Latest news, weather and high school sports for Albany and Southwest Georgia

(AP) -- ASSISTED SUICIDE NETWORK
    Assisted suicide group preparing for trial
   
    ATLANTA (AP) - The leader of an assisted suicide group charged
with helping a 58-year-old man with cancer kill himself said he's
looking forward to a trial that he hopes will validate the group's
work.
    Jerry Dincin says Tuesday that the Final Exit Network is "glad
it's moving along" and that they have been preparing for the trial
for more than a year.
    He became the group's leader after then-president Ted Goodwin
and three other members were arrested in February 2009. The four
members and the group itself were indicted Tuesday by a Forsyth
County grand jury.
    Dincin says the group has not been involved in any suicides
since it was charged but that it plans to put up billboards this
year in California and New Jersey.
    They will read: "Good Life. Good Death. Your Choice."
   
SPEAKER PORTRAIT
    House to unveil Tom Murphy portrait
   
    ATLANTA (AP) - The Georgia House will honor longtime speaker Tom
Murphy by placing his portrait in the state Capitol.
    Murphy, a Democrat, was the longest-serving state House speaker
in the nation when voters in his west Georgia district turned him
out of office in 2002. He died in 2007 at age 83.
    The portrait will be on permanent loan from the Murphy family.
    The unveiling Wednesday will commemorate the 86th anniversary of
Murphy's birth. There will also be a resolution read honoring
Murphy.
    The portrait will be placed outside the House chamber on the
third floor of the State Capitol.
   
FISHERMAN FOUND
    Body of missing fisherman found at lake
   
    MACON, Ga. (AP) - Authorities in middle Georgia have found the
body of a second missing fisherman at Lake Tobesofkee after three
days of searching.
    The Bibb County Sheriff's Office says 52-year-old Willie Buckles
was found Tuesday afternoon a few hundred yards from where the body
of his uncle, 62-year-old Frank Roquemore, was found Sunday.
    The two men went fishing at the lake late Saturday evening.
    Rick Lavender, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Natural
Resources, says Buckles' body was in about 30 feet of water.
    Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones says an autopsy on Buckles' body
is scheduled for Wednesday.
   
FEMA FRAUD
    GA woman sentenced in FEMA fraud case
   
    ATLANTA (AP) - A 27-year-old Georgia woman has been sentenced to
a year in prison on charges of scheming to defraud the Federal
Emergency Management Agency in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
    Markisha Burks of McDonough was sentenced Tuesday on charges of
making a false statement to a governmental agency, mail fraud and
wire fraud. She also must pay more than $11,000 in restitution to
FEMA and the American Red Cross.
    Burks was convicted by a federal jury in December on all 12
counts of fraud after a two-day trial.
    Prosecutors say she told FEMA she lived in New Orleans when the
hurricane struck when she actually lived in Georgia. They say she
received more than $2,000 in emergency housing assistance and more
than $9,000 for rental and other assistance from the government.
   
HAMMER ATTACK-DOCTOR
    Man charged in hammer attack extradited from Ga.
   
    NEW WINDSOR, MD  (AP) - Maryland state police say a man accused
of bludgeoning his doctor wife with a hammer has been extradited
from Georgia.
    Thirty-three-year-old Anthony Soligny of New Windsor, Md., was
arrested last week after a deputy spotted his truck on Interstate
85 in Franklin County, Ga., northeast of Atlanta. Police say he is
now being held at the detention center in Carroll County, Md.
    He's charged with attempted murder, assault and reckless
endangerment. Police say Soligny attacked his wife, Dr. Michelle
Nanda, with a hammer. Nanda is a family physician who practices in
Westminster.
    Police posted a lookout for Soligny. After the deputy in Georgia
spotted the truck and started following Soligny, he pulled over,
called 911 and told dispatchers he was going to surrender.
   
SRS-OLD EQUIPMENT
    Panel: Firefighting equipment at SRS is too old
   
    AIKEN, S.C. (AP) - A panel has expressed concerns about old
firefighting equipment at the Savannah River Site, a former nuclear
weapons complex along the South Carolina-Georgia border.
    In a January letter to a U.S. Energy Department official,
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chairman John Mansfield
wrote that the site is the only facility among the ones they
evaluated where every major piece of firefighting equipment had
exceeded its life expectancy.
    The board's report says first-line engines are 17 years old, one
engine is 20 years old and the reserve engine is 31 years old.
    Will Callicott, a spokesman for Savannah River Nuclear
Solutions, the site's primary contractor, says officials are
getting two new fire trucks and expect to have them there before
the end of the year.
   
