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Welcome to the Georgia Today Podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode five police officers have been arrested after inappropriately using flock cameras. A new study finds AI chatbots are bad at giving financial advice and some folks are worried about moving two beluga whales from Canada to the Georgia Aquarium.
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The odds of some of these animals dying during or after very soon after transport are extremely high.
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Today is Thursday, July 9th. I'm Peter Biello and this is Georgia Today. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says an audit of Georgia's June 16 runoff elections shows the accuracy of machine cast ballots. GPB's Chase McGee reports the audit released today comes as some state GOP leaders are pushing for Georgians to vote by hand marked paper ballots.
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The Secretary of State's office audited more than 1.1 million ballots cast in the runoff. Of those, there were only 23 discrepancies, all on hand marked paper ballots. The audit found zero errors, with more than a million ballots cast by machine. David Becker is the director of the nonpartisan center for Election Integrity and Research. He says ballots cast by machine have the advantage of being unambiguous. Almost all if not all of the errors in marking the ballot and in interpreting the ballot by the machines to come from those hand marked ballots. Raffensperger says that with the current error rate, a presidential election with 5 million votes using hand marked paper ballots would likely result in 3,500 ballot errors. For GPB News, I'm Chase McGee.
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A divided state election board has voted to give its members access to the Secretary of State's election night hub. The board's three Republican members pushed through the access yesterday, saying it will provide election transparency. The board's chairman and its sole Democrat voted against it, saying it oversteps their authority. No vote counting or polling takes place at the hub. A state judge has upheld a Georgia law creating a committee to oversee and discipline state prosecutors. GPB's Ellen Eldredge reports the ruling yesterday backs a Republican effort that spawned a bipartisan challenge.
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Governor Brian Kemp signed into law the bill creating the Prosecuting Attorneys qualification Commission in 2023. He said it would rein in rogue prosecutors who refused to uphold state laws. Democrats assailed the move as an overstep of authority and an attempt to police elected district attorneys who choose not to prosecute low level offenses. When a legal challenge followed, the plaintiffs included four DAs, including one Republican. They claim the commission threatens prosecutorial independence and violates constitutional free speech protections. In the ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker said the plaintiffs failed to show they had been harmed. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.
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The suspect accused of killing two students and two teachers in the 2024 shooting at Appalachia High School is facing a deadline to file a plea. A Barrow County Superior Court judge yesterday set a potential trial date for Colt Gray for October 13th in Augusta. That would be away from Atlanta media markets, which might have biased a pool of jurors in a May hearing. Judge Nicholas Prim set a deadline of Wednesday next week for Gray to change his plea to guilty should he negotiate with prosecutors for a plea deal. Five Albany police officers and a Greene county sheriff's deputy have been arrested after investigators say they misused Georgia's license plate reader system. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations says an internal audit found the Albany officers searched license plate data for non law enforcement purposes. A similar audit led to charges against the Greene county deputy. The investigations follow the rollout of a new Flock safety auditing tool designed to detect unusual searches. State law limits how law enforcement can use the license plate database. Georgia utility regulators have approved an investigation into who exactly is paying for the massive cost of upgrades needed to power data centers. The state Public Service Commission signed off on the study on Tuesday. It's part of an agreement that PSC staff reached with Georgia Power in May to lower costs for residential customers. The probe will focus on whether power hungry industrial customers are shifting some costs to residential customers. A University of Georgia study says you probably shouldn't trust artificial intelligence for financial advice. UGA said yesterday that its College of Family and Consumer Sciences research showed AI chatbots often provide inconsistent advice about money across platforms and based on gender and race. The study suggests, as with medical and other recommendations from AI, always to take it with a grain of salt and consult a professional.
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Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a what happens if we refund tariffs? Why are groceries so expensive? At npr, we stand for your right to be curious, because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works.
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Georgia Aquarium will be getting two beluga whales from a shuttered theme park in Canada the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week approved an emergency request to move 28 whales still living at Marine Land of Canada to the U.S. the park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, closed in 2024amid financial troubles and concerns over animal welfare. Two additional whales will be going to an aquarium in Spain, the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and two seaworld parks in Texas and California will get the bulk of the whales. Biologist Naomi Rose of Washington, D.C. based Animal Welfare Institute says it's good they'll be getting care.
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But but the odds of some of these animals dying during or after very soon after transport are extremely high. They are not well and transport is stressful for beluga whales.
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Georgia Aquarium says the transport could happen within weeks or months, as soon as veterinarians assess and release them. Rose says it'll be an elaborate process.
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Normally you do not move 28 whales at once. You move only, you know, two to five whales at once. It is going to be, as SeaWorld has put it, an extremely complicated operation. They take an animal, put it in a container that is basically the size of the whale. It's a transport box. They suspend them in water, there's some water in the box and they are being supported by a sling that has holes for the pectoral fins and it's lined usually with sheepskin, you know, some soft material. And they are suspended in that box with ice because the overheating is the real problem, particularly with beluga whales, which are arctic animals. And they are put on a truck, taken to an airplane, the plane flies. That's very stressful and there's a lot of noise. The water sloshes around. They have to make sure that they don't aspirate the water. Believe it or not, they are mammals and they can drown. And so they are also very stressed out by this process. Keeping their heart rate and their temperature down is essential.
