At dawn, they will come with the gurney, the door will slowly open, and light from the hallway will stream in.

This, our annual look at the state’s best hospitals, has always been a popular issue with both readers and advertisers, which is not surprising considering health care’s importance not only as a business but its impact as an industry on the overall economy.

When federal regulators closed Bank of Asheville in January and brokered its sale to Troy-based First Bancorp, 18 months had passed since North Carolina’s last bank failure.

They describe it as a medical mall, but when UNC Health Care System and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Inc. launch an unusual Triangle-based partnership late this year, the reality is, they’re trying to get a head start in the race for health-care reform in North Carolina.

As host to 21 Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournaments, the Greensboro Coliseum Complex has often resounded with the clash of titans.

In January, 146 years after the fall of Fort Fisher — the earth-and-sand citadel the Confederacy had hoped would keep open its last, vital seaport at Wilmington — reenactors manned their cannon.

It didn’t take long for the glow of Charlotte winning the 2012 Democratic National Convention to give way to sweat over exactly how the city would pull it off.

Jim Rogers will hand over Duke Energy’s CEO job to Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson and become executive chairman of the combined company, which will be based in Charlotte.

Let’s have some fun and put a financial twist on the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which you seek to trace the connections between Point A and Point B in the fewest number of steps.

Tom Ross hadn’t been president of the University of North Carolina long before expressing a sobering thought.