Alabama News Archives

The electronic bingo casino in White Hall is planning to reopen while asking the Alabama Supreme Court to reconsider a gambling decision that forced the operation to shut down temporarily.

Mobile's first African-American mayor is trying to help U.S. Rep. Artur Davis become Alabama's first African-American governor.

A white Sonata getting the finishing touches at Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama is the 1 millionth vehicle produced at the plant.

Metro Birmingham's construction industry won't likely recover until 2011. That's according to Ahmad Ijaz, an economic researcher for the University of Alabama.

Published: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 3:30 a.m. Last Modified: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 11:21 p.m. MONTGOMERY The Alabama Forestry Commission is considering strengthening timber theft regulations, but the state trade group representing the forest products industry says only the Legislature can enact the proposed changes.

New data shows nearly one in six Alabamians receive food assistance. Data from the state Department of Human Resources shows the troubled economy is sending Alabamians in record numbers to sign up for help in feeding their families.

When the University of Alabama hired Nick Saban three years ago and agreed to pay him $4 million a year to coach football, UA officials had some lofty expectations: that he would return what had become a middlin' football program to its greatest heights, and it would compete for national championships year in and year out.

With a ballooning population of older people, the UAB School of Medicine is changing its curriculum to ensure every medical student learns about caring for the elderly.

A South Carolina-based company that makes equipment for foundries is investing $1.5 million to set up a manufacturing operation in Alabaster.

Alabama investigators said Wednesday they were closing in on a motive for the U.S. state's deadliest-ever shooting, in which a man killed his mother, grandmother and eight others before taking his own life.

With the city's retail center lagging and a streetscape facelift under way, officials in this Alabama city are considering a ban on so-called storefront churches from downtown, the TimesDaily of Florence reports.

Tim Montgomery says he started taking performance-enhancing drugs because he wanted to beat American sprint rival Maurice Greene and become the fastest man in the world.

Published: Monday, November 23, 2009 at 11:12 a.m. Last Modified: Monday, November 23, 2009 at 11:12 a.m. Former state Finance Director Jim Main brought a state employee out of retirement in 2007 to work as a contract employee making nearly $60,000 a year while continuing to draw her state pension of more than $30,000 a year.

Officials in Birmingham are examining the legality of the vote that made Steven Hoyt mayor pro tem of Alabama's largest city.

A county-by-county survey of obesity has been released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the figures for Alabama aren't pretty.

One inspector has been found dead and others have been overcome by extreme heat in an Alabama coal mine.

PONTIAC, Mich. -- A Pontiac teenager has been sentenced to 17 to 35 years in prison in the slaying of a 14-year-old from Alabama who was shot outside a church.

Alabama's two Democratic candidates for governor are divided sharply over whether the state should allow publicly funded charter schools that operate without many of the rules that public schools must follow.

Published: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 4:29 p.m. Last Modified: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 4:29 p.m. The Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday again upheld the state school board's ban on legislators working in the two-year college system, a practice known as double dipping.

State officials say a crane accident at a mining site in southeastern Kentucky has fatally wounded a worker.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is blaming low oxygen for the death of a coal miner at a west Alabama mine.

Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 4:42 p.m. Last Modified: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 4:42 p.m. A former Alabama state trooper awaiting trial for murder in the 1965 shooting death of a black man during a protest at Marion is also the subject of an FBI probe in the 1966 killing of a black man in Alabaster, FBI officials said.

A Belgian arms dealer pleaded guilty in an Alabama courtroom to conspiracy to illegally export F-5 fighter jet engines and parts from the U.S. to Iran.

Published: Monday, November 23, 2009 at 6:01 a.m. Last Modified: Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 11:00 p.m. Hillsboro resident John Howard is almost certain he would be homeless or in jail if he had not lived at the Alabama Sheriffs Youth Ranch in Danville.

Two agency heads in Gov. Bob Riley's administration have traded barbs on Facebook over a candidate for governor who is critical of Riley.

A 14-year-old Alabama girl might have helped arrange the gang rape of her ninth-grade classmate and could face charges as an accomplice based on her comments in a televised interview, a district attorney said.

MOBILE - A University of Alabama alumnus who has been working for the U.S. House ethics committee is the new U.S. attorney for southwest Alabama.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville will require all freshmen and sophomores to live on campus beginning next fall, and that big move away from UAH's traditional commuter-college identity is roiling the campus.

