Alabama News

From the moment Birmingham cop James Blanton issues a BOLO for a truck registered to Eric Rudolph, federal, state and local officers – along with dozens of satellite trucks and scores of reporters – swarm the tiny, picturesque town of Murphy, N.C.

But when agents burst into his trailer they find a Goldilocks situation. The stove, if not the porridge, is still warm, but the inhabitant is gone. He slips into the mountains in the nick of time, just ahead of a massive task force. Thus begins the largest American manhunt of the 20th century.

We follow the evidence as it is discovered, and detail a bizarre string of events including a severed hand, a would-be Rambo, shots fired at federal agents, and a part of the world where many cheer “Run, Rudolph, Run.”

American Shrapnel is an eight-part series from Alabama Media Group. It starts with the biggest pipe bomb the FBI had ever seen. It ends in a dumpster, after the largest manhunt in U.S. history. This is the story of Eric Rudolph and the rise of American rage. Available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

A blast at the 1996 Olympics shakes the American South. A woman is killed and scores injured. As cops wrongly target a security guard named Richard Jewell, the real bomber slips away, only to bomb again. And again. Thousands of photos and videos produce one blurry image of the attacker, a photo so grainy the FBI called him “Blob Man.”

Finally a break comes, but only after a student spots a man acting strangely as a fourth bomb kills in Birmingham.

In this episode we follow that student on his daring chase across Birmingham’s Southside, recreated with his own voice from newly unsealed archival files and interviews discovered by the Birmingham Public Library.

Meet those injured by the shrapnel, buffeted by the “hurricane force” of the blast. And those, including witnesses, experts, federal agents, cops, and, for the first time, the hero himself.

American Shrapnel is an eight-part series from Alabama Media Group. It starts with the biggest pipe bomb the FBI had ever seen. It ends in a dumpster, after the largest manhunt in U.S. history. This is the story of Eric Rudolph and the rise of American rage. Available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Alabama faces yet another day of heat advisories, but it won’t be quite as hot as Tuesday, according to forecasters.

High temperatures today will still be hot, no doubt, but they could end up being a degree or two lower than on Tuesday, when many areas saw the upper 90s for highs.

However, combine today’s expected temperatures with humidity levels and it could feel hotter, 100 degrees or higher, according to forecasters.

Tuesday saw Alabama highs in the upper 90s in many areas.

At least one observation station, at the Dothan Regional Airport, hit 100 degrees on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.

Here are some of Tuesday’s high temperatures, according to weather service data:

• Anniston: 96 degrees
• Birmingham: 98 degrees
• Huntsville: 99 degrees
• Mobile: 97 degrees
• Montgomery: 98 degrees
• Muscle Shoals: 98 degrees
• Troy: 97 degrees
• Tuscaloosa: 98 degrees

Most temperatures on Tuesday were at least 5 degrees above average for this time of year.

Rain chances will be a bit higher on Wednesday, with 50-60 percent chances for most of central and south Alabama and slightly lower chances for north Alabama.

Here is the probability of precipitation for Wednesday:

Thursday could be another day for hot-but-not-as-hot temperatures, which are again expected to be in the 90s.

Here is Thursday’s forecast:

Rain chances will continue to be elevated for Alabama on Thursday.

Cooler temperatures for some parts of Alabama will arrive this weekend, and the weather service is forecasting highs only in the 70s for parts of east Alabama for Sunday:

Here is a look at Wednesday’s heat advisories for Alabama:

NORTH ALABAMA

A heat advisory will be in effect for all of north Alabama until 9 p.m. Wednesday.

The National Weather Service in Huntsville said the heat index could reach 108 degrees in that region this afternoon.

CENTRAL ALABAMA

A heat advisory will be in effect for all of central Alabama until 9 p.m. Thursday.

The National Weather Service in Birmingham said the heat index could climb as high as 107 degrees both today and tomorrow.

SOUTH ALABAMA

A heat advisory will be in effect until 6 p.m. Wednesday for all of southwest and south-central Alabama.

