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Food & Wine Says This Restaurant Has The Best Fast Food In Alabama https://digitalalabamanews.com/food-wine-says-this-restaurant-has-the-best-fast-food-in-alabama/ Who doesn’t love a good “Best of” list? Best burgers. Best barbeque. Best beer. If you’re looking for a “Best of” list for fast food, you’re in luck. Food & Wine went on the hunt for the best fast food in America. But the writers didn’t want the obvious regional fast food joints. Instead, they wanted the “closely held secrets” and gems that weren’t already a national name. Here’s what the writers looked for in a restaurant as they ate their way across the country: at least a handful of locations, counter service, and a robust takeout program. Alabama’s best fast food, according to Food & Wine? Milo’s. And it was the chain’s secret sauce that cinched the victory. Here’s what the writers had to say about Alabama’s favorite fast food sauce: “The dark red condiment is sometimes mistaken for a standard barbecue sauce due to its tomato leanings, while also giving steak sauce vibes, along with the faint umami of a good gravy. This other, one-of-a-kind, don’t-ask-for-the-recipe accompaniment makes its way onto pretty much everything on the menu except the fried pies, though thanks to the generous addition of DIY dispensers in the dozens of Milo’s locations now located around the state, you could probably get away with that.” There’s a story behind that sauce, of course. Milo Carlton, who opened Milo’s Hamburgers in 1946, developed the recipe. He wanted to make his burgers unique, so he came up with his signature sauce by trial and error and tested it out on his customers until he got it just right. Fast forward to 2011, Tom Dekle and a group of local investors bought Milo’s Hamburgers and expanded the restaurant to include 20 locations around Alabama. Dekle is one of a handful of people who can name the ingredients to the sauce. “It’s not only the ingredients,” Dekle told AL.com’s Bob Carlton in 2020. “It’s the sequence in which the ingredients are put together. It has to have precise temperatures, and because it’s a cooked sauce, there is a cooking time at the various stages.” They also singled out the crinkle cut fries dusted with seasoned salt and, of course, the sweet tea that is “a household staple around the state.” Read the full Food & Wine list. [READ MORE: 10 things to know about Milo’s Sauce] Milo’s also won AL.com’s reader poll for Alabama’s best fast-food bracket in 2021. Between Checkers (founded in Mobile!), Foosackly’s, Guthrie’s, Hamburger Heaven, Jack’s, Milo’s, Sneaky Pete’s and Taco Casa, we let readers whittle down the list and to pick the state’s go-to spot. The Final Four were Milo’s, Checkers, Jack’s and Taco Casa. The finals came down between Milo’s and Jack’s, with Milo’s narrowly winning the vote. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Sam McKewon https://digitalalabamanews.com/sam-mckewon/ Sam McKewon’s Three Keys for Nebraska vs. Purdue on Saturday LINCOLN — Jim Harbaugh last Sunday watched NFL games on Fox — perhaps he enjoyed seeing the Vikings, the team that didn’t hire him, beat the Bears — and noticed something during commercial breaks. The Michigan-Penn State game getting a lot of promotion. “Big, big, big game,” Harbaugh told reporters Monday. Michigan has been in a lot of those lately. In fact, Saturday’s UM-PSU game will be the Wolverines’ fourth straight appearance in the “Big Noon” slot on Fox. Michigan has been a whale of a draw, too. Games against Maryland and Iowa attracted 4.38 and 4.2 million viewers, respectively, according to Sports Media Watch. The Indiana game got 4.01 million viewers — outdrawing Texas’ 49-0 defeat of Oklahoma. Saturday’s game in Ann Arbor could hit the 10 million viewer mark. Only two games this season — Alabama at Texas and Notre Dame at Ohio State — have done so. Credit the work done by Harbaugh — who has won 18 of his last 20 games — and Penn State coach James Franklin, who beat Purdue and Auburn on the road this year – for creating a potential ratings bonanza that will smash Saturday’s viewership of TCU-Oklahoma State and potentially match Tennessee’s bid to beat Alabama for the first time since 2006. Michigan has, by my eye, the more complete team, especially along the offensive line. Penn State has the more seasoned quarterback in Sean Clifford and cut its teeth on a tougher schedule so far this season. Auburn is a tough place to play. Penn State rolled on the plains. Michigan Stadium, while huge, fans outward in a way that loses sound. The Nittany Lions have the tougher mental hill to climb, though. They’ve sidled up to these big games for the last several years — and fell short. Penn State hasn’t beaten an Associated Press top ten team since the 2016 Big Ten championship. Franklin this week received a 40-second question (yes, really) about PSU’s performances in such games and compared to the ones Penn State should, and often do, win. “Not only is this Saturday critical in terms of how we manage the game, and how our players go out with the confidence and swagger to make the plays when they’re needed, but it’s also all of the progress you can make the other 364 days a year that add up,” Franklin said. “All those little wins add up, all year long, to put your team in the best position to be successful consistently on Saturdays.” Long answer, but pertinent to any major college football team: Big games are won over the course of a full year, not a week or a few days. Michigan is the seven-point favorite. It should be. Better lines. Home-field advantage. Take the Wolverines in a close one, as Penn State loses its tenth straight game to a top-ten team. Michigan 28, Penn State 24 Purdue vs. Nebraska 6:30 p.m., BTN Line: Purdue by 13½ Tough ask here for the Huskers. Second road game in a row, banged-up defense, makeshift offensive line, an interim head coach still admittedly getting up to speed. Most of all: Purdue is good. Especially on defense. Purdue 31, Nebraska 17 Illinois vs. Minnesota 11 a.m., BTN Line: Minnesota by 6½ Iowa and the Illini combined for all of 15 points last week. It won’t surprise me if the Gophers produce a very similar type of game in Champaign. If Mo Ibrahim is good to go, gimme P.J. Fleck’s boat and points.  Minnesota 17, Illinois 7 Indiana vs. Maryland 2:30 p.m., ESPN2 Line: Maryland by 11½ Look for points from two teams whose defenses, yet to enjoy a bye week, have to be pretty beat up. The Terps have the better quarterback and receivers. Maryland 38, Indiana 23 Michigan State vs. Wisconsin 3 p.m., Fox Line: Wisconsin by 7½ If MSU wants to make a bowl game, it had better win here. It’s not like Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan — all to come — are going to make it any easier. My hunch is the Badgers respond, buoyantly, to their interim head coach, Jim Leonhard. Wisconsin 35, Michigan State 17 Sam’s record Straight up last week: 6-0 | Against the spread last week: 3-3 Straight up this season: 44-10 | Against the spread this season: 29-25 Photos: Nebraska football vs. Rutgers Nebraska’s Tommi Hill (2) celebrates following their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Trey Palmer (3) celebrates with teammates after his touchdown during their game on Friday in Piscataway. ANNA REED THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Travis Vokolek (83) rushes between Rutgers’ Desmond Igbinosun (4) and Kessawn Abraham (5) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Marcus Washington (7) goes up for the ball with Rutgers’ Shaquan Loyal (25) on hi, during their game on Friday in Piscataway. It was ruled an incomplete catch after further review. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Marcus Washington (7) rushes past Rutgers’ Shaquan Loyal (25) and Tyreem Powell (22) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Chancellor Brewington (82) rushes over Rutgers’ Shaquan Loyal (25) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Casey Thompson (11) throws the ball out of reach of Rutgers’ Troy Rainey (51) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Casey Thompson (11) passes the ball during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska interim head coach Mickey Joseph talks to his team during a break in their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Rutgers’ Evan Simon (3) passes the ball during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Anthony Grant (10) eyes Rutgers’ Christian Braswell (6) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Casey Thompson (11) rushes during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Oliver Martin (89) runs is bookended by Rutgers’ Tyreem Powell (22) and Shaquan Loyal (25) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Oliver Martin (89) eyes Rutgers’ Christian Braswell (6) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Malcolm Hartzog (13) breaks up a pass intended for Rutgers’ Shameen Jones (7) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Myles Farmer (8) comes up with the ball after an interception during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska fans watch during the Nebraska vs. Rutgers football game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Timmy Bleekrode (38) celebrates with teammates Travis Vokolek (83) and Nate Boerkircher (49) after his extra point put the Husker ahead during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Colton Feist (82) gets a hold of Rutgers’ Noah Vedral (0) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Colton Feist (82) celebrates a play during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Anthony Grant (10) outruns Rutgers’ Kessawn Abraham (5) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Oliver Martin (89) is taken out of bounds by Rutgers’ Kessawn Abraham (5) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. A personal foul was called on Abraham for unnecessary roughness after the play. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Casey Thompson (11) comes out to the field to celebrate an interception by teammate Malcolm Hartzog (13) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska interim defensive coordinator Bill Busch celebrates following their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Brandon Moore (24) celebrates with teammates after an interception on a pass that was intended for Rutgers’ Johnny Langan (21) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Brandon Moore (24) and Nick Henrich (42) take down Rutgers’ Evan Simon (3) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Brandon Moore (24) looks to an official after a play during their game on Friday in Piscataway. The play was called by for holding by Rutgers. Nebraska won the game 14-13. ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Marcus Washington (7) rushes during their game on Friday in Piscataway. ANNA REED THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Trey Palmer (3) makes a catch in the end zone past Rutgers’ Kessawn Abraham (5) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. ANNA REED THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Casey Thompson (11) passes the ball during their game on Friday in Piscataway. ANNA REED THE WORLD-HERALD Nebraska’s Nick Henrich (42) starts to lose his helmet while taking down Rutgers’ Noah Vedral (0) during their game on Friday in Piscataway. ANNA REED THE WORLD-HERALD Rutgers’ Sean Ryan (5) makes a catch with Nebraska’s Malcolm Hartzog (13) trailing behind during their game on Friday in Piscataway. ANNA REED THE WORLD-HERALD Rutgers’ Noah Vedral (0) is brought dow...

Putin Says Mobilization To End In Two Weeks; Musk Says SpaceX Will Stop Funding Starlink In Ukraine https://digitalalabamanews.com/putin-says-mobilization-to-end-in-two-weeks-musk-says-spacex-will-stop-funding-starlink-in-ukraine/ Three vessels to leave Ukraine carrying more than 84,000 metric tons of agricultural products Ships, including those carrying grain from Ukraine and awaiting inspections are seen anchored off the Istanbul coastline on October 14, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey. Chris Mcgrath | Getty Images The organization overseeing the export of grain from Ukraine said it has approved three vessels to leave the besieged country. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal among Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, said the vessels are carrying 84,500 metric tons of grain and other crops. Two ships are set to leave from Ukraine’s port of Odesa and are destined for Tunisia and Spain. The third vessel is departing from Chornomorsk to Algeria. Read more about the Black Sea Grain Initiative here. — Amanda Macias Russian troops will arrive in Belarus over the coming days, says Belarus defense ministry The Belarus Ministry of Defense announced that Russian troops will arrive in Belarus in the coming days for its joint force operation, according to Reuters. “Troops from the Russian component of the Regional Grouping of Forces will start arriving in Belarus in the next few days,” the Minsk defense ministry said. This follows Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s announcement earlier this week that several thousand Russian soldiers would be stationed in Belarus, which he referred to as a “regional grouping of troops.” Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicated his willingness to respond to any threats from Ukraine, hinting at a possible escalation of the war. The announcement followed the blast that damaged the bridge linking Crimea to Russia, for which Putin blamed Ukraine. — Rocio Fabbro More than 7.6 million Ukrainians have become refugees from Russia’s war, U.N. estimates A man holds his child as families, who fled Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, wait to enter a refugee camp in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on March 3, 2022. Nikolay Doychinov | Afp | Getty Images More than 7.6 million Ukrainians have become refugees and moved to neighboring countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the U.N. Refugee Agency estimates. More than 4.3 million of those people have applied for temporary resident status in neighboring Western European countries, according to data collected by the agency. “The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has caused civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcing people to flee their homes seeking safety, protection and assistance,” the U.N. Refugee Agency wrote. — Amanda Macias Putin says no need for massive new strikes on Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin said there was no need for massive new strikes on Ukraine and that Russia was not looking to destroy the country. Putin told a news conference at the end of a summit in Kazakhstan that his call-up of Russian reservists would be over within two weeks and there were no plans for a further mobilization. He also repeated the Kremlin position that Russia was willing to hold talks, although he said they would require international mediation if Ukraine was prepared to take part. Taken together, Putin’s comments appeared to suggest a slight softening of his tone as the war nears the end of its eighth month, after weeks of Ukrainian advances and significant Russian defeats. Wall Street shares opened higher as traders interpreted them as easing geopolitical tensions, though they dipped later in the day. But Putin – who has said he would be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” – also warned of a “global catastrophe” in the event of a direct clash of NATO troops with Russia. He was speaking after a week when Russia has staged its heaviest missile attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities since the start of its invasion of Feb. 24 – an action that Putin has said was retaliation for an attack that damaged a Russian bridge to unilaterally annexed Crimea. — Reuters Two NATO allies still have to approve Sweden and Finland’s entry into the alliance NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (C), Finland Ministers for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto (L) and Sweden Foreign minister Ann Linde (R) give a press conference after their meeting at the Nato headquarters in Brussels on January 24, 2022. John Thys | AFP | Getty Images Two NATO member countries have not yet signed ratification protocols for Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance. Out of NATO’s 30 member countries, Hungary and Turkey are the last not to grant Sweden and Finland membership. Slovakia was the latest NATO ally to sign ratification documents on Sept. 27. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called on the last two remaining NATO members to ratify Finland and Sweden’s membership. “I encourage all of our valued allies to ratify the protocols for accession as soon as possible so that we can welcome both of these highly-capable democratic partners into the alliance,” Austin told reporters at NATO. In May, both nations began the formal process of applying to NATO as Russia’s war in Ukraine raged. All 30 members of the alliance have to ratify the countries’ entry into the group. In August, U.S. President Joe Biden signed ratification documents following a 95-1 Senate vote to bring Finland and Sweden into NATO. — Amanda Macias Russian mobilization of reservists will end in two weeks, Putin says Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a video conference with a group of award-winning teachers at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, October 5, 2022. Gavriil Grigorov | Sputnik | Reuters Russian President Vladimir Putin said he thinks a mobilization of army reservists he ordered last month to bolster his country’s troops in Ukraine will to be completed in two weeks. Putin told reporters after attending a summit in Kazakhstan that 222,000 of the 300,000 reservists the Russian Defense Ministry said would get called up have been mobilized. A total of 33,000 of them are already in military units and 16,000 are involved in the military operation in Ukraine. The Russian leader initially described the mobilization as “partial” and said only those with combat or service experience would be drafted. However, a decree he signed outlined almost no specific criteria. Russian media reports have described attempts to round up men without the relevant experience, including those ineligible for service for medical reasons. The call-up, announced by Putin in September, has proved hugely unpopular in Russia, where almost all men under the age of 65 are registered as reservists. In the wake of the president’s mobilization order, tens of thousands of men left Russia. — Associated Press U.S. Treasury warns of sanctions, consequences for those who support Russia Economist Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo answers questions during his Senate Finance Committee nomination hearing to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in Washington, D.C., February 23, 2021. Greg Nash | Pool | Reuters U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo outlined the next steps the U.S. will take in imposing economic restrictions on Russia for its war in Ukraine. “Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is issuing guidance making clear that we are willing and able to sanction people, companies, or countries that provide ammunition to Russia or support Russia’s military-industrial complex,” he said in a meeting with representatives from 33 countries held to discuss Russian sanctions. Additionally, OFAC and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security will jointly release a outline of their actions against Russia’s military-industrial complex and the risks for those providing material support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Not only have we been able to impose costs on the Kremlin for its actions, but our economic restrictions placed on the Russian military-industrial complex have had a direct effect on the battlefield,” Adeyemo said of past efforts. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. and Western allies have implemented sweeping sanctions across the financial, technological and export sectors to punish Russian aggression and isolate the nation economically and diplomatically. — Rocio Fabbro U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley speaks with Ukrainian counterpart on the sidelines of NATO defense meting US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley arrives for a two-day meeting of the alliance’s Defence Ministers at the NATO Headquarter in Brussels on October 12, 2022. Kenzo Tribouillard | AFP | Getty Images U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart on the sidelines of the NATO defense ministerial meeting in Brussels. “They discussed the unprovoked and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and exchanged perspectives and assessments,” according to a Pentagon readout of the call with Ukrainian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. Milley reaffirmed U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s fight against Russia and recognized Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Meanwhile, in Brussels, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov joined the NATO meeting and the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group. — Amanda Macias U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan meets with Lithuanian officials to discuss Ukraine and NATO U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan met with Lithuanian officials to discuss the war in Ukraine. Sullivan met with Asta Skaisgiryte, Lithuania’s chief foreign policy advisor and his counterpart Kestutis Budrys, Lithuania’s chief national security advisor. U.S. National Security Advisor ...

