Aug 01, 2023

You could sense this was coming. The silence had been deafening since it was revealed that the Biden Administration was reconsidering the decision to place Space Command headquarters at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.

News broke Monday that Biden had decided to keep the HQ at its temporary home in Colorado.

Ike Morgan

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President Biden has decided to keep Space Command at its interim home in Colorado, rather than follow through on the decision to place it at Redstone Arsenal, which Air Force leadership and studies have repeatedly determined is the preferred spot.

And Alabama leaders are not pleased, reports AL.com's Lee Roop.

The story on Biden's decision come from unnamed senior U.S. officials who said the head of Space Command, Gen. James Dickinson, persuaded the president to keep headquarters in Colorado.

Congressman Robert Aderholt said: “I am outraged to hear that the Secretary of the Air Force allowed politics to circumvent his, and the Department of Defense’s, own basing selection process that determined Huntsville, Alabama as the preferred location of SPACECOM. ... This fight is far from over."

Even Congresswoman Terri Sewell, the only Democrat in Alabama's Congressional delegation, called out the White House over the decision. She said, “The Administration’s decision to keep Space Command in Colorado bows to the whims of politics over merit. Huntsville won this selection process fair and square based on the merits."

The U.S. Geological Survey is asking people in Alabama and five other states to submit dead butterflies and moths for research it's doing, reports AL.com's Leada Gore.

Note: Don't go trapping and killing butterflies or moths. Researchers are requesting the pre-dead variety.

The purpose of the study is to identify environmental factors that could be reducing the population of some insects. So definitely don't take any living creatures out of commission for the study.

They're looking for found butterflies and moths of at least 2 inches. The other states they're taking specimens from are Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. More information can be found  on the USGS website . 

A pair of Montgomery high schools have taken another step away from themes associated with historical figures tied to the Confederacy, reports AL.com's Rebecca Griesbach.

You may recall that the high schools named for Gen. Robert E. Lee and Confederate States President Jefferson Davis now have different school names. One is named for Black Montgomery chemist Percy Julian and the other  -- JAG High School -- is named for three civil-rights figures.

Now that Montgomery Public School officials have revealed the mascots of the schools, and we have the Percy Julian Phoenix and the JAG Jaguars.

Big-name changes like this always seem weird for a year or two. But if the cheerleaders can learn new routines to spell out the new nicknames, we can get used to it, too, I reckon.

The Alabama Department of Public Health is trying to zero in on a handful of tuberculosis cases in northwest Alabama, reports AL.com's William Thornton.

Seven cases have been confirmed across four counties -- Lauderdale, Colbert, Franklin and Lawrence -- involving people who are working or have worked at poultry plants.

So now, ADPH wants to test people in those counties who have worked at poultry facilities at any time since June 2022.

If that describes you, call your county health department. Each one is designating a day or two over the next couple weeks for testing.

Chick-fil-A is planning a pair of restaurant concepts, including a drive-through in New York City and a two-story building in Atlanta (shown in the rendering above) where food travels via an overhead conveyor and is delivered via chutes.

On this date in 1809, William B. Travis of Old Sparta and Claiborne, Alabama. Travis was born in South Carolina, but his family moved to Alabama when he was a young kid, and he spent most of his youth into young adulthood in Conecuh and Monroe counties. Of course, later he headed west, fought in the Texas Revolution and made his stand at the Alamo, where he died at age 26.

August 1

Today's the official start to the Biden Administration's ban on incandescent light bults. You can still legally use them, but retailers can no longer sell them. In 2020, 30% of light bulbs sold were incandescent or halogen incandescent. Switching to LED means a higher price per bulb but lower power usage.

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