http://www.ajc.com The latest headlines from AJC en-us Copyright 2008, Cox Newspapers Inc., AJC Tue, 2 Dec 2008 23:18:54 EST Newspapers COXnet RSS Generator v1.0 http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/08/17/52/image_1352178.jpg http://www.ajc.com 5 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/georgia_public_service_commission.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/georgia_public_service_commission.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 22:07:35 EST Republican former Public Service Commissioner Lauren McDonald regained the post he lost in 2002 Tuesday, besting Democrat Jim Powell in Tuesday's runoff for a spot on the utility-regulating commission. With 90 percent of the precincts reporting, McDonald had 58 percent of the vote. Powell led McDonald in the Nov. 4 general election 47.9 percent to 47.2 percent. But because of votes cast for a Libertarian candidate, neither candidate got a majority, forcing a runoff. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/regents_student_fees.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/regents_student_fees.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 18:41:51 EST Parents and students at Georgia's public colleges should keep their pens poised over their checkbooks. The state Board of Regents on Wednesday is expected to implement changes -- including temporary student fees -- that will reap $40 million in savings and new revenue. The Regents will address the proposals, intended to offset cuts in state funding, in a conference-call meeting. About $20 million would be raised by levying a new fee on students for the Winter 2009 semester, which begins in January, said John Millsaps, spokesman for the regents. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/georgia_minister_killed.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/georgia_minister_killed.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 16:14:34 EST A man and a woman have been arrested in connection with the killing of a church youth minister. Cleveland police chief John Foster identified the suspects as 21-year-old William Joseph Dyer and 29-year-old Jennifer Dawn Lineberger. Both are charged with felony murder, and Dyer is also charged with armed robbery. The body of the Rev. Edward Frank Harris Jr. of Clermont was found shortly before 4 a.m. Monday in the yard of a home in Cleveland. The 44-year-old Harris called his family Sunday afternoon after church to say that he was giving two stranded people a ride to Cleveland before he returned home. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/vote_georgia_runoff.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/vote_georgia_runoff.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 14:18:30 EST A Georgia U.S. Senate race that has attracted national media attention and was even lampooned on Saturday Night Live comes to an end Tuesday. Voters will also select a Georgia Public Service Commissioner, a state Court of Appeals judge and county commissioners, school board members and other local officeholders across the state. ON THE BALLOT: http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/georgia_college_budget.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/georgia_college_budget.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 12:41:31 EST Parents and students at Georgia's public colleges should keep their pens poised over their checkbooks. In a conference-call meeting on Wednesday, the Board of Regents is expected to approve temporary mandatory fees for all students. The regents will also consider cutting the employer share of university system workers' health care plans from 75 to 70 percent. The surcharge proposal would have students at Georgia's major research universities paying $100. At the state's comprehensive four-year colleges and universities, the fee would be $75. And students at two-year colleges would probably pay $50. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/historical_black_colleges.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/historical_black_colleges.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 09:55:51 EST The chairman of a key state Senate committee wants the University System to consider merging historically black public colleges with nearby white-majority schools to save money. In making the suggestion Monday, Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Seth Harp (R-Midland) immediately ran into opposition from supporters of the black schools who say they serve an important role as independent campuses. "I think it's a bad idea," said Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), who has taught political science at two historically black private colleges, Morehouse and Morris Brown. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/georgia_journalism_dean.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/georgia_journalism_dean.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 09:49:59 EST A federal judge is recommending that the University of Georgia clear the name of the campus' former journalism dean. U.S. Magistrate Judge C. Christopher Hagy wrote in court documents Friday that UGA should rescind sexual harassment charges against John Soloski. The judge called the university's probe into the harassment allegations made by employee Janet Jones Kendall "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable." Soloski resigned from the deanship at UGA's College of Journalism in 2005 after Kendall filed a complaint against him for making comments about her appearance. He sued the university in 2006, alleging UGA President Michael Adams used the harassment allegation to settle a long-standing grudge and force him to resign. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/winder_motorcyclist_shot.