Statewide Reports -June 23-30,2002

NOTE - 
If the link to the on-line articles has changed, search the paper's archive section by date and title - Palm Beach Post links are only good for the day posted, and there is a fee to access archived articles. 

6/29-30/02

• Health care dilemma
  Universal health care doesn't have to be government-funded. It may be possible to retain the best of private enterprise, while still extending health care coverage to all Americans.-- 
  When it came to prescription drugs, over a quarter (26 percent) of Americans reported that they did not fill a prescription due to cost, compared to 19 percent in Australia, 13 percent in Canada, 15 percent in New Zealand and 7 percent in the United Kingdom.-- 
  Differences in ability to get needed medical care were particularly stark among people whose incomes were below their country's median. Among those with below-average incomes, 36 percent of U.S. residents did not visit a doctor for needed care because of cost concerns, compared to 14 percent of Australians, 9 percent of Canadians, 24 percent of New Zealanders and 4 percent of U.K. residents.
• Rapid Growth Stifling State Wetland Areas
  TAMPA - For weeks the clouds have hung like angry fists on the horizon - dark, brooding clumps of gray lined with the silver promise of quenching the long drought. ... ``In the urban world around us, we are developing in a way that changes permeable soils into impermeable barriers,'' said Richard Garrity of the county Environmental Protection Commission.
  Every ribbon of road and slab of concrete alters the hydrology that has replenished Florida's aquifer for eons.
  The development-driven destruction of wetlands - especially the forested wetlands the Bay Area has lost to subdivisions and pavement in recent decades - is critical to our water supply.
• CIO for state's tech office named
  Kim Bahrami, who has been serving as Florida's acting chief information officer for almost a year, was awarded the job on a more permanent basis Friday.
• Patients stand to lose in state liability crisis
  Florida's health care news has taken on an ominous tone in recent weeks. On the heels of headlines about the state's desperate need for nurses, the American Medical Association dropped this bombshell: Florida is one of 12 states where skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums have "seriously threatened" patient access to physician care.
• Pension draws praise, concern
  The Legislature's fiscal watchdog is concerned about state pension money going into venture capital funds and some other long-term investments.
• Pension plan guru joining lobbying firm
  INSIDE POLITICS Tom Herndon, whose last day as director of the State Board of Administration was Friday, said he will join lobbying firm Southern Strategy Group Inc. in August.
• Just say 'duh'
  The only possible rationale for a "reject them all and let the politicians sort it out" campaign is that voters are too dumb to understand all of the the issues involved with the proposed state constitutional amendments.
• Justice Reaches Plan With Counties On Voting - ORLANDO - The Justice Department and two Florida counties reached agreements Friday over voting rights violations, ending the possibility of a protracted court battle.
• Court lifts stays in death penalty cases
  The nation's high court clears the way for two executions. The inmates will appeal using the court's recent decision.
• Death Penalty In Florida Escapes High Court Ruling TALLAHASSEE - Four days after finding capital punishment laws in five states unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court ended its term Friday without passing judgment on Florida's death penalty law.
• Refusing to see injustice
  TALLAHASSEE -- This may come as news to Sen. Locke Burt, a legislator who is running for attorney general, but people whose criminal convictions are overturned are just as innocent, in every legal sense, as he is.
• ACLU helping Florida's ex-felons regain right to vote
  APOPKA — Anthony Flowers was a long-term menace to society, with a life of violence and drugs interrupted only by stays in the penal system. Flowers, now 43, feels he's paid his debt after living seven clean years paying his taxes, attending church and raising a family. But as an ex-felon, he's lost many of his civil rights, including the right to vote. Until he gets those rights back, Flowers will wonder if he'll ever finish serving time.
• Ex-Felons And The Right To Vote ... It remains to be seen how big a voting bloc ex-offenders will be - not much of one, we believe - but better a few of them vote than that even one law-abiding citizen see his right denied.
• Jeff Lytle: New rules will affect the strategy in this fall's primary elections
  A few things to remember as you follow the jockeying for local fall elections: In partisan races (county commissions, governor and Legislature, for example) the rules are different this year. No party runoffs. That means a candidate can earn less than a majority — normally 50 percent plus one — of his or her party's votes and still get launched into office. In a primary with two or more opponents, the victor needs only to beat them by a whisker.
