digital security firm Cubist.

Mr. Zhou said he wished he had taken action sooner to bolster Bybit’s defenses. “There’s a lot of regrets now,” he said. “I should have paid more attention on this area.”

Still, Bybit continued operating after the hack, processing all the withdrawals within 12 hours, Mr. Zhou said. Not long after the breach, he announced on X that the company was moving around another $3 billion in crypto.

“This is planned manoeuvre, FYI,” he wrote. “We are not hacked this time.”

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Amazon workers voted overwhelmingly against a bid to unionize their North Carolina warehouse, the National Labor Relations Board said on Saturday, the latest setback in labor organizing efforts at the e-commerce giant.

Workers at the RDU1 fulfillment center in Garner, outside of Raleigh, voted 2,447 to 829 against unionizing with Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, an upstart union founded by warehouse workers in 2022.

Organizers at the warehouse, which employs more than 4,000 people, sought starting wages of $30 an hour. The current pay range is about $18 to $24, Amazon said. The union also demanded longer lunch breaks and increased vacation time.

In a statement, leaders of CAUSE said the election outcome was the result of Amazon’s “relentless and illegal efforts to intimidate us.” They did not say whether they would challenge the outcome, but vowed to keep trying to organize.

Eileen Hards, a spokeswoman for Amazon, wrote: “We’re glad that our team in Garner was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep a direct relationship with Amazon.”

Leading up to the election, the worker-led union filed charges with the labor relations board accusing Amazon of interfering with employees’ protected union activity. The company gave preferential treatment to workers who did not support the union, according to the charges filed by CAUSE. Amazon also unfairly fired the co-founder of the union one week before workers filed for a union election in December, CAUSE said in a filing.

Amazon denied any election interference. Employees have the choice of whether to join a union, and the company talks “openly, candidly and respectfully” about unionization, Ms. Hards said before the vote. She said the CAUSE co-founder had been fired for “repeated misconduct that included making derogatory and racist comments to his co-workers.”

Addressing demands voiced by the union, Ms. Hards said the company already offered safe workplaces, competitive pay, industry-leading benefits and consistent scheduling. The CAUSE union, she added, “has no experience representing workers or their interests.”

On top of what they characterized as resistance from the company, organizers at the warehouse faced an environment in the South that has historically been hostile to unions. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in North Carolina last year was 2.4 percent, the lowest rate in the country and far below the national average of 9.9 percent.

Amazon has aggressively fended off union campaigns and stalled the bargaining process in multiple segments of its business, including warehouses, delivery operations and grocery stores.

In 2022, workers at a Staten Island warehouse in New York voted to form Amazon’s first union in the United States; it is now affiliated with the Teamsters union. Amazon has challenged the election outcome in court, and has refused to recognize the union or bargain with it. Delivery drivers, who work for third-party package delivery companies serving Amazon, have also mounted campaigns with the Teamsters.

The Trump administration’s moves at the labor relations board since the inauguration — including the replacement of the general counsel appointed in the Biden administration, who was considered friendly to labor — could further embolden employers to clamp down on organizing and refuse to bargain, labor law experts said.

Workers at a Philadelphia location of Whole Foods Market voted in January to affiliate with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, establishing the first union beachhead at the Amazon-owned grocery chain. In a filing with the labor board challenging the election, the company cited President Trump’s firing of a Democratic board member, which stripped the board of a quorum necessary to issue decisions.

In January, Amazon said that it was closing its warehouse and logistics operations in the Canadian province of Quebec, where unions had gained a foothold among some Amazon workers, and that it would lay off 1,700 employees.

The North Carolina election is not the first unsuccessful union bid among Amazon warehouse workers. In 2021, workers at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., voted against unionizing, but labor officials later ruled that Amazon had illegally influenced the election. Workers voted a second time in 2022, but the outcome was too close to call, prompting a labor judge to order a third election. That vote has yet to be held, and Amazon has denied wrongdoing.

“Ultimately, the biggest thing that we’re fighting for is dignity,” Italo Medelius-Marsano, a member of the CAUSE organizing committee who works at the RDU1 ship dock, said before the vote. “We’re making sure Amazon knows that we are human beings,” he said, citing the movement’s catch phrase: “I am not a robot.”

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