Alabama News

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Deadly Christmas Eve shooting in Hoover is city’s first homicide in 2 years

A Christmas Eve shooting in Hoover left one man dead in the city’s first homicide in more than two years.

Hoover police at 10:59 p.m. Tuesday responded to a 911 call at an apartment in the 2200 block of Rime Village Drive.

Lt. Daniel Lowe said officers found a 35-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound.

Police and firefighters attempted life-saving measures, but the man was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at UAB Hospital.

Lowe said a 29-year-old male suspect, an acquaintance of the victim, was detained at the scene.

Detectives believe the suspect and victim got into a physical fight inside the apartment. The suspect then fired his gun, striking the victim multiple times.

A motive has not been disclosed.

The victim’s name is being withheld pending notification of his family.

Detectives will present the evidence to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges.

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Target has exclusive new Stanley Quenchers in Gumdrop Green and Popsicle Pink

Celebrate the new year with some of the hottest drinkware around.

Target has Stanley 30 oz. Stainless Steel Quencher Pro Tour Tumbler in two super-hot colors – Gumdrop Green and Popsicle Pink. The bright, cheery colors are new to Target and bring to mind a certain wickedly popular movie. The tumblers are $35.

Available just in time for the new year, the Quenchers are only available at Target. The ProTour Quencher features the new leakproof design with straw lid that you can use on all your others 30 oz. Quenchers as well.

Both have the excellent Stanley performance, keeping drinks cold for up to 9 hours and iced for up to 40, thanks to the double-wall vacuum insulation. The Quenchers also have a textured comfort-grip handle and are car cupholder compatible.

You can order yours here.

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Nordstrom has popular Dr. Martens booties on sale for 35% off

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Pope’s Christmas message: ‘silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions’

By Silvia Stellaci and Colleen Barry, The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis in his traditional Christmas message on Wednesday urged “all people of all nations” to find courage during this Holy Year “to silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions” plaguing the world, from the Middle East to Ukraine, Africa to Asia.

The pontiff’s “Urbi et Orbi” — “To the City and the World” — address serves as a summary of the woes facing the world this year. As Christmas coincided with the start of the 2025 Holy Year celebration that he dedicated to hope, Francis called for broad reconciliation, “even (with) our enemies.”

“I invite every individual, and all people of all nations … to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sounds of arms and overcome divisions,’’ the pope said from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to throngs of people below.

The pope invoked the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, which he opened on Christmas Eve to launch the 2025 Jubilee, as representing God’s mercy, which “unties every knot; it tears down every wall of division; it dispels hatred and the spirit of revenge.”

He called for arms to be silenced in war-torn Ukraine and in the Middle East, singling out Christian communities in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “particularly in Gaza where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave,” as well as Lebanon and Syria “at this most delicate time.”

Francis repeated his calls for the release of hostages taken from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

He cited a deadly outbreak of measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the suffering of the people of Myanmar, forced to flee their homes by “the ongoing clash of arms.” The pope likewise remembered children suffering from war and hunger, the elderly living in solitude, those fleeing their homelands, who have lost their jobs, and are persecuted for their faith.

Pilgrims were lined up on Christmas Day to walk through the great Holy Door at the entrance of St. Peter’s Basilica, as the Jubilee is expected to bring some 32 million Catholic faithful to Rome.

Traversing the Holy Door is one way that the faithful can obtain indulgences, or forgiveness for sins during a Jubilee, a once-every-quarter-century tradition that dates from 1300.

Pilgrims submitted to security controls before entering the Holy Door, amid new security fears following a deadly Christmas market attack in Germany. Many paused to touch the door as they passed and made the sign of the cross upon entering the basilica dedicated to St. Peter, the founder of the Roman Catholic Church.

“You feel so humble when you go through the door that once you go through is almost like a release, a release of emotions,’’ said Blanca Martin, a pilgrim from San Diego. “… It’s almost like a release of emotions, you feel like now you are able to let go and put everything in the hands of God. See I am getting emotional. It’s just a beautiful experience.”

