Alabama News

A Hard Rock hotel is heading to the heart of the Shoals. It will be in the center of Florence, AL.

There are nearly 40 traditional Hard Rock hotels worldwide and most are large enterprises that usually feature music-inspired memorabilia, restaurants and – casinos.

However, the Florence location will have a REVERB Hard Rock Hotel. So far, they only exist in Atlanta, GA and Hamburg, Germany. Seven REVERB locations are in development, including the Florence hotel.

These locations don’t include a casino. This is the only option for an Alabama Hard Rock Hotel – the Yellowhammer State is one of five states where gambling and lotteries are illegal.

There has been an effort to legalize gambling in Alabama for 25 years. Every year, lawmakers propose a bill to legalize it, but it has never passed. This past legislative session, bill sponsor Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, said they were very disappointed and don’t think it should be brought back up for 20 years.

According to a November 2023 poll by KA Consulting, LLC, 80% of Alabamians supported a lottery and 64% backed casinos.

‘Hidden gem’

Many people were disappointed to hear that a casino would not be a part of the new development but Florence City Councilwoman Kaytrina Simmons said there’s more than enough to do in Downtown Florence that the casino won’t be missed, especially after the hotel is built.

“Downtown Florence is a hidden gem,” Simmons said. “There is walkability in our downtown area. And there are several restaurants there that also have live entertainment as well. And then, of course, Mobile Plaza as well as the beautiful park, Wilson Park.”

The council also decided the hotel wouldn’t be zoned to allow for a nightclub.

“I think a club needs to be a standalone club if you’re gonna have one, and not impose it, in my personal opinion,” Simmons said.

The hotel is set to open in 2028, with demolition of the current properties this year.

Academy Sports just dropped a ton of online deals on sneakers and apparel just in time for back-to-school season, including a notable discount on select Nike Air Max 270 sneakers.

With this online deal, you can score select pairs of men’s and women’s Nike Air Max 270 sneakers for as little as $119 as compared to its retail price of $140. Because this is such a hot deal, however, sale styles are selling out quickly.

RELATED: Zappos is selling the HOKA Mach 6 running shoe for its cheapest price yet

The Nike Air Max 270’s are designed as athletic sneakers for casual and lifestyle activities. They features an upper made from a combination of synthetic and textile materials, designed for breathability and comfort during daily wear. However, the main selling point of these popular shoes is its fashionable, yet versatile design.

The visible Max Air unit in the heel not only provides a distinctive look and responsive cushioning, but significantly enhances comfort during daily activities. This combination of style and function makes them an ideal choice for most.

“Conquer your day in comfort and style with the Nike Air Max 270! These kicks boast a lightweight, breathable upper that keeps your feet cool all day,” Academy’s product details state. “Feel the difference with every step – the visible Max Air unit in the heel cushions your feet, transforming your walk into a smooth ride. A stretchy inner sleeve replaces traditional laces for a personalized fit, while the durable rubber outsole keeps you confident on various surfaces!”

Those interested in this deal can checkout the full listing on Academy Sport’s website.

A suspect is in custody in the weekend shooting death of a 65-year-old man in Birmingham.

Jerome Reese Jr., 56, is charged with capital murder in the killing of Curtis Jerome Pruitt.

The Birmingham Police Department’s Crime Reduction Team arrested Reese in the 200 block of 25th Court N.W.

The Hueytown man was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 9:24 p.m. Wednesday. He is being held without bond.

Just after 2:30 p.m. Sunday, North Precinct officers received a call of a person shot in the 900 block of Center Street North.

Police arrived to find a gray SUV in the 10 block of 9th Avenue West, which is walking distance from the original location, said Officer Truman Fitzgerald. The location was near the entrance of a small apartment building.

Pruitt was unresponsive in the driver’s seat. Birmingham firefighters attempted live-saving measures on the scene and then rushed him to UAB Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Police said the suspect – now identified as Reese – Fitzgerald said it appears a man on foot approached the SUV and opened fire. He then fled.

Police have not disclosed a motive.

The charge is capital because Pruitt was inside a vehicle when he was killed.

Rene Kirby, known for his role in “Shallow Hal,” died earlier this month in Vermont at the age of 70.

Kirby’s brother Jon confirmed to Seven Days that the actor died at the University of Vermont Medical Center after being hospitalized for two months with kidney, bladder and esophagus issues.

According to the report, Kirby was a throat cancer survivor but had his larynx removed and was unable to speak.

Kirby, who was born with spina bifida, was cast in “Shallow Hal” as Walt and worked with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black.

Kirby was also cast as Phil Rupp in “Stuck on You,” marking his second collaboration with the Farrelly brothers in 2003.

