Search

The article reports that at least 54 persons were killed in an outbreak of tornadoes in five Southern states during the evening and night of February 5, 2008. Arkansas and Tennessee were the two states reporting both the most fatalities and property damage, with several small communities essentially destroyed. The outbreak was unusual but not unheard of winter weather in the region.

The article reports that many U.S. consumers shopped on the Friday after Thanksgiving, referred to as "Black Friday," but that they exercised restraint in their purchases and shopped at discount chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., and Best Buy Co. Inc. Stores such as Kohl's Department Stores and J.C. Penney Inc., attempted to draw shoppers by opening earlier and offering discounts.

The article reports that the issue of the costs of providing an adequate defense for criminal suspects facing capital punishment has slowed prosecution of such cases to a near halt in many U.S. states. U.S. Supreme Court decisions have emphasized the importance of defense counsel during capital trials. The case of Brian Nichols, who is accused of killing three persons in a Georgia courthouse in 2005, accounted for the state's entire budget for the public defender's office in 2007.

The article reports that the United States Supreme Court ordered a stay of execution on October 30, 2007 for convicted murderer Earl W. Berry. The decision required the signature of five justices, but was unaccompanied by any statement. It seems to indicate that there should be a freeze on lethal injections until the Kentucky case Baze v. Rees is heard, which questions whether certain drugs given by lethal injection should be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment.

The article examines the social and political affects in the U.S. Southeast of the region's prolonged drought in 2007. Both citizens, businesses, and governments have been slow to react to the drought, and water conservation measures have been adopted only sporadically. Georgia instituted a ban on outdoor water use in September, after reports that the Atlanta metropolitan area had only a four month supply of water remaining. Alabama, even more severely affected, has done even less.

The article reports that part of the retired muppet collection owned by the Jim Henson Foundation will be donated to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia. The gift will include some 500-700 pieces as well as funds to build an additional space to be called the Jim Henson Wing. The entire collection has not been donated due to the deterioration of some of the puppets.

The article discusses the erection of a Hindu temple and a Muslim mosque in the Atlanta, Georgia area. The Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is one of the largest Hindu temples in the world. The pieces were constructed in India and shipped to Lilburn, Georgia to be put together. The Al-Farooq Masjid mosque was built in Midtown Atlanta. Both buildings will be open for worship before the end of 2007.

The article reports that puppets which featured in the 1964 stop-motion television special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," have been restored and put for public display at the Center for Puppetry Arts in New York City. The puppets are believed to be the last two surviving figures made by Japanese puppet makers in the 1960s. The puppets were procured by Kevin A. Kreiss, the president of TimeandSpaceToys.com, from a descendant of an employee of Rankin-Bass, the company that made the film.

The article reports that the number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled by recent arrivals from Mexico. Details related to recent data on the issue released by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the author, the data shows that immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York.

This article looks at the political campaign of Georgia Representative Cynthia A. McKinney and how a film entitled "American Blackout" might help her with the upcoming Democratic primary runoff. The movie, directed by Ian Inaba, follows McKinney around for three years and exposes alleged black voter disenfranchisement. McKinney's candidacy was marred by her alleged striking of a white Capitol police officer who tried to prevent her entry into a House office building. The movie reveals that white Capitol police made a game of stopping black representatives.

The author looks at the issue of audio illusions related to cellular phone rings. According to the author, phantom phone rings have emerged recently as an Internet discussion topic and has become a new reason for people to bemoan the techno-saturation of modern life. The author reviews how some experts believe the phantom sounds are the result of phones become a fifth limb for many people. Comments from doctoral student David Laramie, who is writing a dissertation on the effect of cellphones on behavior, are included.

The article looks at how gentrification has affected the black population of Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta has been a symbol of African-American success, including its role as the first major Southern city to elect a black mayor in 1973. For the first time since 1920's, the white percentage of the Atlanta population is increasing and the black percentage is decreasing. Atlanta is attracting affluent, mostly white populations. Demographers say that the shift is driven more by class rather than race.

The article discusses the cost of keeping giant pandas Lun Lun and Yang Yang at Zoo Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia. The pandas require an expensive diet and are attended by four persons. In addition, the zoo must pay steep annual fees to the Chinese government to rent the pandas. Giant pandas are also on loan to zoos in San Diego, Memphis and Washington, D.C. The pandas are becoming a financial headache for many of the zoos. If China will not negotiate some budgetary expenses, says Dennis W. Kelly, chief executive of Zoo Atlanta, the pandas may have to be returned.

