A federal appeals court order has cleared the way for same-sex marriages to begin next week in Alabama. The three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's request for an extended stay.
U.S. District Judge Callie Granade last month ruled that two Alabama laws prohibiting the recognition of same-sex marriages unconstitutional. Granade put a hold on her order until Monday to let the state appeal.
In response, Strange has filed a motion asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the District Court ruling striking down Alabama’s same-sex marriage ban. Strange’s latest stay, if granted, would hold off the ruling until the U.S. Supreme Court rules in June on the issue.
Nearly a dozen Tuscaloosa city officials and citizens gathered to discuss winning grant money for rebuilding tornado damage. The city is competing for a share of a half-billion dollar grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Robin Edgeworth is the director of recovery operations for Tuscaloosa. She says there were great ideas thrown out about how to identify the needs for to meet the requirements of the grant…
“We go in to the community and we begin to look at what our community has identified as potential risks. What HUD is asking us to do is that ‘we know you had a tornado but let’s look in to the future and let’s figure out what possible risks may exist.’”
Tuscaloosa is one of 67 eligible applicants for the HUD grant after the April 27th, 2011 Tornado. The process is in phase one and if Tuscaloosa is selected to move to phase two, Edgeworth says the selection process will carry over until September.
A New York publisher has announced plans to release a second Harper Lee novel later this year. APR’s Alex AuBuchon has the details.
After a fifty five year hiatus, Harper Lee is releasing a second novel. The Pulitzer Prize winning author actually wrote the forthcoming Go Set a Watchman before To Kill a Mockingbird, but shelved the book after publishers at the time advised her to focus on Scout Finch as a child.
This new book is essentially a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. It will follow an adult Scout Finch as she visits her Alabama hometown and her father twenty years after the first novel. Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most iconic novels of all time, with 40 million copies sold worldwide since its 1960 release.
Go Set a Watchman will be released on July 14...I'm Alex AuBuchon, APR news.