Local/Regional News

Black bears, once seen in the Southeast only during a visit to the Great Smoky Mountains, are making a comeback. From Little River Canyon in Alabama to Cloudland Canyon in Georgia and along the Cumberland Plateau in Southeast Tennessee, bear sightings are becoming more common—sometimes in backyards.

Standing atop the mound of concrete he helped build, Collin Sweatman can't help but feel proud. "I just really like the way it looks when I've built something," he said.

Dairy mogul Scottie Mayfield on Friday became the second unexpected challenger to U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, who has spent four months waging a primary battle against Weston Wamp, the 24-year-old son of his immediate predecessor.

The Hamilton County Democratic Party has apologized for dubbing Republican congressional opponents “Do-Nothing Chuck, Little Prince Wamp and the Milkman.”

When they found a tool design they liked, the people who lived here thousands of years ago stuck with it. At least that’s the case for a 6,000-year-old slate ax head donated recently to Prater’s Mill in Varnell, Ga.

Convicted murderer Fredrick Brown, who lodged a chancy appeal of his guilty pleas and sentencing for killing two men in separate shootings, won a small victory Friday.

Construction is under way on a $4.1 million facility that will house a city employee health and wellness health clinic and pharmacy.

A 58-year-old English professor at Dalton State College is under investigation by the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office for alleged child molestation.

State and local authorities were drawn into the arrest of a Guild, Tenn., man in a shooting incident on Interstate 24 near the Jasper exit Thursday night, authorities said.

While lawmakers in Nashville and Gov. Bill Haslam's office wrestle over numbers and the proposed closure of Taft Youth Development Center, a judge in Rhea County says closing the facility is a "smoke screen" for eventual privatization of juvenile justice in Tennessee.

Potential candidates in Chattanooga's mayoral recall election in August are mostly taking a wait-and-see approach as the issue moves to a court hearing next week.

The fiancee of a man on trial for murder testified Friday that in the hours before the shooting the defendant did not have a weapon. Arlinda Moorer said she met with Jamaul Herman, her fiancee, at The Palace near midnight on July 3, 2010, and the pair stayed together until the club closed just after 2 a.m.

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s plan to relax state mandates on local schools’ classroom size isn’t getting a passing grade from many of the people who run them — school superintendents and directors.

Metro Atlanta would get hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation funding while Georgia farmers would get help finding workers they say were driven away by a crackdown on illegal immigrants under an $18.6 billion budget adopted Friday by House lawmakers.