Will Burke County now have to foot the $70,000 bill for a murder retrial the state already agreed to pay for? It could happen. County commissioners discussed the possibility at their regular monthly meeting held last week and decided not to accept a check from the Georgia Public Defenders Standards Council (GPDSC) for $4,935 to help offset some of the costs. More...

A corrections officer and dispatcher have both been fired, and the sheriff says drugs are the reason. Last Tuesday, officer Carlton Whitehead was fired for allegedly supplying inmates with marijuana. He'd been on the job at the Burke County Jail since September and was up for promotion when a suspicious package put him at the crux of an in-house investigation. More...

An annual river trip had a terrible ending when a passenger was thrown overboard and hit by a boat propeller. Cale Odom, 35, was airlifted to MCGHealth Sunday afternoon after the boat he was riding in struck bottom on a shallow section of the Savannah River near Sylvania. More...