The National Weather Service in Mobile said the heat index could get as high as 109 degrees today across the region.

A separate heat advisory will be in effect until 6 p.m. CDT Wednesday for the southeast Alabama counties of Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Henry and Houston.

The National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Fla., said the heat index could get to 111 degrees today in that region.

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John Michael Montgomery will be nostalgic when he performs his final show on Dec. 12.

The country music legend announced his final show will be at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., the first venue of his career.

“I stepped on a tour bus for the first time in 1992 and haven’t looked back since,” Montgomery said in a press release, per Taste of Country.

“But now it’s time to bring it all back home for my last concert — and I can’t think of a better place than Rupp Arena.”

Montgomery, known for hits like “ I Swear,” will perform with brother Eddie Montgomery (of Montgomery Gentry), his son Walker Montgomery and his son-in-law, Travis Denning.“We’re going to have a lot of fun and end this ride in a big way,” Montgomery said.He is know for other hits like “I Can Love You Like That,” :Life’s Dance“ and “I Love the Way You Love Me.”

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.

In a rare public outburst on the Senate floor Tuesday, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker took his Democratic colleagues to task, declaring his party “needs a wake-up call!”

Angrily screaming at two of his shocked Democratic colleagues, his words all but reverberating off the chamber walls, Booker blocked the passage of several bipartisan bills that would fund police programs, arguing that President Donald Trump’s administration has been withholding law enforcement money from Democratic-leaning states.

“This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker bellowed. “Is we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!”

The surprise Senate spat over bills that have broad bipartisan support — mental health resources and other help for police officers — strikes at the heart of the beleaguered Democratic party’s dilemma in the second Trump era as they try to find a way back to power, and also their frustration as Republicans have pushed through legislation and nominations that they vehemently disagree with. Do they cooperate where they can, or do they fight everything, and shut down governance in the process?

“A lot of us in this caucus want to f—— fight,” Booker said with an expletive as he left the Senate floor after the exchange.

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, one of the two Democrats on the floor who tried to pass the law enforcement bills that raised Booker’s ire, said she had a different view.

“We can do both,” she said afterward. “Support our communities, keep them safe, and take on Donald Trump and his bad policies.”

Booker’s tirade began Tuesday afternoon when Cortez Masto tried to pass seven bipartisan bills by unanimous consent. But Booker objected to five of the seven bills, which would have directed resources to law enforcement agencies, arguing that the Trump administration is “weaponizing” public safety grants by canceling them in many Democratic-leaning states like New Jersey.

“Why would we do something today that’s playing into the president’s politics and is going to hurt the officers in states like mine?” Booker asked.

Things escalated from there, with Cortez Masto and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., saying that Booker should have objected when the bill was passed unanimously out of committee. “This is not the way to go about it,” Cortez Masto said.

Klobuchar said to Booker: “You can’t just do one thing on Police Week and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another a few weeks later on the floor.”

“I like to show up at the markups and I like to make my case,” Klobuchar said.

Booker responded with a booming tirade. “The Democratic party needs a wake up call!” he yelled, walking away from his desk and out into the aisle. “I see law firms bending the knee to this president, not caring about the larger principles,” he said, along with “universities that should be bastions of free speech.”

He added: “You want to come at me that way, you will have to take it on with me because there’s too much on the line.”

The arguments points to the tensions below the surface of the Democratic caucus as they head into important moments — both this week, as Republicans push to quickly confirm dozens of Trump administration nominees before the August recess, and this fall when Congress will have to pass bipartisan spending bills to avoid a government shutdown.

Democrats suffered a swift backlash from their base in the spring when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., helped advance a Republican spending bill that kept the government open instead of forcing a shutdown. Schumer argued that shutting the government down would have been worse, and that they were both “terrible” options. It is unclear whether Schumer and Democrats will want to force a shutdown in the fall if Republicans don’t include some of their priorities in spending legislation.

Booker did not have specific advice for his colleagues beyond the need to fight harder. But other senators say they will have to find a balance.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he hears both things at home — “why can’t you all get along” and “thank you for fighting.”

