Aug 07, 2023

For many, this week will mark the beginning of another school year. So we feel it's appropriate to drop another Week in Review quiz on here (it's at a link near the bottom).

There was some wild news over the weekend, from a brawl at the waterfront in Montgomery to a fire inside the Walmart in Leeds. It's all below.

Ike Morgan

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Four warrants were issued over the weekend after Saturday's brawl along the dock near the Montgomery Riverfront, reports AL.com's Lawrence Specker.

On Sunday evening, Montgomery Police said there might be more arrests as more video is being reviewed.

The fighting was shared nationally on social media, often being cast with racial implications. But motivations have not been confirmed, just gleaned from apparent eyewitnesses sharing video.

You know the drill from here: Evolving story, investigation ongoing, check al.com for updates.

State Sen. Tim Melson of Florence is recuperating from going into cardiac arrest in South Korea and expects to be home in a few days, reports The Alabama Daily News.

Melson was in South Korea with a group of officials from Alabama trying to recruit businesses and teachers. Reportedly, fellow state Sen. Arthur Orr performed CPR on Melson.

Melson is a 63-year-old retired anesthesiologist and medical researcher.

A fire briefly broke out inside a Walmart store in Leeds on Saturday night, taking out a rack of women's clothes and creating enough smoke to cause some produce to be thrown away, reports AL.com's Lawrence Specker.

This is another story in which video has been making its rounds on social media. Speculation there (which means very little) is over whether late-night Walmart visitors set the fire to cause a distraction during shoplifting. (PSA: You're risking a lot more from a legal standpoint if you ever decide to elevate from shoplifting at a Walmart to setting it on fire.)

Leeds Fire Marshall Adam Courington said employees were able to put out the fire before the sprinklers went off and before there was any structural damage to the building. Fire and law-enforcement officials will work together in the investigation.

This one's technically a little outside Alabama, but it's from along the Gulf Coast, so we'll claim it.

AL.com's Warren Kulo reports that fisherman Cory Kauffman of Fort Walton Beach, for the second time in about three weeks, saw and videoed a whale shark.

That's a pretty uncommon double to pull off, but it's not just Powerball-level luck at work here. The University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Fisheries Research and Development said that whale shark sightings along the Florida Panhandle have been on the rise -- and are at their highest level since 2009.

Whale sharks are the largest fish in the world, sometimes growing to more than 40 feet long. Kaufmann estimated the most recent one he saw at 30 feet long.

In 1941, jazz musician Howard Johnson of Montgomery.
In 1966, Jimmy Wales of Huntsville and of Wikipedia fame.

How close have you been following your Alabama news lately? If you've been reading this newsletter, you ought to ace this one.

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