Judge Dismisses 1 Of 5 Counts Against Trump Dossier Source https://digitalalabamanews.com/judge-dismisses-1-of-5-counts-against-trump-dossier-source/ ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A judge on Friday tossed out one of of five counts against a think-tank analyst charged with lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a flawed dossier about former President Donald Trump. The remaining four counts against Igor Danchenko will go to a jury Monday after prosecutors and the defense rested their cases Friday. But Judge Anthony Trenga reserved the right to toss out the other four counts regardless of what the jury decides. In the count that was tossed out, prosecutors alleged that Danchenko lied to the FBI when he told an agent that he never talked with a Democratic operative named Charles Dolan about the information in the dossier. As it turns out, there was evidence that Dolan and Danchenko had discussed the information over email. Defense attorneys argued that Danchenko’s response was literally true because they did not talk orally, and the question the FBI agent asked specifically referenced talking. Trenga agreed, and he said that accepting the prosecution’s argument that the question had a broader context than mere talking would result in “divorcing words from their common meaning.” In the remaining counts that will go forward, prosecutors argue that Danchenko fabricated interactions with a supposed source named Sergei Millian, who was a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of commerce. Defense lawyers say Danchenko received an anonymous call from a person he believed to be Millian, and that Danchenko was forthright from the beginning that while he suspected the call came from Millian he was not certain. Danchenko is being prosecuted by Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate any misconduct in the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and its alleged ties to Russia. Danchenko is the third person to be prosecuted by Durham. It is the first of Durham’s cases that delves deeply into the origins of the “Steele dossier,” which alleged connections between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin. and which Trump derided as fake news and a political witch hunt. Durham’s other two cases resulted in an acquittal and a guilty plea with a sentence of probation. Testimony this week at trial has highlighted Durham’s difficulty in proving his allegations. Two key FBI witnesses for the prosecution ended up providing testimony that was highly favorable to Danchenko, resulting in the unusual spectacle of Durham seeking to eviscerate the credibility of his own witnesses on re-direct. Read More…

Fact Check: Trump Responds To Jan. 6 Committee Subpoena With Usual Election Lies | CNN Politics https://digitalalabamanews.com/fact-check-trump-responds-to-jan-6-committee-subpoena-with-usual-election-lies-cnn-politics/ CNN  —  Former President Donald Trump was subpoenaed Thursday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump’s response: his usual election lies. In a rambling 14-page letter to committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, Trump did not say whether he would comply with the subpoena. Instead, he repeated various long-debunked election claims. Here is a non-exhaustive fact check of some of Trump’s claims in the letter. Trump’s title on the document was this: “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” Facts First: This is false. The 2020 election was not rigged or stolen. Joe Biden was the legitimate winner, Trump the legitimate loser. There is no evidence, in any state, of fraud even close to sufficient to have changed the outcome. Trump listed purported evidence of wrongdoing in swing states he lost. One of his claims about Pennsylvania, which Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, was this: “In Pennsylvania, as of February 2021, there were 121,240 more votes than voters.” Facts First: This is false. Pennsylvania did not have more votes cast in the 2020 election than it had registered voters; in reality, it had about 7 million votes cast and about 9 million registered voters, for a turnout of about 76.5%. This claim about the state having had more votes than voters – based on a Republican state legislator’s misreading of state data – was repeatedly debunked in 2020 and 2021. Trump made a dramatic claim about Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa County, where Republicans conducted a sham partisan “audit” of the 2020 election. He wrote: “Maricopa County accepted at least 20,000 mail-in ballots after Election Day 2020, including 18,000 on November 4, 2020, picked up from the U.S. Postal Service—more than the entire Election margin of 10,457 ballots.” Facts First: This is false. As Reuters has reported, this claim, which has circulated among Trump supporters on social media, is based on a misinterpretation of a document that does not actually show that Maricopa County accepted any ballots after Election Day, let alone thousands of ballots. The document was a receipt for transfer of ballots to a company that scans the ballot envelopes, capturing voters’ signatures, as part of the process of the county verifying the signatures. Runbeck chief executive Jeff Ellington told Reuters in June: “These 18,000 ballots were received on Election Day prior to the deadline to cast a vote and delivered to Runbeck the next day for processing, following our standard operating procedure.” Trump returned to a favorite conspiracy theory about a particular county in Michigan, another swing state he lost to Biden. After claiming that one of his allies, Republican attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno, “found voting machines were subverted and accessed remotely,” Trump continued: “In Antrim County, 7,048 votes were changed in favor of Joe Biden.” Facts First: No votes were changed in Antrim County because of voting machines being subverted, and there is no evidence of any intentional wrongdoing of any kind in the county. Rather, the conservative county made a human error in readying its election technology. The error resulted in some votes for Trump being initially reported as votes for Biden in unofficial preliminary results. The error was rapidly corrected, long before any results were made official, and a Republican-led investigation of the 2020 election by a Michigan state Senate committee concluded that “that ideas and speculation that the Antrim County election workers or outside entities manipulated the vote by hand or electronically are indefensible.” As for DePerno’s efforts to prove something nefarious happened in Antrim County, the committee also wrote this in its section on the Antrim County situation: “The Committee closely followed Mr. DePerno’s efforts and can confidently conclude they are demonstrably false and based on misleading information and illogical conclusions.” DePerno and others are now under investigation by a special prosecutor over their own alleged efforts to gain access to election technology after the election; DePerno has denied any wrongdoing and claimed that the accusations are politically motivated. Trump insinuated, as he has before, that he lost Georgia in part because of nefarious doings in Fulton County, home to Atlanta. He wrote that an investigator reported 1,200 ballots being “‘wheeled in through the back door’ days after Election Day, when President Trump’s massive lead ‘shrunk as more votes continue to be tallied in Fulton County.’” Facts First: This is deceptive. The independent monitor who was hired by the state election board to observe the election in Fulton County did not report any sign that these ballots were fraudulent; in fact, he wrote in his report that “at no time did I ever observe any conduct by Fulton County election officials that involved dishonesty, fraud, or intentional malfeasance,” though he did find sloppiness and other issues. Rather, he simply wrote that, although “it was a judgment call,” he thought the “optics” of bringing ballots through a back door two days after Election Day were poor and that this was “the wrong call for transparency purposes.” Also, contrary to the impression Trump left here, the monitor did not connect this particular group of ballots to Trump’s illusory lead in Georgia shrinking. The words “shrunk as more votes continue to be tallied in Fulton County” appear to be a quote from CNN – which explicitly pointed out at the time that Trump’s shrinking lead wasn’t the result of anything nefarious – and not the monitor himself. This story has been updated. Read More…

Trump Skirts Testimony Question In Blistering 14-Page Jan. 6 Response https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-skirts-testimony-question-in-blistering-14-page-jan-6-response/ (The Hill) — Former President Donald Trump on Friday skirted the question of whether he would testify under subpoena in a 14-page response to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, instead doubling down on his disproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump posted a letter to committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) one day after the panel voted unanimously to subpoena him for testimony about his role in the events of Jan. 6, when supporters of the former president stormed the Capitol to halt the certification of the 2020 election results. “This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself,” Trump wrote in the letter, which is dated Oct. 13. The document includes numerous photos meant to demonstrate the crowd size at his Jan. 6 rally, as well as a state-by-state breakdown renewing baseless claims of election fraud in five states Trump lost to President Joe Biden.  There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election — something Trump’s own campaign concluded. Courts on 62 different occasions ruled against Trump when he brought suits seeking to challenge the election based on fraud claims.  Trump’s response is, of course, not a formal compliance with the subpoena, which has yet to be sent after the committee voted unanimously to compel testimony from Trump. Such documents have to be served, and, in the case of prior subpoenas sent by the Jan. 6 committee, include a list of topics the panel wishes to discuss in a formal deposition as well as a breakdown of documents and other evidence that must be turned over.  In taking the vote in a public setting, lawmakers on the panel stressed the importance of hearing directly from Trump. “We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the committee, said shortly before the vote. “And every American is entitled to those answers.” Read More…

Suspect, 15, Taken Into Custody After 5 Shot Dead, 2 Injured In Raleigh Neighborhood, North Carolina Officials Say https://digitalalabamanews.com/suspect-15-taken-into-custody-after-5-shot-dead-2-injured-in-raleigh-neighborhood-north-carolina-officials-say/ A 15-year-old suspect was taken into custody after a “long standoff” with police in connection with a shooting that killed five people and left two others injured Thursday evening in Raleigh, North Carolina, officials said. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called the shooting spree “the nightmare of every community.” The shooting unfolded in a neighborhood northeast of central Raleigh and prompted warnings for residents to stay inside. One of the fatally wounded was an off-duty police officer, Mayor Mary-Anne Baldwin said. In a news conference Friday morning, Raleigh Police Chief Estella D. Patterson said the suspect had been taken into custody and was in critical condition. He was not identified. No information regarding a motive or the suspect’s background was released. Patterson said the victims who were killed ranged in age from 16 to 52. They were identified as: Nicole Connors, 52; Susan Karnatz, 49; Mary Marshall, 35; off-duty Raleigh police Officer Gabriel Torres, 29, who was on his way to work; and a 16-year-old white male. NBC affiliate WRAL of Raleigh reported that the teen victim was James Roger Thompson.  The two people who were injured were identified as Raleigh Police Officer Casey Clark, 33, who was treated and released from a hospital; and Marcille Gardner, 59, who was in critical condition. An off-duty police officer was killed in a shooting in an east Raleigh, N.C., neighborhood Thursday afternoon.WRAL “Tonight terror has reached our doorstep,” Cooper told reporters Thursday evening. “The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence that has been committed.” Baldwin said: “We have to end this mindless gun violence that is happening across our country. There are too many victims. We have to wake up.” Patterson said Friday morning the crime scene was “expansive” and stretched over two miles.  President Joe Biden said in a statement Friday he is grieving alongside the families whose loved ones were killed. He also called for a ban on assault weapons. “Jill and I are grieving with the families in Raleigh, North Carolina, whose loved ones were killed and wounded in yet another mass shooting in America,” Biden said. “We are thinking of yet another community shaken and shattered as they mourn the loss of friends and neighbors, including an off-duty police officer.” He continued, “This year, and even in just the five months since Buffalo and Uvalde, there are too many mass shootings across America, including ones that don’t even make the national news. … We must pass an assault weapons ban.” Police responded to a call about a person shot shortly after 5 p.m. in the 6000 block of Osprey Cove Drive. Patterson said the shootings unfolded in the streets of the neighborhood, then the suspect fled towards the Neuse River Greenway, where more victims were shot. Law enforcement work at the scene of a shooting in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday.Travis Long / The News & Observer via AP The police department advised residents in the leafy neighborhood known as Hedingham to remain indoors. Aerial video from NBC affiliate WRAL showed a large police presence. A witness named Robert Anderson told NBC’s “TODAY” show that he saw the gunman from his back deck.  “He had a camouflage shirt, camouflage pants, black boots, he also had a backpack that looked like it was filled to the brim,” he said in an interview aired Friday. “He was walking, and when I tell you he was walking, it was like nothing had happened,” Anderson explained. “He was just walking looking straight forward. He had his gun on his side and it was pointed downwards and he was just walking.” Another witness told WRAL that she saw neighbors trying to help the off-duty officer, who was inside a car bleeding. The witness told the station that she saw the gunman run from the scene and disappear into a nearby park. He was wearing black boots and appeared to be a teenager, she said. “He looked like a baby,” she told WRAL, adding: “I just don’t even have the words to explain. This is not OK.” CORRECTION (Oct. 14, 2022, 10:10 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the age of one of those injured. The victim in critical condition is 59, not 50. Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital. Marlene Lenthang Marlene Lenthang is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital. Lindsey Pipia and Antonio Planas contributed . Read More…

