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Ex-soldier plans an armed forces museum in Hoover

Former soldier and retired businessman Henry H. Cobb Jr. plans to fulfill a long-held dream by transforming part of a Hoover office complex into a venue to honor veterans and others who served in all branches of the U.S. armed forces.

Commercial real estate firm Graham & Co. Inc. recently sold a building in its Hoover Business Park on Lorna Ridge Drive to the Armed Forces Museum of Alabama, led by Cobb, a former adjutant general for the Alabama National Guard.

He plans an interactive museum, with maps, books and videos, as well as comfortable chairs for people to sit down, spend time and learn more about U.S. wars and those who fought in them.

Memorabilia also will be a part of the museum, including war-era model airplanes and Cobb's personal collection of knives.

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Booming mining's no longer the pits

EVERY time Sue Gogilis starts her shift driving the company truck she gives her steering wheel a good rub with a few disinfectant wipes.

Gogilis, a 34-year-old mother of two, was a dental assistant until last May. Now she drives a mammoth dump truck at one of Rio Tinto's iron ore mines, hauling 230 tonnes of rock and dirt across the scorching Pilbara region in Australia's outback.

"They need the bodies," she said. "And so if there's a body, they don't care if it's male or female as long as it can drive the truck."

From the pits of Australia to the coalfields of Wyoming, mining companies like Rio Tinto are hunting for people to address a dire shortage of workers. A decade ago, with prices slumping, the sense of mining as a sunset industry left it with a workforce with grey hair under its hard hats.