The Sunrise News Sampler

According to Tuscaloosa Police, 26-year-old Rafael Omar Nevels has been arrested after forcing an acquaintance to withdraw money from an ATM Sunday evening. Police received a call, stating that a vehicle's occupant was in danger. A traffic stop was made, and investigators found probable cause to arrest Nevels, who also fit the description of the suspect in the robbery of the Lucky Dollar Food Mart earlier that day. Nevels was placed in the Tuscaloosa County Jail pending a $160,000 bond.

The University of Alabama is celebrating Black History Month with a calendar full of campus activities. Yesterday, tours were held to honor the legacy of Autherine Lucy Foster, the first African American to enroll at the University of Alabama. Tomorrow, heritage campus tours, sponsored by the College of Communication and Information Sciences, will visit key sites of the African American experience at UA.

Alabama legislators are returning to Montgomery and getting back to work this afternoon after last week's meeting schedule got interrupted by the winter storm.

Today, voters in four Alabama counties are going to the polls to fill three vacancies in the Alabama House of Representatives.

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins says he will rule quickly on whether to throw out a lawsuit challenging Alabama's new tax credits for families that move their children from failing public schools, which attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center says doesn't provide equal protection for students in rural areas.

The Food and Drug Administration is preparing a $115 million multimedia education campaign, using ads that depict yellow teeth and wrinkled skin to emphasize the costs associated with cigarette smoking.

Authorities in Michigan are trying to figure out how a prisoner serving life for killing four people was able to escape without being detected. Michael David Elliot evaded guards and got through two electrically charged fences Sunday night. He was captured yesterday in Indiana after allegedly kidnapping a woman, stealing two vehicles, and taking police on a chase.