Latest news with #GeorgiaRecorder
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Governor-appointed GOP labor commissioner officially announces 2026 candidacy
Bárbara Rivera Holmes. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder Georgia Labor Commissioner Bárbara Rivera Holmes has officially thrown her hat in the ring to run for a full term in office. Holmes, who was previously the CEO of the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce, was tapped by Gov. Brian Kemp to lead the agency in April after former Labor Commissioner Bruce Thompson died in November. 'I have a profound responsibility to serve the people of Georgia, and I look forward to working alongside them to ensure Georgia's best and brightest days are ahead,' Holmes said in a statement Wednesday. 'As Labor Commissioner, I will continue to lead the department to build trust, foster collaboration, expand workforce development, and empower small businesses and entrepreneurs across the state.' Before heading the department, Holmes worked as a journalist and has served on boards including the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, to which she was appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal and the Georgia Rural Development Council, to which she was appointed by Kemp. Holmes is of Cuban descent and a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Kemp's appointment made her Georgia's first Latina constitutional officer. Unlike in other statewide races that are likely to see heated partisan primaries, Holmes did not highlight her party affiliation, conservative bona fides or devotion to President Donald Trump, either in her announcement or on her campaign website. She registered as a Republican on her paperwork with the state ethics commission. During the April press conference announcing her appointment, Kemp was less demure. 'Yes, she'll run, and yes she'll run as a Republican,' he said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Eight decades after dying in Pearl Harbor attack, USS Oklahoma sailor gets Arlington farewell
Sailors carry a casket with the remains of John Connolly at Arlington National Cemetery in March 2025. (Photo by Tracey Attlee/For Georgia Recorder) More than 80 years after he died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, John Connolly was finally laid to rest – not as an unknown in a mass grave, but as a naval officer in Arlington National Cemetery. When the Navy first called to tell his daughter, Virginia Harbison, that her father's remains had been identified, she hung up. At 91, living in assisted care in Texas, she could hardly believe it. It was her son, Bill Ingram, who called her back to share the news again. She was silent for so long that he had to ask if she was all right. 'Bill,' she said, 'I hadn't thought about that for 60 years.' She has lived the full life her father never had the chance to. In March, Ingram pushed his mother in her wheelchair to her father's gravesite for the burial. 'They fold the flag in this very tight, nice triangle, and then with white gloves, the commanding officer comes and takes it and kneels down and hands it to my mother,' said Ingram, who lives in San Francisco. 'It was incredible.' On Dec. 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, 429 service members aboard the USS Oklahoma died. Horrifyingly, men trapped below deck after the ship capsized could be heard tapping out 'SOS' in Morse code as the air supply dwindled. Though 32 men were rescued, the rest were tragically not reached in time. After the war ended, the remains were recovered and buried in the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, too water damaged and commingled to be identified individually. There they remained for years until modern science caught up with historical tragedy. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred the USS Oklahoma remains in 2015 to send to a DNA laboratory. Carrie LeGarde, a forensic archaeologist with the agency and project lead for the Oklahoma Project, said her team started the process by testing small pieces of bone for maternal line DNA. Overall, they inventoried 13,000 bones and took 4,900 DNA samples. For Connolly, identification was complicated. 'We had several sequences that had multiple individuals, and that was actually the case with John Connolly, and part of why his identification occurred later in the project,' she said. Since John Connolly was older than most of the men aboard the USS Oklahoma as one of the few officers on the ship and scheduled to retire just three weeks after the bombing, the team at DPAA relied on dental evidence in addition to DNA testing to confirm his identity. Connolly was born in Savannah in 1893 and joined the Navy in 1912. He served during World War I and was eventually promoted to a chief warrant officer. In 1941, his wife, Mary Connolly, and their two daughters, eight-year-old Virginia and six-year-old Helen were eagerly awaiting his return and retirement in Long Beach, California, when the Navy informed them he had died. Mary Connolly never remarried. 'She was very sad all her life because she married at age 30 or 31 and her husband was away in the service, but was killed right before he was supposed to retire,' Ingram said. Connolly's memory has been passed down through the generations. 'We've taken my family to Hawaii, and we went to the memorial and found the marker for his name,' Ingram said. Everything changed last year when Ingram got a call from the Navy. In a 200-page report, the Navy detailed the historical background, identification process and scientific evidence. 'With the research that was involved, both with historical research and medical research, there's a lot of folks at DPAA that are involved,' Navy POW/MIA branch head Richard Jenkins said. 'We as a service will explain that to the family, with the hopes of them feeling comfortable with the findings and showing them that it's not just any set of remains, it's actually going to be that person.' There's a story that runs in Ingram's family about his grandfather. A couple of years after World War II, a young man knocked on the family home and introduced himself to Virginia and Mary Connolly. He had been on the USS Oklahoma with John Connolly, he said, and when the ship was hit, Connolly pushed open a hatch and forced him out. Connolly had saved his life. In 1944, the Navy re-commissioned one of their ships as the USS John Connolly. Though his story was a tragic one — an officer who never returned home whose remains were left unknown — history has granted him a second chance at closure. Over eight decades later, he got the hero's burial he deserved. 'They did everything. They had a band. They played Taps. They fired the guns,' Ingram said. 'Seven soldiers fired three times for a 21-gun salute.' A final sendoff at last. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Eight decades after dying in Pearl Harbor attack, sailor gets Arlington farewell
