Tag Archives: Alabama

Police believe the Birmingham, Alabama, mass shooters used ‘conversion devices’

Glock-Switch

Important Takeaways:

  • The people who opened fire in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, late Saturday are suspected of using “conversion devices” in carrying out the attack, and over 100 shell casings were collected at the scene, according to a preliminary investigation from police.
  • The shooting, which left four dead and 17 injured, is just the latest spurt of mass violence made possible by the small part known as a “conversion device,” “Glock switch” or “auto sear.”
  • Whatever the term, the devices have the power to transform a handgun into a fully automatic firearm.
  • Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond called the devices “a huge problem,” adding they were still investigating whether the shooters used a switch or another type of weapon.
  • With these switches, shooters can fire a huge number of rounds in a very short amount of time. The rapid fire and recoil also make it difficult to aim properly, so these types of shootings can lead to innocent bystanders caught in the spray, as appeared to be the case in Birmingham.
  • There are several efforts in Alabama and across the country working to stop the spread and use of these devices.

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14 million people are under flood warnings from Storm Francine

NBC-News-Now-Screenshot-Storm-Francine

Important Takeaways:

  • The center of Francine has passed over New Orleans and is dumping huge amounts of rain across Louisiana, southern Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.
  • Francine made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane at Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, at 5 p.m. local time yesterday and has since weakened to a tropical storm with sustained wind speeds of 35 mph this morning.
  • More than 400,000 customers were without power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, according to the PowerOut.us website.
  • A storm surge warning is in effect from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to the Mississippi-Alabama border, meaning there could be life-threatening inundation from the sea.
  • 14 million people are under flood warnings, with heavy rain and possible tornadoes expected through tomorrow.

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EF-4 Tornado carves a path through Mississippi into Alabama leaving 26 dead

Mississippi Tornadoes

Luke 21:25 ““And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves

Important Takeaways:

  • ‘There’s nothing left’: Deep South tornadoes kill 26
  • A powerful tornado cut a devastating path through Mississippi, killing at least 25 people, injuring dozens, and flattening entire blocks as it carved a path of destruction for more than an hour. One person was killed in Alabama.
  • The tornado devastated a swath of the Mississippi Delta town of Rolling Fork, reducing homes to piles of rubble, flipping cars on their sides and toppling the town’s water tower.
  • “There’s nothing left,” said Wonder Bolden, holding her granddaughter
  • Based on early data, the tornado received a preliminary EF-4 rating
  • An EF-4 tornado has top wind gusts between 166 mph and 200 mph (265 kph and 320 kph), according to the service.
  • Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued a State of Emergency and vowed to help rebuild as he headed to view the damage in an area speckled with wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields and catfish farming ponds. President Joe Biden also promised federal help, describing the damage as “heartbreaking.”

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Tornadoes tear through the South: Reports of 42 twisters touching down

Tornado Threat

Luke 21:25 ““And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves

Important Takeaways:

  • Winter storm latest: Deadly tornadoes strike South, snow slams north
  • More tornadoes were expected on Wednesday in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as the storm moves east.
  • The tornado threat also extended into the Florida Panhandle Wednesday night, with tornadoes possible overnight in the region.
  • This comes after at least 42 tornadoes touched down across the South since Tuesday afternoon in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. A woman and her 8-year-old son were killed when one of those tornadoes swept through Pecan Farms, Louisiana, on Tuesday, according to local officials.

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South hit by tornadoes causing extensive damage

Alabama Tornado

Luke 21:25-26 “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Important Takeaways:

  • Storms, Tornadoes Cause Extensive Damage Across U.S. Southeast; at Least 7 Dead
  • Storms and tornadoes caused extensive damage to several communities across the U.S. Southeast on Thursday, including in Alabama, where at least 25 tornadoes were reported, according to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.
  • At least six fatalities have been confirmed in Autauga County, Alabama, located in the central part of the state, Emergency Management Director Ernie Baggett told Weather.com. “The best we can tell is about 40 homes have major damage or have been completely destroyed,” Baggett added.
  • Kay Ivey declared a state of emergency Thursday in six counties, including Chambers, Coosa, Dallas, Elmore, and Tallapoosa.
  • “I — along with my partners at the Alabama EMA — will continue monitoring to determine if an expanded state of emergency is needed. I am ready to be a helping hand to our local officials”
  • Power outages have affected over 88,300 residents, 41,500 in Alabama, 16,500 in Tennessee, 12,300 in North Carolina, and 9,600 in South Carolina, according to utility tracker poweroutage.us.

