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What Super Bowl quarterback Jalen Hurts learned from Alabama coach Nick Saban

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What Super Bowl quarterback Jalen Hurts learned from Alabama coach Nick Saban


Jalen Hurts’ one hour of fielding questions from media members at Super Bowl Opening Night in New Orleans on Monday included one “Roll Tide” from the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback.

Hurts also said something that he learned at Alabama while playing for coach Nick Saban had helped him find success on his football journey.

“I got this from coach Saban,” Hurts said. “I think one thing he taught us all – and he taught us all, but not everyone listened. I was one that listened. He taught us that every year is a new season, and it’s an opportunity to restart everything, so you start from the ground up. And you have to have that approach. I think just being able to improve from year to year since my freshman year at college and learn from all my experiences, learn from all of my lessons.

“Being able to stand here where I stand today, I think it’s because of that mentality — being determined, having that endurance to keep going and being diligent with the work. The No. 1 thing that I’ve always wanted to do was quantify my work and make the most of those opportunities. And it’s kind of spoke for itself.”

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Hurts and the Eagles are in New Orleans to play the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX at 5:30 p.m. CST Sunday at Caesars Superdome. FOX will televise the game.

JALEN HURTS ENDS 33-YEAR DROUGHT WITH HALL OF FAME RESILIENCE

While Hurts might try to treat every season as a new start, they have often ended in the same place for the quarterback.

The SEC Offensive Player of the Year as a freshman, Hurts appeared to have capped an undefeated 2016 season for Alabama when he ran 30 yards for a touchdown to give the Crimson Tide a three-point lead over Clemson with 2:07 to play in the CFP national-championship game. But the Tigers took the title when Deshaun Watson threw a 2-yard TD pass to Hunter Renfrow with one second to play for a 35-31 victory.

Hurts and Alabama returned to the CFP national championship game for the 2017 season. But with the Tide trailing Georgia 13-0, Alabama changed quarterbacks at halftime, with Tua Tagovailoa replacing Hurts and pulling out a 26-23 overtime victory.

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In 2018, Tagovailoa became the Tide’s starting quarterback, with Hurts as the backup. But with Tagovailoa injured, Hurts came off the bench, threw for a touchdown and ran for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to rally Alabama to a 35-28 victory over Georgia in the SEC Championship Game.

Hurts transferred to Oklahoma for the 2019 season and finished as the runner-up to LSU quarterback Joe Burrow in the Heisman Trophy balloting.

After going to the CFP in all four of his college seasons and reaching the national-championship game three times, Hurts joined the Eagles as a second-round selection in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Hurts became Philadelphia’s starting quarterback with four games remaining in his rookie season. The Eagles have reached the playoffs in all four of Hurts’ full seasons as a starter.

Hurts has helped Philadelphia reach the Super Bowl for the second time. In the 2022 season, the Eagles won the NFC championship but lost to Kansas City 38-35 in Super Bowl LVII.

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FOR MORE OF AL.COM’S COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.





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Alabama

Alabama puts man to death in the nation's fourth execution using nitrogen gas

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Alabama puts man to death in the nation's fourth execution using nitrogen gas


Michigan resident Beverly Leaf stands in solidarity with Carol Frazier, mother of Demetrius Frazier, as she pleads publicly on Jan. 28 in Lansing, Mich., to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to bring home her son Demetrius, a Detroit man convicted of rape and a separate murder of a 14-year-old in the early 1990s, who was serving a life sentence when he was charged with another murder in Alabama and is scheduled to be executed there Feb. 6.

Jake May/MLive.com/The Flint Journal


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Jake May/MLive.com/The Flint Journal

ATMORE, Ala. — A man convicted of murdering a woman after breaking into her apartment as she slept was put to death Thursday evening in Alabama in the nation’s fourth execution using nitrogen gas.

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Demetrius Frazier, 52, was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m. at a south Alabama prison for his murder conviction in the 1991 rape and killing of Pauline Brown, 41. It was the first execution in Alabama this year and the third in the U.S. in 2025, following a lethal injection Wednesday in Texas and another last Friday in South Carolina.

“First of all, I want to apologize to the family and friends of Pauline Brown. What happened to Pauline Brown should have never happened,” Frazier said in his final words. He finished by saying, “I love everybody on death row. Detroit Strong.”

Frazier in his final words also criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for what he called her failure to step in following appeals for him to be returned to serve out a previous life sentence in her state.

Recently, Frazier’s mother and death penalty opponents had pleaded to Whitmer to take Frazier back to his home state of Michigan to complete his life sentence for the murder of a teenage girl before he was turned over years ago to Alabama authorities. Michigan does not have the death penalty. Police had said Frazier confessed to killing Brown in 1992 while in custody in Michigan.

Whitmer told The Detroit News before the execution that her predecessor, Rick Snyder, “unfortunately” agreed to send Frazier to Alabama and it was in the hands of officials there.

