Strong storms hit Alabama, kill two

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Search and rescue team combed through debris in Alabama after powerful thunderstorms pummeled the state early on Monday, killing at least two people and leaving heavy damage just hours after tornadoes struck portions of Arkansas.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley declared a state of emergency after the predawn storms hit the Birmingham area, with the towns of Center Point and Trussville just to the northeast of the city hit particularly hard.

Two people were confirmed dead, according to Pat Curry, Jefferson County's chief deputy coroner; one in Clay, a city of roughly 10,000 people, and another in the western part of the county.

Earlier, an emergency management official had reported three deaths.

"We have major, major damage," said Bob Ammons, a Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) official, referring to Center Point, Trussville and some unincorporated areas of the county.

About 100 people were treated for injuries, said Jefferson County EMA spokesman Mark Kelly.

Last April, massive tornadoes tore through Alabama killing more than 240 people, including 64 in the Jefferson and Tuscaloosa areas.

On Monday, in St. Clair County, Alabama, spokeswoman Katie Reese said a local fire department estimated some 36 homes had been damaged, and some of them destroyed.

The possibility for sporadic thunderstorms in the region lingered, according to AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Henry Margusity, but overall the severe weather was calming down.

THOUSANDS WITHOUT POWER

Clean-up and recovery efforts were under way across Alabama on Monday afternoon.

Food safety inspectors had been dispatched to assess damage and power outages at retail food establishments, state officials said, adding that any compromised products would be taken off shelves.

Search and rescue efforts were ongoing, according to Matt Angelo of the Center Point fire department. The injury count in that area northeast of Birmingham remained at about 12, he said.

At nearby Parkway Veterinary Clinic animals were being transported to a safe location after the structure sustained a direct hit during the storm, a spokeswoman said.

Earlier, rescue crews were dispatched to investigate reports of an overturned mobile home with people trapped inside, said Debbie Orange, city clerk for the city of Clanton, about midway between Birmingham and Montgomery. No injuries could be confirmed.

A preliminary report from the weather service's storm prediction center indicated a radio station in Clanton, Alabama was destroyed and a 302-foot (92-meter) transmission tower "toppled" due to the severe weather.

A tornado is suspected, but not yet confirmed, in the radio station destruction, according to the National Weather Service.

In Tennessee, the worst storm damage was in the middle of the state, with downed trees and power lines. In western Tennessee, structural damage resulted from winds whipping up to 65 mph, meteorologists said.

These were the latest in a series of powerful January storms to have torn through the Southeast.

On Sunday, twisters downed trees and powerlines in Arkansas leaving thousands without power.

A tornado ripped into an area outside of Fordyce, some 70 miles south of state capital Little Rock, damaging houses and felling trees and power lines as it moved, according to Accuweather.com.

The National Weather Service in Little Rock rated the Fordyce area tornado as an EF2, on a scale that ranges from EF0 to EF5, the most severe. The town of just under 5,000 people was one of the hardest hit areas in a series of storms that struck Arkansas on Sunday night.

Significant damage occurred to houses northwest of the small town, the city's country club and a set of transmission towers, it said in a statement.

The weather service has reported as many as eight possible tornadoes may have touched down on Sunday night in Arkansas, which was pelted by soft-ball sized hailstones and buffeted by winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour.

By Monday, almost 8,000 customers across Arkansas were still without power, according to utility provider Entergy Arkansas, Inc.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Suzi Parker in Little Rock and Kelli Dugan in Mobile, Alabama; Writing by Dan Burns and Lauren Keiper; Editing by Greg McCune and Sandra Maler)

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Alabama governor signs tough new immigration law

Gov. Bentley signed new law ThursdayRequires police to check the status of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally when stopped for another reasonImmigration and civil rights groups, as well as the Mexican government, have condemned the law

(CNN) -- Alabama's governor has signed what he billed as tough illegal immigration legislation, requiring police to check the status of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally when stopped for another reason.

The bill, due to come into effect on September 1, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Robert Bentley on Thursday.

Its passage makes Alabama the latest in a series of states, including Georgia and Arizona, to weigh controversial new laws aimed at tackling illegal immigration.

Civil rights groups and the Mexican government have been quick to condemn the move.

According to a factsheet presented by Alabama House Republicans, the bill will require law enforcement officers "to attempt to determine the immigration status of a person who they suspect is an unauthorized alien of this country".

The legislation also makes it a criminal offense to provide transport or housing to an illegal immigrant. The state will have to check the citizenship of students and any business that knowingly employs an illegal immigrant will also be penalized.

A spokesman for Bentley told CNN that the governor had signed "a tough illegal immigration law".

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, criticized the move, saying Alabama had fallen "into a costly trap" by passing what it described as an "unconstitutional law."

The legislation, sponsored by Republican Rep. Micky Hammon, could cost state taxpayers millions of dollars to enforce and defend through the courts, the SPLC said in a statement.

It also warned the state stood to lose "millions more in lost tax revenue from Alabama businesses that will bear the brunt of boycotts of Alabama goods and services and lost sales to documented and undocumented immigrants who flee the state rather than deal with racial profiling and the state's anti-immigrant climate."