ASCC 2022 Concrete Contractor Safety And Decorative Concrete Awards https://digitalalabamanews.com/ascc-2022-concrete-contractor-safety-and-decorative-concrete-awards/ In celebration of the hard, diligent work concrete contractors accomplish each year and the efforts done each day, The American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC) announced the recipients of the Decorative Concrete International Awards, Safety Excellence Awards, and Member Owner/Executive Safety Award.  The winners were recognized at ASCC’s Annual Conference, on September 29, 2022, in Cleveland, Ohio. Recipients of the ASCC Education, Research, and Development Foundation also awarded two $5,000 scholarships to students in the Concrete Industry Management program: Joseph McDaniel of Tennessee State University and Erik Bermudez of California Sate University. Students must maintain a minimum of a 2.5 GPA to qualify.  Joseph McDaniel of Tennessee State University received their CIM Scholarship during the ASCC Conference, September 2022.American Society of Concrete Contractors The WOW! & Decorative Concrete Awards The Decorative Concrete Council (DCC), a specialty council of the American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC), St. Louis, Mo., has announced the winners of its 14th annual Decorative Concrete International Awards competition. The DCC is composed of contractors, manufacturers, and suppliers of decorative concrete products and is dedicated to improving the technical and business expertise of the contractors that pursue this specialty market.  Colorado Hardscapes, Greenwood Village, CO won the WOW! Award, best overall project, for the USAFA Air Gardens (pictured above), a restoration project to return the Air Force Academy’s Air Gardens, what had been the focal point of the cadet parade grounds, to its former glory. The area is a 600-ft. grid of concrete, landscaping, and pools. After 46 years laying dormant, Colorado Hardscapes was tasked with replacing the Air Garden’s walkways, bridges, and pool copings, and refurbishing the pools themselves. 35,175 sq.ft. of specialty concrete was developed with white cement and white aggregate to compliment the white marble bands, and to contrast with the pools finished with charcoal plaster. Over a mile of exposed finished vertical edges of copings and walkways, and 15 bridges, required innovative forming and finishing techniques. The layout throughout the Academy grounds is at multiples of seven, resulting in having to sawcut all paving into 21-in. tiles. Additional Winners The DCC also presented 20 more awards for various categories within decorative concrete allowing projects over as well as under 5,000 sq.ft. a chance to be recognized. Here are the first- and second-place recipients. Trademark Concrete Systems won 1st Place in Cast-in-Place Special Finishes, Over 5,000 sq.ft. category for their work in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures project.Trademark Concrete Systems | American Society of Concrete Contractors Cast-In-Place Stamped, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Connecticut Bomanite Systems, Bethel, CT, for Downtown Danbury Transit Development 2nd Place, Alchemy Concrete, Inc., Amherst, Junction, WI, for The Manor Cast-In-Place Stamped, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Beyond Concrete, Keyport, NJ, for Dennis Collins Park  2nd Place, Bomanite International Ltd., Quezon City, Cubao, NCR, Philippines, for Café Sawaloka Polished Concrete & Overlays, Over 5,000 sq.ft. Keystone Structural Concrete was awarded the W. Burr Bennett Awards for Safety Excellence.American Society of Concrete Contractors 1st Place, Burgess Concrete Construction, Inc., Moline, MI, for Fruitport Community Schools – High School Addition & Renovation 2nd Place, Musselman & Hall,  Kansas City, MO, for Westview Elementary Polished Concrete & Overlays, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Phaze Concrete, Cedar City, UT, for Phaze Concrete Office Lobby 2nd Place, Jeffco Concrete Contractors, Tuscaloosa, AL, for Ferguson Center Starbucks Cast-in-Place Special Finishes, Over 5,000 sq.ft.  1st Place, Trademark Concrete Systems, Camarillo, CA, for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures 2nd Place, Largo Concrete, Tustin, CA, for Rady Shell at Jacobs Park Cast-in-Place Special Finishes, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Architectural Concrete Construction, Louisville, KY, for Norton Children’s Healing Garden 2nd Place, T.B. Penick & Sons, San Diego, CA, for Sunnyvale Sedimentary Wall Vertical/Facades, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Unlimited Designs, Salt Lake City, UT, for ASU – Interdisciplinary Science & Technology Bldg. 7 2nd Place, Largo Concrete, Tustin, CA, for Apex Bomanite International Ltd. won 1st Place in the Concrete Artistry, Over 5,000 sq.ft. category for the work done for Carnival Square Halong City.American Society of Concrete Contractors Concrete Artistry, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Bomanite International Ltd., Quezon City, Cubao, NCR, the Philippines for Carnival Square Halong City 2nd Place, T.B. Penick & Sons, San Diego, CA, for San Diego Children’s Zoo – Wildlife Explorers Basecamp Concrete Artistry, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Fuscardo Concrete, Weirton, WV, for Rebecca Fuscardo Booth at Deco-Crete Expo 2nd Place, Gilbane Bldg, Co., Phoenix, AZ, for City of Surprise Safety Evidence & Readiness Center Art Installation Multiple Applications, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Hyde Concrete, Pasadena, MD, for Tidewater Farmhouse 2nd Place, Colorado Hardscapes, Greenwood Village, CO, for Lone Rock Retreat  Multiple Applications, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Deco-Crete Supply, Orrville, OH, for The Orchard Stained & Dyes, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Desco Coatings of Alberta, Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, for Fort Edmonton Park Indigenous Peoples Experience 2nd Place, Dancer Concrete Design, Ft. Wayne, IN, for Roanoke Elementary School Stained & Dyes, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Bob Harris, Structural Services, Inc., Waxahachie, TX, and Lee Ann Harris, Decorative Concrete Institute, Temple, GA, for Decorative Concrete Institute Facility 2nd Place, Captivating Concrete Creations, Tawas City, MI, for The Selman Estate Architectural Cast-in-Place Concrete Structures, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Colorado Hardscapes, Greenwood Village, CO, for USAFA Air Gardens 2nd Place, Largo Concrete, Tustin, CA, for Apex Architectural Cast-in-Place Concrete Structures, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Bomanite Artistic Concrete & Pools, El Paso, TX, for Weststar Tower 2nd Place, Raffin Construction Co., Chicago, IL, for Brighton Park Waste Transfer Station Barrier Wall Belfast Valley Contractors CEO Theodore Goloboski III, received the ASCC Member Owner/Executive Safety Award.American Society of Concrete Contractors Cementitious Overlays, Over 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, T.B. Penick & Sons, San Diego, CA, for Legoland Lego Movie World 2nd Place, Texas Bomanite, Dallas, TX, for Hotel Drover Cementitious Overlays, Under 5,000 sq.ft. 1st Place, Sundek of San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, for Aloft Hotel 2nd Place, Sundek National Accounts, Grand Prairie, TX, for Wayne State University Decorative Resinous Coatings, Over 5,000  sq.ft. 1st Place, Decorative Concrete of Virginia, Lynchburg, VA, for Runk & Pratt  2nd Place, Birmingham Decorative Concrete, Leeds, AL, for Caliber Gear Decorative Resinous Coatings, Under 5,000  sq.ft. 1st Place, Decorative Concrete of Virginia, Lynchburg, VA, for Smith Mountain Lake Garage Project Video 1st Place, Desco Coatings of Alberta, Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, for Fort Edmonton Park Indigenous Peoples Experience  The Safety Excellence Award Concrete contractors with exemplary safety records for 2021 were recognized by the Safety & Risk Management Council (SRMC) of the ASCC. The ASCC Safety & Risk Management Council educates contractors on all aspects of safety relating to concrete contracting and insurance matters. The Council also provides oversight on safety publications and events. W. Burr Bennett Awards for Safety Excellence were given to specialty contractor Keystone Structural Concrete, Houston, TX, and general contractor Shiel Sexton, Indianapolis, IN.  These awards are presented to contractors that place the highest priority on safety. Entries are judged on three years of safety performance indicators; values and trends; a self-assessment checklist of company safety practices; and detailed descriptions of safety plans and culture. Hyde Concrete won 1st Place in the Multiple Applications, Over 5,000 sq.ft. category for their Tidewater Farmhouse project.Hyde Concrete | American Society of Concrete Contractors Outstanding Safety Achievement Awards Additional awards, based on the incident rate for 2021, were presented to general and specialty contractors in four categories. In all 22 contractors received awards for zero lost time due to accidents, and 25 contractors were recognized for having lowered their incident rate from the previous year. Finally, 57 contractors received certificates for achieving an incident rate below the national average. General Contractors, for the lowest incident rate: Shiel Sexton Co., Indianapolis, IN (over 650,000 work hours);  Gregory Construction Services, Columbus, MS (160,000 – 650,000 work hours) and  Wm. Aupperle & Sons, Morton, IL (under 160,000 work hours).  Specialty Contractors receiving the Outstanding Safety Achievement Award:  Keystone Structural Concrete, Houston, TX (over 300,000 work hours);  Vicon Construction, St. Louis, MO (90,000 – 299,999 work hours); and  Anderson Commercial Concrete, Moline, IL (under 89,999 work hours). Three companies were recognized for outstanding fleet safety records:  J. J. Barney Construction, Rochester Hills, MI, 480,000 miles with zero accidents;  Schiralli Construction Wilson, OK, 1,000,000 miles with zero accidents; and  Solid Surface Care, Charlotte, NC, 4,680,000 miles with zero accidents.  Owner/Executive Safety The SRMC also announced that The...

BREAKING: Lady E's Chick'n Cafe—home Of The Famous 24 Karat Gold-Dusted Wings—is Under New Ownership + Considering Relocation | Bham Now https://digitalalabamanews.com/breaking-lady-es-chickn-cafe-home-of-the-famous-24-karat-gold-dusted-wings-is-under-new-ownership-considering-relocation-bham-now/ 100+ people attended on opening day and have been continuing to love it since. So, who is the new owner + what does this mean for Lady E’s? According to the Birmingham Business Journal, Sosa Restaurant Partners has purchased Lady E’s Chick’n Cafe and is considering relocating to a new location. Currently located at 1905 Park Place, Birmingham, AL, the new owners are looking to sell the building. Andrea Parker, of Parker & Associates and now part-owner of Lady E’s, says they are looking for a second-generation building. This would be a building that was previously a restaurant so they can add the needed resources and open quickly. They also mentioned they would be open to looking for a second location in Ensley but are focusing on the relocation as of now. Don’t worry though—Lady E’s Chick’n Cafe will still be serving up all your favorites such as their 24k gold wings and cajun fries. You can still visit Lady E’s Chick’n Cafe at its original location: 1905 Park Pl, Birmingham, AL 35203 Monday-Saturday | 10AM-8PM Facebook | Instagram For more breaking news check out Bham Now on Instagram + Facebook! Previous Post Don’t miss this open house for free skincare consultations, all-day injectables + more, Oct. 20-21 Read More…

Federal Reserve Probing Bostic's Trading After Blackout Period Transactions https://digitalalabamanews.com/federal-reserve-probing-bostics-trading-after-blackout-period-transactions/ President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Raphael W. Bostic speaks at a European Financial Forum event in Dublin, Ireland February 13, 2019. Clodagh Kilcoyne | Reuters The Federal Reserve is looking into trades that Raphael Bostic, the head of the central bank’s Atlanta district, made during restricted periods. In the wake of disclosures that there were multiple incidents over the past several years in which Bostic’s investment activity violated Fed restrictions and blackout periods, the central bank said its Office of Inspector General would be reviewing the matter further. There also were incidents were Bostic incorrectly reported his assets. Fed Chair Jerome Powell “has asked the Office of Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board to initiate an independent review of President Bostic’s financial disclosures,” a Fed spokesman said. “We look forward to the results of their work and will accept and take appropriate actions based on their findings.” Trading by Fed officials over the past several years has been a hot-button issue. Disclosures that multiple officials had been involved in investment moves at a time when the Fed was taking steps to support markets preceded the early retirements of two regional presidents, Eric Rosengren of Boston and Robert Kaplan of Dallas. There also were disclosures that trades from Powell himself had been involved in trades during blackout periods in 2020. Trades from former Vice Chair Richard Clarida also came under question, though the inspector general cleared both officials of wrongdoing. The controversy also led to a revised policy that severely restricts the moves Fed officials can make. Bostic said that in his case the violations were not intentional and occurred because of his reliance on a third-party manager who was handling his investments. He said his investments are in accounts in which neither he nor his investment adviser can direct. In a statement issued along with his amended disclosure forms, Bostic apologized for the controversy. “I recognize it is my responsibility to understand and abide by every obligation of this office,” he said. “I want to be clear: at no time did I knowingly authorize or complete a financial transaction based on nonpublic information or with any intent to conceal or sidestep my obligations of transparent and accountable reporting.” He also noted in the statement that his holdings of Treasurys in 2021 exceeded limits outlined in Fed guidelines. The Fed sets interest rates through the use of its fed funds rate, which generally have a close correlation with Treasury yields. On top of previous regulations in place, the Fed in February added to restrictions on what its members can do. The new regulations prohibit top officials from holding individual stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies, along with other assets. Those rule changes also mandated a review from both the Atlanta district and the Fed’s main D.C. operation, leading to the disclosures of Bostic’s filing mistakes. “We welcome this review and will cooperate fully to ensure this matter is effectively resolved,” the Atlanta Fed said in a statement. Controversy over the investment moves from Fed officials hit following reports, first in the Wall Street Journal, that some members had engaged in trading around the time that policymakers were contemplating taking actions in the early days of the Covid pandemic. The Fed ended up slashing benchmark interest rates to near-zero and implementing an aggressive bond-buying program that added nearly $5 trillion to the central bank’s balance sheet. “I sincerely regret if my actions raise questions about my standards, behavior, or motivation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s systems and processes to maintain the public trust, or the commitment of the Federal Reserve to transparency and accountability in fulfilling its mission,” Bostic said. Read More…

