By Associated Press
(AP) – Here are the top 10 Alabama news stories of 2008 as determined by The Associated Press:
-With Jefferson County trying to avoid filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, grand jurors indict Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford on charges related to a financial debacle with roots both in corruption and the nation's credit crisis.
-Mobile wins, then loses, as Washington waffles over whether to award Northrop Grumman Corp. a $35 billion contract to build a new Air Force tanker in the port city.
-Democrats gain a seat in Alabama's congressional delegation as two longtime representatives retire, but the GOP keeps the state in its presidential column as John McCain carries the state over Barack Obama.
-Financial problems mean proration of the state education budget and tuition hikes at public colleges and universities.
-A Mobile County man is charged with capital murder for allegedly tossing his four children to their deaths off a coastal bridge.
-Former Gov. Don Siegelman is freed from prison after nine months and pursues an appeal of his corruption conviction amid claims of GOP wrongdoing.
-The former chancellor of Alabama's two-year colleges, Roy Johnson, pleads guilty and testifies for the prosecution against state Rep. Sue Schmitz, D-Huntsville, the first legislator to stand trial on corruption charges linked to the system. Her trial ends with a hung jury.
-Thousands of people, mostly from Louisiana, fill shelters across Alabama as evacuees escape from Hurricane Gustav. The state asks FEMA to pay $2 million to reimburse the cost of housing, feeding and cleaning up after 8,000 evacuees who were at two-year colleges.
-Drought conditions end across Alabama, but about 30 percent of the state remains abnormally dry at year's end.
-A jury in Montgomery orders the U.S. subsidiary of U.K. drug maker AstraZeneca to pay the state $215 million in what plaintiff's lawyers claim was a scheme to overcharge for Medicaid prescription drugs for years. A judge cuts the award to $160 million. In another trial, a jury orders GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis to pay the state more than $114 million in damages.