He is survived by his mother and six siblings.

“Rene’s a guy we met in real life, on our travels, in Burlington,” Farelly told the Burlington Free Press in 2023. “He’s not the kind of guy you see in a movie. You see him in Burlington, but you don’t see him in the movies. There’s a disconnect there.”

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.

“South Park” started its 27th season with a Donald Trump parody in which Satan asks the President of the United States about the Epstein Files.

“The Epstein list?” Trump asks. “Are we still talking about that?”

“Well are you on the list or not?” Satan said. “It’s weird that whenever it comes up, you just tell everyone to relax.”

The video of the political satire was shared on social media.

The show comes a day after creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone got a $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount, per Newsweek.

Last week, the Writers Guild of America wanted Paramount investigated for bribery after news of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” being canceled.

The WGA, per Variety, said it has “significant concerns” that the move may have been a way to bribe Trump into sanctioning Paramount’s pending acquisition by Skydance.

The episode also aired as “The Wall Street Journal” reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in files related to Epstein’s case.

White House communications director Steven Cheung denied the report, telling the outlet.

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.

With Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze calling this position group one of his favorites during SEC media days.

The Tigers offensive line unit is one of the most improved groups on the entire roster, meshing veteran players and bringing in experienced talent out of the transfer portal.

“I would say, you know, I want to give a shout out to Will Redman and his crew. I think they do a great job of evaluating talent,” Freeze said at Auburn’s first AMBUSH.

“I think we got two legit guys there that have played elite football at a high level. And I think that changes us. And I think that changes us. We really haven’t had that in our time here.”

Here’s what to know about the group heading into the 2025 season:

Players

*Dillon Wade — Senior, Right guard

*Connor Lew — Sophomore, Center

*Xavier Chaplin — Junior, Virginia Tech transfer, Left tackle

*Mason Murphy — Senior, USC transfer, Right tackle

*Jeremiah Wright — Senior, Left guard

Izavion Miller — Senior, Right tackle

Seth Wilfred — Junior, Rotating tackle

Malachi Harris — Sophomore, Rotating guard

Tyler Johnson — Sophomore, Left tackle

Harrison Clemmer — Sophomore, Rotating tackle

Cade Barnett — Sophomore, Rotating guard

Dylan Senda — Sophomore, Left tackle

Kail Ellis — Freshman, Rotating guard

Jacobe’ Ward — Freshman, Rotating guard

Tai Buster — Freshman, Right Tackle

Broderick Shull — Freshman, Rotating tackle

DeAndre Carter — Redshirt freshman, Rotating guard

Isaac Boulger — Redshirt freshman, Rotating tackle

John Henry Flatt — Redshirt freshman, Rotating tackle

Favour Ebuka Edwin — Redshirt freshman, Rotating guard

*Indicates Projected starter

What to know

Seeing the full depth of Tigers offensive line core, this year’s veteran lineup will help develop the next generation of lineman for Auburn.

As a sophomore, center Connor Lew is one of the vocal leaders on the entire team. Last season he gave up just up one sack and zero quarterback hits.

With additions of Murphy and Chaplin at offensive tackle, Wade and Miller will be able to play their true position at guard.

“We get three veterans back in the middle with [Dillon Wade] and [Connor Lew] and [Jeremiah Wright]. And we also get the return of Izavion Miller, who’s a two-year starter for us that can rotate for all of those,” Freeze said during media days.

“Now you have two veteran tackles that have played a lot of snaps that have the length and skill sets that really, I think, improve us from the past two years.”

Miller will be in an important position battle during camp as AL.com does not project him to start when the season begins.

Miller served as the starting tackle since his sophomore season. However, As Freeze spoke on rotating players in that group, Miller will still see the field for his senior year.

When it comes to the younger depth, Freeze and Lew are pretty high on a few names.

“I’ve got to bring along a couple of young ones in [DeAndre Carter] and [Tyler Johnson] and some of those guys, but feel really, really good about our first seven guys,” Freeze added.

Lew is excited in the Tigers recent freshmen class and believes in the future of Auburn’s front seven.

“On the offensive line, Kail Ellis, Jacobe’ Ward, Tai Buster, all of them have picked up the calls pretty fast for freshmen,” Lew said. “So, whenever their time comes, I think it will be good to see.”

Jerry Humphrey III covers Auburn sports forAL.com. You can follow him on X at @Jerryhump3or email him at [email protected].

French President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron have filed a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens, the conservative influencer and podcaster who claims the first lady was born male.

Filed in Delaware on Wednesday, the lawsuit accuses Owens of publishing “outlandish, defamatory and far-fetched fictions,” causing “substantial reputational damage” and “substantial economic damages” to the Macrons in the process, according to the Financial Times.