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40 fires, 6 states, 2 Million acres burning

Revelation 16:9 “They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.”

Important Takeaways:

  • More than 2 million acres burning across 6 states
  • Across the country, more than 6,700 wildland firefighters and support crews are actively working nearly 40 fires across six states, including New Mexico, Arizona, Alabama, California, Kansas and Alaska.
  • The National Interagency Fire Center reported five new fires started this week, two in California and one each in Alabama, Arizona and Kansas.

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Major Storms Hit the South East

2 Timothy 3:1 “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Deadly storms leave trail of destruction across southern US
  • Tornadoes and severe storms touched down across several states, leaving at least one person dead.
  • A major outbreak of tornadoes is causing significant damage across much of the South – including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

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In U.S. Supreme Court case, the past could be the future on abortion

By Lawrence Hurley

OXFORD, Miss. (Reuters) – Just months before she was set to start law school in the summer of 1973, Barbara Phillips was shocked to learn she was pregnant.

Then 24, she wanted an abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court had legalized abortion nationwide months earlier with its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling recognizing a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. But abortions were not legally available at the time in Mississippi, where she lived in the small town of Port Gibson.

Phillips, a Black woman enmeshed in the civil rights movement, could feel her dream of becoming a lawyer slipping away.

“It was devastating. I was desperate,” Phillips said, sitting on the patio of her cozy one-story house in Oxford, a college town about 160 miles (260 km) north of Jackson, Mississippi’s capital.

At the time of the Roe ruling, 46 of the 50 U.S. states had some sort of criminal prohibitions on abortion. Access often was limited to wealthy and well-connected women, who tended to be white.

With a feminist group’s help, Phillips located a doctor in New York willing to provide an abortion. New York before Roe was the only state that let out-of-state women obtain abortions. She flew there for the procedure.

Now 72, Phillips does not regret her abortion. She went on to attend Northwestern law school in Chicago and realize her goal of becoming a civil rights lawyer, with a long career. Years later, she had a son when she felt the time was right.

“I was determined to decide for myself what I wanted to do with my life and my body,” Phillips said.

U.S. abortion rights are under attack unlike any time since the Roe ruling, with Republican-backed restrictions being passed in numerous states. The Supreme Court on Dec. 1 is set to hear arguments in a case in which Mississippi is seeking to revive its law, blocked by lower courts, banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi has raised the stakes by explicitly asking the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Such a ruling could turn back the clock in Mississippi, which currently has just one abortion clinic, and other states to the kind of environment on abortion access that Phillips experienced nearly a half century ago.

Large swathes of America could return to an era in which women who want to end a pregnancy face the choice of undergoing a potentially dangerous illegal abortion, traveling long distances to a state where the procedure remains legal and available or buying abortion pills online.

Mississippi’s abortion law is not the only one being tested at the Supreme Court. The justices on Nov. 1 heard arguments in challenges to a Texas law banning abortion at about six weeks of pregnancy, but have not yet ruled.

TRIGGER LAWS

Mississippi is one of a dozen states with so-called trigger laws that would immediately ban abortion in all or most cases if Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Many are in the South, so a Mississippi woman would be unable to obtain an abortion in neighboring Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee or Alabama. The nearest states where abortion would remain legal, at least in the short term, would be Illinois and Florida.

The average distance a Mississippi woman would need to drive to reach a clinic would increase from 78 miles to 380 miles (125 to 610 km) each way, according to Guttmacher.

While some abortion rights advocates fear a return to grisly illegal back-alley abortions, there has been an important development since the pre-Roe era: abortion pills. Mississippi is among 19 states imposing restrictions on medication-induced abortions.

Mississippi officials are cagey on what a post-Roe world might look like. Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who asked the court to overturn Roe, declined an interview request, as did Republican Governor Tate Reeves.

Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson, who as a Republican state legislator helped shepherd the 2018 passage of the 15-week ban, called Roe v. Wade “antiquated, old law based on antiquated and old science.”

