About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (June 9, 2023)
LOCA^NATION The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com Weekend Edition-June 9-10, 2023 3A Suspicious person call leads to $275K drug bust BY NICK WATSON nwatson@ gainesvilletimes.com A Gainesville man ran Wednesday from deputies responding to a suspicious activ ity call and left behind roughly $275,000 in fentanyl and meth- Gonzalez- amphetamine in an SUV, Powell according to authorities. Hall County Sheriffs Office deputies responded around 9:50 p.m. Wednesday, June 7, to the 7000 block of Williams Road regarding a man walking around outside of the caller’s home. When officers got there, they saw a man, later identified as Michael Gonzalez-Powell, 30, get out of an SUV and run away from them, according to the Sheriffs Office. Roughly two hours later, he was found near the original location. “For towing purposes, deputies inventoried the SUV Gonzalez-Powell left at the resi dence,” according to the Sher iffs Office. “In the vehicle, they found suspected fentanyl and methamphetamine. ” The Sheriff’s Office did not say where the drugs were located in the car. The Special Investigations Unit was called in, later seizing roughly 800 grams of fentanyl and 500 grams of meth worth an estimated $275,000 on the street. Investigators obtained war rants for Gonzalez-Powell on charges of trafficking fentanyl and meth as well as misde meanor obstruction. The man also had a felony probation warrant. Gonzalez-Powell was booked in to the Hall County Jail, where he remains with no bond. The case is still under inves tigation, and additional charges are pending. Third day of smoky air gives millions on East Coast a new view of wildfire threat Lawyers blame ChatGPT for BY JENNIFER PELTZ AND ROB GILLIES Associated Press NEW YORK — Images of smoke obscuring the New York skyline and the Wash ington Monument this week have given the world a new picture of the perils of wild fire, far from where blazes regularly turn skies into haz ardous haze. A third day of unhealthy air from Canadian wildfires may have been an unnerving novelty for millions of people on the U.S. East Coast, but it was a reminder of conditions routinely troubling the coun try’s West — and a wake-up call about the future, scien tists say. “This is kind of an astounding event” but likely to become more common amid global warming, said Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth College geography professor and climate scientist. “This is something that we, as the eastern side of the country, need to take quite seriously. ” Millions of residents could see that for themselves Thursday. The conditions sent asthma sufferers to hospitals, delayed flights, postponed ballgames and even pushed back a White House Pride Month celebra tion. The fires sent plumes of fine particulate matter as far away as North Carolina and northern Europe and parked clumps of air rated unhealthy or worse over the heavily populated Eastern Seaboard. At points this week, air quality in places including New York, the nation’s most populous city, nearly hit the top of the U.S. Environ mental Protection Agency’s air-pollution scale. Local officials urged people to stay indoors as much as possible and wear face masks when they venture out. Such conditions are noth ing new — indeed, increas ingly frequent — on the U.S. West Coast, where residents were buying masks and air filters even before the coronavirus pandemic and have become accustomed to checking air quality daily in summertime. Since 2017, California has seen eight of its 10 largest wildfires and six of the most destructive. The hazardous air has sometimes forced children, older adults and people with asthma and other respi ratory conditions to stay indoors for weeks at a time. SHOOTING ■ Continued from 1A injuries are not life-threatening. Investigators believe Abraham Trujillo, 46, of AIR ■ Continued from 1A Canada experienced an unusually warm May, which dried out the vegetation and contributed to the severity of its wildfires, said Jamie Mitchem, a professor of environmental science at University of North Georgia. Trailblazers, explore Braselton's wine bars, breweries & taprooms. Follow the self-guided tour on an urban adventure where you'll discover the best spots to sample handcrafted cocktails at the hottest spots in Braselton. Most cocktail stops are within walking distance; j| or on Friday and Saturday evenings, hop aboard the ^ fare-free Braselton Trolley. citing bogus law fessor George Washington University. In New York City, Health Department spokesperson Pedro Frisneda said emer gency rooms were seeing a “higher than usual” num ber of asthma-related visits from the blanket of smoke, estimating patients were in the “low hundreds.” The city public school sys tem — the nation’s largest — said Friday’s classes would be conducted remotely, a decision that mostly affected high schoolers because most other pupils already had a scheduled day off. Motorists even got a break Thursday and Friday from having to move their cars for street cleaning. Gainesville, pulled out the gun during an argument with Medrano and left the fight in an SUV, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Officers found Trujillo’s vehicle on Dawsonville Highway and stopped the car, leading to Trujillo’s arrest. Trujillo was charged with aggravated assault and taken to the Hall County Jail, where he was still in the booking process. No further information was released. “That’s been one contrib uting factor to how large the wildfires have become and how quickly they spread,” he said, which are “close to unprecedented,” he added. “What’s shocking about the current situation is that there were massive fires that started out in western Canada — Alberta and Brit ish Columbia — back in May, and now we’re seeing them also in Quebec and Ontario,” he said. “It’s mul tiple provinces and parts of Canada at the same time, so that’s fairly unusual.” “Hopefully we start pay ing attention and realizing that the threat of climate change is accelerating,” he said. “I hope this serves as another wake up call that we need to all work together to protect clean air and water.” JOSE LUIS MAGANA I Associated Press With the Washington Monument in the background and