What's going on in Alabama
Today, friends and neighbors, is National Buttermilk Biscuit Day. You all know how to celebrate that one. Let's get to some news ... Ike Morgan |
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Alabama's two U.S. senators are among those who sent a letter last week to Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs over Mexico's actions toward property held by Birmingham-based Vulcan Materials, reports AL.com's William Thornton. The Vulcan property includes a deep-water port and limestone quarry in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The letter noted Mexico's seizing the property two years ago as well as another shut-down last March and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's threats to turn it into a natural protected area if Vulcan doesn't take $360 million for it. Vulcan says it's worth closer to $2 billion dollars. From the May 9 letter, signed by Sens. Katie Britt, Tommy Tuberville, Bill Hagerty (R.-Tenn.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.): “If Vulcan’s land and port are seized, we will be forced to consider all available remedies at our disposal to ensure no entity or individual benefits from the theft of this property.” The next day Alabama's U.S. House delegation backed that play, sending a similar letter to the Mexican Foreign Affairs secretary. |
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A former Paul Bryant High School student from the Tuscaloosa area was treated warmly at the United Nations in Geneva after speaking on his experience being kicked out of school for a crime he says he didn't commit, reports AL.com's Savannah Tryens-Fernandes. The former student, who AL.com did not identify because of his age, was accompanied by his dad and representatives from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The student told the U.N. that he is a victim of a "discipline system that treats black kids like me unfairly.” “I have a job and still hope to go to college, but it’s harder now,” he said. “What happened to me made me sad and anxious and forced me to fight for my education just because of my race." His status issue stemmed from a resource officer finding marijuana in a car he had ridden to the school in with friends. Police charged someone else in the car with possession, but the student served in-school suspension for a couple months, was sentenced to alternative school and eventually withdrew to be homeschooled. Savannah also reported that just last week Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law that makes it more difficult to expel K-12 students and allows them to have a lawyer present at disciplinary hearings. |
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Muscle Shoals is building a $65 million sports and entertainment complex with an amphitheater, reports AL.com's William Thornton. It'll sit on 66 acres at Sportsplex Drive near Highways 72 and 43. Right now there are city ballfields on that site, and it's next to a retail development. When it's done there will be youth baseball and softball fields, tennis and pickleball courts, soccer fields, basketball courts and volleyball courts. Speaking of the runaway popularity of pickleball ... As we build more and more pickleball courts, it needs to be asked: Are we really into this sport for the long haul? Or will we eventually hang our pickleball paddles on our grandma's vibrating belt machine? Time will tell. |
The Creola Fire Department issued a shelter-in-place alert for residents on Monday, reports AL.com's Warren Kulo. It lasted nearly four hours, until 1:40 p.m. Creola is about eight miles northeast of Mobile. The alert was in response to a nitric acid spill from a tanker truck on Highway 43. Fox 10 News reported that at least five people, including the truck driver and a first responder, were taken to a hospital for treatment. |
WHNT 19 news anchor Steve Johnson has announced his retirement after 50 years in the business, reports AL.com's Mark Heim. Johnson started in sports, like so many icons of journalism. He started working at WHNT in 1977 and made the move from sports to news in 1999. His final broadcast is expected to be June 14. |
“I’m disappointed in the courtroom. I’m hearing Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump. He is former President Trump. Give him some respect. That’s what that place is in there, it’s no respect.” |
“Alabama is not Michigan. Huntsville … Tuscaloosa … they’re not Detroit. We want to ensure that Alabama values, not Detroit values, continue to define the future of this great state.” |
That's how much money Charles Barkley said he'll donate to women's athletics at Auburn University. He also announced he was donating that much to a New Orleans school, inspired by two girls there who discovered a proof for the Pythagorean Theorem using trigonometry. |
In 1954, Congressman Gary Palmer of Hackleburg |
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