Good morning!

Here’s your Daily News for Friday, August 28.

1. Ivey: Keep wearing masks

 

2. Inside Alabama Politics

3. Laura’s impact

 

 

4. Trump lashes Biden, defies pandemic on White House stage

5. BCA conference elevates women’s voices

 

News Briefs

UAB, Boeing named state’s best employers

• The University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Boeing Company have been named Alabama’s best employers by Forbes magazine.
• Forbes and market research company Statista conducted an online survey of 80,000 Americans working at companies with more than 500 employees in every state. Respondents rated their willingness to recommend their own employers to friends and family, along with other work-life questions. Workers were also asked to evaluate other local employers.
• UAB employs approximately 23,000 workers through its academic institutions and hospital system. As a major research university, UAB contributes to cutting edge medical research and is currently involved with the national effort to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.
• Boeing employs more than 3,000 workers at its Redstone Arsenal campus in Huntsville. The company’s work in Alabama is mostly in the aerospace and defense sector, and its programs include the International Space Station, Space Launch System and Ground-based Midcourse Defense missile system.
• Full story HERE.

Man indicted in sale of ‘homemade’, untested cancer drugs

• BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man has been indicted on charges he manufactured homemade and untested cancer drugs in his kitchen and marketed them to “alternative-medicine doctors” in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere, according to federal prosecutors.
• Patrick Charles Bishop, 54, was charged with conspiracy and nearly three-dozen other fraud-related counts in the purchase, manufacture and distribution of drug products that were never reviewed or approved by federal regulators, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama announced Wednesday.
• Prosecutors said Bishop claimed the drugs, which contained a compound he purchased from a Chinese manufacturer, were effective cancer treatments. He sold them to holistic cancer treatment centers and other clinics for use on patients, the U.S. Justice Department said.
• According to the indictment, Bishop purchased the compound for $600,000 and “repeatedly assured” the manufacturer he would only use it for research purposes. But prosecutors said that instead, he and others used the ingredient to make homemade suppositories in nonsterile facilities such as his kitchen in Birmingham, and at a warehouse in Pelham.
• Bishop was also charged with fraudulently introducing adulterated drugs and misbranded drugs into interstate commerce, fraudulently obtaining pre-retail medical products, creating false documentation and knowingly possessing and trafficking in pre-retail medical products obtained by fraud, according to the indictment.
• If convicted, Bishop could face more than 20 years in prison. The statement did not say whether he had an attorney who could comment for him.

Three charged after Alabama man found dead in Florida

• BONIFAY, Fla. (AP) — Three people have been charged in connection with the slaying of an Alabama man who went missing nearly two months ago, authorities said.
• Jeremie Odell Peters, William Shane Parker and Lauren Kay Wambles were arrested in the case, the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office in Florida announced Wednesday. That agency, along with law enforcement counterparts in Alabama, had been searching for Raul Ambriz Guillen of Dothan, Alabama, since early July.
• Authorities said investigators determined Guillen, 51, was last at Peters’ home in Graceville, a community in Florida — more than 20 miles south of where the man was last sighted in Dothan.
• Authorities said Parker and Wambles, Guillen’s girlfriend, were also at the house. Investigators searched the home and found evidence linked to Guillen’s death, according to a statement from authorities. The man’s body was later discovered in Holmes County.
• Officials said Parker has been charged with murder and is awaiting extradition from Alabama to Florida. Wambles, of Dothan, Alabama, was charged with being a principal to murder and is also awaiting extradition. Peters is in custody in Florida, facing charges including abuse of a corpse, according to authorities.
• It was not immediately clear if the three had attorneys who could comment for them.

Former Mobile chief of staff gets year in prison

• MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — A former chief of staff for an Alabama city has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.
• James Antuan Blackman, 33, of Mobile, pleaded guilty Feb. 19 to one count each of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and money laundering.
• In addition to the jail time, Chief U.S. District Judge Kristi K. DuBose on Aug. 21 ordered Blackman to pay more than $200,000 in restitution to the City of Pritchard, where he served as chief of staff, Al.com reported.
• According to Blackman’s plea, during his time as Pritchard’s chief of staff and administrative assistant from November 2016 to January 2018, he used his position to divert money and property to himself.
• Documents show Blackman said he falsified city invoices, deposited city checks to his own account, and used his position to divert three pieces of property from the city to his own benefit. Then, Blackman laundered money through a $39,200 wire transfer from a bank account under his control to a title company to buy property, authorities said.

Consultant to review utility CEO pay after Trump criticism

• NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority has hired a new independent consultant to take a fresh look into its executive compensation after President Donald Trump earlier this month blasted the CEO as being “ridiculously overpaid,” the federal utility’s board chairman said Thursday.
• At a virtual meeting, the board announced that hiring a new consultant, Erin Bass-Goldberg of FW Cook, would be one of multiple steps taken after Trump put the agency in his crosshairs. Trump fired the former board chairman and another board member earlier this month and called for the CEO’s replacement and the position’s pay to be capped at $500,000.
• The board also provided more detail about plans to reverse course on the hiring of foreign labor for information technology jobs, which piqued Trump’s interest enough that in early August he invited the workers who would be replaced to the White House.
• With the pay-scale review in place, CEO Jeff Lyash could have a breather from Trump’s wrath. Results are expected before TVA’s November board meeting.
• Full story HERE.

 

 

Headlines

INSIDE ALABAMA POLITICS – August 28, 2020

 

 

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