“Both are absolutely necessary at this moment in history,” Blumenthal said.

Can one seriously argue that a warship prominently on display at a memorial park that is one of the state’s top tourist attractions doesn’t get all the attention it deserves? I can. At least, 10-year-old me can.

My youthful experience probably was not unusual. My family stopped by USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park during a vacation trip to the coast. We explored the Alabama and the aircraft displays. As the last grains of parental patience trickled through the hourglass, I lobbied hard to see the USS Drum as well.

I had my reasons. “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” had fired my imagination, and this was an era when reruns of Irwin Allen’s “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” were still airing on Sunday mornings. This was as close as I was going to get to the Seaview.

I got my tour, but came away feeling like it had been rushed, and I carried that grudge for years. As an adult, I get it. After a couple of hours shepherding your brood through the Alabama, you’ve seen the main attraction. Everybody’s hungry and tired and cranky and you just want to get back in the car, maybe find some dinner, and get where you’re going.

I ended up moving to Mobile, so I’ve had endless opportunity to lay that grudge to rest. More than 55 years after debuting as a public attraction in 1969, the World War II submarine designated SS-228 remains open for tours. And if it was the only ship in the park, it’d still be worth a stop.

Abundant information about the sub, including a multimedia virtual tour, can be found at www.ussalabama.com and detailed logs of her war patrols are preserved at www.drum228.org. In a nutshell, the Drum is a Gato-class sub launched in 1941. In the course or her eventful World War II career, the Drum sank 15 ships and damaged more, including a Japanese aircraft carrier. She survived depth-charge attacks, including one so severe that her entire conning tower had to be replaced before she could re-enter service.

Touring the USS Alabama, it’s daunting to imagine how she held a wartime crew of 2,500. By comparison, Gato-class subs were crewed with just 60 to 83 men, and the Drum carried 72 according to www.ussalabama.com. The constraints imposed by that crowd are both easier to imagine and harder to believe: With only a couple dozen tourists on board, the sub already seems crowded.

Your first impression is that the ship is small: As you enter the vessel you come down into the forward torpedo room. In this tight space, men had to move torpedoes that were as long (and as heavy) as small cars. And even here, there are bunks.

But as you proceed sternward, you gradually realize that the Drum isn’t small at all. It’s just skinny. (And it helps to get around if you are, too.) It seems to go on and on and on. Use of its 311-foot hull was necessarily efficient. There’s a “three-person stateroom” the size of a modest walk-in closet, and the galley isn’t all that much bigger.

Exposed machinery is everywhere, bearing witness to a crew of individuals who had to be trained to react precisely in difficult circumstances. Their sense of commitment had to be awesome, for them to live and work here. Photos, letters and other personal mementos illustrate the human element.

Where the USS Alabama is a choose-your-own adventure multi-level maze of paths, there’s just one way through the Drum: Front to back, however fast or slow things happen to be moving at the moment. Things tend to slow down in the central control room, where there’s a lot to take in and a chance – for one person at a time – to get a look up inside the conning tower.

You can’t always linger as long as you’d like, at a given spot. But what you can do is complete the tour and circle back through, as many times as you’d like.

There’s a lot of history crammed into a small space, here. And if the Drum sometimes gets overlooked – well, in its day, its ability to remain unseen was its greatest strength.

USS Alabama Memorial Park is open every day except Christmas Day. Hours, ticket prices and other information can be found at www.ussalabama.com.

Dear Eric: My 15-year-old granddaughter recently texted me to say “Grandma, I am a lesbian.” I was only mildly surprised because her mom had told me before that she had a “girlfriend”. I texted her back and said whatever she was, I would always love her. And I asked her how long she had known. She said “for a while now. I’ve dated boys and girls, and it just feels better to date girls.” Less than a year ago, this granddaughter bought a T-shirt that said, “I love my boyfriend.” She had dated boys from the time she was about 12. I am just wondering if she is really lesbian or afraid of being with guys?