Alabama recently became the last of the 50 states to enact a law allowing pet owners to vaccinate their dogs and cats for rabies every three years rather than an annual shot.

Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy know the Michael Oher story better than anyone, at least better than anyone other than Michael Oher himself.

State health and school officials are gearing up to distribute thousands of doses of nasal mist H1N1 vaccines to students across the state, a pair of state officers announced during a Nov.

ANNISTON - Before he could say "mama" or "daddy," both of his were gone. His father went to prison for murder.

A man who hit three bicyclists with his BMW in Fairhope in August has pleaded guilty to drunken driving and three counts of third-degree assault.

State troopers say a three-car wreck left four people injured at an intersection near a new school site near Athens where education officials have been trying to get a traffic light approved.

The Alabama Supreme Court says a woman who thought she had hit a jackpot worth almost $42 million at the Victoryland electronic bingo center will end up empty handed.

Times Business Writer marian.accardi@htimes.com Metro area reports lowest figure in state last month Madison County's jobless rate for October was 7.5 percent, unchanged from September, according to preliminary figures released Friday by the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations.

The Alabama Supreme Court says a woman who thought she had hit a jackpot worth almost $42 million at the Victoryland electronic bingo center will end up empty handed.

Jesse Jackson is no longer being critical of Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham for voting against a health care overhaul bill in the House.

Clyde No. 60, won't get the chop-chop, Gov. Bob Riley says. Gov. Bob Riley pardoned a Thanksgiving turkey on Friday as part of an annual tradition in Alabama that dates back to 1949.

The University of South Alabama's top student leader is being accused of failure to perform his duties.

U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Alabama, condemned on Wednesday the panel recommending that women delay a first mammogram until age 50 and get checkup every two years rather than annually.

An undercover officer posing as a prostitute in Alabama tried more than once to run off a 13-year-old boy who asked her for sex, but police say the teen insisted and had to be arrested.

Former federal prosecutor Michel Nicrosi says she plans to run for Alabama attorney general as a Democrat.

The six circuit judges in Montgomery County have disqualified themselves from hearing a lawsuit filed by a legislative oversight committee seeking to stop a $13 million no-bid computer contract.

MONTGOMERY a ' Permission forms will go out this week for parents of children in kindergarten through age 9 to sign if they want their children vaccinated against H1N1 influenza at a school vaccination clinic.

A leading slot machine vendor and management company took aim at Alabama's fledging charity bingo operators during the casino industry's largest trade show and a meeting of hundreds of casino professionals in Las Vegas this week.

The family of the Barrington man serving as captain of the Maersk Alabama was relieved to learn Wednesday that Paul M. Rochford is safe after an attack on the ship earlier in the day by Somali pirates .

The U.S.-flagged cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama arrives in Mombasa, Kenya, in this Saturday April 11 2009, file photo, after the ship was attacked by Somali pirates firing automatic weapons Wednesday but its unarmed crew locked themselves in a secure room.

Alabama corrections officials say a work release inmate who escaped from the Decatur center has been found in Tennessee but is refusing to sign an extradition waiver.

Attorney General Troy King is seeking input from district attorneys as he weighs an Alabama Supreme Court ruling on electronic bingo machines in the state.

Electronic bingo operators in Alabama aren't calling off opening celebrations at multimillion-dollar casino venues despite a state Supreme Court decision that raised questions about the future of the popular games.

The state Attorney General's Office is seeking an execution date for Alabama's longest serving death row inmate, Thomas Whisenhant.

The area is to beta test the Medicare "Care Transitions program", which is expected to help people transition from hospital care to in home care and from rehab care to home settings.

Two nonprofit corporations created by three legislators in 2006 have received hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars but have yet to undergo a required state audit.

Gov. Bob Riley has urged gaming commissions in seven states to make sure the gambling machine manufacturers they regulate cease all illegal activity in Alabama.

The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down an appeal by Alabama death row inmate Thomas Whisenhant.

Sarah Palin's book tour for "Going Rogue" visits Alabama in one week. The former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate announced that she will be at the Books-A-Million store in Brookwood Village in Birmingham on Nov.

The decision by the board that oversees Alabama's pre-paid college tuition program to have three members who are not public officials and are not seeking office negotiate on behalf of the troubled program is probably a good idea.

MONTGOMERY a ' The incoming chancellor of Alabama's two-year college system will receive the highest salary ever for a chancellor when she begins her job Dec.

