7. Israel announced it killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and mastermind behind the deadly October 7, 2023, attack, during an operation in the southern Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this a major blow to Hamas, while President Joe Biden praised the action, stating it was a significant achievement for Israel and its allies.

6. Bama kills another one (leaving 161 inmates on Alabama Death Row, including five women) after Derrick Dearman, convicted of killing five people in 2016 with an axe and guns, was executed by lethal injection in Alabama. Dearman was the state’s fifth execution of 2024, Dearman had given up his appeals and expressed remorse in his final words, asking the victims’ families for forgiveness, and ultimately, to be executed.

5. The FBI will investigate the death of Dennoriss Richardson, a Black man found hanging at an abandoned house in Colbert County, following concerns raised by his family and civil rights attorney Roderick Van Daniel, who disputes the sheriff’s ruling of suicide. Richardson had previously filed a federal lawsuit against the Sheffield Police Department, alleging abuse, and his family asserts he was not depressed and would not have taken his own life.

4. Legislative pay raises coming as Alabama legislators’ salaries will increase to $62,212 in 2025, a 4.25% raise from their 2024 pay of $59,674. The salary adjustments are tied to the state’s median household income, and Alabama legislators currently earn the highest salaries in the South.

3. The arrest in Birmingham’s September mass shooting outside Hush lounge revealed connections to eleven other homicides spanning eight years, with the accused, Damien Laron McDaniel III, facing charges in multiple murders. Two of the four Hush victims were previously charged in separate homicide cases, and another victim had lost the father of her child in a still-unsolved 2022 murder, a culture of crime and revolving door criminal justice system is to blame for this.

2. U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Montgomery) criticized former President Bill Clinton for not addressing the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies while making references to the murder of nursing student Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant, arguing that proper border screening might have prevented the tragedy. Britt reiterated her support for the Laken Riley Act, aimed at detaining and deporting illegal immigrants who commit certain crimes and noted Democrats made it “crystal clear from the start of their tenure that their goal was mass migration – not the safety and security of the American people.”

1. Former President Donald Trump has taken a narrow lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Nate Silver’s prediction model, leading by 0.7 percentage points at 50.2% to Harris’s 49.5%, this follows multiple national polls showing Trump leading with him doing better in swing states. Silver notes that this is Trump’s first lead since mid-September, and although the race remains highly competitive, recent polls have given Trump a slight edge heading into the final weeks, with a much bigger lead on betting markets.