Ga. 17 at Ga. 119 in Guyton is closed at this time due to a structure fire at the Smoke House restaurant.

Effingham County sheriff’s deputies are on scene.

24-hour jail bookings for Savannah-Chatham County are now posted. Visit booked.savannahnow.com to view photos and information.

All information has been obtained from the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department.

All individuals posted have not been convicted of a crime and are innocent until proven guilty.

The southbound lanes of Ogeechee Road from Victory Drive to Liberty Parkway have reopend following an oil spill on the roadway early Wednesday morning.

 Savannah-Chatham Metro police say the oil was spilled by a moving truck.

Savannah-Chatham Metro police will be operating radar hot spots along Chatham Parkway / Garrard Ave.

Police remind drivers there is zero tolerance for speeding in school zones. 

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Moviemakers say filming of "Need for Speed" will close a bridge linking Georgia and Alabama for several days as they shoot a scene of a car being driven into the Chattahoochee River.

The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reports (http://bit.ly/18ss4Sk) that the 13th Street Bridge over the Chattahoochee will be closed from the morning of June 4 until as late as noon June 8.

The bridge links the Georgia city of Columbus to the Alabama community of Phenix City.

Patrick Mignano of NFS Productions/Dreamworks Studios said the scene to be filmed on the bridge will involve a high-end sports car being driven off the bridge into the river below.

"Need for Speed" has already filmed scenes in other Georgia cities, including Macon and Rome.

Members of the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office Street Operations Division along with two Sheriff’s Office Reserve Deputies conducted a warrant sweep on May 23. During the warrant sweep a total of 16 arrests were made. 

One person arrested was a fugitive named Jennifer Nickels wanted out of Centre County, Pa., for felony thefts.  The others arrested were, Javon Mason, Patience Prewitt, Robert Grant Jr., Tammy Minis, Thomas Burns, Kevin Edwards, Ricky Holmes and William Mullins.  Also arrested were Zachary Fritsch, Kenneth Bryant, Savannah Huntley, Kevin Ellison, Brian Fitzgerald, Shatique Bolden and Marvin Allen. 

These arrests were based on warrants received from various courts including Magistrate, State and Superior.

In addition to these arrests, earlier this morning members of the Sheriff’s Tactical and Response Team (S.T.A.R) along with the United States Marshals Service arrested John Payne Jr.   Payne was wanted by Chatham County Sheriff’s Office for a State Court Probation Warrant.  He was also wanted by Georgia Pardon and Parole for aggravated assault. Payne was also wanted by Thunderbolt Police Department for robbery.  

View the most recent top 25 restaurant scores from the Chatham County Health Department.

Click here to launch the slideshow and see how your local eateries scored.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A federal judge has approved a settlement of a lawsuit challenging the $650 million deepening of the Savannah River shipping channel leading to Georgia's ports.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston thanked attorneys for both sides Wednesday for reaching a settlement in a case he said could have dragged through the courts for years.

Environmental groups sued last year, contending deepening the 32-mile shipping channel will dredge toxic cadmium from the river. Under the settlement, the Army Corps of Engineers would provide more mitigation and the Georgia Ports Authority will provide millions for conservation work. It also will transfer 2,000 acres of marsh to South Carolina.

The settlement allows the deepening to proceed. Attorneys for both sides called it fair and reasonable agreement. 

See Thursday's Savannah Morning News or return to savannahnow.com for additional information.

BERLIN (AP) — German doctors say a man spent 15 years with a pencil in his head following a childhood accident.

Aachen University Hospital says the 24-year-old man from Afghanistan sought help in 2011 after suffering for years from headaches, constant colds and worsening vision in one eye. A scan showed that a 10-centimeter (4-inch) pencil was lodged from his sinus to his pharynx and had injured his right eye socket.

The unnamed man said he didn't know how the pencil got there but recalled that he once fell badly as a child.

The German doctors removed the pencil and say the man has recovered.

Hospital spokesman Mathias Brandstaedter said Wednesday the case was presented for the first time at a medical conference this week.

Armstrong Athletics Inaugural Spring Coaches Tour
6:30-8 p.m. May 30. Plantation Club, The Landings. The Armstrong Atlantic State University Athletic Department invites fans to join the Pirates for their Inaugural Spring Coaches Tour. Presented by the Pirate Athletic Association, fans will have a chance to meet the Armstrong coaches and get an inside look into Pirate Athletics during one of the four stops in the Savannah area. The event is free and open to the public.