COLD CASE-DNA
    August trial set in 1985 killing
   
    BATON ROUGE, LA (AP) - A Louisiana judge has set an Aug. 9
trial date for a Walker native accused of raping and fatally
beating 19-year-old Tina Marie Kristynik in her Baton Rouge home in
1985.
    Vernon Kennedy, who already is serving a life sentence in
Georgia for a 1995 murder, faces a mandatory life prison term if
convicted of second-degree murder in Kristynik's slaying.
    If found guilty in Baton Rouge, prosecutors have said the
54-year-old Kennedy will return to Georgia to carry out his life
sentence there and will not return to Louisiana unless he is
paroled in Georgia.
    Prosecutors say DNA evidence and the work of detectives linked
Kennedy to Kristynik's homicide.
    District Judge Tony Marabella set the trial date on Tuesday.
   
VOTER PRECINCTS
    DOJ mulls reduction in GA city's voter precincts
   
    COLUMBUS, GA (AP) - An elections official in Columbus says the
U.S. Department of Justice is expected to decide by April 26
whether to approve a plan to reduce the city's voter precincts from
48 to 28.
    The Muscogee County Board of Elections decided to move ahead
with the reductions despite complaints from the Columbus branch of
the NAACP, the county Democratic Party and others.
    Nancy Boren, the board's executive director, told the Columbus
Council on Tuesday the changes make use of improved technology,
reduce staff and improve security at schools as requested by the
Muscogee County School District.
    Justice Department approval is required under the Voting Rights
Act.
   
COUNTY MANAGER
    Ware County, GA county manager leaving
   
    WAYCROSS, GA  (AP) - Ware County Manager Gail Barron Boyd is
leaving her job after 40 years in county government.
    The 62-year-old Boyd cited health reasons in submitting a letter
of resignation to county commissioners this week. She says she'll
leave the post within a few months.
    Boyd has been county manager of the southeast Georgia county
since 2001. She served earlier as county clerk and assistant county
manager.
   
BIKE GRANT
    GA Tech to test 'smart locks' on Emory bikes
   
    ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia Tech is getting a $50,000 grant from the
Ford Motor Co. Fund to test a new "smart lock" technology for
bicycles in Emory University's bike-share program.
    The student-developed system will install wireless and GPS
technology on Emory's fleet of bicycles, allowing users to check
them out via text messaging and administrators to track the bikes'
use from a central server. The smart locks will connect wirelessly
with the server, securing the bikes when they are not in use.
    The money is from the Ford College Community Challenge, which
gives grants to college programs that use school resources to
address an unmet need on campus or in the local community.
    Emory has had a bike-share program since 2007. The new
smart-lock bikes will be available at Emory starting next summer
and eventually will be expanded to Georgia Tech and to
neighborhoods between the two Atlanta campuses.
   
SLAIN MARINE-KENNEL
    GA Marines name kennel for slain dog handler
   
    ALBANY, GA (AP) - An Albany military base is naming its kennel
in honor of a Marine canine handler whose parents were allowed to
adopt his bomb-sniffing dog after the young Marine was killed in
Iraq.
    The Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany will hold a ceremony
March 19 to dedicate its kennel to Cpl. Dustin Jerome Lee. The
20-year-old Marine from Quitman, Miss., died in a rocket attack in
March 2007.
    The attack that killed Lee wounded his military dog, Lex. Their
story made headlines in December 2007 when the Marine Corps agreed
to retire Lex early so the dog could be adopted by Lee's parents.
It was the first time the military allowed that to happen.
    A base spokesman said Lee's parents plan to attend the kennel
dedication along with the dog.
   
POSTSECRET EXHIBIT
    'PostSecret' exhibit comes to Kennesaw State U
   
    ATLANTA (AP) - The secrets of hundreds of people from around the
world are on display at Kennesaw State University.
    The university's art gallery features an exhibition of post
cards submitted to PostSecret, a program launched in 2004 by a
Maryland man who invited strangers to share their secrets
anonymously by writing them on postcards and mailing them to him.
Germantown, Md., resident Frank Warren has received more than
350,000 postcards since then.
    He has produced at least five books full of the messages and
regularly updates PostSecret.com with new postcards and e-mails.
    The exhibit, which is free, runs now through March 27 at the Art
Gallery at Kennesaw State University's Sturgis Library. It includes
400 of the postcards that Warren has received.

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