By MANDY LOCKE, Raleigh News and Observer

RALEIGH, N.C. - Female baby boomers shattered glass ceilings and enrolled in colleges that shut out their mothers. They took pills to control how many babies they would bear. Others chose to forgo motherhood and stay single; some married and stayed home to tend to their families.

RALEIGH, N.C. - That cool, throat-numbing sensation some smokers find in their cigarettes could go the way of other products the federal government has deemed dangerous.

DURHAM, N.C. - If a team of white Charlotte, N.C. police officers and prosecutors had understood more about African-American hairstyles in 1999, Shawn Massey would likely have spent the past 12 years watching his son grow up and listening to his grandmother preach in church on Sundays.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Gregory Taylor walked into freedom with baby steps trained by leg shackles.

He stepped into fame after serving 17 years of a life sentence for murder; three judges declared him, clearly and emphatically, innocent. He was the first man freed by a new process propelled by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, the first of its kind in the nation.

The day before John Edwards admitted that he fathered his mistress' daughter, he headed to Haiti to help with relief efforts.

Edwards is in Haiti now, working with a team of U.S. doctors who are aiding a Catholic relief group, his wife told The News & Observer of Raleigh in an interview.

Miles Wright was unemployed and complaining to a friend about the unwelcome quiet in his life a few weeks ago.

That was before the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

In the aftermath, Wright resurrected his life and saved a friend.

John Edwards admitted Thursday to being the father of Frances Quinn Hunter, the 2-year-old daughter of his former mistress, Rielle Hunter.

The nagging, sagging economy has intruded in one more place: America's bedroom.