Paws for A Cause
8-10 p.m. May 30. The Sentient Bean, 13 E. Park Ave. An evening of music, dance and art to raise awareness and benefit homeless animals in the Lowcountry. The show will be from 8-10 p.m. and feature talented local dancers and musicians including Rueda De Sabor (salsa group), Nicole Edge, Gigi, Raluca, Mahree and Caroline Rekowski (belly dancers), Wendy Denney & Co. (modern dance), Greg Rettig, Basik Lee and Norton Lucas (singer/songwriter). Local artists Shaun Beaudry and Dean Denney will be selling prints of their work, with part of sales being donated.

Telfair Museums offer free admission to military families
Through Sept. 2. Jepson Center, 207 W. York St.; Telfair Academy, 121 Barnard St.; Owens-Thomas House, 124 Abercorn St. Telfair Museums will honor active military service members and their families by offering free admission to any of the Telfair Museums from Memorial Day to Labor Day 2013. Free admission is offered as part of the Telfair’s partnership with the Blue Star Museums program, which offers military families the chance to visit museums across the country free of charge this summer. Blue Star Museums is a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense and more than 1,800 museums across America. For more information, call 912-790-8802 or go to www.telfair.org.

Tea in the Garden at the Davenport House
5 p.m. May 30, 31. Davenport House Museum, 324 E. State St. Learn about tea traditions and experience an early 19th-century tea in Davenport House’s beautiful courtyard garden. Patrons will visit areas of the home where tea service took place and will participate in an afternoon tea given with costumed interpreters in the garden. The performance requires that guests be able to walk up and down stairs. The cost is $18 and reservations are recommended as space is limited. For more information, call 912-236-8097.

The Tybee Island Tourism Council has agreed to relinquish control of the annual Tybee Island Pirate Fest after a new not-for-profit group, comprised of business owners who had criticized proposed changes, applied to hold the event instead.

Whether the South End Association of Bars and Restaurants will be able to pull the October event off is in question, however. The organization is counting on getting about $30,000 in funding assistance from the tourism council, which made it clear on Wednesday that no such money will be forthcoming.

The shift comes after the tourism council withdrew its event application after some south end business owners criticized proposed changes that were mainly related to the relocation of the music stage and a children’s play area.

Chairman Keith Gay said the council wanted to move the stage from the north end of the parking lot along Strand Avenue to the south end to separate alcohol sales from the family area.

Some of the business owners were concerned the move would reduce the amount of traffic into their establishments and steer customers away from vendors on the north side when the acts took the stage, said Richard Adams, who helped establish SEABAR and submit the group’s event application.

After City Council heard the concerns on Thursday, they requested the council and business owners meet before approving the application.

The tourism council then withdrew its site plan. Gay said the council did not know the application also would be withdrawn.

Upon learning the business group wanted to take over, the tourism council on Wednesday unanimously voted to support the move by reaffirming its application withdrawal.

“Quite honestly, this is probably the best thing that could happen to this group,” Gay said.

This year’s festival would have been only the second since the tourism council took control of the event following the dissolution of Tybee Fest organization in 2011.

Gay said the council did not want to be in the festival business and reluctantly “stepped up” to prevent the festival from going away. Having SEABAR take over would allow the council to focus on their marketing efforts.

“If they can make it work the old way, God bless them,” Gay said. “I hope they are successful.”

The newly formed SEABAR hopes to get the $30,000 the tourism council received from Tybee Fest’s account when that organization dissolved, said Adams. He said the organization also will count on receiving $25,000 from Southern Eagle Distributors, which has provided such support in the past.

Gay said the council’s festival committee would meet with the SEABAR organization to see how they could assist but the $30,000 would not be provided. Those funds are needed for other events for which the tourism council is still responsible, he said.

Other details will have to be worked out with the change. The tourism council has paid a deposit of about $10,000 to reserve the bands scheduled to perform, and that will be lost if the contracts are cancelled, Gay said.

The new group can use the bands for the event, but they would be responsible for covering the balance owed to them, Gay said.

Gay said the festival has always lost money and the council had been hoping the event would start breaking even with the changes.

If the new organization is not successful, “it could be the end of Pirate Fest as we know it,” he said.

A U.S. District Court judge in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday approved a settlement that ends, at least temporarily, the legal challenges to deepening the Savannah harbor.

The agreement was reached after nine months of intense mediation among environmental groups and South Carolina government agencies on one side and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Georgia Ports Authority on the other.