• Reno Finds Friends And Foes While Campaigning In Tampa-- TAMPA - Janet Reno found enthusiastic supporters - and a few enthusiastic opponents - in her campaign for governor as she toured a West Tampa neighborhood and shopping mall Saturday afternoon.
• Class size initiative may be biggest foe for Bush
  Gov. Jeb Bush's toughest opponent this fall may not be Janet Reno or Bill McBride.
• Bush touts experience in private business in campaign stops
  OCALA — Gov. Jeb Bush told about 200 supporters at a rally Saturday that his experience in private business makes him the best candidate for governor. Bush, who was a partner in a Miami commercial real estate business and a vice president of Texas Commerce Bank before becoming Florida's governor, said he understands the workings of the state's public and private sectors better than one of his opponents for governor.
• Star power, not policies may help Bush
  It happens every time Jeb Bush shows up in public, and it was no different on this steamy Saturday afternoon in Marion County. A buzz, an excitement, an eagerness among anyone near him.
• Clouded horizon: Is Florida ready for the 2002 election? -- ... Both Harris and Gov. Jeb Bush have brushed aside serious allegations about voting disparities in minority and poor neighborhoods. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has visited the state three times to hold hearings, but Harris and Bush refused to attend the most recent hearing last week. As people were testifying about being turned away from the polls or being refused help they needed to vote, Bush was releasing a statement saying the nation's top civil-liberties authority had been "badly discredited." Instead, it's Bush's credibility that has been tattered in this debacle.
• Hunker down for onslaught of Florida ETV -- Election Television-- Savor the serenity of the remaining few days of television without campaign ads, for when the summer wave breaks it will swamp you and spin you.
• Vouching for vouchers, not for schools- 
  Great. Just what Florida needs. More distraction from real education reform.-- 
  The state has about 2.5 million public school students. From what you hear out of Tallahassee, however, the ones who matter most are the 9,000 who became eligible this year for vouchers. Not all will be able to use the vouchers; private schools don't have room, or alternatives aren't close enough. But because Gov. Bush has made vouchers such a key part of his education program -- after saying in his 1998 campaign that they weren't -- the state finds itself concentrating on a gimmick that involves relatively few students and contradicting its own wider policy for all the other students.-- 
  The governor and other members of the anti-public school political Establishment say vouchers offer students at "failing" schools a better alternative. But while the state determines voucher schools solely on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, private schools that voucher students attend don't have to release FCAT results. They don't have to go by any of the accountability rules that the state requires for public schools, even though private schools will be getting public money. So there's no way to tell whether the voucher has offered the student a better alternative.
• Trustees unlikely to evaluate Young
  Monday marks the one-year anniversary for the boards of trustees Gov. Jeb Bush put in charge of the state's universities, but none has yet performed one of the boards' primary duties: formally evaluating the president.
• Criminal Injustice: Get-tough hysteria gives nod to harsh sentencing
  In colonial America, the only "minimum mandatory" judges had to worry about was whether the rope was long enough to make a good noose. Most crimes were punishable by either death or a fine; prisons were all but unheard of.
• Juvenile detainees' abuse reports spike
  Reports to state investigators alleging abuse of incarcerated children nearly doubled statewide over the past four years under Florida's "Tough Love" approach to juvenile justice.
• DCF fares poorly in poll
  Most Florida voters feel state government does a poor job of protecting children in its care, but even more say this problem will have no bearing on their vote for governor in the November election, a new statewide survey shows.
• Foster care dilemma staggers DCF
  Numbers indicate enough foster care homes, but many reject kids with behavior problems.
• Florida's child-welfare system guilty, but not charged
  Real reforms begin with new leadership and must go beyond Gov. Bush's handpicked panel.
• Shoddy records called threat to kids
  A yearlong investigation by a group charged by the governor with overseeing the Department of Children & Families has concluded that abysmal record keeping constitutes a ``threat to the health, safety and welfare of the children placed in foster care.''
• Childers facing possible jail time, more trials in Panhandle
  PENSACOLA — W.D. Childers, once one of the most powerful political figures in Florida, is facing possible jail time for violating the state's open-government "sunshine" law and as many as two more trials. A jury late Friday convicted the former Florida Senate President on one count of illegally discussing public business in private with another now-suspended Escambia County commissioner, Terry Smith, last year.