The 218 page-court ruling states that along with claiming Macron was born under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux, Owens went on to say that the Macrons are also blood relatives and that Emmanuel Macron is “a product of a CIA human experiment or a similar government mind control programme,” per the Financial Times.

The lawsuit says Owens is responsible for spreading the conspiracy theory in the U.S. and around the world in order “to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety and make money.”

On top of selling some merchandise, she’s garnered a social media presence nearing 4.5 million YouTube subscribers with her eight-part series “Becoming Brigitte” released this year.

The filing also says Owens “ignored multiple attempts by the Macrons to engage,” including a letter that the French President and his wife sent the conservative influencer in December to “pointedly deny that the president was statutorily raped,” according to the Financial Times.

The court document charts the timeline of their relationship which started when Emmanuel Macron was a 15-year-old student at a Catholic high school in Amiens and met Brigitte, who was then a 39-year-old married teacher with three children.

Their relationship “remained within the bounds of the law” for a number of years and the pair eventually got married in 2007 when Emmanuel was 29.

The Macrons recently delivered one of the year’s biggest viral moments in May after the first lady was seen slapping the French President as the doors of their plane opened as they landed in Vietnam for an official visit.

Macron denied having a domestic dispute and said they “were squabbling,” and “joking” with each other.

Brigitte Macron will be portrayed in a biopic series whose development was announced last year by Gaumont, the company behind the Netflix hit show “Lupin.”

© 2025 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Preston Judah isn’t shy when he talks about what being the head football coach at Grissom High means to him.

“It means everything,” he said at Huntsville Area High School Football Media Day on Monday. “To be able to contribute and give back to the community that has invested so much in me and my family … it doesn’t get any better. Extra pressure obviously because, on Saturday mornings, if we don’t perform, I’ll see plenty of people who will have something say, but it’s a challenge that I’m excited to take up.”

Judah played football at Grissom from 2002-2006 for head coach Ronny Massey. He also spent time as the offensive coordinator on Chip English’s staff from 2017-2020.

“I’ve pushed all my chips in on orange and brown,” he said. “I’ve been around the program at times when it’s been successful. I was there in 2004 as a player when we made the playoffs and I was there as an assistant coach in 2020 when we made the playoffs, so to me it’s not an insurmountable hill. To me, my job is to get Grissom back to where it belongs. The wins and losses will come. I’ll be able to sleep at night when the teams we have replicate that saltiness and the blue-collar mentality we had in the early 2000s.”

Judah was named the Tigers’ new head coach in February. He replaces Rich Dutton, who went 10-30 in four years at the school, including consecutive 2-8 marks in each of the last two seasons. The Tigers haven’t been to the playoffs since English – now the Hoover head coach – was there in 2020 and haven’t won a playoff game in 25 years.

What’s the key to turning it around?

“Belief. Legitimately,” Judah said. “I think that’s it. We talk a lot about the fact that we plan on Grissom being the premier program in north Alabama, the fact that there is not any difference in the James Clemens’ and the Austins other than the color of their jerseys.

“We did a lot of scheduling of elite talent over the summer. We had an OTA with Hartselle on Wednesday. I think you could make the argument they have been the premier program in north Alabama. Just to see on their faces knowing that we can compete with those guys, we are just as good as they are, has been really important for our development this summer.”

Judah said his players’ attitude, energy and effort all have been top notch. He is now ready to see the physicality turn up as the calendar turns to August. He also has another question on his mind.

“Can we moderate our mentality?” he said. “When things get bad, do we fight through it or do we just have the mindset that it’s the same old Grissom? We’ve done a lot of that culturally to try to shore that up, so we are ready in August.”

Judah described his defense as “salty” and believes it will keep his team in most games.

“Between the 7-on-7s that we’ve had and OTAs with Hartselle and Arab, we may have given up three or four touchdowns in the air in seven or eight games,” he said. “I think we will be really good there. We should be really solid at offensive line and running back. Hopefully, we can stay in drives, stay in games, make sure every drive ends in a kick – hopefully an extra point – but a punt is fine because we know that defense will keep us in games.”

Grissom opens the season at Lee-Huntsville on Aug. 22.

Grammy-winning band Alabama Shakes are probably about to go from being the most famous music act from Athens, Alabama, to second banana. That’s because the buzz around Jessie Murph is building into thunderclap.

Murph is a provocative and talented 20-year-old singer/songwriter who stands approximately 4-foot-11. She’s got Lana Del Rey’s sultry charisma and cinematic sound, young Priscilla Presley’s wigs, and a country drawl filtered through Amy Winehouse’s rap-swagger. And she’s about to have the world by the throat.