At issue was the environmental damage that will result from digging the Savannah River’s navigation channel 5 feet deeper to accommodate bigger, more efficient ships.

New conservation efforts mandated by the settlement include land preservation along the river and its tributaries to protect drinking water quality, a decommissioning of the river’s navigation status above the harbor to allow for the return of its natural meandering course and a requirement that the corps proves the efficacy of a controversial oxygen injection system before any inner harbor dredging may begin.

This last requirement also comes with an escape clause for the conservation groups. If they’re not satisfied with the proof, they can reactivate their litigation.

Savannah Riverkeeper Tonya Bonitatibus calls the proposed system of giant, cone-shaped oxygen injectors the river’s “iron lungs.”

“The dredging is (now) contingent on them working,” she said. “Before it wasn’t. It was, ‘Oh well, we’ll keep deepening and figure it out as we go along.’ Now the agreement has teeth to work it out as it goes along and with not just modeling but actual use.”

Georgia Ports Authority did a demonstration project with the oxygen injectors called Speece cones in 2007 that purported to show they restored the oxygen the deepening would deplete. An outside reviewer from the U.S. Geological Survey, however, indicated the results could have been natural changes in oxygen levels from tidal fluctuations.

Further analysis by a GPA consultant produced no response from USGS, and the corps considered the matter settled.

Project manager Jason O’Kane of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said if the oxygen injection proves inadequate there are ways to boost it, including adding more Speece cones to the 12 currently planned at a cost of $72.2 million.

As part of the settlement, GPA has agreed to establish an annual evergreen fund of $2 million for dissolved-oxygen maintenance for a period of 50 years.

The new mitigation adds $43.5 million to the $652 million project. GPA has agreed to bear most of the additional cost, with the Georgia Department of Transportation handing over $10 million worth of land in Jasper County, S.C., to the Savannah River Maritime Commission to serve as a possible future site of a Jasper port.

Despite these additional costs, O’Kane said the project’s benefit-to-cost ratio of 5.5:1 won’t officially change.

“We feel the settlement agreement validates the science and the worthwhile benefits of the project for both states,” O’Kane said.

Mitigation is projected to account for more than half the cost of the project, a fact proponents point to as due diligence but which can be seen as a drawback, too.

“Maybe the fact that they have do all this mitigation shows this is a tough place to do this kind of project,” said Chris DeScherer, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented the Savannah Riverkeeper, the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, and the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Georgia Ports Authority and the Savannah River Maritime Commission were intervenors in the litigation.

“We are pleased that the courts and all parties have agreed to virtually the same legal and environmental permit that the DHEC scientists suggested and the DHEC Board approved over a year ago,” said DHEC director Catherine Templeton.

The settlement was first announced last month and has since been agreed to by all parties.

In his order issued Tuesday, Judge Richard Mark Gergel retained jurisdiction over the matter to enforce compliance with the settlement and instructed the parties to give the court 15 days notice if they decide to terminate for cause.

Conservation groups had urged the corps to take a broader look at which ports need to be deepened, to both save taxpayer money and reduce environmental degradation, DeScherer said.

That didn’t happen.

“The settlement focuses more on offsetting the harms to the river from further deepening,” he said. “It does not address the institutional concerns about why the corps evaluates each of these projects in a vacuum.”

Still, the conservation groups were pleased.

“This is a vast improvement,” DeScherer said.

The settlement leaves only funding as the missing piece of harbor deepening. Georgia has already allotted $231.1 million to the project. Construction can begin once Congress completes action on the Water Resources Development Act.

The Senate version of the measure, passed this month, approves the $652 million cost level of the deepening, which has increased since the project was authorized 13 years ago. The House now takes up the bill.

“Now that the concern of litigation has been resolved by a universal settlement, this vital project will move forward,” said GPA Board Chairman Robert Jepson in a prepared statement. “The expanded harbor will perfectly complement Savannah’s landside infrastructure, which includes two Class I railroads, and direct access to Interstates 95 and 16.”

Morris News Service reporter Sarita Chourey contributed to this report.

24-hour jail bookings for Savannah-Chatham County are now posted. Visit booked.savannahnow.com to view photos and information.

All information has been obtained from the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department.

All individuals posted have not been convicted of a crime and are innocent until proven guilty.

Savannah-Chatham Metro police will be operating radar hot spots along Veterans Parkway. 

