Tim Melson, R-Florence, wants the Bible to be the focus of three new social studies electives in public schools.

The purpose of the courses, according to the bill, are to teach about "Bible characters, poetry, and narratives that are useful for understanding history and contemporary society and culture, including art, music, social mores, oration, and public policy."

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has similar concerns about how a history class on the Bible is ultimately taught to students.

Attorneys for the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America have filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump asking the court to recognize the citizenship of an Alabama woman who left the U.S. to join ISIS and allow she and her young son to return to the United States.

The woman, Hoda Muthana, began pleading to come home earlier this week after spending more than four years with ISIS, during which she used her Twitter account to call for attacks on Americans.

In the lawsuit, attorneys ask the court to recognize Muthana’s citizenship based on her birth on U.S. and allow she and her son to enter the country.

In the days since Hoda Muthana, the young woman from Hoover who went to Syria to join ISIS, began pleading to come home , there has been no shortage of questions and debate about her citizenship and what the U.S. should do if she returns.

He said the extremist views she adopted when she left the country for Syria don’t reflect those of Hoover or of its citizens.

For many Hoover residents, the news of a young woman from the city joining ISIS was a bit jarring.

Both David and Michael have previously served under their father on the staff at the Church of the Highlands’ main campus in Irondale.

Michael Hodges was the former Greystone campus pastor until he was removed in 2017 for a “moral failing.” The speaking engagement at Freedom House Church in Charlotte appears to be his return to public ministry.

Before becoming Greystone campus pastor, Michael had been on the church staff since 2015 with other titles including director of ministry partnership and placement, and as a member of the Highlands College Team, which teaches students at the church’s ministry training program.

Darrell Bevell has helmed NFL offenses led by running backs Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch while calling the plays for the Minnesota Vikings for five seasons and the Seattle Seahawks for seven seasons.

Six times between 2006 and 2017, Bevell's offenses finished in the top five in the NFL in rushing yards.

After selecting Johnson from Auburn in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft, the Lions had the former Madison Academy standout in a backup role to LeGarrette Blount for the first three games of the season.

The animated Gore who rallied the crowd in Hayneville was a far cry from the wooden, stiff caricature of Gore that emerged during his political career, his face gaining color and his brow damp with sweat as he denounced corporate political actions, environmental injustice and voter suppression efforts.

“If the entire world is recognizing that the cheapest electricity now is solar, why are we burdened in our country, and particularly in Alabama, with the obligation to keep on burning fossil fuels?” Gore asked.

Gore also recognized Wilsonville Mayor Lee McCarty seated in the crowd, one of the local leaders who is seeking to persuade Alabama Power to dig out its existing coal ash, which sits in unlined ponds like the one in Wilsonville near the E. C. Gaston electric generating plant in Shelby County.

Nearly a half-dozen new charges have been filed against a Randolph County High School math teacher accused of being sexually involved with a teen student.

David Brenton Burkhalter, 30, was arrested last week on eight felony charges involving a 15-year-old female student: two counts of electronic solicitation of a child for sex; and two counts of School Employee Sex Act with Student Less than 19 years of age.

He is also charged in Clay County with electronic solicitation of a minor and interfering with child custody.

The president and CEO of the Birmingham Business Alliance is stepping down from his post effective March 29 to take another economic development position in the state, the organization announced Thursday.

The organization suggested Hilson will be leaving the alliance in good hands after 4,500 jobs and $1 billion in capital investment was secured in Birmingham last year.

“When I came here eight years ago from Huntsville my plan was very clear: to accept the challenge to put into practice the proven strategies that I knew would bring a new level of success to this great community,” Hilson said in a statement.

Gary Wade Rowland was sentenced Wednesday in Bibb County Circuit Court, said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. Rowland was a habitual offender with prior convictions for vehicular homicide and drug crimes.

Sutton, the publisher of the weekly newspaper the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, created a firestorm last week with an editorial titled “Klan needs to ride again.” The backlash included Sutton being stripped of journalism honors and censured by the Alabama Press Association.

Sutton said he’s received numerous comments from people across the country, some of which he printed on the front page of this week’s Democrat-Reporter under the headline: “Response: Love editorials.”

Justin Kyle Lett, a 28-year-old medical salesman, disappeared early Sunday morning after he was last seen about 2:50 a.m. outside of Marty's PM on the city's Southside. Lett was seen getting into the front passenger side of a newer white sedan. His family and friends were unable to reach him after he left Marty's PM. Monday, May 14th, 2018, Lett's body was found in an alley between Coosa and Appalachee streets. He had been shot multiple times and appears to have been dumped at this location. Birmingham Police Department are looking for the driver of the white sedan in which Lett left Marty’s PM in. If you have any information about Justin Kyle Lett, his whereabouts the evening and morning of May 12th and May 13th of 2018, or any information about the driver of the newer model white sedan, please contact Homicide Detective Phillip Harris at (205) 297-8459.

Wear is one of three men in three different states interviewed by AL.com in recent months who say Bailey sexually abused them decades ago when they were students at Randolph and he was a teacher in his 30s-40s.

