Hello, Wednesday…

Weather: Not bad. Sunny and warmer than normal today, with highs in the lower 60s. Clouds start to move in tonight, with lows in the upper 30s. Thursday will be cloudy with a 20-percent chance of rain in the afternoon, with highs in the middle 50s. Better rain chances after midnight with lows in the lower 40s.

Fultondale man charged with murder. Jason Hopkins, 28, was arrested in Shelby along with another man, Dane Leach, listed as a transient; both are charged with murdering a man by strangulation in the victim’s Southside home on Friday night. Investigators believe the death is drug-related. Hopkins and Leach are jailed on capital murder charges and held without bond.

Staying dry. Hayden residents voted by a slim margin to continue to disallow legal alcohol sales in the town. The vote was 139 no, or “dry,” votes and 134 yes, or “wet.”

Let’s try that again. Remember a few months ago when the Pinson City Council renamed its main drag “Pinson Boulevard”? That action turned out to be null and void, because a very small part of the section of Center Point Parkway that they renamed turned out to be in the Birmingham city limits. Mayor Hoyt Sanders said they will draft a new ordinance and vote the new name in again for the proper segments, while encouraging Birmingham to do the same for their small part of the street.

Sports: Wildcats charge down the stretch. After struggling back and forth with Corner for most of the game, Fultondale’s boys went on a 13-0 run in two minutes’ time for a 59-50 win over the Yellow Jackets in the first-round of the Jefferson County Schools Basketball Tournament small-school division. In the other first-round game, Oak Grove defeated Mortimer Jordan 66-52. On the girls’ side, Corner routed Fultondale 58-13, while Jordan blasted Oak Grove 74-21. The winners meet in the championship games Friday night at Corner, while the losers face off in the third-place games that afternoon. Over on the large school side, host Minor defeated Gardendale 66-57 in first-round boys play; they’ll take on Pinson Valley, which lost to Clay-Chalkville, in a loser’s-bracket game Thursday. And in the Blount County Schools Tournament at Locust Fork, the Hornets swept Susan Moore in both the boys’ and girls’ first-round games, so they’ll move on to semifinal games on Friday.