Though shaken by a rocket attack that wounded four of its soldiers, an Alabama Army National Guard unit is continuing its winterization work at outposts in eastern Afghanistan.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has announced that its medical school dean will step down next year, after a successor is found.

A settlement has been reached in an Alabama attorney's long-running lawsuit against infamous litigator Richard "Dickie" Scruggs.

Former Alabama Secretary of State Nancy Worley is again facing felony charges. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 3-1 Friday that a lower court erred when it threw out five felony charges against Worley.

A human rights group threatened Friday to file for contempt and fines against the Alabama Department of Corrections for not complying with a state Supreme Court order that it turn over internal reports on inmate assaults and documents related to an inmate's death.

Montgomery: The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled 6 - 3 in favor of the governor's anti-gambling task force overturning an injunction that the operators of the BINGO hall in White Hall, Cornerstone Community Outreach, had obtained blocking any further raids.

UAH police are investigating allegations of a sexual assault on campus early Friday.

Police say a teen has been placed with his grandfather after authorities found guns, homemade bombs, marijuana and knives in his bedroom.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will be the keynote speaker at the Alabama Republican Party's annual "Red, White & Blue Dinner" on Feb.

Teachers and other education employees could have to pay more for their retirement and health insurance benefits under a financial plan proposed Thursday by the Alabama Board of Education.

Rusty LaRue owes his new job as an assistant coach at Wake Forest to Lute Olsen's decision to retire at Arizona.

Published: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 2:34 p.m. Last Modified: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 2:34 p.m. The weather service is reporting some impressive rainfall totals from tropical storm Ida in Alabama.

Everybody knows what this is: dozens of people, mostly retirees, hunched over paper grids in a smoke-filled American Legion hall on a Sunday evening listening eagerly to a woman recite numbers.

An early-morning fire that killed a 61-year-old Adamsville woman apparently started with a toddler playing with a lighter, said Alabama State Fire Marshal Ed Paulk.

Relentless rain swept along much of the Atlantic seaboard Thursday, triggering coastal flood warnings and watches from North Carolina to Long Island.

Coach Gene Stallings' book about raising a child with Down syndrome has been reissued in paperback with a new section about the death of his son, John Mark Stallings.

Published: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 3:30 a.m. Last Modified: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 11:24 p.m. MONTGOMERY A legislator from southeast Alabama has prefiled a bill, with the support of the governor, to prohibit public universities in Alabama from offering employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

Get ready, America. Like her or not, Sarah Palin is coming to a city near you. Last year's Republican vice presidential nominee is starting a book tour next week to promote her memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life." Is it a thinly-veiled bid to test the waters for a possible 2012 Republican presidential bid, or simply an effort to make money and ...

The Alabama Governor's Mansion in Montgomery is going to be open for candlelight tours on three Monday nights in December.

Health care legislation in Washington has split the Democratic candidates for governor in Alabama, with Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks accusing U.S. Rep.

Tropical Storm Ida brought heavy rainfall to south and central Alabama Monday night and Tuesday morning.

A man convicted of murdering a Florence woman in a brutal knife attack in 1988 has been denied parole.

The jury returned a not guilty verdict Monday on capital murder and attempted murder charges against Pierre Smith.

Alabama health officials say they will begin school-based clinics for swine flu vaccinates the week of Nov.

The Marshall County Sheriff's Office says the reward has been increased to $20,000 for information about the slaying of a businessman in Claysville.

A weakened Tropical Storm Ida drenched the U.S. Gulf Coast and oil installations on Monday, shutting down nearly 30 percent of Gulf energy production.

ANNISTON - Anniston police say there is no evidence that bullying caused the suicide of a 12-year-old boy.

The inaugural voyage of Mobile's new cruise ship has been delayed one day due to Tropical Storm Ida.

University of Alabama officials are considering a $15 million renovation plan to commemorate Foster Auditorium's place in civil rights history.

One new U.S. attorney for Alabama is already on the job. Another is close to being approved.

Published: Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 12:01 p.m. Last Modified: Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 12:01 p.m. The Internal Revenue Service is trying to deliver $1.85 million to Alabamians that it can't locate.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Sunday as the Gulf Coast braced for the arrival of Hurricane Ida, which was making its way across the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 2 storm.

Members of the Alabama Army Guard's 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command joined other soldiers now training at Fort Hood for a vigil tonight in honor of those slain and wounded during Thursday's mass shooting.