Update On Orion Amphitheater Group’s Next Huntsville Music Venue https://digitalalabamanews.com/update-on-orion-amphitheater-groups-next-huntsville-music-venue/ The group that developed and runs Orion Amphitheater, tvg hospitality, had planned to open a new 350-capacity downtown Huntsville music venue this summer, but that didn’t happen. Located at 108 Cleveland Ave. N.W. near Furniture Factory Bar & Grill and just off Meridian Street, the space was formerly home to A.M. Booth’s Lumberyard, a now-defunct bar, restaurant and event space. Halfway through October, the space remains closed-up. One of those temporary construction privacy walls covers a stretch of the façade. Now, tvg (all lowercase and short for “the venue group”) is targeting a spring 2023 opening. And the venue’s name has been tweaked slightly too, from Meridian Social Club to Meridian Arts Club. A new venue called Meridian Arts Club is being built in the former location of A.M. Booth’s Lumberyard. (File/al.com/Eric Schultz)al.com A somewhat common assumption locally is Meridian construction was paused due to operational capacity at Orion. In other words, so tvg could focus resources into getting the amphitheater up and running on time for its spring debut. But the real cause of the delay isn’t quite so dramatic. It’s simply that quintessential pandemic-era culprit again, supply chain issues, says tvg cofounder Ben Lovett, who’s also a member of British folk-pop band Mumford & Sons. “The construction market is absolutely crazy out there right now,” Lovett says. “Like, electrical things getting manufactured overseas are now three to six months (to get them) when they would have been a month. That’s just to get everything you need to start building.” Lovett adds, “Huntsville is so rapidly growing that it’s highly competitive to get tradesmen and tradeswomen to do the work. So with our project, which I guess in the grand scheme of things is quite humble and small next to new hotels (and other larger developments) getting built all around us, it’s been hard to lock in the subcontractors. And not as easy as we had anticipated when we first came out with the statement of when it was going to open.” Artist renderings for the Meridian show interior design mixing natural materials with modern style. The exterior, including a sprawling rustic space out-back with an outdoor stage, will remain largely intact, Lovett says. Notable events that took place there when it was the Lumberyard include the inaugural Microwave Dave Day concert in 2015. As far as Meridian’s current progress goes, the interior space has been cleared out, Lovett says. Some electrical and plumbing work has been done. “And we’ve showed up some of the structural too, so we’re just about to start framing it out,” Lovett says. “Right now, it just looks like a lot of work has been done behind the scenes, creating the infrastructure to do it. But it will start to take shape now fairly quickly.” The Meridian, already a promising project because of tvg’s connections and experience, has become critical for Huntsville live music since AL.com first reported plans for the venue in February. The recent closing of SideTracks Music Hall, which during its five-year run brought in rising touring bands (Greta Van Fleet, Shovels + Rope, etc.), top local songwriters (Rob Aldridge, Wanda Wesolowski) and buzzy new festivals (Sluice Fest), leaves a void for a dedicated club-sized Huntsville venue. Some shows originally booked for SideTracks were moved to Furniture Factory’s outdoor stage, including a well-attended bill featuring ’90s Birmingham rockers Brother Cane and former Motley Crue singer John Corabi. Furniture Factory owner Mark Komara also owned SideTracks. But because of weather, putting on outdoor shows are risky during warmer months and come winter not viable on a regular basis. There’s Electric Belle at Stovehouse, the popular West Huntsville entertainment/dining complex. But that fairly new 300-capacity room’s mainly done local shows and hasn’t found footing as a touring-level venue yet. At a capacity of around 1,600, Von Braun Center’s gleaming Mars Music Hall is a huge step up in size. And too big for many bands that played SideTracks. Music fans who’ve resided in Huntsville a while will recall 2013 to 2017 as a dark time for smaller touring-level shows in Huntsville. That was the period between the closing of Crossroads, the formerly long-running club-sized venue, and SideTracks’ opening. “When it comes to venues of this capacity, there really aren’t many,” Lovett says of Huntsville’s current venue mix. He says tvg remains “fully committed” to the Meridian Arts Club project. “SideTracks going away since we first planned on doing this is even more reason than ever to be doing it.” Once it’s open, Meridian Arts Club will host around 12 to 15 live shows a month. A few of those will be DJ sets and electronic artists. Ticket prices for many touring shows will be in the $15 to $20 range, Lovett says. “What you get from the smaller venues,” Lovett says, “is lower ticket prices, more affordable drinks, it’s more relaxed. We’re going to encourage the discovery (of new music) a lot more.” Lovett says at a club-level show, “It’s on that artist to go and basically show people what they’re about. Explain what their songs are about and explain that backstory. Sit at the merch desk and meet these people. This is the graft of getting it all going as a musician and the venue is a key part of that.” While most of the artists will be touring level (Huntsville is nicely situated for routing between Nashville and Birmingham), top-drawing original local acts will get a shot to rock the Meridian’s stage. But not just anybody will get a gig there, locally or touring. “There’ll be a bit of curation going on,” Lovett says. The goal is for local music fans to eventually trust that whatever band is playing Meridian is worth hearing. Huntsville music is clearly ascending. That goes from the top (Orion, Mars Music Hall) on down (a new wave of young bands, fresh festival concepts) Enough so Rolling Stone recently did a feature on Huntsville, mostly focusing on Orion. In addition to its classic coliseum-inspired design, Orion is making industry waves by bringing stars whose tours previously skipped over Huntsville, like Stevie Nicks and Jack White, to the city Still, Huntsville’s still never produced its own Alabama Shakes. Meaning, a band from here that’s become legitimately mainstream famous. Not a single one. But if a young Huntsville band gets a big enough local following they can sell-out Meridian, it’s likely to generate notice beyond the city, Lovett says. “Because from that point, I would expect that music industry folks will come in from Nashville and from Atlanta to scout. And maybe (that local artist) picks up their booking agent that way, or their manager, or their record label. That’s exciting to me. I’ve discovered artists in these types of rooms many, many times.” And here’s where swapping out “Social” for “Arts” in the venue name comes in. Lovett says Meridian’s programming will extend beyond music. The space is now being conceived as a place to also host comedy shows, films, arts events, etc. Also the phrase “Arts Club” scans more communal, creative and inclusive than “Social Club,” which has a tinge of elitism to it. The goal is for Meridian to be a “vessel for culture,” Lovett says, not just a place for bands to play. Lovett asserts there’ve been advantages to the delayed opening. For one, better understanding Huntsville’s entertainment needs and lay-of-the-land. For example, tvg had planned on including a wood-fired pizzeria called Ferrovia as part of the Meridian concept. They’ve since decided Huntsville has enough compelling pizza options and have pivoted to doing Southern-tinged cuisine with family style portions. That new restaurant at Meridian will be called In Horto, which is Latin for “in the garden.” Tvg already has an In Horto location in London. The Huntsville version will mark the first time tvg has brought one of their U.K. concepts to the U.S. The Huntsville menu will be different and play off local flavors and foods. But as a point of reference, London In Horto menu items include: roast chicken with garlic potatoes and leeks; slow cooked lamb shoulder and harissa vegetables; and pork belly, spiced baked beans and bacon. Unlike the common club-sized venue model of handling booking in-house, Meridian will rely on third party promoters. It’s the format for Orion as well, which receives requests from promoters like Live Nation and AEG and others to host their concerts they’re bringing to Huntsville. Orion doesn’t book the artists themselves. With the Meridian, tvg plans to work with local independent promoters as well as the nationals. “It won’t be just us directly working artists,” Lovett says, “because the minute we do that it becomes completely closed as a loop. And you don’t end up with as many diverse ears on the program. This is how we’ve run our other small venues in London.” In addition to Orion, overseen by local arm Huntsville Venue Group, has venue/hospitality projects in London, Austin, Texas, Washington D.C. Early this year, tvg secured $50 million in new funding to expand its venue portfolio and staff. That financing includes participation from music-biz heavyweights – including Irving Azoff, whose managed superstar bands like Van Halen and Eagles and helmed major-labels, Live Nation and Ticketmaster. In February, Lovett told AL.com tvg has allocated $15 million of the new $50 million funding towards their Huntsville projects, including Meridian Social Club and the Apollo Park being built around Orion Amphitheater. Being able to pack a small room and convert dozens of new fans is a key moment for a rising touring band. And developing an early fanbase in a city can help a band grow that base over time and ascend to that city’s larger venues eventually....

ULM Vs South Alabama Prediction, Game Preview Lines TV https://digitalalabamanews.com/ulm-vs-south-alabama-prediction-game-preview-lines-tv/ ULM vs South Alabama prediction, game preview, how to watch. Week 7, Saturday, October 15 ULM vs South Alabama How To Watch Date: Saturday, October 15 Game Time: 7:00 ET Venue: Hancock Whitney Stadium, Mobile, AL How To Watch: NFL Network Record: ULM (2-4), South Alabama (4-1) – Sign up and live stream college football on ESPN+ CFN 1-131 Rankings | Rankings by Conference Bowl Projections | Week 6 Scoreboard What 12-Team Playoff Would Look Like Top 10 Hot Seat Coach Rankings – Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak ULM vs South Alabama Game Preview Why ULM Will Win Can the passing game stay sharp? The Warhawks might have lost to Coastal Carolina 28-21 last week, but Chandler Rogers went off hitting 27-of-30 passes for 279 yards and two touchdowns. This isn’t a high-powered Warhawk passing team, but South Alabama can be thrown on with quick midrange throws. There isn’t enough of a pass rush from the USA defensive front to matter, and on the other side there’s no downfield passing on a consistent basis to take advantage of the shaky ULM secondary. – NFL Expert Picks, Week 6 Why South Alabama Will Win The Jaguars just keep getting it done. There’s nothing flashy about what they do. They’ll come up with 200 passing yards 150ish running yards, and they’ll find ways to come through when needed. They’re just one weird play against UCLA away from being 5-0 and a national big thing. As long as the takeaways keep coming, that will continue. ULM doesn’t turn the ball over all that much, but it gave it away five times in the last three games. USA is red hot at forcing mistakes with ten takeaways in the last three games. – Schedules, Previews College | NFL What’s Going To Happen The fun will continue. South Alabama will be consistent against the ULM defense with the balanced attack keeping control of the game throughout. ULM will stay in it and have its chances, but two turnovers early and no takeaways will make it too hard high a hill to climb on the road. – College Football Expert Picks, Week 7 ULM vs South Alabama Prediction, Line South Alabama 34, ULM 20 Line: South Alabama -17, o/u: 51.5 ATS Confidence out of 5: 2 ULM vs South Alabama Must See Rating (out of 5): 2 – Predictions of Every Game – Bowl Projections | Rankings – Schedules, Scores For All 131 Teams Read More…

A Closer Look At Auburn’s Improved Pass Defense In SEC Play https://digitalalabamanews.com/a-closer-look-at-auburns-improved-pass-defense-in-sec-play/ Auburn’s pass defense got off to an inauspicious start to the year, but the Tigers’ secondary has clamped down on opponents in recent weeks. Blown coverages and lost one-on-one battles down the field marred the first few weeks of the season for Auburn’s secondary, which was 73rd nationally in pass efficiency defense (129.03) and 81st among FBS teams in passing defense (234.7 yards per game) through its first three games. Since the start of conference play, though, things have been trending in the right direction for the Tigers’ defensive backs. “Yeah, I think those guys are flying around, number one,” Auburn coach Bryan Harsin said. “I think they’re around in coverage, around the receivers. They’re not giving those guys many opportunities just to be wide open or cutting the guy loose. So, we’ve gotten better at that.” Read more Auburn football: Where Bryan Harsin’s 2022 salary, buyout rank nationally, in the SEC “They’re my enemy until the end of the game”: Two Auburn transfers set to greet Tigers at Ole Miss Does Auburn’s offense have an identity crisis at midpoint of season? Through its first three games against Mercer, San Jose State and Penn State, Auburn’s defense allowed opponents to complete 62.6 percent of their passes, allowed two passing touchdowns and failed to force any interceptions. During that stretch, the Tigers surrendered 17 passes of at least 15 yards, including 11 of 20 yards or more. In its last three games against SEC opponents, though, Auburn has cut down on that number, giving up 10 passes of 15-plus yards, with six of them going for 20 yards or more. In SEC play, Auburn’s pass defense is first in the league in fewest yards allowed (157.3 per game), third in pass efficiency defense (102.01), fifth in opponent completion percentage (56.1 percent) and third in yards allowed per pass attempt (5.8). The Tigers’ pass defense was particularly stingy against LSU and during the first half of last weekend’s game against Georgia. Auburn limited LSU to just 85 passing yards on 10-of-26 passing (38.5 percent) in what was the program’s fewest passing yards allowed in an SEC game since 2018 against Mississippi State (69). It was also the lowest completion rate allowed by Auburn in an SEC game since 2017 against Mississippi State (35.1 percent), and the fewest yards allowed per pass attempt (3.3) in an SEC game since 2009 against Kentucky (3.4). Then in the first half against Georgia, Auburn held Stetson Bennett to just 7-of-13 passing for 25 yards. Though Bennett turned things around in the second half to finish with a solid stat line in the blowout win, thanks to the Bulldogs’ dominant run game opening things up for the passing attack, the Tigers’ defense still contained things on the back end. Auburn’s pass defense has also shown marked improvement on third downs since the start of conference play. The Tigers allowed nonconference competition to convert 44 percent of third downs through the air (11-of-25), as their first three opponents combined to complete 18-of-25 (72 percent) of their pass attempts for 159 yards and two touchdowns on third downs. Over the last three weeks, SEC teams have converted just 6-of-26 (23 percent) third downs through the air, completing 12-of-26 passes (46.1 percent) for 110 yards and no touchdowns. Most notably, though, Auburn’s defense has not surrendered a passing touchdown since the opening week of the season, when Mercer’s Fred Payton threw two touchdowns in Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Tigers’ defense has gone 145 consecutive pass attempts without allowing a touchdown, and it’s tied with Illinois for fewest passing touchdowns allowed in the FBS this season. Auburn has allowed one fewer passing touchdown than both Alabama and Kentucky, who have given up three each this year. While Harsin had praise for his secondary’s improvement in recent weeks, he also gave plaudits to Auburn’s defensive line for doing a better job of providing pressure on opposing quarterbacks. It goes back to what multiple defenders — including cornerback Jaylin Simpson and edge Derick Hall — have repeated several times since the preseason: Rush and coverage go hand in hand, and one doing well makes life easier on the other. “I think our D-line, I think some of the pressures, too, that we’ve put on the quarterback have helped,” Harsin said. “They’re not just standing back there and scanning the whole field and waiting for a guy to open up. So, I think it’s a combination of getting to the quarterback and also your secondary doing a good job. And on some of the scramble stuff, too, we’re plastering better, we’re covering better, we’re getting better in the back end. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been able to have some of those numbers.” Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Huntsville Council Raises Concerns Over Medical Marijuana Dispensaries https://digitalalabamanews.com/huntsville-council-raises-concerns-over-medical-marijuana-dispensaries/ As the city of Huntsville began publicly considering seeking to bring medical marijuana dispensaries to the Rocket City, city council members raised concerns at Thursday’s meeting. The topic was discussed for about 35 minutes as Mayor Tommy Battle emphasized that the city was moving “cautiously” in studying the issue. The council is expected to vote on an ordinance permitting dispensaries at its Oct. 27 meeting. Related: Huntsville looking at permitting medical cannabis dispensaries Related: Who will dispense medical marijuana in Alabama and what will they need to know? Councilman Devyn Keith asked about the cost of the medical marijuana products and the city’s ability to tax it similar to taxes placed on cigarettes and alcohol as well as potential criminality issues. Councilwoman Frances Akridge asked about zoning codes for dispensaries – an issue the city planning commission is studying – while echoing Keith’s concerns about pricing. Akridge also raised the point that dispensaries will not provide products for those under 19 years old, which would block children suffering from seizures from accessing medical marijuana. “There are kids who need this, too,” she said. Council President John Meredith asked about safeguards for state-authorized consumers should they be drug tested by their employer. Henry Thornton, the city’s external relations officer who presented to the council on the dispensary process, said that would up to each individual employer but those authorized to use medical marijuana would have a state-issued card. Noting that it would be legal for authorized consumers to use medical marijuana while they could still face penalties at work, Akridge said, “I hope they close that loophole.” Many of the questions and concerns are either covered by state law that established the Medical Cannabis Commission, Thornton said. John McMillan, former state treasurer and state agriculture commissioner, is the commission director. There are no price guidelines within state law, Thornton said. “The state is taxing these products at a higher rate than normal prices,” Thornton said. “That is the financial provision that is in state law. And the companies applying for these licenses (to operate dispensaries) will have to pay fees to the commission each year.” Part of those fees will go to further medical marijuana research, Thornton said. The state legislature established a medical marijuana system last year with bipartisan support. Alabama is the 37th state to do so and Thornton said the state is looking to learn from mistakes made by other states. Among those mistakes, Thornton said, were states issuing licenses to users for more than a year, which is the limit in Alabama. All products will have barcodes as well and no smokable products will be sold, he said. Under state law, all products must be grown, processed and sold in Alabama. Authorized users will be listed in a database that will be available to law enforcement to help identify customers who may not have their medical marijuana card with them. There will be a maximum of 37 dispensing sites across the state based on state law. Cities must pass ordinances to allow dispensaries. Should the city decide to allow dispensaries, the ordinance would go into effect Dec. 23 but dispensaries are not expected to begin operation until next summer. “During that time, we will all be working on the final privilege license,” Battle said. “We are finishing up the zoning of the property. We have a lot of things that we need to do very cautiously to make sure that this works in the right manner. There are some things we don’t know. We have looked at what other states have done so we will try to avoid those mistakes. But we will start off very, very conservatively in this.” Dispensaries must be at least 1,000 feet from any school or daycare facility, maintain around-the-clock video surveillance and have a security guard on site during operating hours. No one will be allowed into a dispensary unless they are authorized consumers. Eligible consumers must be suffering from at least one of 16 conditions such as autism, Crohn’s disease, cancer-related issues, epilepsy or other seizure-causing conditions, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain or a terminal illness. Dispensaries will not have raw plant material or any smoking or vaping product or a food product in which cannabis can be infused in its inventory. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Passengers En Route To A 2020 Biden-Harris Campaign Event At TXST Begged For Help That Never Came. https://digitalalabamanews.com/passengers-en-route-to-a-2020-biden-harris-campaign-event-at-txst-begged-for-help-that-never-came/ SAN MARCOS — San Marcos’ current assistant police chief of administration had to go on unpaid leave for eight hours last December after he referred to supporters of a Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaign event as “tards” in an October 2020 text message as they begged police for help on Interstate 35. The assistant chief, Bob Klett, was serving as interim chief of the San Marcos Police Department when he sent the message. An internal memo sent to Klett from current Chief of Police Stan Standridge on Dec. 8, 2021, revealed the disciplinary action. The Caldwell/Hays Examiner received the information in September via a public records request and shared it with the Express-News. The memo references an Oct. 30, 2020, incident in which a bus carrying members of the Biden-Harris campaign drove on I-35 in San Marcos en route to a campaign event at Texas State University. While on the interstate, the campaign bus was tailed and harassed by about 50 vehicles that were purported members of a “Trump Train” — supporters of then-President Donald Trump. The bus nearly crashed as a result of the Trump Train, according to a civil lawsuit filed in June 2021 on behalf of Biden campaign staffers. The San Marcos Police Department refused to provide an escort or assistance for the campaign bus after the vehicles surrounded it, according to the lawsuit. The Biden staffers contend in the lawsuit that when they called 911 and “begged” for help from San Marcos police, members of the department “privately laughed and joked about the victims and their distress, including by calling them ‘tards,’ making fun of a campaign staffer’s ‘hard’ breathing, and retorting they should just ‘drive defensively’ or ‘leave the train.’” The Police Department never publicly revealed the identity of the officer who sent the “tards” comment. According to the letter Standridge sent to Klett, a police commander texted Klett the afternoon of Oct. 30 and asked, “did Kamala show,” to which Klett responded, “no, just a couple other yards.” He then sent another text clarifying that he meant “tards,” short for retards. The Biden-Harris campaign canceled the event at Texas State as a result of the I-35 incident. Klett was interim police chief from September 2019 to November 2020, meaning he was in charge of the police response to the Biden bus incident. Standridge wrote that Klett’s comments were not consistent with the mission and policies of the department. “Your text message reflects unfavorably on the San Marcos Police Department and the City of San Marcos,” he wrote, adding that the message “caused professional harm to the agency and city.” But Klett was suspended for just eight hours without pay Dec. 17, 2021, as a result of the incident, according to the letter. The suspension also was noted in his personnel file. The Express-News has reached out to the city of San Marcos for comment. John Paredes — counsel at The Protect Democracy Project Inc., one of the firms representing the campaign staffers in the Biden bus lawsuit — said that the new revelation is “a reminder that police are not allowed to simply turn a blind eye when faced with political election-related violence” that they could prevent. “The Klan Act prohibits it just as much as it prohibits you and me from going and intimidating people for engaging in political campaigns,” Paredes said. Protect Democracy, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and Washington, D.C.-based law firm Willkie, Farr and Gallagher have filed two lawsuits related to the Biden bus incident: one against the individuals who drove the Trump Train cars, and the other against the City of San Marcos and its police force. Both lawsuits are in the discovery phase. A judge last week set a trial date for the case against the Trump Train drivers for December 2023, and a trial for the case against the city has been set for January 2024. Annie Blanks writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. annie.blanks@express-news.net. Read More…

