Elderly couple missing

An elderly couple has been missing since yesterday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has issued a Mattie's Call for the Walton County pair. Officials said 86-year-old Sam Jefferson Hewatt and 87-year-old Elizabeth Couch Hewatt were last seen Thursday at their Loganville home. Officials said they might be in their 2003 champagne-colored Lincoln Town Car. Anyone with information should call 911 or the Walton County Sheriff's office.

(Associated Press)

Landfill will eventually come to Walton County

Despite protests from neighbors, a new landfill will open this fall in Walton County along the Apalachee River.

People in nearby Oconee County fought the project, citing concerns over pollution and groundwater safety.

It is seven miles from a planned regional water supply reservoir set to open in 2014.

State announces land conservation grants

State grants are helping two Georgia counties conserve land. Thanks to the Georgia Land Conservation Program, coastal Georgia’s Glynn County can now acquire 21-acres next to the 250-acre Fort Frederica National Monument. The program will also help Walton County protect 160 acres on a working cattle ranch near Lake Varner. The state is also giving Walton County a low interest land conservation loan.

Alcovy Circuit needs new judge

The Alcovy Circuit is in dire need of a new judgeship, according to the Judicial Council of Georgia. The Council says the Circuit, which includes Newton and Walton Counties, should be lawmakers’ top priority. There are 49 judicial circuits in Georgia and 202 authorized Superior Court judgeships. More than 417,000 cases are filed annually in the state's 159 Superior Courts.

Third re-enactment of decades-old mass lynching today

Civil rights advocates are calling for justice in a mass lynching that occurred in Georgia 61 years ago. The Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials is holding its third annual re-enactment of the crime today.

Organizers have added a scene this year to the re-enactment of the killing of two black couples by a white mob at the Moore’s Ford Bridge in Walton County. A volunteer dramatizes a racially-provocative speech by Governor Eugene Talmadge. Newly-released F-B-I documents show that Talmadge visited Walton County a day after the incident which triggered the lynchings, in which a black sharecropper stabbed and wounded a white farmer.

The report includes an unconfirmed witness statement that Talmadge incited the violence. Talmadge’s grandson, Herman, says his grandfather had no involvement in the episode.

Despite several state and federal investigations that have identified dozens of suspects, no one has ever been arrested or charged with the four killings.

Indictments in alleged marijuana ring

17 people in northeast Georgia have been indicted for allegedly growing marijuana. A Jackson County grand jury returned the indictments on felony charges stemming from several raids there earlier this year. Authorities raided so-called “grow houses” which look like ordinary homes but are set up inside to grow hundreds of marijuana plants at a time. Police in nearby Walton County have shut down nearly 20 grow houses in the past four months.