A Chrismukkah miracle as Hanukkah and Christmas coincide

Hanukkah, Judaism’s eight-day Festival of Lights, begins this year on Christmas Day, which has only happened four times since 1900.

The calendar confluence has inspired some religious leaders to host interfaith gatherings, such as a Hanukkah party hosted last week by several Jewish organizations in Houston, Texas, bringing together members of the city’s Latino and Jewish communities for latkes, the traditional potato pancake eaten on Hanukkah, topped with guacamole and salsa.

While Hanukkah is intended as an upbeat, celebratory holiday, rabbis note that it’s taking place this year as wars rage in the Middle East and fears rise over widespread incidents of antisemitism. The holidays overlap infrequently because the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles and is not in sync with the Gregorian calendar, which sets Christmas on Dec. 25. The last time Hanukkah began on Christmas Day was in 2005.

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Goodman: Tis’ the season for SEC snowflakes

Ho-Ho-Ho, Merry Christmas and happy first night of Chanukah, my fellow sports donks and filthy college-football animals. Tis’ the season for a frosty mailbag. Some might call our unbridled love of sports a sickness. We call it sports donkery. Fire up the sleigh and let’s ride …

Robert in Stapleton, Ala., writes …

Well another college football season is about done, and it was certainly fun, in no small part to your columns. Just a quick note to wish you and yours a Blessed Christmas season and Happy New Year!! Oh, and if you could tone down the bro-mance with Freeze you’re having of late, that would be greatly appreciated. ALL THE BEST in the coming year!

Mac in Hurghada, Egypt, writes …

Yes, Freeze has been active and it appears successful in the portal, from quarterbacks to running backs to offensive linemen, to receivers and even some in the defensive line. But he’s faced with some staff vacancies to fill too.

While an improvement in personnel is always good, I want just as much to see his offense and play calling to progress as well and not be so stuck in trying to establish his RPO offense and play calling as the only way to go. Having him adapt to his personnel, rather than stick them into his “system.”

Another issue for me is his game management, which was clearly lacking in several games this year. Most noticeably for me, at the end of the first half against Alabama.

ANSWER: Any bro-mance with Auburn coach Hugh Freeze will end very quickly if the Tigers open the season with a loss in Waco, Texas, against the Baylor Bears. But, for now, I’m loving this team that Freeze and his staffers are putting together.

Quarterback transfer Jackson Arnold is from Atlanta, so he’s going to feel right at home at Auburn. Freeze is giving Arnold every resource to lead the Tigers to the College Football Playoff, including a bulked-up offensive line that should be one of the best units in the SEC.

At receiver, Auburn is absolutely loaded. What’s the best way to utilize all that talent? That’s what Freeze will be figuring out ahead of spring practice. Since Auburn didn’t make a bowl game, Freeze has plenty of time on his hands.

I’m not going to pretend like I know more about offensive strategy than Freeze, but if Arnold can connect with his receivers 70 percent of the time then that should give the Tigers a chance to win every game. Last season, Freeze said his team’s strength was the rushing attack, but he made a point at SEC Media Days to note that running the ball doesn’t work if the quarterback can’t keep defenses honest.

It took a while for Freeze, quarterback Payton Thorne and running back Jarquez Hunter to find something that worked in 2024. When they finally figured things out (and I’m talking about that one game against Texas A&M), it was too late. Another slow offensive start in 2025 will be catastrophic for the image that Freeze is hoping to build for the future. Look at the schedule. Auburn’s first three games against Power 5 opponents are on the road: at Baylor, at Oklahoma and at Texas A&M.

Freeze is building a team that can hit teams fast and hard. He’s going to need it.

Jim in Columbus, Ohio, writes …

You have to admit that was clever and at least the kid knows some history. Sherman was born about 30 miles from Columbus, where a junior high school bears his name. More teams in the playoff? No thanks. Three from the SEC and/or B1G is plenty.

Clayt in King Ferry, N.Y., writes …

Ask yourself, ‘Why does everyone down South mock the Big Ten?”

Pull your biased, Alabama-homer head out of your [you-know-where] long enough to develop a broader outlook, then write some intelligent articles. You sound like a ‘woke snowflake’ crying about SEC football.