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Georgia Aquarium will be getting two young but sexually mature males. Rose says she encourages the aquarium not to breed them because they're genetically predisposed to disease. A Columbus teenager broke four American powerlifting records last month. Thirteen year old Nash Earwood set new national marks at the USA Powerlifting Youth Nationals in Illinois in June. Competing in the 12 to 13 year old age group, he broke records in the squat, bench press, deadlift and total weight lifted. Earwood, who trains at 4.0 Fitness in Columbus, had already set multiple Georgia powerlifting records over the past year in the his coach says the sport has helped build his confidence after being bullied in school. In 16 days of operation FIFA Fan Festival Atlanta has welcomed more than 453,000 fans from around the world to Centennial Olympic Park. To help accommodate fans who want a chance to att, festival organizers are extending operating hours for the tournament's final two days. For more on this, let's turn to Chin C. Mouton. She is director of sports engagement and community Impact at Georgia World Congress Center Authority. Welcome to the program.
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Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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So you're extending festival hours for Tuesday the 14th and Wednesday the 15th. What can fans expect on those days?
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Well, they can expect a celebration of soccer. So of course we're going to have the live matches. We'll have the quarterfinal and the semifinal matches being broadcast on our live screens. We'll also have those brain activations that have been very popular throughout the summer. So, you know, Coca Cola, Home Depot, Hyundai, they all have different activations. We also have the pitch, which is in our amphitheater. So we have a lot of programming that takes place there. A lot of youth come out and play soccer matches there. And then just a celebration. We also have art installation, so there's a lot of opportunities to take photos. We have live entertainment. Ludicrous is performing on the 14th. So it really is an opportunity to showcase Atlanta, our culture and then welcome different countries in the community to the Centennial Olympic Park.
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And I believe in the announcement there was something to be said about plans to come on Monday, right? You're going to announce more things on Monday.
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That's correct. We're going to announce more performers on Monday.
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How would you describe what it feels like to be at FIFA Fan Festival Atlanta?
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It's electric. It's exciting. You get to see so many different people come out and support this. You have thousands of people at. At one time. It's very energetic. The energy is high, and it's. It's really, again, a celebration of global soccer.
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This has been very popular and it has been difficult to find general admission tickets. What can you tell us about ticket availability?
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So we are going to open up tickets for the evening programming for the 14th and the 15th, and so that'll take place tomorrow on Friday. And so you can go to our website, our FIFA World cup host committee website, and look at tickets there. So it has been a very popular event. We encourage people to come out early. If you do have tickets, whether it's general admission plus or VIP or just general admission, you want to get there as early as possible to get a good spot at that screen.
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And how much can people expect to spend on both general admission tickets and VIP tickets?
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So general admission is free. General admission plus is around, I think, 45 to $65. And then when you look at VIP tickets, that's somewhere between $225 and $325.
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So as we mentioned, more than 453,000 fans have been to Centennial Olympic park for this. Was that in line with the predictions made before the event, I think it
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has exceeded our expectations. We, you know, we were planning for a large crowd and we wanted sure that people were coming out and we could be a central location for everything. But it really has exceeded everything that we imagined for sure.
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What has your experience of FanFest been?
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I, I love it. So this is something that I've been working on for the past year. And so, you know, getting to know the client, getting to work with FIFA, but then also just again, just seeing the community come out in droves, right, that people really are excited about the World cup and these incredible matches. You know, Argentina versus Egypt the other day was pretty, pretty insane as Olympic Park. So it was exciting to be a part of that.
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And finally, for fans, still thinking of going, is MARTA still kind of the best, easiest way to get there?
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I would definitely encourage people to go to marta. I mean, we definitely have parking on our campus and so we do have, you know, lots that are available. But the easiest way to really have a smooth transportation would be marta.
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Is there anything else about this that I didn't ask you about that you think is important to mention?
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I want to tell people to stay hydrated. We know that, you know, the heat index is something to be aware of. So make sure that you're wearing loose clothing, drinking water. We also have water filling stations within the park and shaded structures. But I do want people to be mindful of the heat.
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So people can bring their own containers to fill up.
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They can, they can, they can bring water bottles that don't have a label on them. So if you have a label, remove those labels. But yes, that's also something that we are allowing in the park.
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Well, Chin C. Mouton, thank you so much for speaking with me about this.
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Thank you again for having me. It's been a pleasure.
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Chin C. Mouton is director of Sports Engagement and Community Impact at Georgia World Congress Center Authority. That's a wrap on this edition of Georgia Today. We do appreciate you choosing GPB as your source of news. If you want to learn more about any of the stories you heard today or check out the latest headlines, go to gpb.org news news. And when you subscribe to this podcast, you can be sure we will be in your feed tomorrow afternoon. Your feedback is welcome. We always want to make this podcast better. Send it by email. The address is Georgia Today at gpb. Org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We will see you tomorrow.