Ex-Alabama football linebacker Justin Okoronkwo will stay in the SEC and transfer to South Carolina, he shared to social media Friday.
That means the Crimson Tide will have a chance to face Okoronkwo this fall when Alabama plays the Gamecocks on Oct. 25 in Columbia, South Carolina.
“New Home !!!” Okoronkwo posted to X, announcing his decision.
In his freshman season, Okoronkwo tallied 14 tackles. The 6-3, 228-pound freshman is from Munich, Germany.
Okoronkwo was among the depth departures at inside linebacker once it became clear several veterans would be returning. The position will have Justin Jefferson and Deontae Lawson returning as well as Nikhai Hill-Green from Colorado.
Other changes at inside linebacker include Jihaad Campbell going to the NFL Draft and Jeremiah Alexander transferring. Alexander also landed in the Palmetto State. He is transferring to Clemson.
Nick Kelly is an Alabama beat writer for AL.com and the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X and Instagram.
Read More
1/51
Class 6A No. 2 Mountain Brook knocked off Clay-Chalkville 59-47 on the road on Tuesday, with junior point guard Parker Wright leading the way with 20 points.
The Cougars were ranked No. 1 when the teams met, but dropped to No. 6 in this week’s Alabama Sports Writers Association poll.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Read MorePacking up for the weekend doesn’t require you to sacrifice style.
Anthropologie has a gorgeous quilted bag that can make any trip nicer. The Quilted Velvet Weekender is normally $88 but is on sale for $49.95. The bag isn’t a large tote (it’s 16 inches by 9.5 inches by 8.5 inches) but is perfect for an overnight visit.
The bag is just one of the great picks at Anthropologie’s sale. Here are some other great bag and accessory choices:
Triple Loop Slinky Drop Earrings – $29.95, regularly $44
Dasha Lace Up Trapeze Tote – $49.95, regularly $88
Small Rhinestone Hoop Earrings – $24.95, regularly $38
Crystal-Inset Drop Earrings – $29.95, regularly $44
Flat Heart Post Earring – $29.95, regularly $42
Pleated Velvet Clutch – $39.95, regularly $78
Mixed Metal Beaded Bracelets, Set of 2 – $34.95, regularly $48
By Anthropologie Foldover Shoulder Bag – $59.95, regularly $98
Spur Drop Earrings – $34.95, regularly $48
By Anthropologie Mini Brocade Satchel – $59.95, regularly $98
Mini Faux Fir Tote Bag – $39.95, regularly $78
Antik Kraft Mini Trapeze Shoulder Bag – $59.95, regularly $78
Delicate Spaced Stone Necklace – $29.95, regularly $44
Miztique Faux-Leather Book Bag – $39.95, regularly $78
Read MoreMacy’s will be closing 66 “underproductive” locations in 2025 as part of a company strategy to return to profitable sales growth, according to a statement from the company.
“Closing any store is never easy, but as part of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we are closing underproductive Macy’s stores to allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores, where customers are already responding positively to better product offerings and elevated service,” said Tony Spring, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc.
“…This plan [Bold New Chapter] is designed to return the company to sustainable, profitable sales growth which includes closing approximately 150 underproductive stores over a three-year period while investing in its 350 go-forward Macy’s locations through fiscal 2026,” the release reads.
Not included on the list is the Macy’s location inside Hoover’s Riverchase Galleria, which has been up for sale since August, but remains on the market and in operation.
Hoover Economic Development Manager Greg Knighton previously told AL.com that the city and Riverchase Galleria management are prepared to start scouting a replacement store if the mall’s Macy’s location closes.
The list of 66 closing Macy’s locations can be found here.
Read MorePresident-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment, an outcome that cements his conviction but frees him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.
Trump’s sentence of an unconditional discharge caps a norm-smashing case that saw the former and future president charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on every count. Yet, the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations — didn’t hurt him with voters, who elected him to a second term.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan could have sentenced the 78-year-old Republican to up to four years in prison. Instead, he chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but assured that Trump will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.