Trump Has Been Subpoenaed, Biden Hasn https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-has-been-subpoenaed-biden-hasn/ It’s clear voters have a tough choice in the midterms. Both parties have serious flaws, ranging from fully embracing racism and espionage to not doing either of those things. Look, I know the midterm elections are coming up, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out the difference between our two major political parties.  Take Thursday, for example. Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, was subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. At the same time, current Democratic President Joe Biden, on a West Coast trip that included a stop in Colorado to name a new national monument, stopped for chicken quesadillas at a Los Angeles restaurant.  Which is worse? I’ll be darned if I know. Is espionage even that bad a thing? Also Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal from Trump in a classified records dispute that’s part of an espionage case focused on the former president. That sounds bad, but it begs other questions: Is espionage actually bad? Does it reflect poorly on Biden that he’s not the focus of an espionage case? More from Rex Huppke: A foreign spy’s view on Mar-a-Lago search affidavit: ‘You’re taking the fun out of spying’ Maybe espionage is a good thing. I don’t have the answers. And that makes it hard to see what separates Democrats and Republicans. Racism in 2022: Are we for or against? On the one hand, Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville recently went on a racist tirade, saying Black people are “the people who do the crime,” and in the week that followed, not a public word of condemnation bubbled up from the elected members of the Republican Party. On the other hand, leaked audio of three Democrats on the Los Angeles City Council engaged in a racist and crude conversation was met by immediate calls for their resignations from Democrats across the country, including President Biden. One council member, Nury Martinez, resigned Wednesday.  Is accepting flagrant racism in the year 2022 good, or is it better to emphatically reject it? You got me on that one. It’s a real head-scratcher. GOP must rebuke racist remarks: Kanye West, Tommy Tuberville and the antisemitic, racist weekend Tucker Carlson stuck with Kanye, but Democrats did not do that Adding to the confusion, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, arguably the most influential media figure in Republican circles, spent a good part of last week propping up rapper and Trump supporter Kanye West, then went quiet as a mouse after West tweeted he was “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” On the flip side, no influential media figure in Democratic circles did that, so…puh-tay-toe, puh-tah-toe, right? Supporting Alex Jones seems bad… On Wednesday, a jury ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay nearly $1 billion to eight families of Sandy Hook shooting victims who for years were mercilessly harassed by Jones and his followers over the baseless claim the shooting was a hoax. A sitting Republican congresswoman, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, came to Jones’ defense on Twitter, calling the verdict “a political persecution” and writing: “No matter what you think of Alex Jones all he did was speak words.” Alex Jones finally faces consequences: Hateful lies have to come with a cost. Charlie Kirk, head of the prominent Republican student organization Turning Point USA, also overlooked Jones’ years of verbal savagery, writing on Twitter that the verdict was about Democrats controlling speech: “This is about sending a message: If you upset the Regime, they will destroy you, completely and utterly, forever.” …but Biden was once nice to his son Defending Jones seems pretty horrendous, but earlier in the week, Fox News’ Sean Hannity aired a 2018 voicemail Biden left for his son, Hunter Biden, who was struggling with drug addiction. Biden said: “It’s Dad. I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world, pal. You gotta get some help. I know you don’t know what to do. I don’t either.” So members of one party were coddling a man whose rhetoric caused parents who lost children in a school shooting to suffer untold additional pain. BUT, the other party’s president was a kind and loving dad who tried to help his struggling son. A real toss-up there, if I’m being honest. It’s one of those “six of one, one-half-dozen of the other” situations. Republican Party needs a rebrand: If the GOP is ready to rebrand amid Trump’s woes, here are my ideas for a post-MAGA party Tricky to figure out the difference between Democrats and Republicans It’s clear voters have a tough choice in the midterms. Both parties have serious flaws, ranging from fully embracing racism and espionage to not doing either of those things.  How in the heck are voters supposed to know which one is best? More humor and satire from Rex Huppke: Lizzo plays James Madison’s crystal flute while racists play dog whistles Sen. Lindsey Graham mansplains abortion ban: ‘I picked 15 weeks.’ Got it, ladies? What Trump and his wannabes did in one weekend should scare us all. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk Read More…

Kyiv Is Hoping The Republican Party’s Better Angels Prevail In The U.S. Midterms https://digitalalabamanews.com/kyiv-is-hoping-the-republican-partys-better-angels-prevail-in-the-u-s-midterms/ Politics stops at the water’s edge, or it may have in 1947, when then-Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, first made the remark. But as partisan politics increasingly have bled into U.S. foreign policy in recent years, next month’s midterm elections have raised concerns about how the election could impact U.S. support for Ukraine as the war against Russia grinds into the winter. Republicans have been widely predicted to retake control of the House of Representatives, and the future of the Senate remains up in the air. Although there has been strong bipartisan support for Kyiv since the war began among mainstream Republicans, former U.S. President Donald Trump-aligned members as well as influential commentators on Fox News and other parts of the right-wing echo chamber have begun to question the degree of military aid provided by Washington. The decision to further arm Ukraine maps onto a deepening rift within the Republican Party between hawkish establishment conservatives, not shy of overseas intervention, and a growing chorus of isolationists who gained prominence during the Trump administration. Politics stops at the water’s edge, or it may have in 1947, when then-Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, first made the remark. But as partisan politics increasingly have bled into U.S. foreign policy in recent years, next month’s midterm elections have raised concerns about how the election could impact U.S. support for Ukraine as the war against Russia grinds into the winter. Republicans have been widely predicted to retake control of the House of Representatives, and the future of the Senate remains up in the air. Although there has been strong bipartisan support for Kyiv since the war began among mainstream Republicans, former U.S. President Donald Trump-aligned members as well as influential commentators on Fox News and other parts of the right-wing echo chamber have begun to question the degree of military aid provided by Washington. The decision to further arm Ukraine maps onto a deepening rift within the Republican Party between hawkish establishment conservatives, not shy of overseas intervention, and a growing chorus of isolationists who gained prominence during the Trump administration. “There are a lot of Republicans who are strongly behind Ukraine, who want the administration to do more,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee. There is, however, a creeping anxiety among Republicans, Democrats, and Ukrainians as to whether they could be overwhelmed by the vocal minority. In May, 57 Republican members of the House and 11 Republican senators voted against a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine while several members of the House Freedom Caucus, which represents some of the most extreme right-wing members, have spoken out explicitly against sending further aid to Ukraine. In August, members of the caucus co-sponsored a bill that called for no more federal funds to be sent to Ukraine until a wall is erected along the U.S. border with Mexico. “These voices that believe in America First isolationism dominate all of the major right-wing media,” said Melinda Haring, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “They’re the noisiest and the loudest, and they get the most attention.” Since the day Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, highly influential Fox News anchors—such as Tucker Carlson—have portrayed the war as a failing of the Biden administration, an effort to avenge Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. At times, Carlson has echoed Russian talking points about the war. Other conservative commentators dismissed the impact that Carlson and others had on the broader Republican Party. “Anytime you’re citing [Rep.] Matt Gaetz and Tucker Carlson, it sounds like there is an agenda behind it,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior foreign-policy and defense fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Pletka noted that senior Republicans across the House and Senate have all encouraged the administration to provide more aid to Ukraine. “I think a lot is overblown in terms of the effect of Fox News commentators,” said a Republican congressional aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter. The aide noted that Republican concerns about military aid have largely centered on bureaucratic fights over appropriations and the urge to get heavy weaponry into the hands of the Ukrainian military faster. In a speech on the Senate floor in late September, minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell urged the Biden administration to move faster in delivering weapons to Ukraine. “The other hesitancy about providing money to Ukraine is not as much to do with Ukraine itself but the Biden administration not doing the proper oversight and accountability of very large sums of money being given to a foreign partner,” the aide added. Others found little substance to the GOP’s critiques of the way the Biden administration has handled military aid to Ukraine. “Republican critiques of the Biden administration are nonsense on Ukraine. And I say that as a lifelong Republican and an Ukraine expert,” Haring said. But views from the fringes of the party have proven capable of moving into the mainstream in recent years, as evidenced by the party’s coalescence around claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. A majority of GOP candidates running for office in November have questioned or rejected the outcome of the vote. “That small group has certainly shown that they have a disproportionate influence on the direction that [House Minority Leader Rep.] Kevin McCarthy chooses,” Smith said. Opinion polls already show creeping fatigue among Republican voters for U.S. support for Ukraine, which could come to weigh on members. A Morning Consult poll released on Monday found only 32 percent of Republicans believe that the United States has a responsibility to protect and defend Ukraine from Russia, compared to 58 percent of Democrats. “I think it’s incumbent on mainstream Republicans to get out of Washington and New York and start talking to Americans,” Haring said. “We need to do better, and we need to explain why support for Ukraine is in the U.S. national interest.” Between January and October, Washington pledged $26.8 billion in military aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy’s Ukraine Support Tracker, several times that of the second-biggest donor, the United Kingdom. Any cutbacks to U.S. military aid to Kyiv could deal an existential blow to Ukraine. “People in Ukraine do believe that support for Ukraine is a bipartisan issue,” said Olena Tregub, secretary-general of NAKO, an independent defense anti-corruption commission in Ukraine. “Yet, of course, here in Ukraine, there is a strong reaction [to] some statements of Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson. These are really shocking statements for Ukrainians, and they are confused as to how Russian propaganda has penetrated the American Republican Party to such an extent,” she added. Read More…

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request Over Seized Documents https://digitalalabamanews.com/u-s-supreme-court-rejects-trump-request-over-seized-documents/ Oct 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to have an independent arbiter vet classified documents that were seized by the FBI from his Florida home as part of his legal battle against investigators probing his handling of sensitive government records. The justices in a brief order denied Trump’s Oct. 4 emergency request to lift a lower court’s decision that prevented the arbiter from reviewing more than 100 documents marked as classified that were among the roughly 11,000 records seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on Aug. 8. There were no publicly noted dissents by any of the nine justices to the decision, which came two days after the U.S. Justice Department urged them to deny Trump’s request and keep the classified documents out of the hands of the arbiter, known as a special master. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com The court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, who left office in January 2021. Federal officials obtained a court-approved warrant to search Trump’s residence in a Justice Department criminal investigation after suspecting that not all classified documents in his possession had been returned after his presidency ended. Investigators searched for evidence of potential crimes related to unlawfully retaining national defense information and obstructing a federal investigation. Trump has denied wrongdoing and has called the investigation politically motivated. Trump went to court on Aug. 22 in a bid to restrict Justice Department access to the documents as it pursues its criminal investigation. Former U.S. president Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, U.S., September 17, 2022. REUTERS/Gaelen Morse/File Photo U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last month agreed to Trump’s request to temporarily block the government from using the seized materials in its investigation until the special master determined if any could be deemed personal or subject to attorney-client confidentiality or executive privilege – a legal doctrine that shields some White House communications from disclosure – and thus off limits to investigators. Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, named retired U.S. Judge Raymond Dearie as the special master. Cannon later refused a Justice Department request to partially lift her order relating only to the documents bearing classified markings of confidential, secret or top secret, which the government argued was impeding an effort to mitigate national security risks from their possible unauthorized disclosure. Cannon said she could not accept that the documents were indeed classified without review by Dearie. The Justice Department appealed to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which then put on hold Cannon’s decisions related to the classified documents, an action that prevented Dearie from vetting them while letting the government resume its probe. The 11th Circuit noted the importance of limiting access to classified information and ensuring the department’s probe would not be harmed. The 11th Circuit also rejected any suggestion that Trump had declassified the documents – as the former president has claimed – saying there was “no evidence” of such action and that the argument was a “red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal.” The three statutes underpinning the search warrant used by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago make it a crime to mishandle government records, regardless of their classification status. The department’s investigation also seeks to determine who accessed classified materials, whether they were compromised and if any remain unaccounted for. Trump’s lawyers previously told the Supreme Court that Dearie should be able to vet the records and that the Justice Department has “attempted to criminalize a document management dispute and now vehemently objects to a transparent process that provides much-needed oversight.” Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More…