• Long arm of sunshine
  Had the Sunshine Law not been on the books, all of W.D. Childers' shenigans might never have come to public light.
• Ex-lawmaker Willie Logan settles ethics case
  TALLAHASSEE — Former state Rep. Willie Logan has agreed to be publicly reprimanded and pay an $8,000 fine for wrongly using state money as part of a settlement with the Florida Commission on Ethics. The proposed punishment would end an inquiry whether the Opa-locka Democrat broke the law by misusing the state money he was given to run his legislative office in South Florida.
• Top Homicide Prosecutor Fired By State Attorney- TAMPA - Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober has fired his top homicide prosecutor, claiming she lied to him.
• Many new laws to take effect July 1
  TALLAHASSEE — People who loiter around schools or spray paint on them will face new penalties as of July 1. Other new laws will help the state pay for the Everglades restoration, require HIV testing of prisoners and allow underage culinary students to sip wine — as long as they spit it out. There will be more than 100 new laws covering a wide range of areas, from technical measures dealing with state trust funds to new rules governing foreigners' driver's licenses.
• New law intended to make road shoulders a bit safer
  If flashing lights alone could have prevented the tragic accident on Interstate 95 on Sept. 4, 1998, then Daytona Beach Police Officer Kevin Fischer would still be alive.
  Related item:
  • New state laws go into effect tomorrow
• Young can raise up UF - if state will let him
  Florida's new system makes his job harder.
• Cultivating a cure for canker
  Although the bacteria have a head start, scientists are making inroads in the search for a way to vanquish the costly disease.
• Toxin found in sediment
  Dioxin has been found in St. Marks River sediment, raising new questions about the extent of contamination and the possible threat to human health.
• Bob Graham's idea won't help the Everglades
  The $7.8 billion Everglades restoration will not restore the Everglades.
• Fundraiser has tax exemption
  Until recently, the GOP supporter was the only cardiologist who didn't pay into a fund to assist indigent patients.
• Jewish voters noticing GOP's pro-Israel moves
  The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beginning to spill over into U.S. politics, with Republicans gaining favor among Jewish voters, long a liberal constituency of the Democratic Party. Even before President Bush called for Yasser Arafat's political head last week, leading congressional Democrats were concerned that Jewish voters and donors were reassessing their relationship with the GOP.
• Doctors seeking to drop insurance
  Many view the risk as less onerous than paying, for example, $100,000 a year for $250,000 in malpractice coverage.
• City renters bear burden
  It's a rather dubious honor: Tallahassee leads the nation in the unaffordability of rental living for a city its size. The "rent burden" - the amount a renter pays in relation to his or her income - for residents of Florida's capital city is the highest of all large cities, according to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Large cities are considered those having more than 50,000 occupied housing units.
• Rights group applauds convictions for slavery
  A human rights group applauds the conviction of three Florida men for holding hundreds of workers against their will.
• Rights group says conviction may end farmworker abuse
  The conviction of three citrus contractors on federal slavery charges in Florida could help end the violence and farmworker mistreatment that has plagued the industry, a human rights group said Friday.
• As tempest roars, she fights for her family
  Nahla Al-Arian is a woman under siege. There's no tear gas, no rubber bullets, no tanks rumbling through the streets. But every night she goes to bed with the same fear.
• Guest editorial: Mammograms that miss tumors
  Pity the poor mammogram patient. For months now she has been witnessing a dispute among professionals over whether mammograms can save lives by detecting tumors early, when they are most treatable. Now she must confront the sad truth that in day-to-day medical practice, many mammograms are interpreted by radiologists who miss an alarmingly high percentage of the cancers they should be detecting.
• Analysis: Alternatives to neighborhood school are vaster than ever. Is that good?
  The landscape of American public schools is slowly fragmenting, breaking into a wider array of educational choices. Where once students headed off each morning to their neighborhood or village schoolhouse, families today can choose among magnet schools, charter schools, home schooling and, most recently, privately run public schools and publicly financed voucher programs. That last option gained new momentum on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld Cleveland's voucher program, in which 96 percent of participating students attend religious schools.