– Confused Grandmother

Dear Grandmother: It sounds like your granddaughter is still exploring what, and who, is right for her. This is natural for teenagers, and folks of any age. The way she identifies may continue to evolve throughout her life. You’re already doing exactly the right thing: assuring her that you love her for her and will be there for her no matter what.

Even kids who are sure they’re straight have shifting relationships to dating. They might be gaga over one person one day and over another person the next day. All of us get to know new parts of ourselves through love relationships and those discoveries can be surprising, and sometimes confusing. By continuing to listen to her, to show up for her, and to reply with love, you’re letting her know that you’re a safe adult she can confide in and go to for advice on dating or anything else she has questions about. That’s the most important kind of relationship for her to cultivate right now and it will continue to benefit you both as life goes on.

Read more Asking Eric and other advice columns.

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.

A Birmingham-based non-profit organization designed to promote student entrepreneurs is expanding its reach with a collaboration in New York City.

Officials with the 2150 Center for Innovation, Commercialization & Growth, an initiative of Miles College, have announced an expansion in New York with the new Infrastructure iLAB Public-Private Partnership Knowledge Center.

The 2150 Center was launched by Miles College last year as a business and innovation collaborative designed to expand to institutions around the country.

Miles is a private historically Black liberal arts college in Fairfield, just west of Birmingham.

The new iLab will serve as a collaborative hub for students, faculty, corporate leaders and government partners to explore economic development and entrepreneurship.

“We’re creating a space where students and industry leaders can co-design real-world solutions,” said Erskine “Chuck” Faush, CEO at the 2150 Project. “This iLab will prepare HBCU talent to lead on the front lines of infrastructure innovation and unlock new opportunities through strategic partnerships.”

The goal is to make mentorship more scalable, personalized, and accessible across campuses.

Students from several colleges last week traveled to New York to see first-hand the expanded offerings of public-private collaboration and product commercialization.

The young entrepreneurs were also hosted by Elias Alcantara, vice president of Macquarie Group, and a former White House senior associate director of intergovernmental affairs. Macquarie is an Australian-based banking and finance group with a major presence in the heart of New York.

“I enjoyed the opportunity to contribute valuable insights, fresh ideas, and diverse perspectives to help expand the iLab concept,” said Jasmine Russell, a rising senior in psychology at Miles College.

Students and professors from several universities will continue to gather for campus sessions over the semester and reconvene with industry professionals to present findings.

“The highlight was collaborating with other thought leaders aiming to bring innovative solutions to the forefront of a competitive global knowledge economy,” said Skyller Walkes, a professor at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa.

The expanded lab comes just months after the debut of the Public Policy iLab in May in Washington, D.C.

“This iLab model convenes and curates the best and brightest minds to problem solve and build businesses,” Faush said at the time.

This is an opinion column.

On July 27, 1996, 29 years ago Sunday, on the eighth day of the Olympics, but so early in the morning it still seemed like the seventh, a bomb went off in Atlanta’s Centennial Park.

It was a huge pipe bomb, designed to kill hundreds. But thanks to chance and rowdy kids and the grace of whatever universal power you choose to credit, the bomb was knocked over. So shrapnel designed to fire into the crowd flew mostly toward the sky.

Still, a mother named Alice Hawthorne was killed, shot through by a nail, as she stood beside her daughter. More than 100 were injured, and a cameraman suffered a heart attack and died.

I’ve tried, over and over, to explain how it felt that day. We all know what it’s like to believe in someone or something so deeply, in a person, or a company, or a myth, or a nation, only to suddenly be forced to question it all. That’s how I felt.

This is why we can’t have nice things. Only more existential.

It is hard to describe the Birmingham of 1996 to those who didn’t live it. Before 9/11, in an age of feigned civility, when common ground was easier to come by and patriotism was not a divisive concept.

The Olympic Games had come to Atlanta, which was a coup in itself. Birmingham’s Legion Field hosted preliminary soccer matches on its hallowed pitch.