In the #MeToo era, as churches, political circles, entertainment industries and society reckon with allegations of decades-old sexual abuse and assault, schools — public and private — aren’t exempt.

It’s not unusual for children to wait years before reporting abuse, said Nikki Patterson, a longtime Alabama sex crimes prosecutor who works in Mobile.

Sports

However, a fair number of anglers are still prowling Lake Guntersville, looking for areas where the murky water has cleared a bit, and also for ditches and culverts where runouts can create a bite.

Captain Mike Gerry says this February has been the best in years for largemouths at Guntersville, and the action should pick up immediately as soon as the water levels get back to normal; www.fishlakeguntersvilleguideservice.com .

Captain Brian Barton reports flooding waters have made fishing tough on Pickwick the past few weeks.

Common sense seems to have prevailed somewhat when it comes to SEC football scheduling, with the news that the annual Auburn-Georgia game (AKA "The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry") will move to earlier in the season beginning in 2020.

It's certainly a boost for Auburn, which no longer has to face its two biggest rivals (Georgia and Alabama) in a three-week span — and both on the road in even years.

The preliminary plan is to swap Auburn-Georgia with Georgia-Tennessee, which has traditionally taken place in late September or early October each year.

The first dustup of what could be shaping up as the Landon Collins offseason saga roiled the New York media and Giants’ fans on Wednesday.

New York’s front office has given no sign that either is imminent, although as much as he dislikes it, Collins seems a likely candidate to be tagged by the Giants.

After Josina Anderson of ESPN reported via Twitter that Collins had cleaned out his locker and said his goodbyes at the NFL team's facilities (although the players are off until April), other reporters relayed that Collins' locker didn't look cleaned out.

But just hours before Auburn faced off against Arkansas, Bruce Pearl, the AU head coach, was asked on the team’s in-house pregame show if he thought his team was getting closer to playing its best basketball.

He wasn’t asked if he thought his team was at its best — rather if it was even moving in the right trajectory.

“Tonight, we got closer when you put the offense and defense together and the shooting to playing better against a decent opponent,” Pearl said.

During his rookie season, Minkah Fitzpatrick played all over the Dolphins' secondary. As the former Alabama All-American departed for the offseason, Fitzpatrick said he'd like to know where the Dolphins planned to play him in 2019.

Alabama lost, 71-53, to Florida Saturday afternoon, a step back for the Crimson Tide in terms of building its NCAA tournament resume. Watch what head coach Avery Johnson said following the Crimson Tide's loss in the video above.

An iconic Southern fried chicken restaurant opened its first Alabama location earlier this week in downtown Birmingham.

Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken, which began in the small town of Mason, Tenn., opened Monday in The Battery , a retail and office development in the former Birmingham Electric Battery Co. building at the corner of 22nd Street and Second Avenue South.

Now based in Memphis, Gus’s is famous for its hot and spicy fried chicken, which Napoleon “Na” Vanderbilt and his wife, Maggie, began serving out of the back of their tavern in Mason more than 65 years ago.

Matt and Calli get really passionate about their topics in this episode of Back Porch Bickerin'. Navigating the truths, desires, and societal pressures of the Valentine's Day, these two Southerners really put things in perspective.

The new barbecue restaurant from James Beard Award-winning South Carolina pitmaster Rodney Scott is expected to open sometime this week in Birmingham.

Scott, who won the James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast in 2018, first announced plans to open a Birmingham location of his Rodney Scott’s BBQ last spring.

The restaurant, which is in the former Saigon Noodle House space at 3719 Third Ave. South in Avondale, could open possibly as early as Wednesday, Feb. 20, according to Birmingham restaurateur Nick Pihakis of the Pihakis Restaurant Group.

The three actors with starring roles in a movie being filmed in Fairhope have made it to the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay.

“The Friend” is based on an award-winning 2015 essay in Esquire written by Fairhope resident Matthew Teague, who convinced the producers to film it in the charming town where he lives with his two daughters.

In unflinching detail, the essay, “The Friend: Love is Not a Big Enough Word,” tells the story of Teague’s wife’s death after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and how one of their closest friends, Dane Faucheux, helped him and his girls through the process by moving from New Orleans to live with them.

On Alabama Highway 10, once you cross the Nanafalia Bridge across the Tombigbee River from Marengo County into Choctaw County, you take the first road to the right, which curves back and takes you alongside the river to a parking lot.

You’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but you have arrived at a wonderful place where the location, the historic building and the warm wait staff make you feel like you’ve traveled back in time.

Mary Ann Ezell Hall sits in one of the original two rooms that once made up the dogtrot cabin where she lived until she was five years old.

The actor, who played Captain America in several films, including 2018′s “Avengers: Infinity War,” has dropped out of the Netflix movie because of scheduling conflicts, according to Deadline Hollywood .

Evans has been replaced by Sebastian Stan , who played alongside him as Bucky Barnes/The Winter Solider in four of the Marvel superhero films.

Several stars are attached to “The Devil All the Time,” a gothic thriller adapted from a 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock .