AP Selects Top 10 Alabama Stories of 2004

Here are the top 10 stories for the year, as selected by the AP staff in Alabama.

1. Hurricane Ivan strikes the Alabama coast and storms up the state Sept. 16, wrecking Gulf resorts and south Alabama towns.

2. HealthSouth's Richard Scrushy battles new charges of perjury and obstruction of justice as former colleagues are sentenced and his fraud case heads for January trial.

3. Ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore loses last appeal, Ten Commandments monument is moved from state courthouse, but protege Tom Parker wins seat on high court.

4. Former Gov. Don Siegelman is acquitted in federal court in Medicaid fraud case, but investigations continue in Birmingham and Montgomery.

5. Three policemen are shot to death in Birmingham while serving a misdemeanor warrant in June after two officers are shot to death in Athens in January when summoned to a home.

6. Alabama soldiers fight in Iraq, where 10 are killed in 2004 along with a contract engineer from the state.

7. A mistrial is declared amid jury tampering charges in the capital murder trial of a man accused of killing six members of his girlfriend's family at Rutledge.

8. Amendment Two, which would delete segregation-era language from Alabama's Constitution, is narrowly defeated.

9. Auburn University gets off probation after a year of shakeups under new interim president Ed Richardson.

10. Civil War widow Alberta Martin dies at 97 and is given an 1860s-style funeral at Elba with Civil War re-enactors.