I was there. Everybody was. Ask Alabamians of a certain age if they came to watch Team USA star Claudio Reyna give America a 1-0 lead against heavily favored Argentina and you’ll think millions did. It sounded like it. Until reality set in.

Gene Hallman was president of the Birmingham Olympic Soccer Organizing Committee back then. He still gets emotional when he talks about it.

“We’ll forever be part of Olympic history here in the South, which I don’t think anyone ever predicted would happen in our lifetime,” he said. “It’s so hard to explain to my kids today. The odds of Atlanta hosting the Olympic Games, and Birmingham being a part of it, were zero.”

It’s true. And it seemed like the whole South got it.

“The whole Southeast was just really invested,” Hallman said. “Just a lot of pride to bring the Olympic Games to Atlanta.”

I’ll never forget Muhammad Ali stepping on stage at the opening ceremonies in Atlanta. It was a surprise. He was battling Parkinson’s and it seemed like his first public sign of weakness. He struggled, but he lit the cauldron to start the Games.

The thrill of victory. And then the agony of defeat. The power of persistence.

Then the bomb changed everything.

I know Hallman feels the existential question, too. What did we all lose that day? I asked him what he might say if he could confront that bomber now. He thought about it.

“I’d say ‘You bastard,’” he said. “‘You really messed up something that was great.’”

The man who planted that bomb remained a mystery for more than a year. He slipped away as investigators wrongly focused on a security guard named Richard Jewell. Bombs exploded twice more in Atlanta over the next year, at an abortion clinic and a lesbian bar, but it was unclear if they were made by the same hands.

And then, a year and a half after the Olympics, another bomb went off, this time in Birmingham.

A bomber stood up the street from the New Woman All Women clinic, in the shadow of UAB. He’d planted a deadly bomb in the brush, aimed the business end at the clinic lobby, and stood behind a tree waiting for patients and staff to arrive.

But again a bomb designed to kill many was thwarted by the fates. A security guard, an off-duty Birmingham cop named Robert “Sande” Sanderson, saw the bomb and approached it as nurse Emily Lyons prepared to unlock the clinic door.

The bomber watched it unfold. He realized it was now or never, so he pushed the detonator on a homemade remote control and blew them up.

Sanderson died on the scene. Lyons has lived through more than 50 surgeries.

“I am a bombing survivor,” Lyons said recently. “I don’t consider myself a victim. Victim sounds weak.”

She is far from that.

It was another one of those moments that makes you question. Murder in the name of God? Death in the name of life? It is easy to despair at times like these, to wonder if we are truly helpless in the face of madmen, if it is futile to hold on to faith in humanity, or the universe, or divinity. What are we to do in the face of dynamite and madness?

We follow in the path of a man named Jermaine Hughes.

Hughes was a young man in 1998, a UAB student who heard the explosion at the Birmingham clinic and looked up. He saw people running toward the site of the blast.

And he saw one man walking away.

“It looked kind of weird because this guy … didn’t turn around to see what happened,” Hughes told police.

Hughes dropped his laundry. He dropped everything. He embarked on a daring, confounding, unlikely pursuit to the top of Red Mountain.

And that act is the reason the bomber was identified. That act is the reason Birmingham police issued a BOLO a couple of hours later:

Be on the lookout for Eric Robert Rudolph.

It would become, at the time, the largest manhunt in American history.

I covered it along the way, from Birmingham and from North Carolina. I thought there was nothing more I could learn about these bombs. This villain. This hero. Boy, was I wrong.

For the last three years I’ve worked with colleagues Becca Andrews and John Hammontree to tell these stories in audio form. We talked to more than 30 people close to the case, and mined recently unearthed and unheard investigative files and interviews now archived in the Birmingham Public Library.

The first three episodes of American Shrapnel: The Weaponization of Eric Robert Rudolph, launch Wednesday. Subsequent episodes will come out each of the next five weeks.

We explore who Eric Rudolph was, how he was radicalized, and explore whether he acted alone. And we trace the rise of American anger to the moment where we now find ourselves.

We hope you will follow and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

John Archibald is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.