• Guest editorial: Enron's Connecticut connection
  No one would accuse them of moving expeditiously, but Connecticut prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into the way that tentacles of the Enron fiasco squeezed state taxpayers out of nearly $200 million. The implications are potentially enormous because of questions over the role of the popular two-term governor, John Rowland.
• Guest editorial: Scorched-earth politics
  A third dry summer in a row has brought another wave of forest fires to the American West. With 2 million acres already gone and summer just begun, it would seem logical for everyone to set differences aside and pursue the sound firefighting strategy devised by the Clinton administration and ratified by President Bush last year. Yet as Pat Williams, a former Montana congressman, observed, "The only thing that burns hotter than a wildfire in the West is the demagoguery of some politicians trying to take advantage of it."
• Guest editorial: The politics of embarrassment
  Having finally come to grips with the necessity of raising the federal debt limit, Congress may feel it has earned the right to a weeklong Fourth of July holiday. Perhaps only in Washington can people plunge the nation deep into debt and then think of themselves as profiles in courage when they summon the nerve to authorize the Treasury to borrow money to pay the bills. It actually took considerable pressure from the White House to get House Republicans to vote to raise the statutory ceiling on federal debt. While the lawmakers couldn't wait to lower taxes and raise spending, no one wanted to acknowledge the obvious consequences.
• Maureen Dowd: Makin' us dizzy
  WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney is a sly old fox. He wanted the congressional cat to start chasing its tail. So he sicced the FBI dogs on it. The vice president called Porter Goss and Bob Graham, the chairmen of the congressional intelligence committees looking into the 9/11 security debacle, to berate them about a leak to the press detailing missed interceptions at the National Security Agency about "zero hour" and "the big match." Never mind that this story had been circulating for months and that any number of agencies could have leaked it.
• Investors inquire: Where's the new wealth?
  If the U.S. economy is growing at anything like the 6.1 percent annual clip reported last quarter, why are U.S. stock markets sagging and economic confidence still shaky?
• Europeans are far from united in acknowledging their Christian past -- VIENNA, Austria -- Unquestionably, the region is steeped in Christianity from the faith's earliest days. The Apostle Paul brought the religion to Europe's shores around A.D. 50. Later, the continent became the center of Roman Catholicism and the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation.-- But that was then and this is now. Today's Europe is a multiethnic melting pot of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths -- making the question a ticklish one as churches lobby for a mention of the continent's Christian heritage in a key document on the future of the European Union.

6/28/02

• Airport workshop debates question of need -- Panama City - "Bottom line, I don’t think we need a new airport," said Panama City Beach resident Pete Rougier. "This is a rush to judgment that will enhance only one major company."
• Sarasota editor resigns after expressing opinion on Harris race
  SARASOTA — The managing editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune resigned Thursday after she expressed her personal views about congressional candidate Katherine Harris in an e-mail to a reader. Rosemary Armao, who served as the newspaper's managing editor for nearly three years, told the reader that she would not vote for Harris, who gained national attention during the 2000 election recount as Florida's Republican secretary of state.
•  

• Group fights nuclear waste trek  Beginning in eight years, Florida residents might be seeing 5,223 casks of nuclear waste like the full-size fiberglass replica displayed by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League at City Hall on Thursday. Shipments of the casks containing nuclear waste from the state's five nuclear power plants would be made along Florida's highways and railroads if the Senate approves a centralized nuclear storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

  Gainesville Mayor Tom Bussing, third from right, speaksr during a press conference held by the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice outside City Hall Thursday to bring attention to the possible transport of nuclear waste through Gainesville. Jon M. Fletcher/The Gainesville Sun

• State fund loses again
  Fresh on the heels of the Enron fiasco, Florida's public employee pension fund took another hit this week when telecom giant WorldCom announced accounting troubles and possible bankruptcy.
• Election echoes still ringing in our weary ears
  A confluence of events has left me wondering if we will ever shed this pall, or whether the ghost of elections past will forever haunt our fair state.
• Bush, McBride air education differences
  The governor defends his system of mandatory tests and school accountability. The Tampa lawyer says there's a better way.
• Peterson to endorse McBride over Reno - BOCA RATON -- Pete Peterson, once portrayed as the Democratic Party's best prospect for challenging Gov. Jeb Bush, plans to back another Democrat waging a long-shot campaign against the Republican governor: Bill McBride.
