August 18, 2022
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s unemployment rate hit a new record low of 2.8% in July. That's the third month in a row that the state posted a new record low jobless rate. Unemployment was 2.9% in June and 3.9% in July 2021. More than 5.1 million Georgians say they were working in May, while 150,000 were unemployed.
NEW YORK (AP) — Dollar General faces nearly $1.3 million in penalties after government inspectors visited three of the chain’s stores in Georgia earlier this year and found worker-safety violations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says inspectors found obstructed exit routes, boxes of merchandise stacked unsafely and electrical panels that were hard to access.
ATLANTA – A plan to add toll lanes along Georgia 400 in Fulton and Forsyth counties is back on track a year after the State Transportation Board rejected the only qualifying bid on the project.
Scientists and students embarking on a census of Georgia lake sturgeon have found three females with mature eggs — an indication that the fish may be reproducing in Georgia for the first time in a half-century. Polluted water and markets for caviar and fish meat had wiped the species out of the Coosa River in the 1970s. University of Georgia associate professor Marty Hamel says the Georgia Department of Natural Resources began reintroducing lake sturgeon 20 years ago, after the Clean Water Act cleaned up the river
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The family of a Georgia woman killed by gunfire last year as sheriff's deputies executed a search warrant at her cousin's home are asking the Justice Department to investigate. Attorneys for 37-year-old Latoya James' family say the case bears striking similarities to the 2020 drug raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
ATLANTA (AP) — Gov. Brian Kemp is naming a former police chief of two suburban Atlanta counties as the next director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Michael “Mike” Register would replaced Vic Reynolds. Kemp in June named Reynolds as a superior court judge in Cobb County. Register was police chief in Clayton County and then in Cobb County.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday he plans to distribute one-time $350 payments to Georgians enrolled in certain public benefit programs. Kemp said the total amount distributed will be more than $1 billion.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s “heartbeat” abortion law will stay in effect while a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law is pending, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Monday. The order represents a setback for pro-abortion rights advocates who had argued the judge should immediately block the law while their case against it was pending.
ATLANTA (AP) — Nearly 200 Georgia state prison employees have been arrested for job-related crimes since the beginning of 2020. The list obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows 195 Georgia Department of Corrections employees arrested through June 30. Of those, 143 are state-certified police officers. The charges include 69 arrests related to drugs, with some prison employees bringing drugs into prison to provide to inmates.
ATLANTA (AP) — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the trial is underway for a man accused of fatally shooting a 7-year-old girl who was riding in a car with her family after a day of Christmas shopping in Atlanta. Fulton County prosecutor Pat Dutcher said in his opening statement on Friday that Kennedy Maxie was struck by gunfire after the defendant, Daquan Reed, was robbed of his cellphone and money outside the Phipps Plaza mall in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, picked up a pistol and fired it from the rear passenger seat of a car.
