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Georgia Today: Ga. Power freezes rates; Alleged North Korean scheme; Museum will display space rock
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On the Tuesday, July 1 edition of Georgia Today: Georgia Power freezes rates until 2028; four North Korean remote workers face federal charges for an alleged scheme involving an Atlanta business; and a Georgia science museum will soon display a piece of the space rock which flew over the state last week.

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, Georgia Power and the State Public Service Commission agree on a plan to freeze the utility's rates. Four North Korean remote workers face federal charges for an alleged scheme involving an Atlanta business, and a Georgia science museum soon will display a piece of space rock that flew over the state last week.
Rebecca Melsheimer: This is something that's billions of years old that has survived being out in space, the harsh conditions there and traveling through the atmosphere to actually be able to hold something that has had that kind of story. It's just really amazing.
Orlando Montoya: Today is July 1st. I'm Orlando Montoya, and this is Georgia Today.
Story 1:
Orlando Montoya: President Trump's big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts has passed the U.S. Senate by the narrowest of margins, with Georgia's two Democratic senators voting "no." Raphael Warnock called it a, quote, "big ugly betrayal," and Jon Ossoff called it a, quote, "catastrophe."
Jon Ossoff: This bill will push hospitals and nursing homes to the financial brink, and it will do major damage to the renewable and advanced energy sector that is driving so much of Georgia's economic development.
Orlando Montoya: Republicans muscled the bill through on a 50-50 vote, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tiebreaker. More than two dozen people gathered outside Georgia congressman Barry Loudermilk's office in Woodstock, north of Atlanta, to protest the bill. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports.
Sarah Kallis: After narrowly passing the Senate, protesters say they want the amended bill voted down in the House. Barbara Cooley helped to organize the protest. She hopes Loudermilk will reconsider his support for the legislation that makes cuts to Medicaid and significantly raises the federal debt.
Barbara Cooley: So we want Rep. Loudermilk, who voted yes the first time, to look at this bill, read it carefully, look at the experts' analysis and say, "No, this is a terrible bill; I will not vote for this bill." It needs to have a lot of changes.
Sarah Kallis: Loudermilk released a statement after H.R. 1 passed the House in May, saying it delivers on promises made by Trump's campaign to lower taxes and make the country safer. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis in Woodstock.

Story 2:
Orlando Montoya: Georgia regulators have approved a plan to keep Georgia Power's base rates steady through 2028. The unanimous decision by the Public Service Commission today follows an agreement between the utility and regulatory staff. Officials say the move provides stability for customers, though opponents warn of potential future risks if costs for new data centers rise. Rates still could increase next year to cover $862 million in damage from Hurricane Helene and other storms. Georgia Power has faced criticism for high profits and rising bills on its 2.3 million customers. The company says regular customers won't bear the costs to serve new data centers.
Story 3:
Orlando Montoya: Meanwhile, the city of Augusta says they reached a key milestone in Hurricane Helene recovery yesterday. The city says they have completed all vegetative, construction and demolition debris removal. Cleanup teams have removed nearly 3.5 million tons of debris from the storm that swept through Georgia last September.
Story 4:
Orlando Montoya: Demolition has begun at the former site of Atlanta Medical Center. The work yesterday begins redevelopment at the formal hospital that Wellstar suddenly closed in 2022. GPB's Sofi Gratas has more.
Sofi Gratas: A concrete portico at one of Atlanta Medical Center's former main entrances was the first to get torn down as part of the demolition, which will go into next year. Former staff watched, and many cried. Daniella Kington, a surgeon at Wellstar, worked at the hospital for 10 years. She calls her former co-workers family.
Daniella Kington: We are heartbroken to see it come down. At the same time, it's been two years since the hospital closed. We're not all coming back to work together every day, unfortunately. So we all have to move forward, that is — that is the reality.
Sofi Gratas: Developers don't yet have a cost estimate for the plan, which they call Boulevard Next. It includes mixed-income apartments, retail and green space, and has WellStar's support. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas.