Tide Hoops To Host Charity Exhibition For Alberta Head Start Program https://digitalalabamanews.com/tide-hoops-to-host-charity-exhibition-for-alberta-head-start-program/ TUSCALOOSA, AL — The Alabama men’s basketball team will host Southern Illinois for a charity exhibition at Foster Auditorium later this month, with proceedings going to benefit Community Service Programs of West Alabama’s Alberta Head Start Program. Click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter and breaking news alerts. The exhibition game in set for Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. This will be the third meeting all-time between the two schools, who have not faced each other in men’s basketball since 2004. Find out what’s happening in Tuscaloosawith free, real-time updates from Patch. Alabama leads the series 2-0. UA pointed out on Friday that the NCAA previously approved schools to use one of its possible two exhibition games for the purposes of raising funds for a catastrophic event, COVID-19 relief efforts, and/or social justice initiatives. Find out what’s happening in Tuscaloosawith free, real-time updates from Patch. The regulation 40-minute game will be Alabama’s first contest of the year in the United States after the team’s foreign tour this summer, which saw the Crimson Tide win a game in Barcelona followed by a pair of victories in Paris. Freshman standout Brandon Miller led Alabama in scoring with 22 points a game. Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you’re interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com. Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts. The rules of replying: Be respectful. This is a space for friendly local discussions. No racist, discriminatory, vulgar or threatening language will be tolerated. Be transparent. Use your real name, and back up your claims. Keep it local and relevant. Make sure your replies stay on topic. Review the Patch Community Guidelines. Read More…

UK: Climate Protesters Throw Soup On Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' https://digitalalabamanews.com/uk-climate-protesters-throw-soup-on-van-goghs-sunflowers/ LONDON (AP) — Climate protesters threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery on Friday to protest fossil fuel extraction, but caused no damage to the glass-covered painting. The group Just Stop Oil, which wants the British government to halt new oil and gas projects, said activists dumped two cans of tomato soup over the oil painting, one of the Dutch artist’s most iconic works. The two protesters also glued themselves to the gallery wall. The soup splashed across the glass covering the painting and its gilded frame. The gallery said “there is some minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed.” It was cleaned and returned to its place in the gallery on Friday afternoon. The work is one of several versions of “Sunflowers” that Van Gogh painted in the late 1880s. London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested two people on suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass. “Specialist officers have now un-glued them and they have been taken into custody to a central London police station,” the force said in a statement. A group of protesters from the same group later gathered at police headquarters and sprayed yellow paint over the rotating “New Scotland Yard” sign in front of it. Several also glued themselves to the road, blocking traffic. Police said 24 people were arrested. Just Stop Oil has drawn attention, and criticism, for targeting artworks in museums. In July, Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to the frame of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” in the National Gallery. Activists have also blocked bridges and intersections across London during two weeks of protests. The wave of demonstrations comes as the British government opens a new licensing round for North Sea oil and gas exploration, despite criticism from environmentalists and scientists who say the move undermines the country’s commitment to fighting climate change. Read More…

2 Arrested In California, Charged With Capital Murder In Killing Of Beloved Birmingham Husband, Father, Jeweler https://digitalalabamanews.com/2-arrested-in-california-charged-with-capital-murder-in-killing-of-beloved-birmingham-husband-father-jeweler/ Birmingham Real-Time News Updated: Oct. 14, 2022, 11:56 a.m.| Published: Oct. 14, 2022, 11:46 a.m. Joshua Burns and Jayveon Fleming are charged with capital murder in the August 2022 killing of Cedric Mahaffey in Birmingham. (Birmingham Police Department) Two suspects have been charged in the August slaying of a beloved Birmingham husband, father and jeweler, and are in custody in California. Joshua Jermaine Burns, 20, and Jayveon Khiry Fleming, 18, are charged with capital murder in the August shooting death of 29-year-old Cedric Mahaffey, Birmingham police announced Friday. Both are from Birmingham. Mahaffey, known for his grill business – Golds by Ced – was found murdered Aug. 20 in a vacant southwest Birmingham house. Mahaffey’s vehicle was missing when his body was discovered. Police said the suspects stole Mahaffey’s sedan and drove it to Sunnyvale, California. They were taken into custody there by the Santa Clara Police Department after they reportedly tried to commit a robbery in California. The pair is being held at the Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas, Calif. Birmingham homicide detectives traveled to California where they met with the agencies who assisted in the arrest as well as conducted interviews with witnesses and both suspects. Officers from the city’s West Precinct responded at 8:42 p.m. that Saturday to a Shot Spotter alert of one round fired in the 500 block of Francis Place S.W. Cedric Mahaffey, 29, was shot to death Saturday, Aug. 20, 2022, in a vacant house in southwest Birmingham. (Contributed) Once on the scene, police were directed to Mahaffey in the front room of a house. He had sustained a gunshot wound and was pronounced dead on the scene by Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service. Police said a single gunshot was heard prior to the discovery of the victim. Authorities have not released a motive in the slaying, but his friends and family believe he was likely set up to be robbed. It was not uncommon for Mahaffey to go to his customers to take molds for their grills or deliver the final product. Mahaffey graduated from Wenonah High School and then attended Alabama State University, eventually going into the family business. He left behind his wife, Santana, and three children. Those who know Mahaffey said he was spiritual and a deep-thinker and was active in Urban Hope. Mahaffey, followed by more than 7,000 people on Facebook, often posted scripture, and important life messages about family, marriage, and parenting. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Supermarket Giants Kroger And Albertsons Plan $25 Billion Merger https://digitalalabamanews.com/supermarket-giants-kroger-and-albertsons-plan-25-billion-merger/ The deal, an effort to bulk up against deep-pocketed rivals Walmart and Amazon, is likely to invite serious antitrust scrutiny from regulators. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. The combined annual revenue of Kroger and Albertsons is close to Walmart’s grocery sales.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York Times Oct. 14, 2022Updated 12:25 p.m. ET The grocery giant Kroger announced plans on Friday to acquire Albertsons in a deal that could reshape the supermarket landscape in the United States, uniting the country’s largest supermarket chains at a time when rising costs and competition from Walmart and Amazon squeeze the industry. But the deal, which values Albertsons at about $24.6 billion including debt, is likely to invite intense scrutiny from regulators who are focused on the potential for large companies to affect prices, and have a history of blocking deals that may directly impact consumers. Even before the deal was announced Friday, consumer advocates had raised objections to its possibility. The deal would bring together chains including Ralphs, Safeway and Vons, among a handful of others. Kroger and Albertsons operate nearly 5,000 stores across the country, as well as pharmacies and gas stations. But their combined annual revenue of $209 billion last year falls short of Walmart’s annual grocery sales, of about $218 billion. Though Amazon is a smaller presence in the grocery business, it is also pressuring rivals as it reaches further into every corner of the retail market with its delivery services. Both grocers are coming off pandemic highs. Their sales soared as homebound customers stocked up on food, but inflation is now cutting into their profit margins, and customers have returned to dining out and spending less on groceries. At the same time, Amazon and Walmart have invested in the digital and delivery parts of their businesses and used their scale to keep prices lower. The deal will certainly face significant political and regulatory scrutiny, heightened by a global food security crisis that is compounded by significant inflation in food prices. Food prices in the United States rose more than 11 percent in September from a year earlier, as the cost of everything from fruits and vegetables to cereals and flour continued to rise. Lina Khan, who heads the Federal Trade Commission, which is expected to review the deal, has expressed deep concern about the impact of corporate consolidation. Kroger and Albertsons said they planned to sell stores to competitors, and would consider spinning off between 100 and 375 stores into a separate, stand-alone company. Analysts have pointed to a overlap between the two grocers, particularly on the West Coast, as a likely source of divestitures. For the Democrat-led agency to approved the deal, Kroger and Albertsons will need to convince its members that they create a viable competitor in parts of the country in which there is significant overlap. But past efforts to carve out stores to form a new competitor haven’t worked. In 2014, the retailer Haggen in Bellingham, Wash., bought more than 100 stores that Albertsons had sold to win approval for its $9 billion merger with Safeway. A year later, Haggen filed for bankruptcy and blamed Albertsons for the breakdown of its business. Albertsons later bought back 33 of those stores from the bankrupt company. “Part of the rationale for this deal is that we need to be bigger. Well, if you’re bigger and more significant, what does that mean to the markets where you’re dumping stores for some smaller guy who will not have the purchasing power that you claim you’re going to get from this deal?” said Bill Baer, who led the Justice Department’s antitrust division during the Obama administration. “Divestiture is always a bright idea for merging parties, and it’s not always a very good idea for consumers.,” he added. Albertsons shares fell on Friday, a sign that investors are skeptical that the deal will get past regulators. By late morning, the stock was trading below $27 a share, more than 21 percent below Kroger’s $34.10 a share offer price. In announcing the deal, Kroger also sought to ease concerns about the impact on consumers by saying that it expects to save about $500 million in costs, which it plans to use to “reduce prices for customers.” Whether it follows through with those plans will likely be a key focus for regulators. Though cost savings in acquisitions often come from layoffs, the grocers may also point to fact that their workforces are unionized as part of their discussions with regulators. The Biden administration has been a significant proponent of unions. Neither Walmart nor Amazon are unionized on a large scale. Consumer protection groups raised concerns about the deal following reports of a possible merger on Thursday. The American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit that promotes antitrust legislation, criticized it as a “bad deal for consumers, workers and communities.” “There is no reason to allow two of the biggest supermarket chains in the country to merge — especially with food prices already soaring,” Sarah Miller, the group’s executive, said in a statement on Thursday. As part of their pitch to regulators, Kroger and Albertsons will likely try to convince them that their scale is needed to compete against big box stores like Aldi, Lidl — two European chains that have been expanding quickly in the United States — and Costco, as well as Amazon. The agency, though, has not always allowed retailers to use Amazon as a boogeyman to help clear their deals. In 2015, the F.T.C. successfully sued to block a merger between the retailers Office Depot and Staples, even after they had positioned the deal as an effort to take on Amazon and lower prices. A review process would likely include the F.T.C. talking with consumer advocates, competitors, suppliers and others. Regulators will also look to whether Kroger has promised that past acquisitions would lower prices, and whether those promises came to fruition. A review may also include formal requests for information about the companies’ plans or testimony from executives. That could take months, and the process can drag on companies and their employees as they grapple with uncertainty. Kroger, based in Cincinnati and founded in 1883, operates 2,750 grocery stores across the United States under banners that include Ralphs, Dillons and Harris Teeter and has a market capitalization of about $32 billion. Albertsons, based in Boise, Idaho, and founded in 1939, runs 2,200 supermarkets under names like Albertsons, Safeway and Vons and has a market capitalization of roughly $15 billion. Kroger’s chairman and chief executive, Rodney McMullen, will remain in that role at the combined company, as will Kroger’s chief financial officer, Gary Millerchip. / Read More…

2 Palestinians Killed By Israel, Belonged To Armed Groups https://digitalalabamanews.com/2-palestinians-killed-by-israel-belonged-to-armed-groups/ By MAJDI MOHAMMED – Associated Press JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (AP) — Israel’s military on Friday carried out an arrest raid in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and killed two Palestinians in gun battles, according to Palestinian reports. It was the latest bloodshed in what has become the deadliest year in the territory since 2015. Palestinian militant groups claimed both slain men as members, though there were conflicting statements about the circumstances surrounding the death of one of them, a hospital doctor. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Dr. Abdullah al-Ahmed was on duty, attending to the wounded outside his hospital when he was shot. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the secular Fatah party, claimed he was a member. In a poster announcing his death, the group said he died “in an armed clash” with Israeli forces “defending the homeland.” The poster showed him posing with two assault rifles. The second man killed Friday in the Jenin refugee camp was identified by the militant group Islamic Jihad as a field commander. The camp is a stronghold of Islamic Jihad, a Fatah rival, and has been a frequent flash point for confrontations. Five people were wounded in the fighting, including two paramedics as an ambulance was caught in the crossfire, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, reported. Video showed an ambulance trapped in a narrow alley of the camp trying to retrieve a dead body as gunshots rang out. The Israeli army said it entered Jenin on Friday to arrest a wanted Hamas militant who had carried out recent attacks against Israeli security forces. Diaa Muhammad Yusef Salama, 24, was armed with an M-16 assault rifle as Israeli security forces apprehended him and two other suspects, it added. The raid set off a gunfight between soldiers and armed Palestinians. Photos showed smoke billowing from the camp after militants apparently detonated explosives. The army said it opened fire on the armed men and warned uninvolved residents that they were risking their lives by being in the area. At one point, a firefight erupted outside the local hospital, witnesses said. The doctor who worked in the licensing department was shot in the head as he left the building to tend to a wounded man in the hospital yard, said hospital director Wisam Bakr, adding he knew nothing about reports al-Ahmed belonged to a militant group. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, condemned Friday’s shootings as “extrajudicial killings.” “The Israeli government has crossed all the red lines,” he said. Also on Friday, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian houses in the village of Hawara in the northern West Bank, Wafa agency reported. Videos circulated online by witnesses showed settlers from a nearby Jewish settlement throwing rocks at a house in the village. Other videos showed Israeli soldiers scuffling with villagers who tried to protect the houses from the settlers. A day earlier, settlers from the nearby Yitzhar settlement rampaged through the village. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2015. The fighting has surged since a series of Palestinian attacks in the spring killed 19 people in Israel. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed. Israel says the raids are needed to dismantle militant networks at a time when Palestinian security forces are unable or unwilling to do so. The Palestinians say the raids undermine their security forces and are aimed at cementing Israel’s open-ended 55-year-old occupation of lands they want for their hoped-for state. Hundreds of Palestinians have been rounded up in such raids, with many placed in so-called administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold them without trial or charge. The tensions spilled over into east Jerusalem this week, as Israeli police fired live rounds, tear gas and stun grenades on Palestinians throwing stones and fireworks across several neighborhoods in the contested city. Two Israelis were hurt in the confrontations, Israeli police said on Friday, adding that security forces arrested 18 suspects on charges of disturbing public order. The police said they scaled up their presence at flashpoint areas across the city. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Read More…

