The N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, which helps determine whether residents were sterilized under the state eugenics program, had stopped taking new requests for verification on June 20 when it ran out of money.

Before the temporary freeze, the foundation had verified 161 eugenics victims, 146 of them living.

The office is back working again, but no one knows for how long.

The state ran a eugenics program for about 40 years that lasted until 1974. A state board ordered sterilized residents who were mentally diseased, feeble-minded or epileptic. The board also ordered sterilized people who were poor or who were thought likely to have disabled children. About 7,600 people were sterilized under the auspices of the state board. The N.C. State Center for Health Statistics last month revised its projection of likely living victims from about 1,500 to 2,000 to about 1,350 to 1,800.

Legislators had talked for years about compensating victims, and the idea gained traction this year.

Gov. Bev Perdue and the state House had proposed giving victims $50,000 each in compensation, but Senate Republicans refused to go along. The verification work would have ended, but in the final days of the legislative session, the legislature directed the Department of Administration to find money to keep it going. The three-person staff is down to one executive director Charmaine Fuller Cooper.

The foundation had more than 140 requests for verification on June 20, and is again accepting new requests.

Were going to continue as usual as long as we can, Cooper said.

Burr wins on Haqqani network

Congress has passed a bill forcing the State Department to declare the Pakistani Haqqani network a terrorist organization or to provide a detailed explanation of why the label is not fitting.

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Dome: Eugenics office operating on shoestring