Mar. 27, 2025

Today is Opening Day for the 2025 Major League Baseball season. If you're into baseball, movies or baseball movies, check out today's podcast episode. We're picking our favorites of all time.

Today's report follows. Thanks for reading,

Ike

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United Launch Alliance, a company with a big investment in North Alabama, is now authorized to fly national security space missions, reports AL.com's John R. Roby.

The authorization is for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. Blue Origin makes the BE-4 engines that are integrated into Vulcan at United Launch Alliance's Decatur plant.

Until now, only SpaceX had certification to fly the missions, but United States Space Force is expecting to ramp up its national-security launches.

The Vulcan can deliver National Security Space Launch spacecraft directly into geosynchronous orbit.

A Jackson County school is closing after educating students for 120 years, reports AL.com's Heather Gann.

Flat Rock School serves Pre-K through sixth-grade students. The entire school's enrollment was only 64 this year. Superintendent Jason Davidson said they had teachers covering multiple classrooms and as many as five subjects. He also said there's currently no counselor in place.

So the Jackson County School Board unanimously voted this week to close Flat Rock at the end of the school year.

Even with its dwindling numbers, some in the area hoped to save the small community school, even launching an online petition to save it.

Flat Rock School was founded in 1905 by the United Methodist Church Conference, and it was sold to the state in 1929.

There are many, many lists of state rankings on every issue you can imagine that come down the pike.

Most of them we pass by. Some of them we share here. And then there are the rare ones we simply cannot ignore because they speak to us as a people.

The math-and-stats website GIGACalculator has produced a study that ranked Alabama the second-most-likely state in the U.S. to survive an alien invasion, reports AL.com's Mary Colurso.

How would one rank states on such a thing? Well, GIGACalculator examined the number of UFO sightings, access to food and water, numbers of medical professionals and scientists, military presence, population density and places to run and hide.

And just glancing at that criteria, we probably would be in a decent position. And somebody out there still has a toilet-paper stockpile from summer 2020.

Although military and places to run and hide aside, I think we might could win them over with southern hospitality. Take them to a ballgame and a pig picking and they might be ready to invest instead of invade.

Unless they ally with the pigs first.

Braves fans take note: A new vanity license plate showing off your favorite MLB team (and its retro lower-case "a" logo) became available in Alabama this month.

In 1921, 30-year Congressman Tom Bevill of Townley.

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