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After a contentious redrawing of Alabama’s congressional map, two candidates will compete in November for a seat, and perhaps congressional controlShomari Figures, an attorney and Obama White House executive from a politically-prominent civil rights family, has won the Democratic nomination to run in Alabama’s redrawn second congressional district Tuesday night, defeating state representative Anthony Daniels.The runoff election has been closely watched because of its...

Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, allegedly put stickers on state buildings with antifa, anti-police and anti-Ice sentimentsAn Alabama man has been charged with detonating an explosive device outside the state attorney general’s office.In a statement on Wednesday, the justice department announced that authorities had arrested 26-year-old Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert of Irondale on charges of malicious use of an explosive and possession of an...

Bill signed by governor Kay Ivey and lambasted by civil rights advocates affects public schools, universities and state agenciesThe Alabama governor Kay Ivey has signed a bill into law in effect banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs across public schools, universities and state agencies, the latest move in a wave of a Republican-led legislation that aims to restrict diversity efforts.The law, known as...

Jonathan Katz accuses Britt of being ‘dishonest’ in State of the Union rebuttal with story about Karla Jacinto RomeroDoubts have been cast on the accuracy of a story about horrific child sex abuse told by the Republican senator Katie Britt in her widely ridiculed speech delivered in rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.The journalist and author Jonathan Katz has accused...

Britt, 42, third youngest serving senator, spoke on the heels of her state’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’Republicans chose first-term Alabama senator Katie Britt, the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the Senate, to deliver the rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.The 42-year-old presented a counterpoint to the oldest sitting president at her kitchen table...

Some IVF providers say the legislation will allow services to restart, but claim it does not address the legal status of embryosAlabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, has signed into law new legislation that will shield IVF providers from the fallout of a court ruling that equated frozen embryos with children.The new law protects providers from lawsuits and criminal prosecution in the event of “damage or...

Merrick Garland warns of efforts to disenfranchise Black voters and says court decisions have weakened the 1965 Voting Rights ActThe right to vote in the US is under attack, with sustained efforts to disfranchise Black voters, US attorney general Merrick Garland told a Selma church service commemorating the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday police attack on civil rights activists.Garland said decisions by the...

Steve Marshall, state’s attorney general, says no staff or personnel injured by explosion in Montgomery on SaturdayOfficials in Alabama said on Monday they had launched an investigation into the detonation of an explosive device outside the office of the state’s attorney general at the weekend.“Thankfully, no staff or personnel were injured by the explosion. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (Alea) will be leading the...

Helping those who can’t read or write or who have disabilities to obtain, fill out or return a ballot is on par with serious feloniesA bill to criminalize some kinds of absentee ballot voter assistance – creating a felony on par with statutory rape or involuntary manslaughter – sped out of an Alabama state senate committee Wednesday.The proposed legislation on senate bill 1 initially...

Lawyers failed to persuade courts to stay the execution, arguing procedure amounted to cruel and unusual punishmentAlabama has carried out the first execution of a death row inmate in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner’s lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.Kenneth Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm...

Private equity firm Onex Corp partly owns company that makes mask for use in untested nitrogen hypoxia execution methodA Canadian company is facing criticism for allegedly supplying the equipment for a state execution in the United States, in a case that has drawn outrage for the reliance on a seemingly untested method of execution.On Thursday, Alabama plans to kill inmate Kenneth Smith by suffocating...

Kenneth Smith, to be executed in Alabama by untested gas method, tells Guardian of nightmares from failed lethal injectionOn Tuesday morning, Kenneth Smith will be moved within the Holman correctional facility in Alabama to the “death cell”, the bluntly named holding unit where condemned prisoners are placed two days before their appointed execution.Smith knows the cell well. He knows its dimensions and the feel...

Brandon Jamal Nation III was reportedly fatally shot in a Bessemer home on Sunday and his barber, also shot, was taken to a hospitalA five-year-old boy was killed when someone shot into a home where he was getting his hair cut, according to Alabama police.The shooting happened at about 10am on Sunday in Bessemer. The child was identified as Brandon Jamal Nation III, of...