Virginia Connolly accepts a folded flag during ceremony honoring her father John Connolly at Arlington National Cemetery in March 2025. (Photo by Tracey Attlee/ Georgia Recorder) More than 80 years after he died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, John Connolly was finally laid to rest – not as an unknown in a mass grave, but as a naval officer in Arlington National Cemetery. When the Navy first called to tell his daughter, Virginia Harbison, that her father's remains had been identified, she hung up. At 91, living in assisted care in Texas, she could hardly believe it. It was her son, Bill Ingram, who called her back to share the news again. She was silent for so long that he had to ask if she was all right. 'Bill,' she said, 'I hadn't thought about that for 60 years.' She has lived the full life her father never had the chance to. In March, Ingram pushed his mother in her wheelchair to her father's gravesite for the burial. 'They fold the flag in this very tight, nice triangle, and then with white gloves, the commanding officer comes and takes it and kneels down and hands it to my mother,' said Ingram, who lives in San Francisco. 'It was incredible.' On Dec. 7, 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor, 429 service members aboard the USS Oklahoma died. Horrifyingly, men trapped below deck after the ship capsized could be heard tapping out 'SOS' in Morse code as the air supply dwindled. Though 32 men were rescued, the rest were tragically not reached in time. After the war ended, the remains were recovered and buried in the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, too water damaged and commingled to be identified individually. There they remained for years until modern science caught up with historical tragedy. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred the USS Oklahoma remains in 2015 to send to a DNA laboratory. Carrie LeGarde, a forensic archaeologist with the agency and project lead for the Oklahoma Project, said her team started the process by testing small pieces of bone for maternal line DNA. Overall, they inventoried 13,000 bones and took 4,900 DNA samples. For Connolly, identification was complicated. 'We had several sequences that had multiple individuals, and that was actually the case with John Connolly, and part of why his identification occurred later in the project,' she said. Since John Connolly was older than most of the men aboard the USS Oklahoma as one of the few officers on the ship and scheduled to retire just three weeks after the bombing, the team at DPAA relied on dental evidence in addition to DNA testing to confirm his identity. Connolly was born in Savannah in 1893 and joined the Navy in 1912. He served during World War I and was eventually promoted to a chief warrant officer. In 1941, his wife, Mary Connolly, and their two daughters, eight-year-old Virginia and six-year-old Helen were eagerly awaiting his return and retirement in Long Beach, California, when the Navy informed them he had died. Mary Connolly never remarried. 'She was very sad all her life because she married at age 30 or 31 and her husband was away in the service, but was killed right before he was supposed to retire,' Ingram said. Connolly's memory has been passed down through the generations. 'We've taken my family to Hawaii, and we went to the memorial and found the marker for his name,' Ingram said. Everything changed last year when Ingram got a call from the Navy. In a 200-page report, the Navy detailed the historical background, identification process and scientific evidence. 'With the research that was involved, both with historical research and medical research, there's a lot of folks at DPAA that are involved,' Navy POW/MIA branch head Richard Jenkins said. 'We as a service will explain that to the family, with the hopes of them feeling comfortable with the findings and showing them that it's not just any set of remains, it's actually going to be that person.' There's a story that runs in Ingram's family about his grandfather. A couple of years after World War II, a young man knocked on the family home and introduced himself to Virginia and Mary Connolly. He had been on the USS Oklahoma with John Connolly, he said, and when the ship was hit, Connolly pushed open a hatch and forced him out. Connolly had saved his life. In 1944, the Navy re-commissioned one of their ships as the USS John Connolly. Though his story was a tragic one – an officer who never returned home whose remains were left unknown – history has granted him a second chance at closure. Over eight decades later, he got the hero's burial he deserved. 'They did everything. They had a band. They played Taps. They fired the guns,' Ingram said. 'Seven soldiers fired three times for a 21-gun salute.' A final sendoff at last. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Sponsor of Georgia abortion ban spared trauma of watching brain dead loved one carry fetus
Doctors and lawyers at Emory Healthcare – but mainly the lawyers, I suspect – say that under Georgia's anti-abortion law, they are required to keep Adriana's body functioning as the fetus inside her develops. (Photo by John McCosh/Georgia Recorder) By most common measures, the life of Adriana Smith ended three months ago, when a tragic series of undiagnosed blood clots left her brain dead, with no hope of recovery. Yet today, in a hospital room in Midtown Atlanta, Adriana's body is still being kept alive by machines, without regard to her family's wishes. As someone who has been there, I know how difficult and extremely personal that decision can be, but I can only imagine what it must be like to have that choice stripped away, as it has been stripped away from Adriana's loved ones by people who don't know them, who know little of their circumstances, and deal with none of its consequences. In Adriana's case, she was nine weeks pregnant at the time the blood clots hit, which under some readings of Georgia law has meant that what remains of Adriana's body is now under government control until the fetus can be safely extracted. 'She's been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,' April Newkirk, Adriana's mother, told 11Alive News. 'It's torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there.' Doctors and lawyers at Emory Healthcare – but mainly the lawyers, I suspect – say that under Georgia's anti-abortion law, they are required to keep Adriana's body functioning as the fetus inside her develops. They are erring on the side of caution – not medical caution, but legal caution. The law in question is the 'Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act.' or the LIFE Act. The main sponsor of that law, state Sen. Ed Setzler, says it's working as intended in this case. 