1. Boeing’s proposed missile partnership would mean ‘north of 1,000 jobs’ in Huntsville.

 

2. 627 parole hearings delayed until November.

• The Board of Pardons and Paroles likely won’t resume parole hearings until Nov. 1, the agency said Wednesday. As a result, 627 parole hearings from September and October have been postponed.
• “I am certain within reason that we will have the system up and running on or about Nov. 1,” Director Charlie Graddick said in an emailed statement.
• Graddick announced last week that hearings would be postponed amid claims that prior board leadership was not complying with new victim notification standards. Graddick, appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey under the new law, took over leadership of the agency Sept. 1.
• “This uncalled-for situation is a disappointment to me and to our hardworking employees but mostly I feel sorry for the victims and other interested parties who have been forced to wait to testify before the parole board,” Graddick said. “We’ve put all resources possible toward repairing this breakdown.”
• Janette Grantham, the executive director of Victims of Crime and Leniency, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of victims of crimes, told Alabama Daily News that she hadn’t been alerted recently of any victims not being notified of hearings, but believes previous leadership was not doing due diligence to reach victims.
• Read the full story from ADN’s Caroline Beck HERE.

 

3. Alabama hospitals sue opioid companies.

• Twenty-one Alabama hospitals have filed a civil lawsuit against the manufacturers, distributors and retailers of opioid-based drugs.
• The hospitals are alleging negligence, fraud and civil conspiracy by the defendants, which include Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and more than 40 other companies and individuals involved in the production and sale of opioids.
• Alabama hospitals allege in the complaint that the opioid companies engaged in a decades-long practice of making false assurances about the addiction risks associated with opioid products and used other deceptive marketing tactics to persuade physicians and health care providers to broaden prescribing patterns.
• The Alabama hospitals involved in the complaint include Baptist Health medical centers in Montgomery and Prattville, DCH Health Care facilities in Tuscaloosa, Northport and Fayette, three Birmingham hospitals and several rural hospitals.
• Alabama has had the highest number of opioid prescriptions per person in the nation.
• In 2017, the state had 836 drug-overdose deaths, 50% involved opioids, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.
• Total drug overdose and opioid overdose rates had climbed in Alabama in recent years to averages of 17.1 and 8.6 per 100,000 people in 2017.
• Read the full story from ADN’s Caroline Beck HERE.

 

 

4. Trump wants to ban candy e-cigs.

• The federal government will act to ban thousands of flavors used in e-cigarettes, President Donald Trump said Wednesday, responding to a recent surge in underage vaping that has alarmed parents, politicians and health authorities nationwide.
• The surprise White House announcement could remake the multibillion-dollar vaping industry, which has been driven by sales of flavored nicotine formulas such as “grape slushie” and “strawberry cotton candy.”
• The Food and Drug Administration will develop guidelines to remove from the market all e-cigarette flavors except tobacco, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters during an Oval Office appearance with the president, first lady Melania Trump and the acting FDA commissioner, Ned Sharpless.
• Trump, whose son Barron is 13 years old, said vaping has become such a problem that he wants parents to be aware of what’s happening. “We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t have our youth be so affected,” he said.
• Melania Trump recently tweeted her concerns over the combination of children and vaping, and at the meeting, the president said, “I mean, she’s got a son — together — that is a beautiful, young man, and she feels very, very strongly about it.”
• Reckon Barron got caught vaping in the Rose Garden?
• Full story HERE.

 

5. Democratic debate tonight.

• The Democratic Party’s strongest presidential contenders— according to polls and fundraising, at least — meet on the same debate stage for the first time Thursday night.
• The lineup in Houston will be different but the dynamic familiar: Former Vice President Joe Biden will fight to preserve his front-runner status as a crowded stage of lower-tier candidates scrap for attention and momentum any way they can. Opportunities and risks abound for a race that is far from settled.
• The debate will be aired on ABC beginning at 9:00 p.m. Central Time.
• Read more about the big questions heading into the third Democratic debate HERE.

 

News Briefs.

• ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — A search of Fountain Correctional Facility in Alabama’s Escambia County has found more than 600 makeshift weapons, 51 cellphones, synthetic drugs and multiple gallons of an alcoholic drink that prisoners call julep or pruno.
• The Alabama Department of Corrections says more than 300 law enforcement officers took part in the 10-hour operation Monday at Fountain, which houses about 1,230 inmates.
• The department says the search was the sixth time the corrections department had joined with local, county and state law enforcement to crack down on contraband at a state prison. Officials, in a statement Tuesday, said the department carried out the first major joint contraband operation at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville in February.

• TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — A University of Alabama teacher is off the job after video surfaced of a student drinking a beer in class.
• School spokesman Chris Bryant said Wednesday marketing instructor Joel Strayer has been placed on administrative leave while “several concerns” are investigated.
• A video posted to a social media site a week ago shows a young man punching a hole in the side of a beer can and drinking it while others in the classroom watch and clap. Someone is heard saying: “I am impressed.”
• The student newspaper at Alabama, The Crimson White, reports the incident occurred in Strayer’s classroom earlier this month, and that the person shown in the video wasn’t a student at Alabama.
• Strayer didn’t reply Wednesday to an email seeking comment, and Bryant declined further comment.
• Watch the video HERE.

• LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — If you’re carrying a gun, Florida’s largest supermarket chain doesn’t want to see it.
• Publix Supermarkets is joining a growing number of retailers in asking customers not to openly carry firearms in its stores.
• Publix said in a statement Wednesday that it requests that only law enforcement officers openly carry firearms in its supermarkets.
• The Lakeland, Florida-based chain has 1,226 stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
• In the months after the 2018 massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, Publix came under fire from survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for donating to the campaign of a Florida gubernatorial candidate aligned with the National Rifle Association.
• The students held “die-ins” at two stores in South Florida.

• The Supreme Court is allowing nationwide enforcement of a new Trump administration rule that prevents most Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States.
• The justices’ order late Wednesday temporarily undoes a lower court ruling that had blocked the new asylum policy in some states along the southern border. The policy is meant to deny asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without seeking protection there.
• Most people crossing the southern border are Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty. They are largely ineligible under the new rule, as are asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and South America who arrive regularly at the southern border.
• The shift reverses decades of U.S. policy. The administration has said that it wants to close the gap between an initial asylum screening that most people pass and a final decision on asylum that most people do not win.
• “BIG United States Supreme Court WIN for the Border on Asylum!” President Donald Trump tweeted.
• Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the high-court’s order.
• Full story HERE.

 

Headlines.

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