• Reno refuses to commit to any gubernatorial debates - ..."We haven't yet confirmed for any debates but we intend to," Harburger said. "We're just reviewing and considering each invitation."
• Ex-consultant files ethics complaint in tiff with Graham-- WASHINGTON -- A former consultant for the drive to bring back an independent board overseeing Florida's universities has filed a federal ethics complaint saying U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's staff has been working on the initiative while on taxpayer time....
  Kaplan, who is involved in a breach of contract lawsuit with the committee, also sent complaints to Attorney General Bob Butterworth, the Florida Elections Commission and the state attorneys in Tallahassee and Orlando. That letter accuses the committee of filing inaccurate or misleading campaign documents.
• Vouchers allowed for religious schools
  In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a school voucher program in Cleveland, declaring that public money can be used to pay tuition at religious schools.
• Despite Supreme Court, Florida voucher challenge to continue
  TALLAHASSEE — Critics of Florida's voucher law said Thursday they won't abandon their legal fight despite the 5-4 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court upholding a similar Ohio law. A Tallahassee judge put Florida's voucher lawsuit on hold in February because of the Ohio case in the nation's high court. A hearing before Circuit Judge Kevin Davey is scheduled for next month.
• Voucher ruling won't stop lawsuit in Florida
  A ruling Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of taxpayer-funded vouchers going to religious schools won't deter a group that's filed a similar lawsuit against such vouchers in Florida.
• Making vouchers legal doesn't make them good
  Florida's plan still flunks under state law.
• Church and state
  The U.S. Supreme Court all but knocked down the wall between church and state when it ruled, in a 5-4 decision that vouchers are constitutional.
• School 'choice': Voucher opinion obscures fundamental issue
  The U.S. Supreme Court's approval of taxpayer-funded vouchers deals a harsh blow to the traditions of public education and religious liberty.
• Drug tests OK'd for many high school students
  The Supreme Court put public high school students on notice Thursday: Drug tests may be required for playing chess or joining the cheerleader squad.
• COST ESTIMATES State economists on Thursday drew up language explaining...
  COST ESTIMATES State economists on Thursday drew up language explaining the potential cost of four constitutional amendments proposed for the November ballot and a fifth aimed for 2004. Here are the statements:
• NAACP pushes state amendment to limit class sizes-- The NAACP wants to see some changes in Florida's school system, and the organization sent some of its highest ranking officers on a two-week tour of the state to try to bring those changes to pass.-- 
  The civil rights organization is collecting signatures to get a state constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would limit class sizes from kindergarten through high school, said Bill McCormick, Fort Lauderdale president for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Amendments need 500,000 signatures to get on the November ballot.
• Class size amendments carry hefty price tag
  Thanks to a new law, for the first time, economists are calculating the costs of proposed citizen initiatives. Some say it's politics as usual.
• Class-size plan to cost $20 billion
  State economists assign price tags and impact statements to issues on the November ballot.
• Economists consider cost language for constitutional amendments
  TALLAHASSEE — Florida voters considering a constitutional amendment limiting the number of students in each classroom may have to decide if the state can afford the billions of dollars it would cost. A group of state economists estimated Thursday it would cost between $20 billion and $27.5 billion over eight years to pay for the additional classrooms and teachers that would be needed if an amendment sponsored by Sen. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, is successful at the polls.
• State Farm loses bid for big rate hike on home insurance -- for now
  Only weeks before Florida’s largest property insurer planned to impose a major rate hike, Florida Insurance Commissioner Tom Gallagher on Thursday blocked State Farm Florida Insurance Co.’s request.
• Would-be judges free to state views - Code similar to Florida's is overturned - In a landmark ruling that could alter Florida's judicial campaigns, the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that rules preventing candidates from talking about legal and political issues are unconstitutional.
• Judicial hopefuls can speak on issues
  The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down limits on what judicial candidates can tell voters about their opinions.

• State rests case in Childers' Pensacola 'sunshine' trial
  PENSACOLA — The state rested its case Thursday against former Florida Senate President W.D. Childers on charges he illegally discussed public business in private with other now-suspended Escambia County commissioners. Defense lawyer Fred Levin said Childers would take the witness stand later Thursday or Friday to dispute allegations he violated Florida's open-government "sunshine" law 
• Childers takes the stand, disputes details of talks
• Poorly paid workers gain allies
  Members of a grassroots effort to bring higher wages to the region's poorest-paid government workers have developed a draft ordinance they hope Orange County will consider in the coming months.
