Chatham County | featured news

Daniel Almond of Clyo is challenging fellow Republican and incumbent Jon Burns of Newington in State House District 159.
Burns is House majority leader.
Almond, who has worked for three years as a corrections officer at the Effingham County prison, is running for elected office for the first time.

HAVANA — Cuban President Raul Castro called on President Barack Obama on Monday to lift longstanding U.S. trade and other restrictions as he and Obama pledged to move forward with normalizing relations between Cuba and its longtime Cold War-era foe.

Police say they recovered a man’s body from a Savannah-area marsh Monday morning and launched an investigation into his death.
A boater passing by in the marshes off the Herb River behind the 6800 block of LaRoche Avenue called 911 just before 10 a.m. after spotting a man floating in the water, said Sonny Cohrs, Savannah-Chatham police spokesman. Marine patrol units responded and recovered the body.
Forensics officers and detectives were on scene late Monday morning.
No further information was immediately available.

Arson investigators are probing a fire they suspect may have been started by a Molotov cocktail in the wee hours of Sunday as the four-day St. Patrick’s festival was wrapping up in downtown Savannah.
Firefighters were called to the 500 block of East Perry Street about 12:30 a.m. after a structure fire was reported. When they got there, they instead discovered an open-area fire that had already burned out, said Savannah Fire & Emergency Services spokesman Mark Keller.

The city of Savannah’s film office says movie production is shutting down Gaston Street in front of Forsyth Park until about 11 p.m. Monday.

Twenty-two arrests were processed through Savannah-Chatham police’s mobile command posts on March 19, the third and final day of this year’s St. Patrick’s festival.
In total, there were nine disorderly conduct charges, one reckless conduct charge, one for public urination, one for DUI, one fleeing to elude charge and one charge of swimming in the Savannah River.
There also were three individuals charged with affray (fighting in public), five charged with obstruction, five possession of marijuana charges and three possession of a controlled substance charges.

It was a sunny November afternoon when a 20-year-old Savannah man told police that a stranger shot him while he was playing basketball on East 54th Street. Officers interviewed him at the hospital while others processed the crime scene and canvassed the area looking for leads on a suspect.
But the man recanted his story hours later and admitted the gun belonged to him and was discharged accidentally during a basketball game.
“We get reports like this all the time,” said Savannah-Chatham Police Sgt. David Barefield.

ATHENS, Greece — Hundreds of mostly Syrian asylum-seekers continued to arrive in Greece by sea Sunday despite the start of an international agreement to send migrants back to Turkey.

Obama arrives in Cuba for what he calls a ‘historic visit’