Fresh Loaf

MOTHER’S DAY TORNADOES: Twenty-three people are killed nationally by an estimated 47 twisters from Oklahoma and Missouri to Georgia, making this year the worst so far for tornadoes since 1999. At least one person dies in Georgia as six tornadoes hit through midstate.

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: A Valdosta Daily Times reporter, who was one of five media monitors of the execution of William Earl Lynd last week, writes of the experience.

THOMAS GOWN AFFAIR: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gives UGA’s commencement speech over the weekend, recalling how Georgia was still too segregated for him to attend UGA in the ’60s.

SCHOLARBLIND: The AP profiles the valedictorian of this year’s Morehouse graduating class, who’s white.

CORN IN THE USA: By July, the entire Southeast gasoline pipeline will be using E10, which is at least 8 percent ethanol.

CAN’T ARGUE WITH RESULTS: Jonesboro High School’s mock trial team wins its second consecutive national championship.

SHADY ROVE: MC Turd Blossom has a new gig as FOX News “pundit.”

CROWS TERRIFIED: Northeast Georgia town trying to break Guinness World Record for “Most Scarecrows in One Location,” with 4,000 scarecrows by Sept. 1. No one so far has had the heart to tell Hoschton that this will not, in fact, make the town a “household word.”

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Today’s news seems to all be traffic-related.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that state transportation board member Garland Pinholster has floated an idea to raise $22 billion to help address the region’s traffic. Pinholster proposes the Georgia DOT sign a contract with a single, large investment group that could put up all the money necessary to build a Northern Arc and, perhaps, help fund tunnels underneath Atlanta — and maybe a few other projects such as commuter rail and the Beltline intown-transit loop.

Pinholster’s plan comes on the heels of one offered by board member David Doss in February that would raise money through a one-cent statewide sales tax. But here’s the watch-out-Atlanta-you-may-get-screwed-again part of the Doss plan: Although about two-thirds of the money would be raised in metro Atlanta, only one-third of that money would come back here. The rest would go to rural Georgia.

Meanwhile, the Gwinnett Daily Post reports that the feds have declined to fund the proposal to create more than 28 miles of optional toll lanes on I-85 from the Perimeter to north of I-985.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says MARTA has come up with something new: sleek buses that give the appearance of rail cars and will link the Stone Mountain area and MARTA’s Kensington rail station. The buses won’t travel in dedicated lanes, but drivers will have the ultimate power trip: the ability to keep a green light from turning red.

And, finally, the New York Times reports on a story that CL broke several weeks ago: Devon Dartnell’s dream to turn forestry waste into ethanol, a car fuel. Dartnell, the biomass program manager for the Georgia Forestry Commission, says construction will begin next month on a plant in Soperton that will convert the wastes into fuel and help determine whether agricultural byproducts are an economically viable alternative power source. The money behind the plant comes from a former Apple computer executive.

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