Auburn Flips 4-Star OL From Michigan State https://digitalalabamanews.com/auburn-flips-4-star-ol-from-michigan-state/ Auburn Football Published: Oct. 14, 2022, 9:45 a.m. Clay Wedin, a 2023 four-star offensive lineman from Florida, poses with Michigan State coach Mel Tucker. (Photo used with permission from Josh Wedin)Photo used with permission from Josh Wedin Auburn found another piece of its 2023 recruiting class from the Big 10. Clay Wedin, a Florida offensive lineman who had committed to Michigan State, announced his flip to the Tigers on Friday. Wedin is a four-star from Carrollwood (Fla.) Day and the 383rd-ranked prospect in the country, per 247Sports Composite. He’s the 11th member of Auburn’s recruiting class and the third offensive lineman. Coaches Cadillac Williams, Joe Bernardi and Will Friend were the key relationship builders. Wedin was on the Plains for Auburn’s narrow loss to LSU, a follow-up from a trip in March. He saw enough on his latest trip to decommit from the Spartans on Oct. 10. “They don’t just talk to you, they’re talking to you with some energy,” Wedin told AL.com this past spring. ” … It’s not just (the same recruiting pitch) copy and paste say it a million times over.” Carrollwood Day went 7-3 last year with Wedin helping lead a run game that averaged 159.2 yards per game. He’s blocked for a top-10 running back in the 2024 class and Alabama target, Anthony ‘Scoota’ Carrie. Wedin is listed at 6-foot-6, 295-pounds and projects as an interior offensive lineman like the Tigers’ other two verbal pledges in that group, Gernorris Wilson and Bradyn Joiner. Auburn’s class is now ranked 48th nationally and 12th in the SEC. MORE Tigers recruiting: Watch as we break down Auburn’s DB commits. Do players pick school or coach? Auburn 2024 CB: ‘I didn’t commit to the coach, I committed to the school’ Nick Alvarez is a reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @nick_a_alvarez or email him at NAlvarez@al.com. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Jan-6-Merrick-Garland-Trump-Subpoena https://digitalalabamanews.com/jan-6-merrick-garland-trump-subpoena/ U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the swearing in for the new Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters at BOP headquarters on August 2, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein-Pool/Getty Images) This content comes from the latest installment of our weekly Breaking the Vote newsletter out of VICE News’ D.C. bureau, tracking the ongoing efforts to undermine the democratic process in America. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.  Now that the public part of the January 6 committee’s investigation of the coup attempt is (most likely?) done, the big question is, what will criminal prosecutors do about it? Right now, that question comes down to the judgment of two people: Fulton County (Georgia) DA Fani Willis and Attorney General Merrick Garland.  Franklin Foer, a staff writer at The Atlantic, interviewed a whole bunch of Garland’s friends, former clerks, and deputies, as well as Garland himself. He’s concluded that federal charges for former President Donald Trump are “inevitable.” I called up Foer to talk about it, and edited our conversation for length.  So you think that Merrick Garland is going to indict Donald Trump. What makes you say so? Merrick Garland changed over the summer. First, he’s been changed by the job. As attorney general, he’s seen the threats to democracy. And I think he’s become less of a consensus-minded hyper-institutionalist and more concerned with these existential threats. So I think he’s become a bit more willing to engage in a confrontational approach with the anti-democratic forces in the country. Secondly, there’s the Mar-a-Lago case, which is, I think, a fairly black-and-white one.  But is Merrick Garland no longer the incremental institutionalist we thought we knew? Is he a slash-and-burn prosecutor now? I don’t think so. While he may be more confrontational than he was 18 months ago, he is who he is. And he cares very much about institutions, including the DOJ. And I think he doesn’t like to see its integrity being impugned by its opponents. He doesn’t like to hear that its agents are planting evidence in people’s summer beach homes. And so I think that his institutionalism has been one of the things that has brought him along in the Mar-a-Lago case. We learned this week that Trump ordered a Mar-a-Lago employee to move boxes containing government documents that were later seized. What have you seen in the Mar-a-Lago case since the search that makes you think Garland has switched gears? It’s really so interesting, because this is the first time we’ve seen Garland and Trump going mano a mano. And Garland has been much feistier and aggressive than I think a lot of people credited him. It begins with the search itself, which is a very aggressive action. There was maybe a norm that you don’t storm the house of former presidents that we’ve gone past. Then at the press conference afterward, Garland basically said, “I’m going to take credit for doing this. This was my decision, and we’re gonna call out Trump’s bullshit.” Then came the filings, including the famous photo of documents on the floor. There’s just not a lot of deference. There’s almost a dismissiveness at times about the shoddy legal arguments that the Trump team is making. It’s really treating Trump as if he’s any other defendant making a bad case in court. So Garland has applied his dictum that no one is above the law, and he’s backed it up with action. How affected do you think Garland is by the attempt to entangle DOJ in the coup plot? The attempt to get DOJ to lie to the public about election results and investigations. I think it’s a big deal. But I think in his head these cases exist on separate tracks. The role of DOJ in the post-election coup is one case, January 6 and the rioting is a separate case. You have the false electors running in parallel and then you have Mar-a-Lago. And I really don’t think that in his head he’s intermingling these cases. What do you see in the Jan. 6 prosecution universe that makes you think Garland is getting tough to a point that it might rise to Trump? In my view, the January 6 prosecutions are much tougher for him. It will take more time to get to the point where he’s ready to indict in that case at a higher level. And I don’t think that’s terribly unusual for a prosecutor to take their time in a public corruption case, especially when you’re going after current and former elected officials. Those cases almost always go at a fairly plodding pace, and that’s just the culture of DOJ.  So when does all this have to happen given that America is one big election cycle now and Trump is guaranteed to use a prosecution for political advantage?   I think by late spring of next year, but I’m not saying Merrick Garland necessarily would think about it in this sort of way. Garland may not care that his case doesn’t come to fruition within this presidential term. He may just let the investigation plod ahead for however long until he has a strong case to prove. Trump and his allies are promising violence and chaos if he’s prosecuted. How do you think Garland weighs that as he thinks about the pros and cons of charging Trump?  I don’t actually know that it goes into his calculus. I think that it’s hard not to think about it because the threat is basically explicit at this point. Yes, there’s discretion involved, especially at this level. But my instinct is that when he says nobody is above the law, he means it. The prospect of right-wing violence is real, but there’s this other question, which is what happens to American democracy if you exempt somebody from the rule of law, or if you don’t punish these blatant crimes because you’re afraid of violence? My sense is he’s not going to bend to the threat. Mother-of-all T.W.I.S. Notes This Week in Subpoenas doesn’t usually get an enchilada this spicy. You’ve probably heard by now that the January 6 committee dropped the gavel by authorizing a subpoena of the man at the center of their investigation: Donald Trump. If you haven’t heard, please shoot me your life coach’s contact info.  Trump will do his best to bend this to his advantage while doing all he can to delay it. This legislative committee has no real enforcement power, so it could be the ideal place for Trump to ridicule and debase his critics in front of an irresistibly massive TV audience.  On the other hand, he would have to do that under oath. And in Florida, Fulton County, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., criminal prosecutors will be watching. To wit: Just two months ago Trump talked a big game about how a “racist” New York AG was out to get him with fake accusations against his business. And by the time Leticia James got him under oath, Trump opted not to repeat that stuff, and instead used Fifth Amendment protection to avoid incriminating himself. More than 440 times.    Trump’s lawyers will be the ones in charge of not letting him step on any legal rakes here. It’s no small task. As my colleague Greg Walters points out, in times like this it pays to remember the worlds of one-time Trump attorney John Dowd, who struggled to represent Trump through the Mueller investigation. Dowd told Bob Woodward, in the book Fear, that he didn’t think Trump was guilty of obstruction or collusion with the Russians. The problem, the lawyer says on page 357, is that Donald Trump “is a fucking liar.” – Hutch you talkin’ bout, Willis Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis has a new witness in her criminal investigation of the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Cassidy Hutchinson, the aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, is cooperating in Willis’ grand jury. Hutchinson famously told the January 6 committee all about how Donald Trump knew the Capitol crowd was armed; how everyone around Trump watched him refuse to act as the rioters inflicted mayhem in his name; and how multiple members of Congress sought pardons for participating in the coup plot. As such, she’s likely to be able to answer questions about what Meadows, Trump, or other White House officials said or did around Trump’s bid to steal Georgia. Reminder that Willis has said she could start charging people as early as December.  Next of Kinzinger One thing you can say for the people engineering America’s anti-democratic lurch is that they make their intentions plain. Take Jim Marchant, the QAnon-jangled GOP candidate for Nevada secretary of state. Marchant made it clear at Trump’s rally earlier this week that he’s running in 2022 to hand 2024 to the former president.  Enter Republican January 6 committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who this week endorsed a slate of pro-democracy Republicans, indys, and Dems—including Marchant’s opponent Cisco Aguilar. Kinzinger also endorsed Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, in their governor’s races against anti-democratic Trumpists. Cuffing season An Iowa man was arrested and charged for threatening two Arizona election officials just days after the end of the partisan Cyber Ninjas election review. Mark A. Rissi, of Hiawatha, Iowa, could get up to 12 years for allegedly leaving threatening voicemails for a Republican, Trump-supporting Maricopa County supervisor and also for an employee of Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Lane ends, purge now Early voting has started in the 2022 midterms, and so have systematic efforts to suppress voting through purges. This week in Georgia, the Cobb County Board of Elections rejected a challenge to 1,350 voters whose registrations were missing dorm room numbers or names. It’s happening all over the country. But in Georgia the purge attempts are pouring in by the tens of thousands, thanks to new GOP-installed rules allowing any voter to challenge unlimited numbers of registrations in any county.  Anon is sad  The creator of one the internet’s most notori...

Trump Trashes Jan. 6 Committee As ‘witch Hunt’ But Won’t Say If He’ll Testify https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-trashes-jan-6-committee-as-witch-hunt-but-wont-say-if-hell-testify/ Former President Donald Trump slammed the House Jan. 6 committee as a “witch hunt” on Friday but did not say if he would comply with a subpoena for his testimony. A day after the committee ordered Trump to testify under oath, Trump issued a rambling statement denouncing the panel as an unfair Democratic plot to damage him politically. On his social media outlet, the twice-impeached ex-president blasted members for not asking him earlier and called the panel “a total BUST.” FILE – Then-President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to speak at a rally in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) “The Unselect Committee has perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before,” Trump said in the four-page letter addressed to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s chairman. “It is a Witch Hunt of the highest level.” Trump accused the committee of ignoring his bogus claims of vote fraud and his outlandish accusations that someone else other than him should have acted to defend the Capitol against the violent mob of his supporters. “You have not gone after the people that created the Fraud, but rather great American Patriots who questioned it,” Trump wrote. “These people have had their lives ruined as your Committee sits back and basks in the glow.” [ Trump’s troubles worsen: 6 legal landmines facing the ex-president ] In the committee’s 10th public session on Thursday, just weeks before the congressional midterm elections, the panel summed up Trump’s “staggering betrayal” of his oath of office, as Thompson put it, describing the then-president’s unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. While the effort to subpoena Trump may languish, more a nod to history than an effective summons, the committee has made clear it is considering whether to send its findings in a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Under committee rules, the Jan. 6 panel is to produce a report of its findings, likely in December. The committee will dissolve 30 days after publication of that report, and with the new Congress in January. Read More…

Good Morning, News: Wheeler's Homeless Internment Camps, “Dark Brandon” Arrives, And Trump Flirts With Appearing Before Jan. 6 Panel 🍿 https://digitalalabamanews.com/good-morning-news-wheelers-homeless-internment-camps-dark-brandon-arrives-and-trump-flirts-with-appearing-before-jan-6-panel-%f0%9f%8d%bf/ The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support! GOOD AFTERNOON, PORTLAND! Don’t pack away that thong just yet! Expect sunny skies with record-breaking October highs in the mid-80s this weekend. And now, here’s your daily NEWS thong. IN LOCAL NEWS: • PREPARE THYSELF, INFIDEL, FOR THE IMMINENT ARRIVAL OF “DARK BRANDON! Translated for non-Trumpers: President Biden returns to Oregon today to attend a volunteer event with Democrats, pop by a reception for gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek on Saturday, and deliver a speech in Portland! DO NOT CAST YOUR EYES UPON HIM, FOOLS, LEST HE SMITE YOU WITH THE ALMIGHTY SWORD OF ANTIFA! Service Disruption Reminder President Joe Biden will be in Portland today and Saturday. MAX and bus service will be disrupted in Downtown Portland today through as late as 6 p.m. Saturday, due to security surrounding his visit. — TriMet (@trimet) October 14, 2022 • According to a report from the WW, Mayor Wheeler is prepping to launch a plan that would criminalize unsanctioned camping across the city and force them into three large internment camps (which he’s blithely calling “campuses”)—despite the fact that houseless folk have different needs that for many could make living there impossible. Reminder to those rich people in the back: BEING HOMELESS IS NOT A CRIME. And to the rest of us: So many of us Portlanders are just one major medical bill away from being homeless ourselves. Hope you like “campus living!”  We call this the Sam Adams long game: https://t.co/NMviEnka1z — Alex Zielinski (@alex_zee) October 14, 2022 • Following the tragic crash that killed a popular Portland chef cyclist on SE Powell & 26th, hundreds of green-clad protesters created a human barricade to protect the bike lane on this dangerous street, calling on transportation agencies to reinstall the green bike boxes at the intersection. Our Isabella Garcia was there and files this report. • BIG NEWS: Multnomah County Deputy District Attorneys will now consider immigration consequences when prosecuting noncitizens in an effort to avoid deportation when possible, according to District Attorney Mike Schmidt. In a nutshell, this means if an American citizen and a noncitizen get a traffic ticket, both will be required to pay a fine, and neither will lose their family. The latest COVID-19 vaccine booster shots are now available for children between 5 and 11 years old in Oregon. https://t.co/Mbb3ZgJ3hP — Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury) October 13, 2022 • Hey Brainy Pants! See how you score on this week’s challenging and hilarious POP QUIZ PDX! This week: the latest sports scandals, local rich villains, and… you asked for it, and got it… MONKEY TRIVIA.   • You won’t wanna miss the special one-night only screening of HUMP! 2022 on the big screen at Revolution Hall on Wednesday, October 26! Featuring the hottest (and sometimes hilarious) short flicks from horn-dogs just like YOU, it’s the sexiest event of the fall! IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS: • Remember the January 6 committee? Well, they returned with a BANG yesterday, showing alarming new footage of Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders desperately trying to regain control over the nation’s capitol as domestic terrorists were swarming the building. The panel also voted UNANIMOUSLY to subpoena Donald Trump  in order to answer questions before the committee—but get this! Some reports are saying that Trump is actually considering it—if he can do it LIVE in a public forum… an idea that is sending chills up his advisors’ spines. Pelosi’s response to hearing Trump might march to the Capitol is definitely worth watching pic.twitter.com/wpUlvKoqwT — Acyn (@Acyn) October 14, 2022 • Grocery giant Kroger is planning on buying its rival Albertsons for $24.6 billion which would make it one of the biggest grocery chains in the country. • In yet another loss for Trump, the Supreme Court (including the members he bought and paid for) flatly refused to intervene in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, in which Trump wanted stop a special master from reviewing the stuff he stole from the White House. Climate protesters threw cans of tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London. The gallery said the work was unharmed aside from “some minor damage to the frame.”https://t.co/Tsl6Kaeso0 pic.twitter.com/2at4dlqFtk — The New York Times (@nytimes) October 14, 2022 • The world’s biggest billionaire baby, Elon Musk, is threatening to yank Ukraine’s Starlink internet service—a crucial tool in the country’s war with Russia—because a Ukrainian diplomat told him to “fuck off.” (Hey Elon! My neighbor told you to “fuck off” as well! Better take away his Tesla.) • And finally… sorry if any of this news stressed you out! BETTER WATCH THIS: Watching this certainly reduced my stress levels! It’s the hands! pic.twitter.com/JRzZ2L4Xg9 — Dr Amir Khan GP (@DrAmirKhanGP) October 13, 2022 Read More…