With the continued effect of NIL, regional differences will disappear, to wit, Ohio State having bought several SEC players. It’s morphing into a battle of the ‘brands’ regardless of location. And, before you dismiss me as a ‘northerner,’ know that I’m a UGA graduate and my daughter is an Alabama graduate.

ANSWER: Tis’ the season for snowflakes. First things first, when did UGA grads start using the phrase “to wit” to make a point? Sounds like Big Ten trash talk to me.

I’m pretty plugged in to SEC fandom across the board. Gotta be honest. I don’t hear a lot of people mocking the Big Ten. To wit, it’s just that everyone knows the SEC is the better league from top to bottom. That doesn’t mean every team in the SEC is superior to every team in the Big Ten, though. But on average the SEC is made of tougher stuff.

The Big Ten is a three-team league. To wit, was Vanderbilt better than Indiana this season? Yes, absolutely.

Ohio State’s victory at home against Tennessee doesn’t prove much. The Buckeyes paid a hefty price for their roster and won a home game against a team that also couldn’t win on the road game against Arkansas. The home teams went 4-0 in the first round of the playoffs. Home-field advantage made a big difference.

Anyone with a pulse understands that a major rivalry is forming between the SEC and the Big Ten. The leagues hate each other and it already feels like a civil war with all the rhetoric being tossed around. Sportswriters and coaches are getting in on the action, too.

In the end, that animosity is good for college football. This sport is about rivalries. The SEC vs. the Big Ten isn’t going away and will only grow in significance. Just wait until the next round of conference expansion.

Should both leagues receive four auto bids into a 14-team playoff? That’s the latest trial balloon being floated by the CFP. I’m not against it if the SEC can scoop up an at-large bid at the back of the bracket. But I’m sticking with my soapbox stance of the FBS needing a 16-team field. Better yet, make it 24. Bowl games are going away and a bigger playoff just means more revenue for everyone.

The real problem with the first 12-team playoff is how these teams were seeded. The committee needs to rank the field at the end of the season and then fill out the brackets just like the NCAA basketball tournaments.

But the sport needs more home playoff games. The campus feel is what makes college football better than any other sport around. There wasn’t a single home playoff game at a traditional SEC school. Maybe by next Christmas, Auburn and Alabama will have that fixed.

BE HEARD

Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what’s on your mind. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”

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“The Fire Inside” shows why Black excellence isn’t enough for women athletes

As America grapples with conversations about representation and equity in sports, the story of Clareesa Shields begins in Flint, Michigan. In the city that became synonymous over the last decade with crisis, the young Black woman, who became the first American to win back to back gold medals in the Olympics for boxing, was reared.

Yet even Olympic gold couldn’t guarantee equal treatment. In one scene from the new film The Fire Inside, Shields stares sorrowfully at cereal plastered with images of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps as she’s buying diapers for her nephew. Despite her historic achievement, Shields struggled to gain sponsorships after her Olympic win. “It’s just much harder with women athletes,” one potential sponsor tells Jason. “Then you amplify that when they excel in a sport that people don’t expect to see women in.”

This disparity reflects a broader reality for Black women in sports. The forthcoming film, the directorial debut of Fruitvale Station’s cinematographer Rachel Morrison with a script by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, makes no explicit reference to the water crisis, but it looms large over the film along with the systemic barriers she faces.  “You ever wonder why they call it Flint?” Shields’ coach Jason (Brian Tyree Henry) asks Shields (Ryan Destiny). “…It’s a tough stone Flint, and it’s strong as hell. That remind you of anybody?”

Shields’ life, in the film, is marred by poverty, abuse, and homelessness with boxing becoming her only refuge. As more success came with boxing however, so did the problems. The film’s third act is dedicated to showing how Shields struggled financially despite winning her first Olympic gold medal in 2012.

The conversation around pay inequality in women’s sports extends far beyond boxing. In an interview from 2023, Shields highlighting how even as she made $1 million, becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat, it was still only a third of the $3 million that the male boxers typically make.

In The Fire Inside, Shields’ fights for a three thousand dollar monthly stipend, an increase from the meager monthly thousand dollars that USA Boxing offered while she trained in their facilities. “This isn’t just about me,” Shields tells USA Boxing over the phone, “y’all need to boost the stipend for all the women.”