On July 18, Murph released her excellent sophomore album, the subtly titled “Sex Hysteria.” Del Rey posted a video on Instagram of her pole dancing to one of Murph’s songs. On “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” Murph delivered a stylized performance of her single “1965.” Fallon beamed, “That is how you do it right there!”

Meanwhile at a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit fashion show, she sang on the catwalk surrounded by bikini models and brandishing a whip. Murph’s also featured on SI Swimsuit’s digital cover for July and in an accompanying pictorial. And oh yeah, her music, including songs like “Blue Strips” and Jelly Roll collabo “Wild Ones,” have piled up more than a billion Spotify streams. And counting.

Then there’s the matter of the music video for “1965.” The clip is artfully shot and edited. It also puts the N in NSFW, thanks to images including five seconds of (possibly) faux onscreen fornication by two actors.

Also in the vid, Murph sticks a cocked and loaded pistol into the mouth of an older man in bed. Later, another older man is pleasured under the table at a dining party by a younger female. Elsewhere, Murph’s tied up bondage-style on a couch. Lots of cig are smoked. Perhaps most eyebrow-raising is a scene with a child actor’s spliced among the debauchery.

That’s on top of the song’s lyrics. There are winking references to affordable cocaine, physical abuse, benefits of cigarettes, and women belonging in the kitchen.

The hook contains the couplet “I think I’d give up a few rights/ If you would just love me like it’s 1965.” Eleven f-bombs are dropped. Part of the second verse goes, “And I would be twenty and it’d be acceptable/ For you to be forty and that is f—-d up I know, But at least you wouldn’t drive off before I get in the f—ing door.”

The “1965” video posted on YouTube has drawn more than 12,000 comments. Mostly pearl-clutching observations like “since when is pornography allowed on youtube,” “there’s still time to unrelease this” and “I need to get this out of my search history.”

On TikTok, where Murph has 11 million followers, the singer defended the “1965” video in a caption to a video post: “This entire song is satire r yall stupid.” Media outlets with names like BroBible and Whiskey Riff have published content focusing on the purposely button-pushing “1965” video.

Meanwhile, in an album review of “Sex Hysteria,” Variety praised Murph for “her soaring, powerful voice,” “fierce rhyming skills,” “empowerment and humor.” The Variety review concludes that with “Sex Hysteria,” which follows her “impressive” 2024 debut album “That Ain’t No Man That’s The Devil”, Murph has “truly arrived.”

A recent Rolling Stone feature on Murph focuses on her backstory. Currently a Los Angeles resident following a stint in Nashville, Murph says when she comes back to Athens for a visit she heads straight to a local gas station for a big cup of boiled peanuts.

The RS feature addresses Murph’s complicated relationship with her hometown, which has a population of about 32,000. Athens is located in North Alabama about 30 minutes from Huntsville.

“My relationship with home has changed so much since I’ve left,” Murph tells Rolling Stone writer Jonathan Bernstein. “I really remember being 15, 16, even younger, and just knowing that I was not meant to be there. I didn’t feel right there. But I go back and I’m so grateful to be there. There’s something so sweet, something very nostalgic and beautiful, about the South.”

Rolling Stone’s feature also alludes to a dark past. ““I was really f—ed up when I was 17,” she says. “I was very severely depressed, dealing with a lot of s—. I was really struggling, and I think people like to have music they can relate to. I’m very grateful for the music I put out during that’s just not … Thank God I’m past some of that.”

A trough of low pressure over the Gulf isn’t expected to become a tropical depression, but it will bring higher rain chances for part of Alabama on Thursday.

And Friday too.

The National Hurricane Center on Thursday said the system had only a 10 percent probability of becoming a tropical depression in the next seven days.

It is expected to track westward across the northern Gulf and move inland over the weekend to the west of Alabama.

The National Weather Service in Mobile was keeping a close eye on the system Thursday and said it will cause a moderate risk for rip currents today along the Alabama and northwest Florida beaches.

That risk is expected to increase to high on Friday:

The system will bring high rain chances to south Alabama, with lower chances farther north.

Here is the probability of precipitation for Alabama through 7 p.m. Thursday:

Those higher rain chances will continue into Friday as well:

The weather service expects rain to spread northward from the Gulf with a southerly wind, and “numerous to widespread” showers and storms will be possible today and Friday in south Alabama.

The Mobile area could get 2 to even 3 inches of rain from the system through Saturday, according to weather service forecasts:

The rain is expected to keep the heat in check today, and there are no heat advisories in place for the entire state.

However, forecasters expect once the tropical system moves out that the heat will move back in, and next week looks very hot with more heat advisories likely.