Courtesy of Marjory Collins / Wikimedia Commons.
- Four people survived and 40 drowned after an inflatable boat carrying migrants across the Mediterranean Sea sank off the coast of Sicily on Thursday. Although nearly 10,000 migrants have been rescued near Italy’s coast in recent days, hundreds have died in an attempt to seek refuge in Europe.
- Around 5,000 anti-xenophobia protesters took to the streets of the South African city of Durban on Thursday. The demonstrators condemned recent violence against immigrants accused of stealing the jobs of citizens of South Africa, where the unemployment rate is 24 percent.
- After a Massachusetts jury found him guilty of the 2013 murder of his friend Odin Lloyd, former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, 25, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Wednesday. Hernandez, who once enjoyed a $40 million contract with the Patriots, affirmed his innocence.
- A Fulton County judge sentenced nine of the 10 convicted former Atlanta Public Schools educators to jail on Tuesday as part of a widespread standardized test cheating scandal. Sentences ranged from one to seven full years in jail, while one former testing coordinator received a sentence of six months of weekends spent in jail.
- On Tuesday afternoon, an airline passenger flying into the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport from a West African nation complained of diarrhea, a symptom of Ebola virus disease, and was transported to the Emory University Hospital. By Wednesday, the individual was cleared for travel and returned to their home state.
- A Peachtree City grand jury indicted a former police chief on Wednesday for accidentally shooting his wife. William McCollum, who resigned in March, was charged with reckless conduct and could face a year in jail if convicted.
