Here are five of our best reads

Here are five of the best reads from the past week of the News & Observer.

Prosecutor says man stalked Chinese restaurant owner two nights before killing

The rainy April night Maurice Wiley allegedly shot and killed restaurant owner Hong Zheng outside his Hope Valley Farms North home wasn’t the first time Wiley had been there, a prosecutor said Thursday. Read more.

The war on plastic straws has gone mainstream, but what comes next?

Alternatives to plastic straws are squarely on the razor’s edge of an environmental movement gone mainstream, one that’s finding its way from major cities to the Triangle and North Carolina. Read more.

A new election forecast shows just how long the odds are for many NC candidates

A new forecast model by election prognosticator Nate Silver on his FiveThirtyEight website shows that most of North Carolina’s congressional incumbents have very little to worry about, with six incumbents having a 99 percent chance of winning. Read more.

NC sees the nation’s second highest increase in opioid deaths

Drug overdoses in North Carolina surged in 2017 faster than every other state in the nation but one, as the potent and cheap fentanyl and its derivatives flooded the state. Read more.

The cable cord-cutter’s 2018 guide to watching college football and the NFL

You cut the cord, didn’t you? And it was going great — you have Netflix and your mom’s HBO Go password, so no problem. Except now it’s football season and you need to see all those games. Read more.