The mosaic of laws passed by state legislatures this year reveals a country grappling with threats, from a faltering economy and record-high gasoline prices to global warming and lead-tainted toys from China.

Despite a tough economic year, several states are attempting to hold the line on college tuition — or at least not let increases get out of control — by avoiding deep cuts to higher education, an area that states have been quick to slash in past years when funds were low.

(Updated 5:38 p.m. EDT, July 17, 2008)

For many states, 2008 will be remembered for record numbers of home foreclosures, $4-a-gallon gasoline and the beginning of a slide into new fiscal woes after two years of overflowing coffers.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - Federal law requires that anyone with a commercial drivers license speak English well enough to talk with police. Authorities last year issued 25,230 tickets nationwide for violations. Now the federal government is trying to tighten the English requirement, saying the change is needed for safety reasons.

Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee lead the nation when it comes to obesity, a new government survey reported Thursday.

One month after state Department of Transportation Commissioner Gena Abraham said the agency had a $1 billion deficit, the DOT board demoted the department's longtime treasurer, and Abraham's staff told the board that they had brought the deficit down to just under $7 million.

A looming federal deadline that requires tribes to track and register sex offenders in their communities was both embraced and denounced by tribal leaders in a Senate hearing on Thursday. The Adam Walsh Act, a law to track the whereabouts of people who commit sex crimes, calls for tribes to comply with the federal law by next April or step aside so a state's attorney general can do the job. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian affairs, called on tribal leaders and national spokesmen to testify on Indian Country's success and failures in complying with the sex offender registration act.

Unemployment was up in Georgia from last June.

Hold the cheeseburger and fries. American adults are getting heavier, and numbers released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today prove it.

Think fried chicken, biscuits and gravy and pecan pie. What do these Southern classics add up to?

Nebraska will receive almost $3.2 million as part of a $515 million settlement with a drug company accused of misconduct.

ATLANTA -- The South tips the scales again as the nation's fattest region, according to a new government survey.

Sen. John McCain on Thursday renewed his call for a "brief" gas tax holiday - and quickly ran into a political fender-bender with his new Missouri campaign chairman, Sen. Kit Bond.

The South still leads the nation in obesity rates, with Tennessee ranking in the top three for the heaviest population, according to the most recent government data.