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/01/winder_motorcyclist_shot.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 09:38:20 EST A Bogart man who fatally shot a 21-year-old motorcyclist he believed had harassed his daughters has been sentenced to life in prison. A Superior Court jury convicted Richard Harold Gear of murder and aggravated assault on Monday after a two-week Oconee County trial. B.J. Mough of Winder was shot in the back Feb. 25 as he rode past Gear's house. Gear fired his gun twice as Mough drove by, and a third time when he made a second pass from the other direction. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/carson_crime_stoppers.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/carson_crime_stoppers.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 08:42:55 EST Lawyers for two men accused of killing University of North Carolina student body president Eve Carson want all Crime Stoppers information on the case. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Tuesday that lawyers for 22-year-old Demario Atwater and 18-year-old Laurence Lovette want all the tips the private organization received. The 22-year-old Athens, Ga., woman was found dead on a Chapel Hill street in March. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/warner_robins_motorcycle.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/12/02/warner_robins_motorcycle.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Tue, 2 Dec 2008 08:40:19 EST A Warner Robins man is dead after he lost control of his motorcycle while doing a wheelie and crashed. Houston County Sheriff's Lt. M.J. Stokes said 21-year-old Joshua Bryan Baker died when he was thrown off the motorcycle into a utility pole. Stokes said witnesses told investigators that Baker was driving at high speeds and lifted his front tire into the air. When the wheel came back down, the motorcycle went out of control. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/mental_health_settlement.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/mental_health_settlement.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Mon, 1 Dec 2008 15:47:13 EST For the second time in two years, Georgia will pay a million-dollar settlement over the death of a patient at one of its beleaguered state psychiatric hospitals. An apology, the patient's sister said, might have resolved the case for much less money. The family of Michael Ernest Webb, a 59-year-old Vietnam veteran from Gwinnett County, will receive $1 million for agreeing not to pursue a lawsuit against the state. Webb died Dec. 16, 2006, after nearly three weeks without a bowel movement at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/mental_health_privatization.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/mental_health_privatization.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Mon, 1 Dec 2008 15:47:12 EST Under pressure to fix its mental health system, Georgia is embarking on an uncharted course: the total privatization of state psychiatric hospitals. In an escalation of earlier plans for limited privatization, officials now want to hire for-profit companies to build and operate three new psychiatric facilities to replace all seven existing state hospitals, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The last of the old facilities would close by 2012. The move would end 150 years of state-provided psychiatric care in Georgia, marked by frequent revelations of horrid conditions, reforms, more revelations and more reforms. Now the state confronts a confluence of challenges: up to 10 percent budget cuts and an investigation of the hospitals by the U.S. Justice Department. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/georgia_veterans_home.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/georgia_veterans_home.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Mon, 1 Dec 2008 14:37:17 EST This is moving day. Michael Seamands' cramped home for the past five years is no longer his. The landlord, the state of Georgia, says he has to go. He has packed cleaning materials, clothes, the model airplanes he assembled in the quiet afternoons at the Georgia War Veterans Home domiciliary. The Lawrenceville resident accepts the moving orders with the stoicism you'd expect from someone who patrolled the Vietnamese jungles 36 years ago. Some things you cannot change, Seamands said; you get your orders and head out. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/gasenate1201_web.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/gasenate1201_web.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Mon, 1 Dec 2008 09:52:07 EST Georgia's seemingly endless U.S. Senate runoff finally winds down Monday, its last day marked by high-profile rallies, withering attack ads and stealthy efforts to get campaign-weary voters back to the polls. Alaska governor and former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will appear with Saxby Chambliss at four campaign rallies Monday after headlining private Atlanta fund-raisers Sunday night at the tony W Hotel in Midtown. Palin will appear at public rallies in Augusta, Savannah and Perry, and in metro Atlanta at the Gwinnett Center at 4 p.m. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/herb_shafer_attorney.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/30/herb_shafer_attorney.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 Mon, 1 Dec 2008 09:02:45 EST At first blush, a visitor entering a courtroom and seeing attorney Herb Shafer thinks one thing: Isn't George Burns dead? [ Post your comments below. ] The legendary comedian has indeed passed on. But Shafer, a dapper 88-year-old bantam rooster of a man, still haunts Georgia's courtrooms, angering prosecutors, frustrating judges and drawing stifled guffaws and eye rolls from jurors.