The article reports on the situation in Sago, West Virginia, where 12 coal miners died after being trapped in a coal mine following an unexplained explosion on January 2, 2006. According to the author, many of the miners wrote notes to family members before their deaths. The one survivor of the incident, Randal McCloy, is in a coma and may have suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation.

The article reports that 12 miners who were trapped in the Sago coal mine in West Virginia were found alive following an explosion. One miner was found dead. Joe Thornton of the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety said the rescued miners were being examined and will be sent to a hospital. INSET: Searching the Sago Mine.

The article examines reactions of General Motors (GM) employees to plans for plant shutdowns. GM workers nationwide met the news of plant closures and job cuts with shock, resignation, and frustration with management. Many of the plants that will close are over 50 years old, dating back to an era when GM dominated the American automobile market. As foreign competitors with lower labor costs and more desirable vehicles have cut down GM's market share, the automaker has struggled to regain its competitiveness. Trimming its work force and closing under-used plants is one way it hopes to do this.

For decades, the drug-resistant germ called MRSA was almost exclusively a concern of humans, usually in hospitals and other health care settings. But in recent years, the germ has become a growing problem for veterinarians, with an increasing number of infections turning up in birds, cats, dogs, horses, pigs, rabbits and rodents. And that, infectious-disease experts say, is becoming a hazard to humans who own or spend time with these animals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The influenza vaccine, which has been strongly recommended for people over 65 for more than four decades, is losing its reputation as an effective way to ward off the virus in the elderly. A growing number of immunologists and epidemiologists say the vaccine probably does not work very well for people over 70, the group that accounts for three-fourths of all flu deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

