As she flipped through the cemetery register, Mary Blakely's eyes filled with tears. On line after line, the entry read simply "Baby Boy" or "Baby Girl," followed by a surname and a burial date.

Ron Poirier couldn't escape the feeling that his cancer was somehow a punishment.

Authorities say a former foster parent who lived in Spencer is accused of sex crimes against children, and investigators want anyone who believes they were victimized to come forward.

Health advocates say a North Carolina Senate bill would repeal hundreds of local and community college rules restricting smoking outdoors.

It's unclear how long he will be dogged by inquiries into last year's deadly attack in Libya, the IRS targeting of tea party groups and now the seizure of Associated Press phone records in a leak investigation. But if nothing else, these episodes give new confidence and swagger to Republicans who were discouraged by President Obama's re-election and their inability to block tax hikes as part of the Jan. 1 "fiscal cliff" deal.

States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half— from .08 blood alcohol level to .05_matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a federal safety board recommended Tuesday. That's about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 pounds, two for a 160-pound man.

Angelina Jolie wrote a powerful op-ed article Tuesday, explaining her decision to go public with having her breasts removed to avoid cancer.

The third straight week of NAACP protests has produced the highest arrest count yet at the North Carolina General Assembly. Dozens were arrested Monday outside the Senate chambers in protests targeting the Republican-held legislature. An official count isn't yet available, but the group topped last week's 30 arrests by about 20 people, according to observations of the arrests and first-hand accounts.

Attorneys in North Carolina's redistricting lawsuits will return to court early next month because a three-judge panel wants to hear more evidence before deciding on the legality of boundaries drawn by Republican legislators.

President Barack Obama tried to swat down a pair of brewing controversies Monday, denouncing as "outrageous" the targeting of conservative political groups by the federal IRS but angrily denying any administration cover-up after last year's deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya.