The U.S. Senate is considering a bill that would improve the Gulf red snapper season by moving the boundary between state and federal waters.
The bill would extend the jurisdictions of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana out nine miles into the Gulf of Mexico to improve red snapper management and benefit anglers on the Gulf Coast.
The bill was approved yesterday by the Senate Appropriations Committee. It’s part of a funding bill for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other federal agencies.
The federal government currently recognizes a nine-mile limit between state and federal waters off the coasts of Texas and Florida. It has recognized only three-mile limits for Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
The measure would give Gulf states more control of lucrative fishing rights as well as revenue from oil and gas production close to shore.
The movie Jurassic World hits theaters today and one of the main vehicles used in the film was built in Alabama.
The Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe is produced at the German car company’s plant outside of Tuscaloosa. Sut Jhalli was the executive producer of a documentary on product placement in Hollywood movies. He says putting a product into a film is an elaborate market strategy.
“Advertisers look to movies as just another place that they can place their messages, especially in a time when audiences are trying to get away from messages. There’s so much advertising out there, and audiences don’t want it. [Advertisers] want to get into those places where audiences can’t escape. Movie theaters are the perfect environment because you literally have a captive audience.”
Jhalli says the more prominent the product is, the more the advertiser pays the movie producers.
The city of Tuscumbia is gearing up for the 37th annual Helen Keller Festival later this month.
The town is staging performances of the play The Miracle Worker Friday and Saturday nights to remember Helen Keller. The Tuscumbia native was born blind and deaf and later became a writer and advocate for the disabled.
Sue Pilkilton is the executive director of the Helen Keller birthplace, Ivy Green, in Tuscumbia. She says the setting for the Miracle Worker play is about as authentic as you can get.
“It’s performed on the grounds of the birthplace of Helen Keller. We have four to five thousand visitors each year that come just for the play. We have every state represented and last year we had [visitors from] eight foreign countries.”
Helen Keller was also recognized last week as a member of the inaugural class of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Keller was honored alongside Harper Lee and several other prominent Alabama writers.
Six letters by "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee to one of her close friends could bring as much as $250,000 at auction.
Christie's is selling the signed and typed letters today. They were written to New York architect Harold Caufield between 1956 and 1961.
Four of them date from before "To Kill a Mockingbird" was written and published, while Lee was caring for her ailing father, the model for her protagonist Atticus Finch.
In another letter, she writes about her "stunned" reaction to the success of her 1960 novel which was later made into a movie.
Christie's says only three other letters written by Harper Lee have come up at auction in the last 35 years.
The 89-year-old author is in declining health and lives in an assisted living home in Monroeville.
The seller wasn't identified.