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“It’s a really tough situation,” she told the media outlet. “I understand the pleas and concerns. Michigan is not a death penalty state.”

Prosecutors said that on Nov. 27, 1991, Frazier, then 19, broke into Brown’s apartment in Birmingham while she was asleep. Prosecutors said he demanded money and raped Brown at gunpoint after she gave him $80 from her purse. He then shot her in the head and returned later to have a snack and look for money, they said.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a post-execution statement that justice was done.

“In Alabama, we enforce the law. You don’t come to our state and mess with our citizens and get away with it,” Ivey said. “Rapists and murderers are not welcome on our streets, and tonight, justice was carried out for Pauline Brown and her loved ones.”

Frazier was sentenced to life in prison in Michigan for the 1992 murder of Crystal Kendrick, 14. Then in 1996, an Alabama jury convicted him of murdering Brown and recommended by a vote of 10-2 that he receive a death sentence. Frazier remained in Michigan custody until 2011 when the then-governors of the two states agreed to move him to Alabama’s death row. Frazier suggested in his final statement that his confession to the killing of the Michigan girl was false.

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Alabama became the first state to conduct nitrogen gas executions, putting three people to death last year with the method. It involves placing a respirator gas mask over the person’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen. Frazier, like the first three people to be executed by the method, shook or quivered on the gurney, although to a lesser degree than the others.

Frazier was strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed gas mask covering his entire face. The execution began at about 6:10 p.m. after a corrections officer did a final check of the mask.

Frazier moved his outstretched palms in a swirling circular movement for the first minute or two. At 6:12 p.m., he stopped circling his hands. He appeared to grimace, quiver on the gurney and take a gasping breath. A minute later, he raised both legs several inches off the gurney and then lowered them.

His breathing slowed at 6:14 p.m. to a series of sporadic breaths. He had no visible movement by about 6:21 p.m. The curtains to the execution chamber closed at 6:29 p.m.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said afterward that the gas flowed for about 18 minutes and that instruments indicated Frazier no longer had a heartbeat 13 minutes after the gas began.

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Hamm said he believed that Frazier lost consciousness quickly. He said he believed other movements, including the raising of the legs and periodic breaths, were involuntary.

A federal judge last week refused to block the execution. Defense attorneys had argued the new method does not work as quickly as the state promised. Media witnesses, including The Associated Press, previously described how those put to death with the method shook on the gurney at the start of their executions.

The judge, however, ruled that the descriptions of the executions did not support a finding that any of the men “experienced severe psychological pain or distress over and above what is inherent in any execution.”

Abraham Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action said the method of execution is “experimental gas suffocation.” He said it needs more scrutiny in the federal courts before Alabama uses it to carry out another execution.

Some of Brown’s family members witnessed the execution but declined to make a statement to the media.

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Hours ahead of his execution, Frazier visited with his mother, sister and legal team. He had a final meal from Taco Bell that included burritos and a Mountain Dew soft drink.



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New ‘Camp Hill’ virus discovered in Alabama is relative of deadly Nipah — the 1st of its kind in the US

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New ‘Camp Hill’ virus discovered in Alabama is relative of deadly Nipah — the 1st of its kind in the US


A close relative of the deadly Nipah and Hendra viruses has been detected in North America for the first time — specifically, in the U.S. state of Alabama.

The pathogen, which scientists have named Camp Hill virus, was detected in four northern short-tailed shrews (Blarina brevicauda). The animals were caught in 2021 near a town of the same name in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. After being captured for a study, the animals had been dissected and their organs frozen for later analyses; it was in those analyses that the virus was discovered.

Camp Hill virus is a type of henipavirus, a broad group of viruses that typically infect bats but have been known to “spill over” into various mammals, including humans. In people, henipaviruses can cause severe respiratory illness and a type of inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis.

Prominent henipaviruses known to infect humans include Hendra virus and Nipah virus. The former virus was first detected in Australia in 1994 and has a case-fatility rate of around 60%. The latter germ has caused disease outbreaks across Southeast Asia since being initially detected in Malaysia in 1998, and it kills between 40% and 70% of people infected.

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Deadly Nipah virus kills boy in India, prompts worries over outbreak

The detection of Camp Hill virus is significant because it marks the first time a henipavirus has been detected in North America. That’s according to the scientists who discovered it, who released a paper Jan. 17 in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The discovery raises concerns that henipaviruses may be more widespread than once thought. In particular, it provides evidence that B. brevicauda shrews — which can be found across central and eastern North America — can harbor these types of viruses, along with other germs already confirmed to cause human disease. It’s possible that Camp Hill virus may pose a risk to humans, perhaps spreading through direct contact with infected animals or their feces and urine, the researchers suggested.

However, despite these possible concerns, the authors of the new paper have cautioned against leaping to such conclusions.

