Gail Short - a freelance writer in Birmingham, Alabama

Christy Jordan is hiding a cake in her garage.

The Huntsville writer and creator of Southernplate.com food blog has for the last eight years taught millions of readers how to cook southern. She has published cookbooks and appeared in national magazines and on the “Today Show,” Hallmark Channel, Fox News and “700 Club.”

This morning, however, she is at home planning a birthday dinner for her husband, Ricky, and the yellow Duncan Hines cake with her homemade chocolate icing and chocolate-dipped strawberries on top is stashed away inside the extra refrigerator in the garage.

“And I’ve got all the evidence cleaned up so I can surprise him,” she says. Read the article here.

In 2011, Blake Percival of Montgomery made a difficult choice. He sued his former employer. 
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Percival had worked more than a decade at U.S. Investigations Services (USIS) Inc., the federal government’s largest provider of security background checks, when the company promoted him to director of fieldwork services. But he says he soon discovered that the company had implemented a process called “dumping,” sending case files to the federal Office of Personnel Management before completing the background checks. Percival says he told his employees to perform thorough investigations, resisting the policy. USIS terminated him. 

Read the full article here.