A group of scientists from conservative Brigham Young University has criticized state lawmakers over their recent handling of the climate change issue.

The Alabama Supreme Court has told a lower court to take another look at a death penalty case from Jefferson County.

The sign going on the front door at the Perry County courthouse reads: "Closed for the Obama Holiday." The rural, mostly black county has proclaimed Monday as an official holiday celebrating the election of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama.

Korean automaker Kia is building the Sorento SUV at its new factory in Georgia, which has brought more than 3,600 supplier jobs to Alabama.

On Thursday, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency announced at the Greene County Courthouse the potential hiring of Global Security Systems, a Jackson, Miss.-based company that plans to bring its Alert FM system to nine West Alabama counties.

PRICHARD - An attorney representing Prichard in the south Alabama city's bankruptcy proceedings says the city's debt is probably more than $1 million.

All 264 soldiers of the 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command that are currently at Fort Hood for training have been accounted for.

Published: Friday, November 6, 2009 at 3:30 a.m. Last Modified: Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 10:45 p.m. BIRMINGHAM Candidates are beginning to line up in Birmingham to replace Larry Langford as mayor of Alabama's largest city.

A growing number of states are moving to allow higher alcohol content in beer, despite concerns from some substance-abuse experts.

State Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks has picked up endorsements from 28 sheriffs in his campaign to become Alabama's next governor.

Governor Candidate Bill Johnson Held a press conference today at Country Crossing, to show his support on the project.

The chairman of the legislative Contract Review Committee today accused the Riley administration and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne of using "racially coded" messages to criticize the panel's hiring of a black lawyer.

Workers at Alabama's Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa met with the head of the Alabama Department of Mental Health to express concerns for their 655 jobs and for the nearly 300 patients if the state mental hospital is sold to the University of Alabama and its patients possibly move to a Birmingham location, the Tuscaloosa News reports.

Several Alabama cities are planning parades and ceremonies to observe Veteran's Day on Nov.

Montgomery police have labeled the search for a missing baby as a death investigation.

The board that oversees Alabama's prepaid college tuition plan is switching from politicians to non-politicians to try to negotiate a solution to the program's $346 million deficit.

Published: Monday, November 2, 2009 at 5:15 p.m. Last Modified: Monday, November 2, 2009 at 5:15 p.m. A new study from the U.S. Census Bureau shows Alabama residents and companies paid less in state and local taxes than their counterparts in any other state.

A national study released Wednesday showed Alabama makes families living in poverty pay higher income taxes than any other state.

The ongoing fight over Alabama's Prepaid College Tuition Program will reach another milestone Wednesday and many parents from the valley are taking their fight to state lawmakers in Montgomery.

A conservative group will hold a conference on homosexuality this week, and gay rights organizations say they plan to stage a protest.

A federal judge has ruled that artist Daniel Moore did not violate trademark laws by painting scenes of University of Alabama football without licensing the work through the university.

Alabama voters can expect to see the faces of some well-known Democratic felons in advertisements that Republicans plan to run before the 2010 legislative elections.

A Jefferson County circuit court judge today denied a request to allow electronic bingo in Walker County until an appeal is heard by the Alabama Supreme Court.

The Internal Revenue Service says more than 72 percent of Alabama's taxpayers filed their federal tax returns electronically during 2009.

Alabama residents and companies paid less in taxes than people and businesses in any other state in the 2007 fiscal year, based on total state and local taxes paid per resident.

A former state trooper has been indicted in west Alabama on a charge of first-degree sex abuse.

A meal plan costing $1,300 per semester is now mandatory for on-campus freshmen.

A report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows the average domestic airfare for the north Alabama city cost $471 in the second quarter of this year.

Another 260 Alabama soldiers are on their way to Afghanistan. The deployment comes just as violence continues to increase in the country.

Officials with the Country Crossing development in Houston County are complaining that a member of Gov.

Alabama Attorney General Troy King is running for re-election while feuding with influential Republicans who would normally be his allies, including the top three GOP officeholders in the state.

Less than five months after winning a seat in the Alabama Senate, Marc Keahey, D-Grove Hill, faces another challenger for the upper chamber.

A federal grand jury today indicted a Woodstock woman on charges she embezzled close to $900,000 from a development company where she worked as a manager and bookkeeper, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance announced jointly with FBI Special Agent in Charge Patrick Maley, U.S. Postal Inspector in Charge Martin D. Phanco and IRS Special Agent in Charge, ...