Merchan said that like when facing any other defendant, he must consider any aggravating factors before imposing a sentence, but the legal protection that Trump will have as president “is a factor that overrides all others.”
“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those legal protections, one power they do not provide is that they do not erase a jury verdict,” Merchan said.
Trump, briefly addressing the court as he appeared virtually from his Florida home, said his criminal trial and conviction has “been a very terrible experience” and insisted he committed no crime.
The Republican former president, appearing on a video feed 10 days before he is inaugurated, again pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.
“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously, that didn’t work,” Trump said.
Trump called the case “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.”
“Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice,” he wrote in a lengthy post on his social media platform after the sentencing.
With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Merchan had indicated he planned a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors didn’t oppose it.
Prosecutors said Friday that they supported a no-penalty sentence, but they chided Trump’s attacks on the legal system throughout and after the case.
“The once and future President of the United States has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.
Rather than show remorse, Trump has “bred disdain” for the jury verdict and the criminal justice system, Steinglass said, and his calls for retaliation against those involved in the case, including calling for the judge to be disbarred, “has caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal justice system and has put officers of the court in harm’s way.”
As he appeared from his Florida home, the former president was seated with his lawyer Todd Blanche, whom he’s tapped to serve as the second-highest ranking Justice Department official in his incoming administration.
“Legally, this case should not have been brought,” Blanche said, reiterating Trump’s intention to appeal the verdict. That technically can’t happen until he’s sentenced.
Trump, a Republican, becomed the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.
The judge had indicated that he planned the unconditional discharge — a rarity in felony convictions — partly to avoid complicated constitutional issues that would have arisen if he imposed a penalty that overlapped with Trump’s presidency.
Before the hearing, a handful of Trump supporters and critics gathered outside. One group held a banner that read, “Trump is guilty.” The other held one that said, “Stop partisan conspiracy” and “Stop political witch hunt.”
The hush money case accused Trump of fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them, and he contends that his political adversaries spun up a bogus prosecution to try to damage him.
“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.
Bragg’s office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace.”
While the specific charges were about checks and ledgers, the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise. Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.
Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.
“There was nothing else it could have been called,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, adding, “I was hiding nothing.”
Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial. Since his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have pulled virtually every legal lever within reach to try to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.
The Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.
Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.
On one hand, Trump’s defense argued that immunity should have kept jurors from hearing some evidence, such as testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.
And after Trump won this past November’s election, his lawyers argued that the case had to be scrapped to avoid impinging on his upcoming presidency and his transition to the Oval Office.
Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.” He wrote that he strove to balance Trump’s need to govern, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, the respect due a jury verdict and the public’s expectation that “no one is above the law.”
Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.
Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.
After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutorFaniWillis was removed from it.
Read MoreParts of Alabama have been hit with up to 4 inches of snow today with the potential for ice later this afternoon.
The National Weather Service is asking Alabamians to provide snow and ice reports but there is a right – and a wrong – way to provide information.
For all cases, NWS needs to know when, where, the duration and the amount of snow or ice reported.
For snow, you should find an open, flat area sheltered from the wind. Avoid taking measurements on elevated surfaces where melting occurred, near trees, around structures or in old snow or drifts.
You should use a ruler to take measurements in several different locations and average the amount to the nearest tenth of an inch. Try to be level with surface of snow to read measurements.
Details on best ways to measure snow from the National Weather Service.NWS
Measuring ice is a little different. For that, you should find an ice-covered object like a branch, fence or sidewalk, in an open area. Avoid taking measurements on objects that are sheltered or around structures.
Once you find a flat surface, use a ruler to measure from the edge of the object to the edge of the ice. If you’re on a non-flat surface, use a ruler to measure the thickest part and thinnest part of the ice from the edge of the object to the edge of the ice and average the two measurements by adding and then dividing by two.
