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The National Weather Service predicts that the major winter storm that dropped significant snowfall and ice on the Southeast yesterday will intensify as it moves up the Eastern Seaboard today. The accumulation of ice can damage the electric distribution system and make road conditions unsafe, which could hamper power restoration efforts. As of 3:30 p.m. yesterday more than 450,000 customers were without power from Florida to Pennsylvania, according to the Department of Energy's Energy Assurance Daily. States of emergency have been declared in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. The U.S. Energy Information Administration provides...

They can make fun of us if they want. Georgians know that grace and generosity are more important than blame. While others may make fun and cast blame, the important stories are not about how weather happens, snow comes and we get caught in traffic jams for hours or how we abandon cars and pick them up a day to two later. The real stories are about strangers handing out food and water, stores and restaurants welcoming those who are stranded, providing them shelter for the night. They are of neighbors getting together for large dinners, friends walking miles to...

About 1,000 local jobs will be affected when Verizon Wireless closes its customer contact centers in Cranberry and Warrendale in May as part of a national realignment of 5,000 employees, the company announced Wednesday. Verizon Wireless said a total of five customer contact centers will close in May. For the 1,000 local customer service employees affected, options are to apply for other positions locally, to relocate to one of 26 out-of-state customer contact centers or to accept a severance package. Employees eligible for out-of-state relocation will receive a $10,000 relocation assistance package. The company also is offering employees seeking to...

The potentially devastating winter storm that forecasters and the governor have been warning about for days began unfolding before daybreak Wednesday as temperatures dropped to 32 degrees or below and began freezing the precipitation that returned overnight. ... “All of the interstates, all of the secondary routes, all of the surface streets, are all iced over,” Arum said. “Where you are right now is where you’re going to be tomorrow morning, there’s no doubt about it.” ... The number of power outages is growing by the minute. Just before 5 a.m., the number of customers in the dark was 2,000....

Americans today are too sensitive about race, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a gathering of college students in Florida on Tuesday. Speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thomas, the second black justice to serve on the court, lamented what he considers a society that is more “conscious” of racial differences than it was when he grew up in segregated Georgia in the days before — and during — the civil rights era. “My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to...

Rep. Paul Broun has landed the first endorsement from a national tea party group in the crowded Georgia GOP Senate primary, with the nascent Madison Project set to back his candidacy Tuesday. In its endorsement, which was shared early with Post Politics, the group says Broun has been the House's fiercest conservative, bar none. "...few come to the ankles of Paul Broun in terms of a proven commitment to constitutional governance," the group will say in a release. "It is not an exaggeration to say that Congressman Paul Broun has sustained the most conservative voting record over the longest period...

Atlanta won't get fooled again. The South is bracing for another blast of winter weather starting Monday night, and Georgia and its biggest city are determined to avoid a repeat of last month's disaster. Cold will meet precipitation, creating an icy mess from northeast Texas to the Carolinas through Wednesday, according to Weather.com. After 2 inches of snow in late January debilitated parts of Georgia — particularly Atlanta — leaving kids stranded in schools and cars stuck on highways overnight, the state’s transportation department cried wolf last Thursday when declaring a winter weather storm watch for Atlanta that wasn’t. But...

The daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said Thursday that her brothers won't take King's Nobel Peace Prize and traveling Bible from her without a fight. Bernice King alleges her brothers Dexter King and Martin Luther King III want to sell the objects, and she told reporters that she won't stand by to let it happen. The slain civil rights icon's estate -- controlled by his sons -- filed a complaint in Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta last week to force Bernice King to turn over the items. "Not on my watch," she said at Atlanta's Ebenezer...

A former Georgia Tech associate professor has been found guilty of 76 counts of sexual exploitation of children. Faiz Al-Khayyal was convicted by a jury Thursday in Fulton County Superior Court and will be sentenced at a later date. “Possession of child pornography is a heinous crime that exploits the most vulnerable members of our society,” Attorney General Sam Olens said in a news release.

ATLANTA — Friends say a Georgia Tech graduate student is in critical condition after an apartment fire off 10th Street in midtown. Atlanta police told Channel 2’s Erica Byfield that Saamar Akhshabi was burned from an incendiary device in the incident. WSBTV.com reported the explosion as breaking news Tuesday just after 8:30 p.m. When investigators arrived on scene they found the international student with severe burns to his hands, arms and chest.