Story 5:
Orlando Montoya: The Atlanta police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks in 2020 is on administrative leave after getting into a physical dispute, according to Atlanta police. Garrett Rolfe was placed on administrative leave after an incident at a Midtown club early Sunday morning. APD says Rolfe, who was off-duty at the time, and another man got into a verbal argument. The argument escalated into a physical dispute. Rolfe was arrested and charged in the deadly shooting of Rayshard Brooks outside an Atlanta Wendy's in June 2020. He has since been reinstated.
Story 6:
Orlando Montoya: An immigration judge in Georgia has granted bond for a well-known Spanish-language journalist arrested while covering a protest last month. That means he will be free, as the government seeks to deport him from the United States. Mario Guevara, who's from El Salvador, was arrested by local police on June 14 while covering the protest just outside of Atlanta. He was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement several days later and was being held in a South Georgia immigration detention center. A digital news outlet that Guevara started about a year ago posted on social media today that a judge had granted him bond.
Story 7:
Orlando Montoya: The U.S. Justice Department is charging four North Korean remote workers in a scheme that officials believe financed a weapons program. The FBI announced the indictment yesterday. An Atlanta business was caught up in the alleged scam. Marlon Williams, the founder of blockchain company Starter Labs, says his company was extorted out of over $900,000 after he hired remote IT workers through Telegram. Those workers were later found to be North Korean scammers. Williams said his company has made changes after the extortion.
Marlon Williams: Bitcoin created a culture of anonymity that is just widely accepted as this is how we work as a crypto-culture. However, you know, or at least for us over at Starter Labs and our community, we're going back to the basics of building real relationships with people in real life.
Orlando Montoya: The FBI says the same scam is happening across the world and that cryptocurrency companies like Starter Labs are particularly vulnerable. FBI officials believe the stolen money was used to fund North Korea's weapons program.
Story 8:
Orlando Montoya: The Georgia Science Museum plans to display a piece of space rock that streaked across Georgia skies last week. The meteor sighting on Thursday prompted wonder and amazement from many people who saw it. Well, now the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, in Northwest Georgia, says it acquired a meteorite from the virally shared fireball on Sunday. This morning I spoke with the museum's curatorial coordinator, Rebecca Melsheimer, about the space rock that landed in metro Atlanta's Henry County.
Rebecca Melsheimer: Yeah. So we had found out or heard on the news, just like everybody else, that there was the meteorite fall on — on Thursday. And since we knew it had fallen in Georgia, it was something that we were definitely interested in. We would love to have it here. And through our relationship with the Meteorite Association of Georgia, they put us in touch with somebody who actually found a piece of the meteorite that fell and they brought it up here on on Sunday so we actually had it had it in our hands as of yesterday.
Orlando Montoya: And is this the one that fell through someone's roof and ceiling and...?
Rebecca Melsheimer: It is not the one. So this is a different piece but it all is all part of that one meteorite that broke up as it was — once it made it through the atmosphere broke up into many different pieces. So it is part of the same rock, but it is not specifically the piece that went through the house.
Orlando Montoya: And how would you go about identifying this as a space rock?
Rebecca Melsheimer: Well, one of the things you look for is that it's actually been observed. We saw it fall because there were so many different camera angles and people who were filming it because it happened during the day, they were able to actually figure out where the different pieces would have fallen. So they were to go out there and see the fresh, the fresh fall. If you found something that was just kind of like out in the middle of nowhere, you really want to look for something that just looks different than the other rocks that are around it. One of the things you can look for is if it's slightly magnetic, if it has a fusion crust — so, that's like the outside of the meteorite that actually melted as it passed through the atmosphere, so it creates like a thin crust on the outside that's usually black and brown. It's a different color from the rest of the rock.
Orlando Montoya: And what does it — what does it look like? What are the dimensions? How big is it?
Rebecca Melsheimer: As the meteor was traveling through, it was about 3 feet. So we only have like a 2- to 3-inch size piece of it because it broke up.
Orlando Montoya: Wow, a 3-foot rock! That is a big rock.
Rebecca Melsheimer: Yeah and so it was definitely much smaller once it made it through because it's trial by fire really when it comes through the atmosphere because the — it's traveling so quickly that all of the the particles that are in the atmosphere creates a lot of friction and heat which is what causes the outside of the rock to melt and so loses material as it goes through the atmosphere. And then it has so much pressure and everything like that, but it broke apart after it went through the atmosphere.