''Desperate Pets!'' read the headline of an online classified ad posted from Lee County, Fla., which is ranked first in the nation in home foreclosures. ''Please Help!'' begged a post from a pet owner in Carroll County, Ga., who said she had two dogs that would be homeless when her mother's home was foreclosed on in a few weeks. ''Our shelter has something like an 80 percent kill rate,'' the post said. ''I have exhausted every effort I know to find them a good home. No one wants a pregnant dog.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High blood pressure, the most commonly diagnosed condition in the United States, is becoming increasingly resistant to drugs that lower it, according to a panel of experts assembled by the American Heart Association. ''It's becoming more difficult to treat and it's requiring more and more medications to do so,'' said the panel chairman, Dr. David A. Calhoun, a hypertension specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court on Monday sharply criticized a state plan to lay off a large group of public defenders, saying it could cause a legal crisis. On Friday, the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, which administers Georgia's defender system, announced it would close the Metro Conflict Defender Office, one of four such offices in Georgia that handle cases in which it would be a conflict of interest for the local public defender's office to represent more than one client charged with the same crime. The issue arises when, for example, two defendants in the same bank robbery turn on each other after they are arrested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At least one Arkansas family already knows that 2008 has been a devastating year for tornadoes. John E. Hill, 31, lost his job on Feb. 2 when a huge twister demolished the boat factory in Clinton, Ark., where he worked as a welder. Little more than three months later, Mr. Hill, who was struggling to provide for his family, lost his house, cars and cash savings to another tornado. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To gas prices, foreclosure rates and the cost of rice, add this rising economic indicator: the number of tips to the police from people hoping to collect reward money. Calls to the Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers hot line in the first quarter of this year were up 30 percent over last year. San Antonio had a 44 percent increase. Cities and towns from Detroit to Omaha to Beaufort County, N.C., all report increases of 25 percent or more in the first quarter, with tipsters telling operators they need the money for rent, light bills or baby formula. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Apparently eight million gallons of water and 80,000 animals were not enough for the Georgia Aquarium, which already claims to be the world's largest. It did not have dolphins. On Tuesday, aquarium officials announced plans for a $110 million expansion, increasing itself by 1.5 million gallons, most of which will be used for dolphin windows, dolphin shows and something called ''dolphin encounters.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gena L. Abraham, Georgia's state transportation commissioner, started her day on Tuesday by making a routine announcement via news release: $75 million would be spent to resurface roads and build bridges around a medical center in Augusta. It is likely that Ms. Abraham, 39, the first woman to run what is one of the most powerful government agencies in the state, has never been so eager to build bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A teenager who the authorities say planned to blow up his high school and made a tape explaining his motives appeared in a South Carolina court on Monday so a judge could appoint a lawyer to defend him. The teenager, Ryan Schallenberger, 18, of Ruby, S.C., an honor student who was in contention to be valedictorian in his class at Chesterfield High School, was turned in by his parents after they found bomb-making supplies and a detailed plan for the attack. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A company hired by the State of Georgia to administer health benefits for low-income patients is sending letters to notify tens of thousands of residents that their private records were exposed on the Internet for nearly seven weeks before the error was caught and corrected, a company spokeswoman said on Thursday. The records of as many as 71,000 adults and children enrolled in the Medicaid or PeachCare for Kids programs were inadvertently posted on Feb. 12, said Amy Knapp, a spokeswoman for the company, WellCare Health Plans Inc., whose headquarters are in Tampa, Fla. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This week the third floor of the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University became a place where lovers were ''secretaries to the wordless moon'' and a ''blue-scooped sky'' was lathered ''with the soap-slip caressing of pot-bellied clouds.'' The occasion was ''A Fine Excess: A Three-Day Celebration of Poetry,'' a conference headlined by three Pulitzer Prize winners: Mark Strand, a former poet laureate of the United States, who won the prize in 1999; W. D. Snodgrass, who won in 1960 for his first book of poetry; and Richard Wilbur, another former poet laureate, who won the Pulitzer twice, in 1957 and 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A narrowly divided Georgia Supreme Court declined Monday to order a new trial for a man sentenced to death in the 1989 murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer, despite recantations by seven of nine witnesses who originally testified against him. The convicted man, Troy A. Davis, 39, had collected affidavits from all seven of the recanting witnesses, some of whom said their trial testimony had been coerced by investigators who were under pressure to convict someone in that fatal shooting of a fellow officer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A powerful tornado struck directly at the commercial center of downtown Atlanta on Friday night, blowing windows out of dozens of high-rise buildings, tossing trees and cars, and severely damaging many of the city's landmarks, including the CNN Center, the Georgia Dome and the convention center. At least 27 people were injured and taken to hospitals, said Capt. Bill May of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, most with cuts and bruises from flying debris. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The $1.6 million Templeton Prize, the richest award made to an individual by a philanthropic organization, was given Wednesday to Michael Heller, 72, a Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist and philosopher who has spent his life asking, and perhaps more impressively answering, questions like ''Does the universe need to have a cause?'' The John Templeton Foundation, which awards grants to encourage scientific discovery on the ''big questions'' in science and philosophy, commended Professor Heller, who is from Poland, for his extensive writings that have ''evoked new and important consideration of some of humankind's most profound concepts.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant worker, hopped into his boat to follow it upstream to its source. It turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama's first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has extended the prison term of former Mayor Bill Campbell of Atlanta, a spokeswoman confirmed Friday, a week after news reports questioned his participation in an early release drug treatment program. Lawyers for Mr. Campbell, who was convicted of tax evasion, told the judge who sentenced him in 2006 that their client had ''no health or substance abuse problems.'' Nonetheless, prison officials admitted him to a wait-listed drug treatment program, which allowed him to shave more than three months off his 30-month sentence. His sentence was also reduced by four additional months for good behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on a man named Timothy Elliot, who was sentenced by judge Richard Connon of Barnstable Superior Court in Massachusetts for violation of the terms of the probation agreement. The agreement required him to avoid gambling, purchase of lottery tickets or visit an establishment where gaming is conducted. The man was convicted of robbing banks so that he could buy scratch-off lottery tickets, the judge allowed him to keep the $1 million he won in the Massachusetts lottery.

The article presents an obituary for Tom B. Murphy, the House speaker for Georgia.

The article presents information related to the arrival of African-American novelist Alice Walker's archive at the Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. According to school officials, Walker, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, will get her archive placed at the university. According to Rudolph Byrd, a friend of Walker, Walker's papers provide an individual with a sense of the process of creating fiction and poetry.