Impeachment talk is all the rage-again. Rep. Paul Broun, a GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia, indicated during a tea party-sponsored candidate forum this weekend that he would support the impeachment of President Obama. Candidates at the Gilmer County GOP forum, including Broun, were asked by a questioner: "Clinton was impeached for perjury. Obama has perjured himself on multiple occasions. Would you support impeachment if presented for a vote?" Broun, along with two other candidates, Derrick Grayson and Eugene Yu raised their hands, according to video of the event obtained by ABC News (watch video above). Neither Rep. Phil...

ALBANY, Ga. — If Lee Mullins lived in Pittsburgh, he could buy mid-level health coverage for his family for $940 a month. If he lived in Beverly Hills, he would pay $1,405. But Mullins, who builds custom swimming pools, lives in southwest Georgia. Here, a similar health plan for his family of four costs $2,654 a month. This largely agrarian pocket of Georgia, where peanuts and pecans are major crops and hunters bag alligators up to 10 feet long, is one of the most expensive places in the nation to buy health insurance through the new online marketplaces created by...

For the past four months, Sarah Callaway has had to watch as her daughter Greylynn’s body has been wracked by uncontrollable spasms several times a day. “They don’t hurt her. But they scare her, and she cries. And you can’t do anything for her except comfort her,” said Callaway, a Chatsworth resident. “That’s the most frustrating part. I just say to her, ‘I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry.’” When Greylynn was born six months ago, doctors diagnosed her with a brain malformation and gave her only weeks to live. She survived, but her condition has left...

NEW YORK (AP) -- CNN's Carol Costello was more than prepared for her contentious live interview with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Wednesday, having spent frustrating hours caught in the epic traffic snarls caused by the rare Southern snowstorm. Unlike other motorists, Costello wasn't stranded overnight in her car, but it took two tries and more than three hours for her to drive two miles to her home Tuesday from the news network's Atlanta headquarters.

It was a winter storm response described as an "epic failure" of government by one national news network. A midday winter storm struck Atlanta's metro population of nearly 6 million on Tuesday. By early afternoon, hundreds of thousands of commuters had taken to the streets, all at once, in a desperate effort to get home. At the same time school systems dismissed an army of students, many on buses. Government got into the act too, telling workers to hit the road. But by the time everyone started out, what began as flurries became several inches of snow on the highways...

It’s likely not the birthday celebration James Freeman wished for. The Rome, Ga., resident spent Tuesday — his 31st birthday — slogging across 72 miles of icy metro-Atlanta roads for 12 hours after leaving Norcross at 2:30 p.m. “Some called it ‘Snowpocalypse,’ others ‘Snowmageddon.’ I called it my birthday,” Freeman shared in a first-person account he wrote for Yahoo News on Thursday.

Still littered with abandoned cars, Atlanta struggled to find its way back to normal Thursday while the mayor and governor struggled with the political fallout from a snowstorm that trapped some people in their cars more than 24 hours. Mayor Kasim Reed assured people on Tuesday, in a message on Twitter before the snow began to fall: “Atlanta, we are ready for the snow.” On Thursday, he acknowledged that authorities made a mistake by not staggering their orders for people to go home — schools first, then private businesses, then government employees. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people poured onto...

In a briefing late Tuesday night, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal deflected criticism for the traffic nightmare plaguing Metro Atlanta saying in part that the crippling weather was "unexpected" and that government officials made preparations based on forecasts that called for "the majority of the effects of the storm" to be "south of here." "We have been confronted with an unexpected winter storm that has hit the metropolitan Atlanta area," the governor said.  But a timeline of winter storm watches, warnings, and advisories paints a different picture, one that shows that the governor and other government officials had nearly a day to prepare...

Civil Emergency MessageGAC057-063-067-089-097-113-121-135-151-247-301700- BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE GEORGIA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY IN ATLANTA GEORGIA RELAYED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA 408 AM EST THU JAN 30 2014 THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PEACHTREE CITY HAS RELAYED A * CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE AT THE REQUEST OF THE GEORGIA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY IN ATLANTA GEORGIA. * A STATE OF EMERGENCY REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR ALL OF GEORGIA DUE TO IMPACTS FROM A WINTER STORM ON TUESDAY THROUGH THIS MORNING. * THE CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON TODAY AND PRIMARILY PERTAINS TO THE...

Thousands of Atlanta students stranded all night long in their schools were reunited with their parents Wednesday, while rescuers rushed to deliver blankets, food, gas and a ride home to countless shivering motorists stopped cold by a storm that paralyzed the business capital of the South with less than 3 inches of snow. The result was gridlock on freeways that are jammed even on normal days. Countless vehicles were stranded and many of them abandoned. Officials said 239 children spent Tuesday night aboard school buses; thousands of others stayed overnight in their schools. One woman's 12-mile commute home took 16...