SMITHFIELD, N.C. — Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell's territory is one of country stores and fading tobacco barns; but increasingly his work -- and his words -- reach far beyond his rural county. Advocates and politicians across the state have come to know him as the lawman with the deep country twang who makes incendiary comments about "drunk Mexicans."

"Look at that," he says, pointing to tiendas that have cropped up amid the barbecue joints. "You can't even read the durned sign. Everywhere you look, it's like little Mexico around here."

Bizzell is a farm boy so steeped in traditional American culture that he won't even eat spaghetti, much less a taco. Since becoming sheriff a decade ago, he has watched a Hispanic influx change the rural landscape of his home county. Its population is now 11 percent Hispanic. » read more

Think of it as a new "normal" in American family life.

After creeping slowly and steadily upward most of the last 50 years, the number of babies born to young unmarried women quietly crossed a troubling threshold in 2006.

For the first time in a half-century of record-keeping, a majority of babies born to women younger than 30 were out of wedlock. » read more

Summer is officially over in Alaska, and if you got out in the sun to enjoy both days of it you were lucky.

Those were the two July days the temperature at the offices of the National Weather Service in Anchorage hit 70 degrees or better.

"Those temperatures occurred at the beginning of the month (of July) and were immediately followed by a long stretch of cool and wet weather. » read more

Hurricane Ike regained strength and howled closer to the Turks and Caicos Islands Saturday, and forecasters shifted Ike's path south enough so that South Florida and the Keys may avoid a direct hit.

The latest forecast points Category 4 Ike on a course through Cuba Sunday and Monday, emerging in the Florida Straits Tuesday as a Category 1 storm after its interaction with land.

Its course from there is unclear, but Florida's Panhandle and the vulnerable Gulf Coast -- recently dealt a blow from Hurricane Gustav -- should be monitoring the storm. Forecasters said Ike could restrengthen into a major hurricane when it moves into the warm Gulf of Mexico next week. » read more

Tropical Storm Hanna is racing northward after raking the Carolina coast overnight, soaking eastern North Carolina but sparing all but the eastern fringes of the Charlotte region.

And even there, effects were minimal. Up to 3 inches of rain has fallen in far eastern Union County, and eastern Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties got some rain, too. But nothing fell west of Interstate 77, and any rain should be long gone by later this morning as Hanna bolts up the Atlantic coast, said Rodney Hinson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Greer, S.C.

"The rain's already ending, really," Hinson said. » read more