The article focuses on a controversy concerning the division of Christ Church in Savannah, reportedly the first church established in Georgia. Among the congregation, 87 percent voted to split from the Episcopal diocese and join an Anglican diocese in Uganda. The rift has created two congregations, each claiming the name and assets of the church. The Diocese of Georgia filed a lawsuit in November 2007, to keep control of the church's assets resulting in a legal tangle.

The article reports on the involvement of the Atlanta police in Georgia in a child pornography case. Terrill M. Crane, husband of Sergeant Tanya C. Crane, was arrested in connection with the case on November 29, 2007. According to the federal investigators, some police officers have withheld and destroyed evidence. The arrest was made after the Federal Bureau of Investigation received photographs of Crane engaging in sexual activity with some girls.

The article offers information regarding the marriage of physician Katherine Van Loon and basketball player Jon Steitz. It refers to their professional life, courtship period and what they like about each other. It states that the two tied nuptial knot on the grounds of the Clioster resort on Sea Island, Georgia.

The article reports on a Georgia Supreme Court ruling striking down a state law about sex offenders. On November 21, 2007, the court unanimously overturned the law that had limited the movement and residence of registered sex offenders. The court ruled that the law was running contrary to the property rights enshrined in the Constitution. The law was passed in 2006.

The article offers news briefs related to the U.S. Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore has announced to seek the Senate seat presently held by John W. Warner. A Michigan judge has ruled that Anthony Green Jr., a high school student charged with shooting two other teenagers, will be tried as adult. Fran Townsend, terrorism advisor at the White House, has decided to step down from her post.

The article offers information on the efforts of U.S. federal biologists at the Fish and Wildlife Service, to make drinking water available to Atlanta, Georgia. They allowed Georgia to maintain more water in a reservoir that supplies water to the city and other northern parts of the state, with the aim of reducing flows to Florida. They want Lake Lanier to fill with new rainfall water, which is shrinking in the recent drought. Experts predict that Lanier could dry without significant rains.

The article focuses on the consumption of water by a homeowner Chris G. Carlos, in Marietta, Georgia. Carlos is reported to have consumed 440,000 gallons in September 2007, about 14,700 gallons a day. The average consumption in the U.S. is about 150 gallons a day per person. Public relations specialist Joseph M.A. Ledlie said that Carlos has become aware of the water crisis and was now taking steps to conserve. Homeowners say it is not possible that he did not know about the drought conditions.

The article reports that Genarlow Wilson, an African American convicted as a teenager for having consensual sex with a fellow teenager, has been released after spending two years in jail. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of Wilson's release calling his ten year prison sentence grossly disproportionate to the crime. Critics have accused Wilson's prosecutors as being racially motivated for using a law meant to keep child molesters behind bars to curb teenage sexual activity.

The article focuses on Howard Finster Vision House in Pennville, Georgia. The house which was made by Howard Finster, a Baptist preacher and bicycle repairman, is known for its Paradise Gardens. But the house is in a dreadful condition with its overgrown gardens. Art dealer David Leonardis, who is restoring the house, found the state of gardens frustrating. Leonardis purchased the house in 2004 and told the house was in the similar condition as the gardens are now.

The article reports that a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia ordered a stay of execution for terminally ill prisoner Daniel L. Siebert. Siebert was scheduled to die by lethal injection. An appeal was filed by lawyers representing Siebert following refusal of Judge Mark E. Fuller of Federal District Court in Alabama to stop execution of Siebert.

The article reports that the Georgia Supreme Court ordered a stay of execution for Curtis Osborne, a condemned prisoner. While passing the stay order, the court cited the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to review constitutionality of execution by lethal injection. Earlier, the court also stayed execution of criminal Jack E. Alderman by lethal injection.

The article presents information about the drought situation in Southern States. Some cities in the Southeast will run out of water in a few months time, climatologists predicted on October 15, 2007. The situation is said to be the worst in the last 100 years. Reacting to the prediction, North Carolina Governor Michael F. Easley asked people to conserve water.

The article reports that federal officials in the U.S. are planning to deport an elderly German man, Paul Henss, living in Georgia who they said was a guard and dog trainer in Nazi death camps at the Dachau and Buchenwald. It is informed that the case is being pursued by the Office of Special Investigations in the U.S. Justice Department.

The article presents the views of several architects on the influence of the traditional architectural designs on the new church buildings. According to them, the close resemblance of the new architecture with the traditional gothic architectural design churches was a way of getting in close communication with god.