Orlando Montoya: And what do you guys plan to do with it? Will it eventually be on display or just in your collection? What is the plan?
Rebecca Melsheimer: It will absolutely — absolutely be on display. We're looking to try to have it out by the end of the summer. We actually have an entire case that is just Georgia meteorites. So we do not have all of the meteorites that have fallen in Georgia, but we have most of them. And so we were very excited to get this to kind of add to our collection, to have a good representation of everything of, you know, meteorites in Georgia.
Orlando Montoya: I think it's exciting, but what excites you about it?
Rebecca Melsheimer: I mean, it's just, it's so exciting that, you know, something that was, you know, in space just a few days ago, that I'm actually able to hold it in my hands, and being able to think that this is something that's billions of years old, that has survived, you know, being out in space, the harsh conditions there, and traveling through the atmosphere, and to actually be able to hold something that has had that kind of story is just really amazing. And then being able to share that with everyone, too, to say, like, you saw this on TV and everything like that, and then you can come over here and you can actually see it. So that's going to be — going to be great.
Orlando Montoya: That was Rebecca Melsheimer of the Tellus Museum in Cartersville. Hundreds of people from a half-dozen Southern states told the American Meteor Society that they saw the fireball. Most of the sightings came from Georgia and South Carolina. A scientist at NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Ala., said the here unleashed the energy of about 20 tons of TNT.
Story 9:
Orlando Montoya: Well, traffic in Atlanta can be a nightmare, but when there's a traffic incident, you need a hero. And the Georgia Department of Transportation's Highway Emergency Response Operators, or HERO program, will resume patrols in overnight hours seven days a week in the metro Atlanta area starting today. This follows a break in service that started in 2023 when the HERO Program faced staffing shortages. The program clears traffic-related incidents as well as offers free roadside assistance, including for flat tires and dead batteries. So the HERO program is now back at all hours of the day. Meanwhile, AAA expects more than 61 million people will travel by car over the Independence Day holiday travel period. The busiest travel days are expected to be tomorrow through Sunday.
Story 10:
Orlando Montoya: Home Depot is buying specialty building products distributor GMS for about $4 billion. It's the Atlanta-based home retailer's second notable acquisition in a little over a year that emphasizes a deliberate push by the company into building and materials supply. The move comes as booming sales from the pandemic fade and Home Depot intensifies its focus on professional builders. GMS, based in metro Atlanta's DeKalb County, is a distributor of specialty building products like drywall, steel framing, and other supplies. Last year, Home Depot acquired supply company SRS Distribution for more than $18 billion.
Story 11:
Orlando Montoya: Former Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal got remarried over the weekend, exchanging vows with Brenda McCalley of Hiawassee in a ceremony in Oglethorpe County, east of Athens. Deal's daughter Carrie posted photos from the ceremony to her Facebook page in a post that says, "it's never too late to fall in love." The photos showed the happy couple at the altar in an outdoor covered ceremony. The 82-year-old Deal lost his then-wife, former Georgia first lady Sandra Deal, to a battle with cancer in 2022. The couple had been married for 56 years. As first lady, Sandra Deal became a well-known presence across Georgia through her efforts to boost literacy rates statewide.

Story 12:
Orlando Montoya: The late former President and first lady Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are getting more recognition following Jimmy's death late last year. The post office in Plains will get a new name in honor of the presidential couple. A dedication ceremony is happening tomorrow in their hometown, with local leaders, postal officials and members of the Carter family expected to be in attendance. Speakers are expected to include the Carters' son Chip and Rosalynn Carter's sister Lillian Smith Wall. Georgia U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop introduced the bill to designate the facility in honor of the Carters last year. The bill was signed by former President Joe Biden on Jan. 4.
And that's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. If you'd like to learn more about these stories, visit GPB.org/news. If you haven't yet hit subscribe on this podcast, take a moment to do that now. That helps you to keep us current in your feed. If you have feedback for us, send that to us. We love to hear what you have to say. Email us at GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Orlando Montoya. We'll be back again tomorrow with another edition of Georgia Today.
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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news