Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

Coy Privette, a retired Baptist pastor, conservative lawmaker and outspoken advocate for Christian groups, was charged Thursday with paying a 32-year-old Salisbury prostitute for sex acts.

The 74-year-old Cabarrus County commissioner was arrested at his home in Kannapolis early Thursday. He appeared before a Rowan County magistrate on six misdemeanor charges and was released on a promise to appear in court Aug. 22. He did not return e-mail messages or calls to his cell and home phones, and no one answered the door at his Kannapolis home.

Privette, a prominent Republican with a 30-year career, is one of the state's most vocal opponents of alcohol sales and legal gambling. He also serves on the State Baptist Convention of North Carolina and as president of the Christian Action League of North Carolina.

A Florida teen has been charged with a felony after getting caught watching pornographic material, but it's not what he was watching that got him into trouble, it was where he was watching it.

Leah Leon says her 15-year-old neighbor, Jeremiah Issac, broke into her southeast Cape Coral home so he could look at pornography on her computer.

"He was sitting here and the chair was more like this and he had just went to touch the screen and his hand was on his head and I scared him because I screamed," said Leon.

Leon said she didn't think it was the first time he had been there.

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, whose telephone number was disclosed by the so-called "D.C. Madam" accused of running a prostitution ring, says he is sorry for a "serious sin" and that he has already made peace with his wife.

"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter said Monday in a printed statement. "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there — with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."

"I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one...I think this debate is very healthy, and it's winning a lot of hearts and minds. I think we're going to show real progress."

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he'd had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston's wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

Was the convicted felon Scooter Libby kept out of jail because the president was "worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell"?

"I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own, unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair."