Pictures of animals holding knives and cigarettes have prompted an investigation of employees at Mecklenburg County Animal Care and Control.In an e-mail to city leaders, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe said his department had been investigating the "inappropriate" pictures since August, according to The Herald's news partner, WSOC-TV.One picture showed a cat, apparently sedated, w...

When Nikki Haley won election last week as governor of South Carolina, a small town halfway across the world in India's Punjab exploded in celebration.The Randhawa family in the town of Verka distributed sweets to neighbors, set off firecrackers and broke into traditional Punjabi dances to demonstrate its pride that a relative had been elected the first Indian-American female governor in U.S. hist...

Harry Pavilack - the Myrtle Beach lawyer perhaps best-known for his television commercials and billboards urging potential clients to "Call Pavilack Today!" - is $72.5 million in debt and is facing allegations in bankruptcy court that he could be hoarding cash and hiding assets from creditors, court records show.The allegations were raised in a report last week by George DuRant, a court-appointed ...

Iran began the process of loading 163 fuel rods into the reactor core of its first nuclear power plant on Tuesday, celebrating the achievement as proof that Tehran can outmaneuver international sanctions.The plant, built with Russian help in the southern port city of Bushehr, is not among the aspects of Iran's nuclear program that are of top concern to the international community and is not direct...

Edwin Newman, who brought literacy, wit and energy to NBC newscasts for more than three decades, and battled linguistic pretense and clutter in his best sellers "Strictly Speaking" and "A Civil Tongue," has died. He was 91.NBC News did not immediately say Wednesday where or when Newman had died, or the cause of death.At NBC from 1952 until his retirement in 1984, Newman did political reporting, fo...

Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Cable Inc. said Sunday that they have made "significant progress" in resolving their issues over programming fees with less than a week left to renew a pact that feeds TV channels like ESPN into American households."We are now focusing all our attention on a successful conclusion of these efforts prior to the Sep. 2 deadline," both companies said on their websites S...

Veteran reporter and commentator Daniel Schorr, whose hard-hitting reporting for CBS got him on President Richard Nixon's notorious "enemies list" in the 1970s, has died. He was 93.Schorr died Friday at a Washington hospital after a brief illness, said Anna Christopher, a spokeswoman for National Public Radio, where Schorr continued to work as a senior news analyst and commentator.Schorr's career ...

Human error might have caused the crash of an Air India Boeing 737-800 plane that killed 158 people over the weekend, India's civil aviation minister said Monday.Weather conditions and other factors at the time the plane reached its destination "looked absolutely normal for a regular touchdown and a safe landing," Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told the CNN-IBN television news channel."You c...

Catholic Church officials said Friday that the recently created first synthetic cell could be a positive development if correctly used, but warned scientists that only God can create life.Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction to the announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA. They warned scienti...

Downtown Bangkok turned into a flaming battleground Wednesday as an army assault toppled the Red Shirt protest leadership, enraging followers who fired grenades and set numerous fires that cloaked the skyline in a black haze.Using live ammunition, troops dispersed thousands of anti-government protesters who had been camped in the capital's premier shopping and residential district for weeks. Four ...

COLUMBIA -- South Carolina's ongoing soap opera starring the state's governor and his former wife continued Thursday with Jenny Sanford's appearance on the Dr. Phil television show.The broadcast came the day after Gov. Mark Sanford told reporters that he had spent Mother's Day weekend in Florida with the Argentine woman with whom he had an affair, trying to rekindle their romance.Both Sanfords at ...

A North Carolina town that the mayor called "Mayberry with a beach" has banned swimmers from wearing thongs.Kure (kyoor-EE) Beach Mayor Dean Lambeth says "we're going to keep this as close to Mayberry with a beach as you can keep it," referring to the idyllic Southern community portrayed on the 1960s TV series "The Andy Griffith Show."The Star-News of Wilmington reports that the town council voted...

A South Carolina family spotlighted Sunday on the television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" say they are trying to cope with the bigger bills that came with their big new house.Amanda and Derrick Suggs told The Sun News of Myrtle Beach that their new house, built by the show in January, is about three times larger than their old one. That means higher taxes, insurance and utility bills."The...

More than 100 Chinese miners were pulled out alive Monday after being trapped for over a week in a flooded coal mine, where some ate sawdust and strapped themselves to the shafts' walls with their belts to avoid drowning while they slept.Rescued miners wrapped in blankets, some with their light-sensitive eyes covered but their feet bare, were hurried to waiting ambulances that sped wailing to near...