40 Years Ago: 'Kung Fu' Helps Start A Cultural Movement https://digitalalabamanews.com/40-years-ago-kung-fu-helps-start-a-cultural-movement/ Martial arts fever would eventually grip American culture, but in 1972 the trend was still in its infancy. There was no MMA, and no John Wick-style heroes who seem to be trained in every style of hand-to-hand combat there is. The Karate Kid wouldn’t be made for another 12 years, and the legendary Bruce Lee was only just making his debut on American movie screens with Fists of Fury and Way of the Dragon. Then came Kung Fu, perhaps the most influential television show in the history of American martial arts. ABC premiered the series on Oct. 14, 1972, following a made-for-TV film called The Way of the Tiger, The Sign of the Dragon from the previous February. Written by Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander, and directed by Jerry Thorpe, the movie told the story of a man named Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine). Caine is the son of an American father and a Chinese mother who was orphaned at a young age and then raised in a Shaolin Monastery, where he learned the mystical arts of Kung Fu. After killing the nephew of the Emperor of China after he murdered Caine’s master, Caine flees to the American west in the 1870s. The film was so popular that ABC immediately made plans to turn it into a series, and Kung Fu began production that summer under the direction of writer Herman Miller. By that point, the show was already dealing with controversy. There were rumors that ABC had stolen the idea from a screenplay Bruce Lee had pitched to them called The Warrior, about a Chinese Kung Fu master traveling around the American west. This idea had so much momentum that it almost instantly became become a commonly believed urban legend. (The truth is that Spielman and Friedlander had been working on the idea for the script since 1967.) Watch the Opening of ‘Kung Fu’ The casting of Carradine had also been a controversial choice. Several Asian actors auditioned for the part, including Bruce Lee and George Takei. (Lee had been rejected, it was claimed, because of his accent.) Carradine was chosen, however, despite having no martial arts experience. The Association of Asian Pacific American Artists actor group filed a complaint, and the show has frequently been cited in the intervening years as an “example of whitewashing,” or having Caucasian actors appear in roles as people of other races. Carradine noted in a 2009 interview with NPR that both his eyes and skin tone were altered by make-up artists on the show to make him look more Asian. These things did nothing to stop Kung Fu from becoming immensely popular. In each episode, Caine would journey through the Old West and encounter an injustice to be stopped and people to be helped, and would use his martial arts abilities to do so. There were also numerous flashbacks to his youth in the Shaolin Temple, and the lessons learned from Master Po (Keye Luke) and Master Chen Ming Kan (Philip Ahn). Po gave Caine the nickname “Grasshopper,” which became one of the show’s pop culture taglines. The fight scenes in Kung Fu are pretty tame to modern eyes, and Carradine told NPR that government regulations placed strict limits on the number of minutes in each episode that could be devoted to showing violence. Still, filming could be physically hazardous work. “I have broken or dislocated virtually every finger and every toe that I have,” he said. “I’ve crushed my ribs. I’ve smashed my shoulder. I’ve destroyed a ligament in the knee. I could go on.” At the same time, all of this action wasn’t random. Samuel L. Jackson‘s character in Pulp Fiction memorably says he intends to emulate Caine and “walk from place to place, meet people, get into adventures” – but he’s only half right. Caine was indeed wandering around getting into adventures, but he was also looking for the American side of his family – and in particular his half-brother, Danny Caine. Watch a Fight Scene From ‘Kung Fu’ Unlike the vast majority of episodic shows, Kung Fu finished out its plot line. There have long been rumors that Carradine quit the show after only three seasons because of on-set injuries. But he always maintained in interviews that he left because the show never lived up to his expectations about what it could be, and that he wanted to pursue a big-screen career. In any case, the producers knew they could never replace Carradine, so they made sure that the third season ended properly: Caine finally locates his brother Danny, and his nephew Zeke. Despite the surrounding controversy and its limited run, Kung Fu became one of the most influential shows of the ’70s. Its lasting popularity was such that Carradine returned to the part in 1986 for Kung Fu: The Movie on CBS. The following year, a feature-length pilot called Kung Fu: The Next Generation aired on CBS, starring Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son. Carradine then played Caine as the grandfather of a new protagonist in Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, which aired in syndication from 1993-97. The CW channel rebooted the show yet again in 2021, and there have been rumors about a feature film in the works for nearly a decade. Beyond all of this, there are the legions of martial arts shows and martial-arts-trained heroes that have appeared on screen over the ensuing decades. Bruce Lee deserves his share of acclaim for this, as do people like Chuck Norris, John Woo and Jackie Chan, but no small part of the credit also has to go to David Carradine and Kung Fu. 28 Classic Films That Were Turned Into (Mostly Failed) TV Shows Many classic ’70s and ’80s flicks have spawned TV series – but few have found success.  Read More…

Social Security COLA 2023, Live Online Today: Increase, Benefits And Adjustment | SSA Latest News https://digitalalabamanews.com/social-security-cola-2023-live-online-today-increase-benefits-and-adjustment-ssa-latest-news/ Update: October 14th, 2022 11:28 EDT SOCIAL SECURITY How can you check your COLA notice online and when will I see the increase in my Social Security checks? The Social Security Administration announces annually its cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to benefits so that they keep pace with inflation. With prices rising at a clip not seen in four decades many beneficiaries will be anxious to see what the boost to their monthly checks will be in 2023. While the agency mails out letters throughout the month of December, but they request not to contact them until January, the first month when beneficiaries will see payments with the higher amount, as the notice could take time to reach you. However, you may not need to wait for the mail to know how much your payments will increase based on the 2023 COLA. Most beneficiaries can access the notice online. Only three COLAs have been bigger than 2023’s Since it was first implemented in 1975, the Social Security Administrations’s cost-of-living adjustment has only been larger than in 2023 on three occasions, all over 40 years ago. In 1979, it was 9.9 percent; in 1980, a record 14.3; and in 1981, it was 11.2. You can take a look at each year’s COLA on the SSA website. MEDICARE PREMIUMS Medicare Premiums Part A: How much will it cost and what will be the impact of COLA 2023 on it? The Social Security Administration announced its fourth largest COLA increase since they began in 1975 increasing the average amount that a beneficiary receives each month by over $140. While inflation is still taking a bite out of household finances, Medicare premiums in general are set to decrease next year. While the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries do not have to pay any premiums for Part A coverage, one of four parts of the government subsidized healthcare program, those that are required to pay will see a slight increase in 2023 to buy into this portion of Medicare. Deductibles and coinsurance amounts will also rise somewhat next year. Here’s a rundown the costs you can expect. 2023 COLA based on CPI-W beats inflation for index based on elederly spending habits There has been a push to change the way that the annual automatic increase, if any, is calculated through the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). The Social Security Administration currently uses the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). This broad basket of goods and services that consumers spend their money on is said not to reflect properly what seniors are spending their money on and causing retirees to lose purchasing power.  There have been calls for the Consumer Price Index for Americans 62 years of age and older (CPI-E) to be used instead. While the data hasn’t been published yet, the 8.7 percent COLA announced Tuesday beat the August-to-August CPI-E by a full percentage point according to Jaime Hopkins from the Carson Group. Despite record 8.7% COLA for 2023, “Still more work to do to help seniors” The Social Security Administration announced a historic 8.7 percent COLA increase for benefits in 2023. The extra money each month will help recipients cope with inflation to a degree when it arrives with January’s payments. However, there are concerns that more needs to be done especially in the case of seniors to make the COLA more responsive to the expenses they face that aren’t used in the current calculation. The current COLA uses inflation figures from the CPI-W, a broad basket of consumer goods and services. There are calls to use the CPI-E which targets goods and services that “would more accurately measure spending patterns of seniors.” The Senior Citizens League reported recently that since the early 2000s, those on Social Security have lost forty percent of their purchasing power. Without SSA COLA beneficiaries would lose purchasing power Prices continually rise over time but Social Security benefits didn’t always adjust to the increased cost of living recipients faced on a daily basis. Prior to 1975 it took an Act of Congress to give benefits a boost. Since then monthly checks paid out by the Social Security Administration have been adjusted automatically each year to reflect general inflation being experienced by consumers for goods and services. Social Security Administration announces historic 8.7% COLA 2023 increase The Social Security Administration has announced a nearly 9% cost-of-living adjustment, the biggest increase since 1981, affecting the benefits received by over 70m Americans. Welcome to AS USA 2023 COLA increase updates Hello and welcome to AS USA’s live blog on the 2023 Social Security COLA increase for Friday, 14 October.  The Social Security Adminstration announced the 2023 Cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for social security benefits, for programs like Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance. Other government pension and benefits programs will also be affected by the 8.7% increase. The COLA offered for next year is historic in size after inflation has plagued markets for basic commodities consumed by most households, including food, shelter, utilities, and gasoline.   Tagged in: Seguridad Social Inflación Estados Unidos Pensión jubilación Ayuda económica Read More…

Hail Or Fail: Al Michaels Says NFL Would Love For Daniel Snyder To Sell Commanders https://digitalalabamanews.com/hail-or-fail-al-michaels-says-nfl-would-love-for-daniel-snyder-to-sell-commanders/ A look at the good (Hail!) and bad (Fail!) from the Washington Commanders’ 12-7 win over the Chicago Bears on Thursday. Hail: Al Michaels In the wake of an ESPN report Thursday that Daniel Snyder has told his inner circle about the private investigators he has hired to gather dirt on fellow team owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Amazon Prime play-by-play man Al Michaels addressed the ongoing controversy surrounding the Commanders co-owner, who is under investigation by five entities. He was quite frank. “Just my feeling, I think what the league would love is for Snyder to sell the team,” the legendary Michaels, who is as plugged in with the NFL as any broadcaster, said as cameras showed Snyder with team president Jason Wright in a suite at Soldier Field. “Not have to go to a vote, but just sell the team. Because it’s become a major problem around the league, obviously. And we’ll see what happens. I think it’s got a long way to go, and Dan is very well known for digging his heels into the ground.” On the pregame show, reporter Michael Smith said he talked to a high-ranking league official who told him it was “50-50 that Snyder survives these scandals.” Chants of “Sell the team!” could be heard during Amazon Prime’s on-field postgame show. Hail: Goal-line defense Three times the Bears advanced at least as far as the Washington 5-yard line, and three times the home team came away without points. That’s how the Commanders managed to end their four-game losing streak despite being outgained by 178 yards by one of the worst offensive teams in the league. In the first half, Washington intercepted Justin Fields on a pass headed for the end zone and stopped running back Khalil Herbert for no gain on a fourth-and-goal run from the 1. With Chicago driving for the potential game-winning score in the final minute, the Commanders kept the Bears out of the end zone on four consecutive plays from inside the 5, and they sealed the win when cornerback Benjamin St-Juste tackled wide receiver Darnell Mooney inches short of the goal line on a fourth-down catch. Fail: Drops Wide receiver Curtis Samuel had 22 catches and two touchdowns over Washington’s first three games. He has 12 catches and hasn’t scored in three games since, including two grabs for six yards against the Bears. On the Commanders’ final drive of the first half, Samuel dropped what should have been a 40-yard touchdown and another pass that should have been a first down within the span of four plays. Hail: Carson Wentz, bulldozer With little time to throw and his receivers letting him down when he did, Wentz failed to eclipse 100 yards passing for only the third time in his career. He also played his first turnover-free game with Washington, improved to 7-0 on “Thursday Night Football” and threw a vicious block on a run by Brian Robinson Jr. for the second consecutive week. On the first play after the Bears muffed a punt midway through the fourth quarter, Wentz leveled all-pro linebacker Roquan Smith, springing Robinson for a five-yard gain. The rookie running back scored the go-ahead touchdown on the next play. “It’s not planned by any means, but especially when you’re down there by the goal line, and it was an ugly game, I’m going to do anything I can to help this team get in the end zone,” said Wentz, who was hampered by a hand injury he suffered in the second quarter on top of the biceps tendon strain he suffered Sunday. “That was fun, I guess. Hopefully I’m not making a living doing it.” Fail: The wrong number of men It’s Week 6. Washington has an experienced defensive coordinator in Jack Del Rio. At the very least, the Commanders should have the correct number of players on the field when they’re missing tackles, blowing assignments and giving up explosive plays. Twice Thursday, Washington was penalized for having 12 men on the field, which is one too many. Embarrassingly, one of those instances resulted in the Commanders allowing a 40-yard touchdown pass to Dante Pettis. Equally inexcusable, Washington had only 10 men on the field on one play during Chicago’s final drive. Fail: ‘Freshman’ teams Despite combining for two touchdowns, Chicago and Washington managed to play a lower-scoring game and a less appealing brand of football than what viewers were subjected to last Thursday, when the Indianapolis Colts defeated the Denver Broncos, 12-9 in overtime, in a contest that featured nothing but field goals. “I’ve been on these types of teams,” Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez said on the pregame show. “They’re the JV teams of the NFL. But there’s a silver lining to that, folks. I think we’re going to have a good football game.” Gonzalez, who was the leading receiver on the 2008 Kansas City Chiefs team that finished 2-14, amended his take at halftime with Washington leading 3-0. “This might be the freshman team,” he said. “This is not good football.” Hail: Takeaways Washington came into the game with one takeaway through five weeks and the second-worst turnover differential in the league. Jonathan Allen ended Chicago’s second possession inside the Washington 10-yard line when he intercepted a pass that deflected off fellow defensive lineman Efe Obada’s helmet. Commanders rookie Christian Holmes pounced on a muffed punt by Chicago’s Velus Jones Jr. with eight minutes remaining, setting up the Robinson touchdown run that proved to be the difference in the game. Fail: Ron Rivera’s challenge flag usage It’s been a rough season for the Commanders’ third-year coach in the replay challenge department. In last month’s loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, he didn’t throw his challenge flag fast enough to contest a catch that appeared to be incomplete. In last week’s loss to the Tennessee Titans, he sacrificed a timeout on Washington’s final drive by challenging a play that had little chance of being overturned. On Thursday, Rivera may have goofed again when he decided not to challenge a third-quarter catch by Mooney that appeared to hit the ground. Rather than facing third and long, Mooney’s catch set up third and short. David Montgomery ran for a first down on the next play, and the drive resulted in a touchdown. Read More…