'I'm proud that the hospital recognizes the full value of the small human life living inside of this regrettably dying young mother,' Setzler told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 'Mindful of the agony of this young mother's family, the wisdom of modern medical science to be able to save the life of a healthy unborn child is something that I trust in future years will lead to great joy, with this child having a chance to grow into vibrant adulthood.' Proud as he might be, Setzler isn't the one who has to watch what's left of his daughter lay lifeless in that hospital room, not alive exactly, with machines performing basic life functions, week after week. He isn't the one who has to explain what's happening to his seven-year-old grandson, Adriana's son. If the fetus survives, he also isn't the one who will have to raise the child. Doctors have warned Adriana's family that the fetus has fluid on its brain, with unknown consequences. 'She's pregnant with my grandson,' Newkirk said. 'But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he's born,' she said. 'This decision should've been left to us.' According to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, however, Emory Healthcare and Setzler are misreading the legislation. 'There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,' his office said in a statement. 'Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy'.' Carr's reading of the law seems to be correct. As his statement indicates, the law defines abortion as 'the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy,' and the withdrawal of extraordinary life-maintenance measures on a brain-dead woman would not fall within its restrictions. But this is the problem when you try to write a law into black and white, when you try to legislate what is right and what is wrong when dealing with decisions that are so personal, so intimate. Moral certainty sounds good, it may feel good, it may play well in a political campaign, but it cannot possibly make such hard choices from a distance. The law cannot act more wisely or with more love than would those who know the situation best. This story first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, a member with the Phoenix in the nonprofit States Newsroom.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Bookman: Sponsor of Georgia abortion ban spared trauma of watching brain dead loved one carry fetus
Doctors and lawyers at Emory Healthcare – but mainly the lawyers, I suspect – say that under Georgia's anti-abortion law, they are required to keep Adriana's body functioning as the fetus inside her develops. John McCosh/Georgia Recorder By most common measures, the life of Adriana Smith ended three months ago, when a tragic series of undiagnosed blood clots left her brain dead, with no hope of recovery. Yet today, in a hospital room in Midtown Atlanta, Adriana's body is still being kept alive by machines, without regard to her family's wishes. As someone who has been there, I know how difficult and extremely personal that decision can be, but I can only imagine what it must be like to have that choice stripped away, as it has been stripped away from Adriana's loved ones by people who don't know them, who know little of their circumstances and deal with none of its consequences. In Adriana's case, she was nine weeks pregnant at the time the blood clots hit, which under some readings of Georgia law has meant that what remains of Adriana's body is now under government control under the fetus can be safely extracted. 'She's been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,' April Newkirk, Adriana's mother, told 11Alive News. 'It's torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she's not there.' Doctors and lawyers at Emory Healthcare – but mainly the lawyers, I suspect – say that under Georgia's anti-abortion law, they are required to keep Adriana's body functioning as the fetus inside her develops. They are erring on the side of caution – not medical caution, but legal caution. The law in question is the 'Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act.' or the LIFE Act. The main sponsor of that law, state Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, says it's working as intended in this case. 'I'm proud that the hospital recognizes the full value of the small human life living inside of this regrettably dying young mother,' Setzler told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 'Mindful of the agony of this young mother's family, the wisdom of modern medical science to be able to save the life of a healthy unborn child is something that I trust in future years will lead to great joy, with this child having a chance to grow into vibrant adulthood.' Proud as he might be, Setzler isn't the one who has to watch what's left of his daughter lay lifeless in that hospital room, not alive exactly, with machines performing basic life functions, week after week. He isn't the one who has to explain what's happening to his seven-year-old grandson, Adriana's son. If the fetus survives, he also isn't the one who will have to raise the child. Doctors have warned Adriana's family that the fetus has fluid on its brain, with unknown consequences. 'She's pregnant with my grandson,' Newkirk said. 'But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he's born,' she said. 'This decision should've been left to us.' According to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, however, Emory Healthcare and Setzler are misreading the legislation. 'There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death,' his office said in a statement. 'Removing life support is not an action 'with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy'.' Carr's reading of the law seems to be correct. As his statement indicates, the law defines abortion as 'the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy,' and the withdrawal of extraordinary life-maintenance measures on a brain-dead woman would not fall within its restrictions. But this is the problem when you try to write a law into black and white, when you try to legislate what is right and what is wrong when dealing with decisions that are so personal, so intimate. Moral certainty sounds good, it may feel good, it may play well in a political campaign, but it cannot possibly make such hard choices from a distance. The law cannot act more wisely or with more love than would those who know the situation best. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
