The Sunrise News

10/07/2025

“Cold-blooded” animals, also known as ectotherms, do not regulate their own body temperature. Snakes, frogs, turtles, salamanders, alligators, crocodiles and all other herptiles cannot produce their own warmth. That is why you will often find snakes and turtles sunning themselves on rocks or on pavement. They are trying to heat up on the warm asphalt. However, all animals have an ideal temperature range, and even our cold-blooded friends can get too hot, so on our hottest Alabama days, you may have a harder time finding these animals.

With 93 reptiles and 73 amphibians calling Alabama home, we have a lot of ground to cover. Check out the full article to learn all about these animals that call Alabama home.
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10/01/2025

Warrior Met Coal is planning to expand two of its coal mines near Tuscaloosa, situated within the Black Warrior River watershed. The Bureau of Land Management announced earlier this month that they would be leasing the federal land that Warrior Met Coal is seeking to expand onto. Bidding for this land starts on Tuesday. If Warrior Met Coal were to expand, their mines would encompass nearly 14,000 acres of land in total.

Environmental impacts from mine expansion raise concerns for the many species that live in the Black Warrior River watershed. This includes the endangered Black Warrior waterdog, a salamander that lives in only a few creeks within the river basin.

The Black Warrior waterdog was listed as an endangered species in 2018, as its population declined due to runoff from mining and other development. The waterdog is especially vulnerable to poor water quality due to its external gills. This vulnerability also makes the waterdog an important indicator species, meaning that its population levels and health help indicate the health of the river system as a whole.

The waterdog is just one species that lives in the watershed. Other threatened species also dwell in the area, including the flattened musk turtles, a threatened species of turtle that lives exclusively in the upper Black Warrior River Basin.

Read more about this issue on our site or in our email newsletter. Sign up at thesunrisenews.com.

Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service.

09/22/2025

A wave of fallout regarding comments and social media posts made about right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk’s Sept. 10 murder hit Alabama this week, resulting in multiple educators across the state losing their jobs while some state leaders and students call for additional retribution.

Auburn University fired multiple employees last week over social media posts regarding Kirk’s death that university President Christopher Roberts said were “hurtful, insensitive and completely at odds with Auburn’s values,” in a statement posted to X.

Read more on our website and subscribe to the Alabama Roundup newsletter to stay up to date with events across Alabama.

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09/15/2025

Alabama public media groups are starting to make changes following Congress’s decision to cut $9 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in July. Alabama Public Television leaders laid off 15% of their staff last week, while a Huntsville public radio station has announced that it is dropping its NPR programming.

Read more in this week's Alabama Roundup. And make sure to subscribe to the Alabama Roundup, where we make staying informed a breeze.

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09/13/2025

More than 100 Wilsonville residents packed a City Council meeting last week to voice their objections to a proposed 3 million square-foot data center project.
The proposed 14 building data center would take up 664 acres. The peak power demand for the center is expected to be more than 1,000 megawatts.

Read this story and more on our site and in our weekly newsletter.

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09/12/2025

The child, who Alabama Department of Public Health said is younger than five years old, was not vaccinated against measles. Children typically receive their first dose of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine when they are between 12 and 15 months old.
Measles is a highly contagious disease. However, the state’s MMR vaccine rates have been dropping in recent years. 93.8% of the state’s kindergartners had received their MMR vaccines going into the 2023-24 school year — below the 95% vaccination rate the CDC considers necessary to achieve herd immunity.

Read this story and more on our site and in our weekly newsletter.

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09/11/2025

Eight Alabama death row inmates have filed lawsuits in federal over the state’s nitrogen gas ex*****on method, calling the method unconstitutional.

These lawsuits, each filed separately, are not challenging the inmates’ status on death row. Instead, the suits are solely focused on banning the use of nitrogen gas in ex*****ons — a method the state pioneered and has used in five ex*****ons since January 2024.

“Death by nitrogen hypoxia is not akin to peacefully going to sleep. It is instead painful suffocation,” lawyers wrote in the suit filed on behalf of death row inmate Mark Jenkins.

Read the full story and more on our site and in our weekly newsletter.

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08/26/2025

A new point of contention is emerging over the state’s internet sales tax system. While multiple cities in the state have filed lawsuits claiming Alabama’s eight-year-old Simplified Sellers Use Tax — which levies state sales tax on online purchases through the state — is unconstitutional, the Association of County Commissions of Alabama issued a call to action to protect the system at their summer conference last week.

Find out more in this week's Alabama Roundup! Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed on news across Alabama.

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08/25/2025

A new point of contention is emerging over the state’s internet sales tax system. While multiple cities in the state have filed lawsuits claiming Alabama’s eight-year-old Simplified Sellers Use Tax — which levies state sales tax on online purchases through the state — is unconstitutional, the Association of County Commissions of Alabama issued a call to action to protect the system at their summer conference last week.

Find out more in this week's Alabama Roundup! Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed on news across Alabama.

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08/20/2025

Keeping up with the news can be a lot of work, which is why we've made it simple. Just subscribe to our newsletter and get weekly editions of our Alabama Roundup emailed directly to you!

We provide concise and accurate summaries of some of the top news stories across Alabama to make staying informed easy.

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08/18/2025

A Jefferson County judge last week allowed a civil lawsuit filed by the family of an Alabama inmate whose organs were harvested during an autopsy by the University of Alabama at Birmingham to go forward.

This is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed against ADOC and UAB by family members whose loved ones were returned with missing organs after they died in ADOC custody.

Find out more in this week's Alabama Roundup! Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed on news in Alabama.

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07/16/2025

If you’ve lived in Alabama for any number of years, you’re probably familiar with Travis Ward’s artwork, whether you know it or not. His classic designs withstand the test of time and show his passion for both innovation and appreciation of the foundational works that came before him.

Travis “TJ” Ward has been a signmaker in Birmingham for 52 years. He has had a passion for art since he was a child, and when he was 13 he started his first sign-making job with Robert Glass, a husband of one of his cousins, who he credits as his mentor and one of his lasting artistic inspirations. He learned how to hand-paint signs with brushes, measure and cut materials, and how to format and space lettering in a way that’s both readable and aesthetically appealing. He also learned how to weld, bend neon and later, cut and apply vinyl.

One of his favorite mediums to paint on? Billboards.

Read more about Ward and his legacy of handmade signage on our site. https://thesunrisenews.com/travis-ward-legacy-sign-maker/