Pat Duggins

The Baldwin County Commission voted Tuesday to terminate the current agreement with area libraries tying courier service to state funds. The libraries have signed new contracts without the funding requirement. The move comes after Fairhope and its residents lost access to the courier when the Alabama Public Library Service (APLS) denied state funding to the Fairhope library last month. The two sides disagreed over 10 young adult books the state board says meets its definition of sexually explicit.

Imagine waking up one morning, opening that day's copy of The New York Times, and seeing yourself described as TV's “king of creepy.” My guest tonight got that distinction just last year. Two time Emmy award winning actor Michael Emerson is a University of Alabama graduate, and he once worked at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. We met his wife, Carrie Preston of the CBS TV series Elsbeth, just last month. Now, just in case you thought that creepy comment in the New York Times was a one off. the Washington Post later called Emerson “TV's most beloved creepy guy” four months later, and he seems to relish in that. Emerson starred as Ben Linus in the TV series "Lost" and the eccentric billionaire Harold Finch in Person of Interest. However, fans of the cult classic horror film "SAW" may remember him as the creepy hospital orderly Zep Hindle. Michael Emerson and I talk about his days at the University of Alabama and more. Next on APR Notebook.

Charles “Sonny” Burton didn’t kill anyone. The state of Alabama could execute him anyway. Burton, 75, is facing execution for his role as an accomplice in a 1991 robbery at an auto parts store where customer Doug Battle was killed. No one disputes that another man, Derrick DeBruce, shot and killed Battle.

NASA's long-awaited moonshot with astronauts is off until at least March because of hydrogen fuel leaks that marred the dress rehearsal of its giant new rocket, designed, built, and managed in Alabama. It's the same problem that delayed the Space Launch System rocket's debut three years ago.

It looks like the city of Huntsville will be one of only two communities to test a possible revamp of the U.S. Census. The Trump administration originally had six municipalities in the program, but cut out four of them. Huntsville and Spartanburg, South Carolina are the only two remaining.

Alabama singer and songwriter Jason Isbell will have to be content with just six Grammy awards. The Shoals area music star lost in all three categories in which his first solo acoustic album “Foxes in the Snow” was nominated. Isbell was under consideration, “Best Americana Performance,” “Best Americana Song,” and “Best Folk Album.” Ironically, the singer who “learned the ropes” in the music industry in the Muscle Shoals lost one award to another artist who recorded music in that region of Alabama.

Work requirements are kicking in for more older adults and parents of teenagers across the U.S. who get help with groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The implementation dates vary by state. For Alabama lawmakers, the issue may be more of a political one.

Charitable groups and local municipalities across Alabama are opening warming stations as temperatures plunge to the upper teens with wind chills near zero degrees. About 240 million people were under cold weather advisories and winter storm warnings Saturday as a powerful system threatened to bring howling winds, flooding and heavy snow to the East Coast — including blizzardlike conditions stemming from a “bomb cyclone” in the Southeast.

The Alabama prison system has moved three well-known inmate activists who supported a 2022 prison strike and were featured in an Oscar-nominated documentary about the troubled system to isolated cells with little contact with others, family members and attorneys said.

NASA has delayed the launch of an rocket designed, built, and tested in Alabama on a mission around the moon. The four astronauts’ upcoming trip is being postponed because of near-freezing temperatures expected at the launch site. The first Artemis moonshot with a crew is now targeted for no earlier than Feb. 8, two days later than planned. NASA was all set to conduct a fueling test of the 322-foot moon rocket on Saturday, but called everything off because of the expected cold.