Gipson in an interview declined to answer questions about what Mississippi – or the southeastern United States – would be like without abortion rights, focusing on the specifics of the 15-week ban.

“It’s a false narrative to paint this as a picture of an outright ban throughout the southeast,” Gipson said, noting that the Supreme Court does not have to formally overturn Roe to uphold Mississippi’s law.

In court papers, Fitch said scientific advances, including contested claims that a fetus can detect pain early in a pregnancy, emphasize how Roe and a subsequent 1992 decision that reaffirmed abortion rights are “decades out of date.”

Abortion rights advocates have said any ruling upholding Mississippi’s law would effectively gut Roe, giving states unfettered power to limit or ban the procedure.

Phillips worries about a revival of dangerous, unregulated abortions that imperil women’s lives.

“I’m afraid that many more women and girls will be in back alleys,” Phillips said. “I’m worried we are going to find them in country roads, dead.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

Flash flooding in parts of Alabama kills one, prompts several rescues

(Reuters) -Heavy rain flooded parts of Alabama near Birmingham late on Wednesday, killing at least one person, closing roads and prompting several water rescues after a flash-flood emergency was issued for several counties.

Flash flooding was blamed for the death of a child in Arab, about 65 miles (105 km) north of Birmingham, the Marshall County Coroner’s Office said early on Thursday.

The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) said numerous people had been rescued from vehicles stuck in water and that homes and roads were flooded, with the rains forming and moving into areas already suffering from significant and life-threatening flooding.

The NWS issued a flash flood emergency late Wednesday for Shelby and Jefferson counties in Alabama, where weather stations recorded 5-10 inches (13-25 cm) of rain in a day.

“While heavy rainfall has ended at this time, runoff is resulting in continued significant flooding w/major impacts. Elsewhere, areas of rain continue into the night,” the NWS said in a tweet early Thursday.

Birmingham receives an average of about 3.34 inches of rain in October, according to CNN, which means some areas received around double the precipitation they normally receive in an entire month.

“We’ve had numerous water rescues, people trapped in cars and rescued by fire departments and police departments, and we’ve had damage reports of trees on houses and trees on roadways, and it’s really across the entire Birmingham metro area,” Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency Director Jim Coker told CNN.

(Reporting by Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru and Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Toby Chopra and Mark Heinrich)

U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations hit eight-month high over 100,000

By Anurag Maan

(Reuters) -The number of coronavirus patients in U.S. hospitals has breached 100,000, the highest level in eight months, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, as a resurgence of COVID-19 spurred by the highly contagious Delta variant strains the nation’s health care system.

A total of 101,433 COVID patients were hospitalized, according to data published on Friday morning.

U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations have more than doubled in the past month. Over the past week, more than 500 people with COVID were admitted to hospitals each hour on average, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The United States reached its all-time peak for hospitalizations on Jan. 14 when there were over 142,000 coronavirus-infected patients in hospital beds, according to HHS.

As the vaccination campaign expanded in early 2021, hospitalizations fell and hit a 2021 low of 16,000 on in late June.

However, COVID-19 admissions rose suddenly in July as the Delta variant became the dominant strain. The U.S. South is the epicenter of the latest outbreak but hospitalizations are rising nationwide.

Florida has the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalized patients, followed by Texas and California, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More than 95% of intensive care beds are currently occupied in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

The Delta variant, which is rapidly spreading among mostly the unvaccinated U.S. population, has also sent a record number of children to hospital. There are currently over 2,000 confirmed and suspected pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to HHS.

Three states – California, Florida and Texas – amount to about 32% of the total confirmed and suspected pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States.

Children currently make up about 2.3% of the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalizations. Kids under 12 are not eligible to receive the vaccine.

The country is hoping for vaccine authorization for younger children by autumn with the Pfizer Inc vaccine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said this week that the nation could get COVID-19 under control by early next year if vaccinations ramp up.

The United States has given at least one dose of vaccine to about 61% of its population, according to the CDC.

The United States, which leads the world in the most deaths and cases, has reported 38.5 million infections and over 634,000 deaths since the pandemic began last year, according to a Reuters tally.

(Reporting by Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)