Jun 06, 2024

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Toyota is expanding its Huntsville engine factory again, adding another $282 million in a project that will create more than 350 jobs. Now this isn’t the Mazda-Toyota assembly plant. This is engine plant on the other side of town. It’s easy to get mixed up by all the auto manufacturers in the state.

The Huntsville expansion will add new lines for drivetrain products.

Toyota Alabama has been in Huntsville since 2003 and is the company’s largest engine producer in North America, employing more than 2,000 people. The plant produced more than 770,000 engines last year.

In all, Toyota has invested more than $1.7 billion in the engine plant.

Here’s some good news for some of Alabama’s largest hospitals.

Electronic records of patients at all of the Ascension Health-affiliated hospitals in Alabama have been “successfully restored” less than a month after the facilities were hit by a ransomware attack, the health system said Tuesday.

Ascension Health operates six facilities in the Birmingham metropolitan area, including St. Vincent’s Hospital. It also runs Providence Hospital in Mobile.

Ascension, said it is working on restoring records for its entire system by June 14.

Hospitals across the country have been dealing with disruptions of their services after Ascension Health confirmed it was hit by a “cybersecurity incident,” after detecting what it says was “unusual activity on select technology network systems.” The company since determined it to be a “ransomware” incident.

when you find yourself applying for unemployment, you’re already facing tough times, but for the last few years, Alabama has made that process even tougher. AL.com’s Sarah Whites-Koditscheck reports that just 10% of unemployed Alabamians are receiving benefits, according to federal data analyzed by the nonprofit Century Foundation. That puts Alabama second to last in the nation, following North Carolina. At the other end of the spectrum, 57% of unemployed New Jersey residents were getting benefits last year.

The problems date back several years, when the system buckled under the pandemic. It’s never worked well again. While struggling to pay people in need of support, Alabama today continues to review old payments and demand people pay back money given out during lockdown.

Alabamians recently out of work told AL.com that when they applied for unemployment, it took months for the department to do the necessary verifications with their employers –- meaning the money arrived too late.

And to make matters worse, Alabama is also still demanding that some Alabamians pay back money handed out during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, even though Gov. Kay Ivey chastised the state’s Labor Department in 2022 for demanding repayment.

And there is no easy way to argue with Alabama. As of last year, the wait to appeal a repayment demand by the Alabama Department of Labor was the longest in the nation, according to an analysis of federal data by Century Foundation. On average, it takes Alabama 685 days to hear an appeal. So almost two years for a $275 a week pay out.

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