Basketball legend Michael Jordan is donating $10 million to launch two medical clinics in underserved communities near his hometown in North Carolina, a regional health care system announced Monday.

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The Novant Health clinics are set to open in early 2022 in New Hanover County along North Carolina's southeastern coast, according to a statement from the system. The gift marks one of the largest ever from the Basketball Hall of Fame athlete, news outlets reported.

Jordan previously gave $7 million to open Michael Jordan Family Clinics in Charlotte in 2019 and 2020. Those clinics have since seen more than 4,500 patients and have administered nearly 1,000 COVID-19 vaccines, Novant Health said.

"I am very proud to once again partner with Novant Health to expand the Family Clinic model to bring better access to critical medical services in my hometown," Jordan said in a statement. "Everyone should have access to quality health care, no matter where they live, or whether or not they have insurance."

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According to a news release from the Diocese of Charlotte, Father Richard Sutter of St. Gabriel's Catholic Church said the lector in the Sunday service had just reached the 19th chapter of 1 Kings, a Bible passage referring to the prophet Elijah, which said, "After the wind there was an earthquake – but the LORD was not in the earthquake." It was then that parishioners felt the 5.1 magnitude earthquake centered near Sparta, the most powerful to hit the state in more than 100 years.

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Monitors said the 5.1-magnitude temblor struck at 8:07 a.m., following a much smaller quake several hours earlier. There were no reports of serious injuries, but some minor structural damage was reported in Sparta, as well as cracks in roads. Images on social media also showed items knocked off of grocery store shelves.

The Charlotte Observer reported that while he didn't feel it himself, Sutter said parishioners came up to him as soon as the service ended. He said the moment can be a lesson for the times.

"When there's fear from an earthquake, when there's fear from a storm, when there's fear from a pandemic and uncertainty ... you have to let the Lord speak to us the truth," he said. "Let's keep our eyes on Jesus Christ and not the waves (or even earthquakes) we cannot control," he said.

Father Cory Catron, pastor of the Catholic mission in Sparta, said his church suffered no apparent damage from the quake. "Made for good homily material, though," the news release said.

In his homily, Catron joked about being worried the next thing would be fire. He called the events a reminder of God's presence, adding "we must not be distracted by the noise and problems of the world around us, but listen for His voice in the stillness."

As the 11:15 a.m. Mass in Sparta was ending and Catron offered a final blessing, there was a 1.8 magnitude aftershock. He said, "The ceiling creaked for like three seconds, and everybody kind of looked up and immediately we knew what it was."

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In a letter sent to the department Friday and obtained by The Associated Press through a records request on Monday, UNC's research chief defends the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, saying it has been a leader in Middle Eastern language studies for years.

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UNC, which houses the consortium, was responding to an Aug. 29 letter from the department. Threatening to cut federal grant money, the department said the program focused too much on cultural offerings and not on language or national security and that it also placed too much emphasis on "the positive aspects of Islam" and not other religions.

Terry Magnuson, the school's vice chancellor for research, said UNC and Duke were the first universities in the Southeast to teach Middle Eastern languages on a regular basis. He said that UNC started offering Arabic classes in 1959 and that it now has the nation's highest enrollment in the Urdu language and the eighth highest in both Arabic and Turkish.

He rebuffed the argument that the consortium fails to provide adequate instruction on national security and economic issues, saying it hosts dozens of programs a year on the topics, sometimes featuring former national security officials from the Trump, Obama, and Bush administrations.

Magnuson also contested the Trump administration's claim that certain cultural programs, including one on Iranian art and film, should not be supported with taxpayer money. He said such programs help improve language acquisition and attract new students to the consortium's courses.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had ordered an investigation into the program in June following complaints of anti-Israel bias at a conference hosted by the consortium. Critics said it featured a rapper who performed an anti-Semitic song.

The department's investigation did not directly take a stance on any anti-Semitism but instead evaluated if the consortium was meeting rules tied to a federal grant for language programs. It said the consortium was falling short of the grant's goals and had until Sept. 22 to revise its proposal.

Among its findings, the department said the program failed to provide a "balance of perspectives" on religion. It argues that the consortium promoted the "positive aspects" of Islam but not Christianity, Judaism or other religions. It also said the consortium focused too much on Islam and failed to teach about discrimination faced by Christians, Jews and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

Magnuson countered that the consortium has hosted events on the persecution of Armenian Christians and other religious minorities. He said a positive appreciation for Christianity, Judaism, and other religions "suffuses" all the programs in question, noting that the consortium has hosted events including a visit to a Jewish center to explore Jewish traditions and presentations on Christianity in Lebanon.

Academic freedom advocates say the department's letter amounted to ideological harassment, but UNC makes no such argument in its letter. Magnuson said the school "deeply values its partnership" with the department and "has always been strongly committed to complying" with the grant program.

