By Robert Palmer Staff Writer | 

April 12, 2015 
 

Alabama's new Remington firearms plant is up and running, and the first gun to bear the Huntsville stamp is a pocket .380-cal. pistol being marketed to women as well as men.

That's the word from the NRA Annual Meeting in Nashville Friday where Remington proudly showed off the small semi-automatic model RM380 with "Huntsville" stamped on the right side.

The pistol, which holds six cartridges in a magazine with room for a seventh in the chamber, is apparently also being made in Charlotte, N.C., if a giant poster for the handgun is evidence. The picture shows the new handgun with "Charlotte" stamped on its side.

A mentor at Birmingham's first health care "hackathon" asked a team working on chronic health whether they could borrow techniques from an unlikely source - the beer industry.

"How does Miller Lite get people to stop drinking Budweiser?" he asked.

Unlocking that question could potentially lead to better strategies to get people to eat healthier, exercise and stop smoking. Changing patient behavior is one of the hardest problems in healthcare, and also the one with the biggest potential for improving the state's dismal health statistics. Obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart disease affect much of the state's population and account for many premature deaths.