Sen. John Wilkinson, R-Toccoa, was sworn into office Thursday after winning a runoff election Dec. 6 for northeast Georgia's District 50.
Wilkinson replaces former Sen. Jim Butterworth, who Gov. Nathan Deal handpicked in September to lead the Georgia National Guard. A self-described conservative, Wilkinson spent decades working in agricultural education -- including as executive director of Georgia's FFA (formerly the Future Farmers of America).
He takes office ahead of next year's legislative session, which begins Jan. 9. KRISTINA TORRES
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Georgia fared better this year than most other states in the percentage of its schools failing to meet a key federal benchmark under the No Child Left Behind law, according to a study released Thursday by the Center on Education Policy in Washington D.C. The study shows that, nationally, 48 percent of all of the nation's schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2011, a big increase from the 39-percent failure rate in 2010 and the highest failure rate since NCLB went into effect in 2002. Georgia reported a 27 percent failure rate for 2011, with 613 schools out of 2,246 not making AYP. That was up from a 22.6 percent failure rate in 2010, according to the state Department of Education website. NANCY BADERTSCHER
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The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded researchers at Emory University and two other institutions an $11 million grant to test treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.
They will test two types of exposure therapy – where patients repeatedly retell their traumatic experiences – combined with a cognitive enhancer drug. PTSD can develop after a traumatic event in which a person’s life or someone else’s was in danger. The team includes researchers from New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and the University of Southern California. MISTY WILLIAMS
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