You should report when the freezing rain ends and report the average ice thickness to the nearest hundredth of an inch, duration, time of observation and location.
Details on how to measure ice from the National Weather Service.NWS
After weighing pros and cons of electric vehicle (EV) ownership since becoming president of the Alabama Clean Fuels Coalition in 2020, I decided my next pick-up truck would be electric.
My gas-powered 2019 Silverado required a new transmission and expensive engine repairs before I made it to 70,000 miles, so I decided to make the switch a little sooner than expected. I purchased my first EV, a 2024 Chevrolet Silverado RST EV First Edition, earlier this year.
Fast forward to the fall and we faced our first all-electric adventure – a family trip from Birmingham to Alabama’s beaches, our first without needing to stop for gas. Could we make it work, conveniently?
The all-electric range of 440 miles on a full charge gave me confidence that my wife, four-year-old son, and unborn twins would be fine on an 800-mile road trip in Alabama. I knew there were multiple chargers along the way to keep this vacation on track.
Like most EV owners, I charge at home most of the time, usually to 80%, or 350 miles, but I charged all the way to 100% on my home charger for this trip. Eleven hours of charging at home increased my battery’s charge from 51% to 100% and added about $19.96 to my power bill. As a comparison, this amount of range would have cost me about $38 at the pump in my old gas truck.
My home charger cost $550 from a local big box store and installation on a 60-amp breaker cost another $450. Since I’m an Alabama Power customer, I am taking advantage of their EV-related incentives, which include a $500 rebate for home charger installation and about a 10 percent overnight discount on all the power I consume between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.
My truck has a bigger battery than most EVs on the market, so I am looking for the very fastest chargers as a matter of convenience.
Of 115 unique fast charging stations currently operating in Alabama, 35 can deliver over 200kW to a vehicle and another 17 of those can deliver up to 400kW.
The sweet spot for a restroom, meal and fueling break is somewhere around 30 minutes for my family. Even with the biggest battery on the market, I never imagine my family spending more than 30 minutes at any fast charger. EV charging speeds slow significantly after the battery reaches 80%. I’d expect a 400kW charger to add 300-to-350 miles of range in 30 minutes.
Bottom line: I’ve got a big battery that I’m going to charge at home most of the time.
Between Hoover and Bay Minette along Interstate 65, fast charging stations are conveniently located in Alabaster, Prattville, Montgomery, Hope Hull, Greenville and Evergreen. We made it to the Baldwin Beach Express after four hours of driving, ending at the Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging station at the Buc-ees in Baldwin County with 31% battery state of charge (SOC).
We parked, plugged in and headed inside to use the restroom, get food and stretch our legs. Once we returned, I didn’t have time to eat my brisket sandwich before the charging session was complete and we were on our way. Total time charging time? 29 minutes.
We decided to take the Dauphin Island Ferry one way, meaning we drove around the Mobile Bay to get back to Orange Beach. We also visited the outlet mall in Foley on another day, and we never worried about our electricity-powered driving range. Including a stop at Hope Hull on the way home, we charged for a total of 75 minutes at a cost of about $150 during this trip, which is a little more than I would have paid for gas in my old truck.
Once I returned home, I posted about our trip on Facebook and received a number of insightful questions, including this one: “If you were evacuating from somewhere in full traffic, would you be comfortable about not losing a charge and being stranded?”
Yes. I tested my truck one hot August day by sitting in it for four hours with the air conditioner blasting and it only used 1% of my battery. As long as power is available, I feel confident that my truck will always be in range of a working fast charger – EVEN in Alabama! And if the power is out? When there is a mass evacuation, gas stations typically run out of gas before the power goes out. EV chargers, on the other hand, will work until the power goes out. Without backup power, an electricity outage means no one gets fuel, EV driver or not.
Looking ahead
Range anxiety, the fear of running out of charge, remains a major obstacle to EV adoption, even though approximately 90 percent of EV charging happens at home. But the range anxiety I felt before embarking on our beach vacation was real. This trip dealt a huge blow to any range anxiety I may have in the future.