Police remind drivers there is zero tolerance for speeding in school zones. 

BRUNSWICK, Ga.  — A judge has set a tentative trial date for two teenagers facing charges in the killing of a baby near the Georgia coast.

Brunswick Judicial Circuit Judge Stephen Kelley tentatively scheduled an Aug. 19 trial date in the slaying of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago.

View more related photos here

The Brunswick News reports that the date was set during a status conference hearing Wednesday.

De'Marquise Elkins and Dominique Lang face murder charges in the March 21 killing. Both suspects have pleaded not guilty.

Authorities say Elkins shot the child in the face as he sat in his stroller. The boys are accused of trying to rob the child's mother on the street a few blocks from her Brunswick apartment. The mother, Sherry West, was wounded by gunfire but survived.

This item was posted today on the  Fort Pulaski website:

Due to a boat collision with the Cockspur Island Bridge, Fort Pulaski National Monument is closed to all vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic through Thursday, May 30, 2013. Please stay tuned for more information regarding the park's reopening.

Return to savannahnow.com for more information as it's available.

More Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, though the level of applications is still consistent with steady hiring. Weekly applications rose 10,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 354,000. The four-week average rose 6,750 to 347,250, the third straight gain. The average fell to a five-year low earlier this month.

Here are the states with the biggest changes in applications. The state data are for the week ended May 18, one week behind the national data:

States with the biggest increases:

South Carolina: Up 1,263, due to layoffs in manufacturing

Tennessee: Up 1,191, due to layoffs in administrative and support services, restaurants and trade contractors

States with the biggest decreases:

California: Down 16,334, due to fewer layoffs in the service industry

Georgia: Down 1,802, due to fewer layoffs in manufacturing, construction, and administrative and support services

Illinois: Down 1,198, no reason given

View the most recent top 25 restaurant violators from the Chatham County Health Department.

Click here to launch the slideshow and see how your local eateries scored.

A second arrest has been made in the April 3 attack on Oliver the pig in Effingham County.

Clyde McFearin, 52, of Springfield, was arrested Wednesday and charged with aggravated cruelty to animals and obstruction of a law enforcement officer, according to Effingham County Sheriff’s Spokesman David Ehsanipoor.

A man and two dogs attacked the family pet that wandered away from its home and into the Bevills Mobile Home Park, both of which are on Courthouse Road. A witness took video of what Ehsanipoor called an “unprovoked, brutal attack” on the domesticated animal.

Ehsanipoor said investigators determined that one of the dogs belonged to McFearin. He said the obstruction charge is because McFearin lied to investigators, he said.

“According to witness reports, McFearin let his dog loose after the pig was being attacked by the other suspect and his dog,” Ehsanipoor said.

McFearin was in the Effingham County Jail Thursday.

The pig suffered 23 stab wounds but has recovered, Ehsanipoor said. “He’s doing well with his family,” he said.

Another man charged in the attack soon after it happened is free on bond. Benjamin Fullwood, 23, of Springfield, was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals, obstruction and trespassing.

Palmetto Electric Cooperative is teeing up another opportunity for golfers to win $1 million.

The 11th annual Touchstone Energy Million Dollar Hole-in-One Shootout taking place Thursday through Saturday in Bluffton, South Carolina.

“The event will once again raise money for Bright Ideas,” says Palmetto Electric Cooperative President and CEO G.Thomas Upshaw.

“Bright Ideas provides funding for innovative classroom projects for low country schools.”

The cost to participate in the Million Dollar Shootout is $1 per ball or $10 for a bag of 12 balls.  No advance registration is needed for the three day event.  Qualifying rounds will be held Thursday, May 30, from 9am to 7pm, Friday, May 31, from 9am to 7pm and Saturday, June 1, from 9am to 5pm at the Old South Golf Links in Bluffton.

Twenty-eight golfers will qualify to compete in the $1 million shootout Saturday at 6pm.  Qualifying shots will be from approximately 115 to 130 yards.  Daily prizes will be awarded.

The top twenty-eight golfers will advance to the shootout and get one shot at the grand prize.  The shot will be from 165 yards for men and 150 for women.  A $1 million dollar annuity will be awarded to any and all players making a hole-in-one during the finals.

The first hole-in-one in the finals will also win someone a BMW 128i convertible.  Should no one make the hole-in-one, the closest to the hole wins $1,000 cash and a playing spot in The Pro-Am in Las Vegas.  Second through fifth place prizes include rounds of golf at area courses.