He said the school will establish an advisory board to review the consortium's activities and will keep records detailing how all expenses relate to the goal of the federal grant.

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Martha Gerdes is on a "leave of absence" from the program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte pending her disenrollment from the ROTC, according to US Army Cadet Command spokesman Maj. Robert Carter. The Army Times was the first to report the discipline against Gerdes.

UNC-Charlotte spokeswoman Buffie Stephens said federal law prevents the university from commenting.

Gerdes was a student at Davidson College in North Carolina when the Army began investigating her last November. Carter said ROTC officials learned of Gerdes' online activities when an anti-racism group called Carolina Workers Collective posted screenshots of tweets it attributed to her.

Carter said Gerdes admitted to investigators that she anonymously posted the statements on her Twitter account, "@femanon," which has been suspended. Gerdes' online activities "are inconsistent with the high moral expectations of a future Army officer," he added.

"Army ROTC remains committed to leadership excellence through diversity," Carter said in a statement.

Gerdes was enrolled at Davidson from August 2015 to November 2018, majoring in physics and working as a teaching assistant in the German studies department, said college spokesman Jay Pfeifer.

The Army Times reported that Gerdes posted messages that appeared to advocate for a race war and defend the Nazi Party. Above old photos of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross, she tweeted that she was "born in the wrong era." And, a day after a gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, she wrote that she didn't care about "Jews getting shot up except insofar as it's going to make it a lot harder for a lot of white people to just exist."

In March, HuffPost leaked online chat logs that were linked to several members of the U.S. armed forces, including two Army ROTC cadets from Montana and New York, to a white nationalist group called Identity Evropa. Carter said both are "out of the programs now."

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Details of the early evening violence remained hazy hours later, but campus Police Chief Jeff Baker said his emergency dispatch office first received a call about an individual armed with a pistol who had shot several students.

Two or three campus police officers responding to the call entered the building, disarmed the gunman and took him into custody, Baker said.

The accused shooter was identified late Tuesday as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, who is in custody with charges pending. No other information about Terrell was released.

Officials offered no explanation for what might have precipitated the shooting, and it was unclear whether the assailant knew any of his victims.

Local television news footage showed police officers escorting a tall, lanky young man with shaggy brown hair from a patrol car. As he was taken into a station house, the man looked over his shoulder with a smile and appeared to yell something at reporters.

Several local media outlets reported the gunman either was or had been a student on the campus.

"Our officers' actions definitely saved lives. There's no doubt about that," Baker said.

The gun violence, coinciding with the last day of classes for the academic year, prompted a security lockdown of the entire campus as police swept the university one building at a time, evacuating students as they progressed.

Video aired on local television and posted to social media showed scenes that have become all too familiar in the United States due to the rise in school gun violence, with students evacuating campus buildings with their hands raised as police officers ran past them toward the scene of the shooting.

About three hours after the shooting, Baker said all university buildings had been searched and secured and that students who live on campus could return to their dormitory halls. The university said final exams would be postponed through Sunday.

An outdoor concert scheduled for Tuesday night at the campus football stadium by rap artist Waka Flocka Flame was also canceled after the shooting.

Sandy D'Elousa, a spokeswoman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, which is leading the investigation, said the suspect in custody was believed to have acted alone.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said its agents were on the scene assisting police.

"The FBI is prepared to provide any resource needed as the investigation continues to determine exactly what led to this tragic loss of life in our community," said John Strong, special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Charlotte.

Baker confirmed that two victims were killed and four other injured, three of them listed in critical condition.

Television station WBTV in Charlotte, the state's most populous city, reported that gunfire erupted near the university's Kennedy Hall administrative building.

"We are in shock to learn of an active shooter situation on the campus of UNC Charlotte. My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives, those injured, the entire UNCC community and the courageous first responders who sprang into action to help others," Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said on Twitter.

Susan Harden, a professor of education on campus since 2011 who also serves on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners, expressed disbelief at the gun violence.

"This is a day at the end of the semester, when students are doing performances, presentations. … This is just the worst thing," Harden said at the police staging area.

"Our campus is so safe. So safe. I've never felt unsafe on our campus. I'm heartbroken."

Initial word of the shooting surfaced in a frantic warning posted by the school on its official Twitter account.

"Run, Hide, Fight. Secure yourself immediately," the university posted. The school said later on its website the campus was on lockdown and that students and staff should "remain in a safe location."

According to its website, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte enrolls more than 26,500 students and employs 3,000 faculty and staff.

The deadliest mass shooting on a campus of higher education in the United States took place at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, on April 16, 2007, when a student killed 32 people in a shooting rampage, before killing himself.

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