This trip confirmed something I already knew: A combination of advances in EV battery range and the addition of EV chargers along Alabama’s interstates – thanks to ADECA’s statewide EV infrastructure grant program – made it easy for me to go electric on our vacation with no problems. To be honest, we had considered using my wife’s gas-powered SUV for the trip, but now we realize that’s not necessary.
As major auto manufacturers roll out more EVs, it’s increasingly likely one will fit your family’s lifestyle. You can visit www.driveelectricalabama.com to learn more about EVs and their impact on our state.
I love my truck. It’s the best vehicle I’ve ever owned, and I’ll be using it again for future family trips. You can also check out a video on www.driveelectricalabama.com, where I go into more detail about our family beach trip and address questions and concerns surrounding EVs.
Here’s the bottom line: This trip did a lot to ease my range anxiety. We loaded up the truck, went to the beach and didn’t have to stop for gas over 800 miles with zero problems.
Michael Staley has served as the president of the Alabama Clean Fuels Coalition since 2020.
Drive Electric Alabama is a statewide education platform dedicated to improving the state through the adoption of electric vehicles. EVs can create Alabama-based jobs, save money and make people’s lives more convenient. Add to that a healthier, cleaner place to live, and you have countless reasons to plug in. Learn more at driveelectricalabama.com.
Read MoreThe No. 8 Ohio State Buckeyes play against the No. 5 Texas Longhorns in the College Football Playoff (CFP) Semifinals tonight. The matchup will begin at 6:30 p.m. CT on ESPN. Fans can watch this game for free online by using the free trials offered by DirecTV Stream and Fubo TV. Alternatively, Sling offers a first-month discount to new users.
The Buckeyes have played well this postseason, as they defeated Tennessee and Oregon by double-digit points. The Ohio State squad defeated Tennessee 42-17 in the opening round, and they followed up that performance with a 41-21 win against Oregon.
The Ohio State offense has found success through the air, as they have highly talented wide receivers. Notably, Ohio State’s freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith has 290 yards and four touchdowns in the CFP this year.
The Longhorns struggled mightily in their last game, as they almost lost to Arizona State in double overtime. However, the Texas squad escaped with a 39-31 win.
Quinn Ewers led the Texas offense last game, as he threw for 322 yards and three touchdowns. The star quarterback also threw an interception, so he will need to protect the ball tonight.
Fans can watch this game for free online by using the free trials offered by DirecTV Stream and Fubo TV. Alternatively, Sling offers a first-month discount to new users.
The New York Knicks play against the Oklahoma City Thunder in an NBA game tonight. The matchup will begin at 6:30 p.m. CT on NBA TV. Fans can watch this game for free online by using the free trials offered by DirecTV Stream and Fubo TV. Alternatively, Sling offers a first-month discount to new users.
The Knicks enter this matchup with a 25-13 record, and they are coming off a 112-98 win against Toronto. During the victory, Karl-Anthony Towns led the New York offense. He scored 27 points and shot 9-14 from the field. Notably, Towns leads the team in points and rebounds this season, so he will try to continue his great play tonight.
The Thunder enter this matchup with a 30-6 record, but they are coming off a 129-122 loss against Cleveland. During the loss, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played well offensively. He ended the game with 31 points and shot 13-27 from the field, so he will look to perform similarly tonight.
Gilgeous-Alexander averages more than 31 points and six assists per game.
Fans can watch this game for free online by using the free trials offered by DirecTV Stream and Fubo TV. Alternatively, Sling offers a first-month discount to new users.
The CEO of the Retirement Systems of Alabama is interested in partnering with the city to light up the future Mobile Civic Center, while concerns have risen from Mobile County officials over the lack of a theater within the future venue.
The latest news on the city’s approximately $300 million downtown arena comes about one month ahead of a crucial date in which the exact bid price on the project will be known.
Read More