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As yet, there is no evidence to suggest that Camp Hill virus will spread from shrews to humans. (Image credit: NajaShots via Getty Images)

“There is no evidence to suggest that the provisionally named Camp Hill virus has infected humans, and the likelihood of it doing so remains unknown but is likely low,” lead study author Rhys Parry, a molecular virologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, told Live Science in an email.

Although Camp Hill virus belongs to the same genus as Hendra and Nipah viruses — called Henipavirus — it is genetically distinct from both of them, he emphasized. By comparison, Camp Hill virus is more closely related to other shrew-borne henipaviruses seen in Southeast Asia and Europe than bat-borne henipaviruses like Hendra and Nipah, he said.

This distinction is key because bat-borne henipaviruses tend to infect a wider range of hosts and cause them more harm, and they’ve been known to cause severe disease outbreaks in people, he said.

So far, only one other shrew-borne henipavirus has been identified, and that is Langya virus, Parry said. This virus infected 35 people in China between 2018 and 2021, causing symptoms such as fever, fatigue and cough and in rarer cases, impaired liver and kidney function. But importantly, no deaths were reported.

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It’s currently unknown whether the B. brevicauda shrews in North America are able to spread Camp Hill virus to humans. They usually inhabit woodland areas where direct encounters with humans would be somewhat rare, the study authors wrote.

Notably, B. brevicauda shrews have been found to carry other viruses that can potentially spill over to people, but these have never made the leap from these critters to humans.

“Given that B. brevicauda shrews already host other zoonotic viruses, such as Powassan virus and Camp Ripley virus, and that veterinary professionals already handle them with appropriate biosafety measures, no additional precautions are required,” Parry said.

Future research should instead focus on trying to isolate the Camp Hill virus and decipher how many types of animals it can and has infected, he said. This information could then be used to better assess the potential risk of a spillover to humans.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

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Alabama finance leaders say 'sugar high is over' for state budgets • Alabama Reflector

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Alabama finance leaders say 'sugar high is over' for state budgets • Alabama Reflector


Alabama finance officials said Wednesday that the state’s “sugar high is over” as they predicted uncertainty around the economy in the coming years.

Speaking to lawmakers on Wednesday, officials said growth in the General Fund and the Education Trust Fund (ETF) are declining from double-digit growth it has seen over the last couple of years, due to the loss of federal COVID relief funds and uncertainty about a General Fund revenue source dependent on higher interest rates.

“In a span of three years, you went from a revenue source that wasn’t even on a pie chart in terms of its percentage contribution to the total General Fund to it’s now the second largest revenue source, and it’s not a reliable revenue source,” said Kirk Fulford, deputy director of the Legislative Services Agency.

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Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6% in the 3rd quarter of 2023, higher than all but Arkansas, and personal income increased by 5%.

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The General Fund’s revenue grew about $226 million year over year, largely driven by a $150 million increase in interest on state deposits, Fulford said. 

The ETF, which gets most of its revenue from state income and sales taxes, is expected to grow 1.82% in fiscal year 2026. The current 2025 budget was about 6% higher than the prior year’s budget. 

Alabama State Finance Director Bill Poole outlines Gov. Kay Ivey’s 2026 budget priorities during a presentation to Alabama lawmakers on Feb. 5, 2025 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

State Finance Director Bill Poole, who said “ditto on virtually everything” to Fulford’s remarks, cautioned lawmakers to budget conservatively.

“Be cautious, particularly in periods of uncertainty and clearly in kind of a transformative transition period in national and state economy,” Poole said.

Gov. Kay Ivey will request a $3.7 billion General Fund budget, about $400 million (12.1% increase) higher than the current budget, and a $9.9 billion ETF, about $560 million (6% increase) higher than the current ETF. The budget prioritizes education, public safety and workforce development. Key proposed allocations include increases of $230 million for Medicaid, $124 million for PEEHIP (Public Education Employees’ Health Insurance Plan) costs and further investment in mental health and law enforcement.

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The Alabama Legislature will have the final say on what the budgets look like. 

Poole said that as the state reduces earmarked funds and removes one-time line items from the last budget, it may look like some agencies may have been negatively impacted. 

“But there’s a story behind those numbers. Understand that we have not reduced operating maintenance costs at any of the agencies,” he said.

Fulford also reminded lawmakers of the expiration of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, which provided Alabama schools with $3 billion in temporary funding. Officials warned that school districts may seek state support to continue programs initially funded by ESSER, potentially straining future budgets.

“You can’t sustain another $3 billion of funding, and by the way … you certainly couldn’t support it on an ongoing basis either,” Fulford said.

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But Alabama’s economy seems strong compared to other states, Fulford said.

“There’s so many other states that are having to come in and figure out how to move the shells around to fill holes in their budget because of various decisions that they made, because of revenues declining and them not assuming the revenues were going to decline as fast as they did,” Fulford, adding that many states would like to be in Alabama’s position.

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