The struggle extends beyond compensation into representation itself. Shields expresses her frustastions to a USA Boxing representative about expectations to maintain a pristine image, after being shown another female boxer who was dressed provocatively during a photoshoot. “I won that gold medal by being me,” she says. “Now to get endorsements and sh*t you saying I got to be somebody else?!”

Even in the telling of Shields’ story, the pressure to make Black women athletes more palatable for mainstream audiences persists. Very little on screen time is given to Shields’ athleticism. Destiny as Shields is a bloodless, unbruised fighter, emerging from every fight with nothing more than unkempt hair and the glow of just a few sweat beads. Scenes of Shields’ boxing are over with such quickness one wonders if you as the audience member might have been KO’D.

Instead, the story induldges in the cliches of an athlete’s humble beginnings to a burdensome degree. This familiar framing—focusing on trauma and adversity rather than her athletic prowess —reflects how Black athletes’ stories are often packaged for mainstream consumption. When the film touches on deeper complexities, like when Shields’ reconciliation with her mother after  being kicked out, or her father return from an unexplained jail stay, these moments remain unexplored, suggesting a reluctance to engage with a fuller nuanced reality beyond familiar tropes of adversity and redemption.

It’s easy to understand why the film was originally titled Flint Strong. Much like the Michigan city it’s set in, Shields’ legacy risks being reduced to a story of her trauma, stripping her of vibrancy and nuance. The film show glimpses of this complexity in the father-daughter dynamic between Henry and Destiny, their warmth buoying the film. It’s the love and care between Jason and Shields that repeatedly gives her the strength to continue on.

The film ends as they share one last conversation before she gets on a bus to the Olympic training facility. “That first gold medal, that was for Flint,” Jason tells her. “But your next one, that one’s for you.” The question remains: in a system still struggling with equity, will individual excellence ever be enough?

Hanna Phifer is a journalist and critic based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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JD Crowe: Christmas wishes for peace, love and light

This is an opinion holiday tribute.

May love and peace fill your heart and light your way on this Christmas Day and throughout the new year.

Speaking of light, read John Sharp’s story about this one-stoplight town that just won Alabama’s best Christmas decorations contest.

Merry Christmas, y’all.

True stories and stuff by JD Crowe

The hog killin’

The mysterious ‘Bubble Guy’ of Fairhope and the art of bubble Zen – al.com

How I met Dr. Seuss

Robert Plant head-butted me. Thanks, David Coverdale

I was ZZ Top’s drummer for a night and got kidnapped by groupie

Check out more cartoons and stuff by JD Crowe

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].

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New drone under the tree? Some things to know before your first Huntsville flight

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’Tis the season for holiday-themed NASA space images

Star cluster NGC 602 includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs.X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand

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Dear Abby: My spouse doesn’t want my family to stay in our home when they visit

DEAR ABBY: My spouse and I (both women) have been together for 25 years. For half of them, we lived in the Middle East. We met while working as health care expatriates. My spouse is from South Africa and was raised very differently than I was.

When we finally returned to the U.S., we bought a house in a southern state where two of my brothers live. Over time, my spouse let me know she didn’t want them to stay in our house when they came to visit. She preferred they stay in a hotel. She said she was disgusted that they might not shower before bed, and that our cats would be disturbed by their presence. I told her I thought her comments were rude, and I reminded her that sheets are always washed after visitors leave.

This has caused a lot of conflict in our relationship, and I’m not sure I can go on alienating and hurting my family by not welcoming them in my home. I love my spouse, but I love my family and friends too, and I want them to feel welcome. I am torn about what to do. — PULLED IN TWO

DEAR PULLED: I don’t know what your spouse has against having your brothers as houseguests, but her “reasons” for wanting them to stay in a hotel are excuses rather than reasons. As you stated, the sheets are washed and changed after guests leave. And cats are adaptable creatures. An alternative might be for your spouse to leave when your relatives come to visit, or for you to visit them instead.

Read more Dear Abby and other advice columns.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

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