The Mexican government warned that the law could affect the human and civil rights of Mexicans living in or visiting the state.

Several immigrant and civil rights organizations filed a class-action lawsuit last week against a new Georgia law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

That law allows police to ask about immigration status when questioning suspects in certain criminal investigations.

Meanwhile, Arizona's governor said last month she would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after portions of the state's new immigration law were blocked by federal courts.

The Arizona bill catapulted the issue onto the national stage last year, drawing a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, which argues that the law is unconstitutional.

Lawmakers in at least 20 states weighed similar proposals during the past year, according to the National Immigration Forum.

CNN

Alabama governor to address state on storm damage

(CNN) -- Less than a week after an epic outbreak of violent weather ripped across the South, officials in Alabama are still tallying the dead and trying to restore power.

The expanding scale of devastation wreaked by tornadoes that swept across the region has prompted Gov. Robert Bentley to deliver a live, statewide address on the impact of the storms Tuesday night. He is scheduled to make the speech during a joint session of the Alabama Legislature, according to a statement released Monday by the governor's office.

Precisely what the governor will say is unknown, however officials expect Bentley's speech will contain details about recovery efforts and damage estimates from recent status reports by the Alabama Emergency Management Agency (AEMA).

Since Saturday, the number of Alabama counties declared disaster areas by the federal government has more than doubled, from 17 to 36, according to AEMA. Search and rescue operations continue for missing victims and fatalities.

However, because of fluctuations in death tolls and injuries reported by counties across the state, the agency says it will no longer release them until all of the missing can be accounted for, and final totals of the dead and injured can be confirmed.

Storm recovery: How you can help

The agency's latest death toll from the storms, released Saturday, was 250. AEMA reported 2,219 injuries. The total number of people killed in five other states -- Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia -- during Wednesday's storms was 89.

The latest death toll for all weather-related fatalities, including flash floods, in the past week in those states is 356, according to the most recent emergency management reports.

Meanwhile, the number of customers that remain without power in Alabama has been cut by nearly two-thirds, from 1.1 million to around 407,000, according to an AEMA reported released Monday. It could be another week for power to be restored in some places such as Cullman County in north central Alabama.

There are currently 17 shelters serving 419 displaced people around the state. However, emergency responders say the actual number of people rendered homeless by the storms is certain to be much higher because that total does not reflect the number of people who've been taken in by family and friends.

Alabama poultry producers claim to have lost more than 2 million birds because of the storms, according to emergency management officials.

CNN

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Alabama Weighs Changes to Child Custody Laws Aimed at Uniting Broken Families

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The Alabama Senate is considering rewriting the state's child custody laws based on a controversial plan that has divided lawmakers over uniting broken families.

The bill would require divorced parents to share equal custody unless one is declared unfit. Supporters say the bill will inject fairness into custody battles that usually favors mothers, and allows both parents to raise their children. But opponents say the bill could hurt children by destabilizing their lives.

The Senate Children, Youth Affairs and Human Resources Committee narrowly passed the legislation this week in a 3-2 vote and it now heads to the full state Senate.

Republican Sen. Paul Bussman, a divorced father who says he got little time with his children when they were growing up, sponsored the bill.

Bussman told the Birmingham News that he saw his children every other weekend and once during the week in the wake of his divorce 15 years ago.

"I'm over the anger, but I understand the problem," he told the newspaper.

Democratic Sen. Vivian Davis Figures opposes the concept.

"This is a bad bill," Democratic Sen. Vivian Davis Figures told the newspaper. "We cannot have a one size fits all (approach) where children are concerned. You just can't."

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Alabama outbreak linked to pharmacy

The bacteria were found in bags used in intravenous feeding at six Alabama hospitals, state health officials said. STORY HIGHLIGHTSBacteria found in a bag in the pharmacy match bacteria in the blood of the victimsThe same bacteria were found on a water faucet in the pharmacyInvestigators' goal is to put together a probable chain of events (CNN) -- Alabama health officials seeking to find the source of bacteria suspected in the deaths of nine hospital patients and the sickening of 10 others announced Thursday they found the same bacteria in a pharmacy in Birmingham.

"Looking at the DNA fingerprints, that organism is an exact match of the organisms that the patients had, so we know it wasn't inserted after it left the pharmacy," Dr. Don Williamson told CNN.

The pharmacy, IV Meds, of Birmingham, had prepared the intravenous feeding solutions that were administered to all of the patients in six hospitals in the state. Bacteria in their blood matched bacteria in a bag of the suspect product found in the pharmacy, he said.

"Now it's just a matter of identifying the source of it from the pharmacy other than from the bag," said Dr. Mary McIntyre, a medical officer with the Bureau of Communicable Disease within the Alabama Department of Public Health. "That's still ongoing."

She said the same bacteria -- called Serratia marcescens -- were also found on a swab from a water faucet inside the pharmacy. McIntyre described IV Meds as a small business that had one full-time staff pharmacist. The company's website has been taken down and calls to the business have gone unanswered.

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