Breaking News } Special weather statement: Chatham, Durham, Johnston, Orange, Wake

Editorial:  Tomorrow will be pressure-packed in Punxsutawney, Pa. That's when Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog that forecasts the continuation or shortening of winter, is released from his home in Gobbler's Knob.

Editorial:  The legal community in Durham, and those citizens who appear in courts for various reasons, have clear reason to have lost confidence in District Attorney Tracey Cline, whose public statements regarding Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson have been inflammatory at the least, and perhaps wildly inaccurate and unprofessional at the worst.

Editorial:  First, the points on which most reasonable people would agree: WakeMed is a fine hospital system that serves the people of Wake County and other areas as well and does a good job providing care for those who cannot afford it.

The first bills have just been mailed to users of the state's first modern-era toll road, the Triangle Expressway, and already the talk is of two more toll projects in this traditionally free-roads state.

Editorial:  It was less than three years ago that public health officials were alarmed by the deaths of residents of a Wayne County assisted living facility.

Editorial:  Three years ago, the disastrous breach of a coal-ash containment area at a TVA power plant in Tennessee was big news.

editorial:  Many fairly long-term residents of North Carolina, regardless of their political party affiliation, have had to answer this question somewhere, sometime, on their travels: Why is it that a state represented for 30 years in the U.S.

editorial:  One of our most frequent and sociable visitors to backyard feeders, the Carolina chickadee delights in mid-winter snacks that include, beside a good mixture of seeds, a bit of something on the order of peanut butter or fat-rich suet.

editorial:  There wouldn't be any point in putting up billboards if they were obscured by trees, now would there? Like 'em or not, billboards in many situations are legal and to a certain extent useful.

editorial:  Call them what you will - pirates, members of an armed gang, common criminals or militants - they're no longer holding an American woman and a Danish man captive in the wilds of Somalia. For that, Americans are amply justified in applauding the U.S.

The re-election fight was shaping up as a tough one for Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue, who won her office in 2008 against Charlotte Republican Pat McCrory, the former mayor whom she figured to face in a rematch this year.

In Durham and indeed throughout North Carolina, the surname Duke - if it signals a connection to the Dukes who founded a tobacco empire and used their fortune to propel a university to national renown - can be a ticket to wealth, influence and social acclaim.