Atlanta Ga

The 80-year-old leader of a megachurch pleaded guilty Wednesday to lying under oath about his sexual affairs and was sentenced to 10 years' probation. Archbishop Earl Paulk, who has been in ill health, was also fined $1,000 on a single felony count. The charges stem from a 2006 deposition Paulk gave in a lawsuit against him, his brother Don and the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church by former church employee Mona Brewer, who said she was coerced into an affair.

For more than a decade, a steady stream of housing officials and city planners from across the country have visited Atlanta to view the future of mixed-income housing. They tour sites such as Centennial Place -- where vast public housing blocks were torn down in 1994 to make way for a pioneering $150-million mixed-income community of garden apartments and town homes -- and then they go on to carry out similar projects in cities such as New Orleans and New York.

The judge presiding over the death penalty case of a man accused in a notorious courthouse shooting stepped down Wednesday after being quoted in a magazine article as having said of the defendant, "Everyone in the world knows he did it." Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller Jr. told local media outlets Tuesday that he did not recall making the statement to a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.

This city's much-hyped plan to transform an abandoned 22-mile railroad loop into a green trail and transit route received a significant setback Monday when the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that school property taxes could not be used to fund the project. Atlanta officials, who have invested $160 million in the so-called BeltLine, had expected about $850 million to come from future school tax revenue.

Vikas Chinnan stood over a tank at the world's largest aquarium, peering down at the world's largest fish species. He was wondering what it would be like to jump in and frolic beside the whale sharks. The creature approached, eerily quiet. It was longer than a Ford Expedition, impossibly elegant as it banked into a turn at the tank's edge, flexing its gray, massive, mottled form into a parabola of living flesh.

"It was a normal day of judicial proceedings," prosecutor Kellie Hill told the jury Monday. "A regular day of courtroom tranquillity -- until that man walked in a back door." She pointed across the courtroom to the sullen, powerfully built man in a tan suit accused of killing four people in a 2005 rampage that started at a courthouse just a few blocks from here.

Federal authorities in Atlanta announced grand jury indictments Wednesday against 41 people allegedly connected to violent Mexican drug cartels, including a former deputy sheriff from Texas stopped with nearly $1 million in cash hidden in his pickup on a Georgia highway. The trafficking operation moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and marijuana from the Southwest border to Atlanta, authorities said.

A popular mix-tape DJ and his partner have been arrested at his Atlanta offices on suspicion of selling pirated CDs. DJ Drama, who is responsible for the "Gangsta Grillz" mixes, was booked late Tuesday with partner DJ Don Cannon after police in Morrow, Ga., raided his offices of Aphilliates Music Group and detained 17 people. On Wednesday, DJ Drama, whose real name is Tyrie Simmons, was denied bail along with Cannon. Representatives of the two could not be reached.

Prosecutors plan to seek felony murder indictments against three Atlanta police officers who killed an elderly woman during an exchange of gunfire in her home, according to a document released by one of the officer's attorneys Wednesday. The Nov. 21 slaying of Kathryn Johnston, 88, sent waves of anger across Atlanta -- prompting hundreds to gather to vent and criticize Police Chief Richard J. Pennington.

Scientists from across the world gathered here Thursday to launch an "Amphibian Ark" for thousands of species of frogs, toads and salamanders threatened by a deadly fungus. The ark project was envisaged as scientists came to realize that the amphibians could not be saved in the wild, said Kevin Zippel, the project's amphibian program officer.