School superintendent: ‘We need to do what’s right for our children’

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DeKalb’s newly hired interim school superintendent said he started Feb. 12 under a school bus. He wanted to make sure two school employees had received a memo he sent to school personnel. “They thought I had lost my mind,” said Mike Thurmond. “You have to open up the lines of communication,” said Thurmond, adding that [...]

Supreme Court hears appeal from abortion doctor accused of Medicaid fraud

Court Supreme Court of the United States

The Georgia Supreme Court heard an appeal of a pre-trial ruling involving a DeKalb County doctor who was accused of illegally using Medicaid funds to perform services associated with elective abortions. Dr. Tyrone Malloy was indicted in 2011 by a DeKalb County grand jury for two counts of Medicaid fraud in violation of state law. [...]

OPINION: Ferrol Sam’s gifts to Georgia live on in his work

Cathy

I was saddened to learn that Georgia writer Ferrol Sams died Jan. 29. Although I only met him once, I feel as though I lost a friend. Sometimes people we know through their writing can feel like closer friends than those we know personally. I first became familiar with Sams and his work in the [...]

DSA wins regional mock trial competition

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DeKalb School of the Arts won the regional mock trial competition on Feb. 2 at the DeKalb County Courthouse, by defeating Decatur High School in the final round of the competition. The event, sponsored by the State Bar of Georgia, brought together approximately 150 youth from seven DeKalb and metro Atlanta schools to compete for [...]

OPINION: We do trash good

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“Any job worth doing is worth doing well.”—credited to Lord Philip Chesterfield (1694-1773), a British nobleman in a letter in 1724. Chesterfield is also credited with inventing the couch, or Chesterfield sofa. As other metro area counties and cities have occasionally experienced, a long stretch of bad or critical headlines can start to tarnish—some might [...]

Eddie Moody: ‘I want Lithonia to be the safest city in America’

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  When former DeKalb County Police Chief Eddie Moody retired from his job in 2004, he said that if he ever put on another police uniform it would be for DeKalb County. That all changed when council members and residents of his home town of Lithonia asked him to consider becoming the new chief of [...]

CDC employees indicted for alleged molestation of 6-year-old

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Two former employees for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been indicted for child molestation by a DeKalb County grand jury. Thomas Joseph Westerman, 42, and Kimberly Quinlan Lindsey, 44, were arrested in 2011. Each was recently charged with two counts of child molestation. According to the indictment, Westerman and Lindsey asked [...]