DURHAM - A judge ordered Rodney McLaurin, 38, held without bail Monday in the slaying of Steven Mitchell.

RALEIGH - A new group representing programmers and owners of video poker-style games set to become illegal in North Carolina says it is working to tweak their games so the owners can stay in business.

CHAPEL HILL - Atlas Fraley's family has dropped its lawsuit against Orange County over his death because their lawyer did not think it could overcome a governmental immunity defense.

RALEIGH - Three country music stars who were in town over the weekend will make a return trip to the state capital during the N.C. State Fair.

An old barn and an abandoned house burned over the weekend in Johnston County, the latest in a string of suspicious fires in the southern end of the county.

PARIS - Alain Corneau, the French filmmaker who leaped to international notice with the 1991 hit "Tous les Matins du Monde," has died, his talent agency said Monday. He was 67.

A group of North Carolina hospitals thinks patience is a virtue when it comes to giving birth.

DURHAM - Two Durham video producers are out to lure more movie business to the Triangle with a new agency to be fully operating by the middle of September.

DURHAM - Former classmates recalled two young men killed in a car crash in Carteret County over the weekend as fun-loving, compassionate friends.

The Downtown Raleigh Alliance has weighed in with Gov. Bev Perdue and other state officials on the idea of transforming the Dorothea Dix property into an urban park.

When two of the nation's premierbasketball tournaments dribbled away fromRaleigh - and why wouldn't they, when the venue for games was located in a cow pasture miles from downtown? - they left a void in the city's cultural offerings.

RALEIGH - North Carolina voters will get to use a rare method for choosing an elected official in the November election.

Tom Ross is sort of a poor man's Erskine Bowles.

Watching the Alaskan GOP Senate primary race with interest is North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr.

APEX - When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave its final environmental approval this month for the site of a regional wastewater treatment plant in New Hill, few breathed a deeper sigh of relief than Tim Donnelly, director of this town's public works department.

Most retired executives keep mementos from their time atop the corporate ladder.

CARY - Kathy Hart makes an annual pilgrimage to the Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival looking for "a signature piece" to add to her one-of-a-kind collection of one-of-a-kind objets d'art.

DURHAM - In the summer of 1999, prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for high school dropout Derrick Michael Allen when they switched course and offered him a deal.

As college students return to the Triangle, some are cracking open lip balm-size jars and plastic bags of a legal herb product that mimics the effects of marijuana.