Good morning, folks. My name's Ike Morgan. Welcome to a Down in Alabama newsletter with a bit of a new look. Below we still have links to Alabama stories, just like always, but we're going to try to give you a little more to chew on right here in this weekday email. So you can read and scoot, or dig in and click through, depending on your time and inclination. Either way, hopefully we can inform and maybe even entertain. But we're burning daylight, so let's get started ... |
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Over the course of the day Tuesday, we had a mini-helicopter crash in a marsh, a small plane crash-land at a rail-yard, and a spacecraft reportedly make a big sonic boom as it streaked toward the Gulf.
Fortunately, there were no reports of injuries in any of the incidents.
The spacecraft's fall from way, way above was planned. SpaceX confirmed its Dragon splashed down off the Florida Panhandle.
In the morning, a two-person gyrocopter took a tumble as it came down in a Dauphin Island marsh. In the evening, a small plane crash-landed in a Birmingham rail yard. |
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Women's sports and gender identity |
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Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed into law a measure that prohibits those born biologically male from playing women's college sports in the state, whether or not they identify as transgender, reports The Associated Press.
This is an expansion of a law passed last year that limited K-12 girls sports to those who were born a biological female. |
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Maybe we need practice for target practice |
Four people who the Cherokee County sheriff says were target practicing in a wooded area are under arrest after a 94-year-old woman was shot, reports AL.com's Carol Robinson.
Sheriff Jeff Shaver said the woman was in a home across a cove from the shooters. The round entered the home through a window and struck the woman. She was taken to a hospital and is expected to recover.
The four suspects, two from Indiana and two from South Carolina, have been charged with second-degree assault.
We don't want to get bogged down in complicated physics properties here, but it's pretty simple.
Sheriff Shaver: “People just don’t think. Make sure if you’re going to target practice, you have a proper backstop or you could have unintended consequences.” |
“I think the big mistake that people make is college athletics is not a business. People say it’s a business. It’s not a business. ... We reinvest every cent that gets made into non-revenue sports, to scholarships, to a lot of things that create a lot of opportunity for a lot of people, which is really, really good."
Alabama football coach Nick Saban, speaking at the SEC spring meetings. |
Born in 1981, former major league pitcher Jake Peavy of Mobile. |
Today is both World Parrot Day and National Flip Flop Day, which naturally turn our thoughts to Mobile's Jimmy Buffett, who is recuperating after a hospital stay earlier this month for undisclosed reasons. Last week Buffett offered an update through a statement, saying he was going to "go for a fishing trip with old friends, along with paddling and sailing and get myself back in good shape. Once I am in shape, we will look at when's and where's of shows." |
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