By ANNE BLYTHE, Raleigh News and Observer

The trial of John Edwards is not scheduled to begin for at least two and a half weeks, but the tabloids already are dishing on the legal drama in all CAPITAL LETTERS!

The latest from the National Enquirer: "John Edwards Secret Wedding to Rielle! His desperate attempt to CHEAT JUSTICE."

RALEIGH, N.C. - American universities have gone to great lengths to install special sirens and mass-alert systems on campuses in the four years since a gunman massacred 32 fellow students and faculty at Virginia Tech University.

Native New Yorker Joe Michalek has spent the past six years trying to make a name for himself as a modern moonshiner, stilling his "boutique 'shines" out in the open, instead of down some dusty road in a moss-draped backwoods hideaway.

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. - Rielle Hunter, the videographer who had an extramarital affair and child with John Edwards, has accused the man who once falsely claimed to be her baby's father of secretly slipping sealed court documents to federal prosecutors.

RALEIGH, N.C. - James Iredell, one of the first U.S. Supreme Court justices, and father of North Carolina's 23rd governor, was a prolific letter writer.

During the latest episode of the battle over a sex tape showing ex-presidential candidate John Edwards being less than presidential, Judge Carl Fox stopped with a quizzical look.

As if baggage, security and traffic weren't enough of a hassle for the thousands expected to fly in and out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport this holiday weekend, here's one more thing to worry about: coyotes.

At Duke University, a school that likes to tout its cutting-edge research, a sex toy study being conducted by a behavioral economist and student health workers has roused criticism.

For much of October, researchers recruited female Duke students to take part in a "sexually explicit" study on Tupperware-style parties in which sex toys, not kitchenware, are the draw.

Elizabeth Edwards has long tried to forge a thin gray path between public and private life.

She asks for privacy to deal with the affair that her husband, John, a one-time presidential hopeful, had with former campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.