a thick layer of smoke, Marine Corps honor color guard rehearse, Thursday, June 8, in Washington. Officials have opened smoke shelters for people who are homeless or who might not have access to clean indoor air. So what’s the big deal about the smoke out East? “The West has always burned, as has Canada, but what’s important now is that we’re getting these massive amounts of smoke in a very populated region, so many, many people are getting affected,” said Loretta Mick- ley, the co-leader of Harvard University’s Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group. Fueled by an unusually dry and warm period in spring, the Canadian fire sea son that is just getting started could well become the worst on record. More than 400 blazes burned Thursday. Over a third are in Quebec, where Public Safety Minis ter Franqois Bonnardel said no rain is expected until next week and temperatures are predicted to rise. He said there have been no reports of injuries, deaths or home damage so far from the fires, but it remained unclear Thursday when more than 12,000 evacuees from various communities would be able to return. Manon Cyr, mayor of the evacuated town of Chibouga- mau, said she advised resi dents to be “Zen and patient. That’s the most important.” But, she noted, the real solution will be a good dose of rain. In neighboring Ontario, a haze hung over Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, where many school recess breaks, day care center activities and outdoor rec reation programs were can celed or moved inside. U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that hundreds of American firefighters and support personnel have been in Canada since May, and that he’d offered Cana dian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “any additional help Canada needs to rap idly accelerate the effort to put out these fires.” The two spoke Wednesday. Wildfires aren’t the only air-quality problems that beset major population cen ters around the globe. In Beijing, for example, decades of sandstorms blowing in from the Mon golian plains have mixed with human-made pollution, sometimes making neighbor ing buildings invisible to one another. Commuters have even been spotted walking down streets wearing plastic bags over their heads to insu late against particulates. Many African countries in and near the Sahara Desert, too, regularly grapple with bad air mainly because of sandstorms. Senegal, in par ticular, has endured years of unsafe levels of air pollution, which is causing asthma and other respiratory diseases, climate experts say. Chemically, wildfire smoke can be more toxic than typical urban pollu tion, but with an asterisk: With smog, “the problem is you’re in it all the time,” says Jonathan Deason, an environmental and energy management pro- BY LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK — Two apologetic lawyers responding to an angry judge blamed ChatGPT Thursday for tricking them into including ficti tious legal research in a court filing. Attorneys Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca are facing possi ble punishment over a fil ing in a lawsuit against an airline that included ref erences to past court cases that Schwartz thought were real, but were actu ally invented by the artifi cial intelligence-powered chatbot. Schwartz explained that he used the groundbreak ing program as he hunted for legal precedents sup porting a client’s case against the Colombian air line Avianca for an injury incurred on a 2019 flight. The chatbot, which has fascinated the world with its production of essay-like answers to prompts from users, suggested several cases involving aviation mishaps that Schwartz hadn’t been able to find through usual methods used at his law firm. The problem was, sev eral of those cases weren’t real or involved airlines that didn’t exist. Schwartz told Judge P. Kevin Castel he was “oper ating under a misconcep tion ... that this website was obtaining these cases from some source I did not have access to.” He said he “failed mis erably” at doing follow-up research to ensure the citations were correct. “I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fab ricate cases,” Schwartz said. Microsoft has invested some $1 billion in Ope- nAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Its success, demonstrat ing how artificial intel ligence could change the way humans work and learn, has generated fears from some. Hundreds of industry leaders signed a letter in May that warns “ mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority along side other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Judge Castel seemed both baffled and disturbed at the unusual occurrence and disappointed the law yers did not act quickly to correct the bogus legal citations when they were first alerted to the prob lem by Avianca’s lawyers and the court. Avianca pointed out the bogus case law in a March filing. TAXES ■ Continued from 1A However, Flowery Branch has a rollback rate, 2.664 mills, which would keep revenue the same. At that rate, the owner of a home assessed at $400,000 would pay $426.24 in prop erty taxes. General fund tax revenue is $2.2 million this budget year and is projected to be $2.8 million in fiscal year 2024, which begins July 1. The city is required to hold public hearings if the city doesn’t use the rollback rate. Two of those were held June 8, with only one per son asking about whether the city’s presentation on the matter would be on the city’s website. The third one will take place at the June 15 meeting. Council members had much to say about the mat ter, defending not lowering the rate. The additional rev enue is needed to keep up with the city’s growth, they said. “We’re proposing to spend ($600,000) just adding police officers,” Mayor Ed Asbridge said. Flowery Branch is rapidly growing. Recently released U.S. Census Bureau esti mates show the city growing from 9,512 in 2020 to 10,938 in 2022, a 15% increase. Councilman Joe Anglin also cited the cost of paving streets, which have risen because of inflation. “If we’re not keeping up with that, we’re going to find ourselves in a situation where we’re going to have to really consider doing some drastic things,” he said. 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