• Study: Senior housing shortage looms
  The number of seniors may double in 30 years, with many needing financial or medical help.
   
• Finding explosives challenge for scan machines
  The machines trigger alarms about 20 to 30 percent of the time but many are false.
• Man's Pledge crusade had its roots in south Florida
  FORT LAUDERDALE -- An atheist's crusade to get the words "under God" stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance began in Broward County four years ago.
• Feds mum on Pensacola shopping mall arrests
  PENSACOLA — At least three merchants who appear to be of Middle Eastern or southern Asian descent were arrested by FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service agents at two shopping malls, witnesses said. FBI spokesman Bill Hurlburt said Wednesday's action was part of a joint investigation by the two agencies and that there would be no further comment because it was continuing.
• Judge: Muslim woman can challenge driver's license photo law
  ORLANDO — A judge ruled a Muslim woman can pursue her legal fight to wear a veil for a driver license photo, despite objections from the state that it jeopardizes public safety. Orange County Circuit Judge Ted Coleman denied a motion Thursday by the state to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought by Sultaana Freeman, whose driver license was revoked when she refused to replace her photograph with one showing her face unveiled.
• Guest editorial: The Hamdi paradox
  The Bush administration apparently doesn't want Yaser Esam Hamdi to know he has any rights for fear he might exercise them. Hamdi is the U.S.-born Saudi brought to Norfolk Navy brig from Guantanamo Bay in April because the military believed he could claim American citizenship. He has been held incommunicado and without charge ever since.
• Taxation cases target Connolly
  The state files four tax warrants as a criminal investigation focuses on federal tax issues.
• Rolling appeal denied
  The Florida Supreme Court denied killer Danny Rolling's appeal Thursday that argued defense attorneys should have moved his case out of Alachua County, where he murdered five college students.
• Florida high court rejects Rolling appeal in Gainesville slayings
  TALLAHASSEE — Danny Rolling lost his second appeal Thursday in the Florida Supreme Court. In an unsigned opinion, the state's high court rejected legal issues raised by attorney for Rolling, including the argument that his five death sentences were recommended by a jury biased by fear.
• Citrus County bat colony freed from blocked cave
  WITHLACOOCHEE STATE FOREST — About 6,000 bats are flying free again thanks to volunteers who spent hours opening the mouth of the mosquito-eating mammals' cave. The colony, mostly female bats and their babies, had been trapped in the cave by heavy silt pushed by heavy rains. The cave's opening became clogged Tuesday as thunderstorms swept across the Withlacoochee State Forest in the southeastern portion of Citrus County.
• Population growth, drought drying north Florida springs
  BRONSON — Four years of drought and a growing population are causing popular north Florida springs to dry up and rivers and streams to be at record low levels, a hydrologist said Thursday. Blue Springs, outside Bronson in Levy County, is where generations of kids have plunked down 35 cents to spend a day flopping into the cool, blue water. But this year the water is no longer moving at the minimum requirement of 500 gallons per swimmer per day. In fact, it's not moving at all.
• We're slip-sliding away as deluges of rain keep hitting
  No matter where we live in Central Florida, we all have one thing in common these days: We're getting wet. Awfully wet.
• Scientists evaluating Tortugas fishing restrictions
  DRY TORTUGAS NATIONAL PARK — After nearly a month at sea, scientists studying the impact of a no-fish zone around the Dry Tortugas estimate 80 percent of the snappers, groupers and grunts are being overfished in the Florida Keys. Their study comes one year after federal officials declared 151 square miles of waters around the Dry Tortugas National Park off-limits to fishing.
• Guest editorial: Power failure
  There's a major disconnect between the Bush administration and those around the country who want cleaner air. The Environmental Protection Agency argues adamantly that its proposal released June 13 to revise a section of the Clean Air Act would do more to improve the nation's air than leaving the 25-year-old landmark law as it is.
• Expanding the state, Bush style - The Bush administration's statism is becoming routine. Many of its big-government solutions are designed to crush terrorists, and thus are largely appropriate. But elsewhere, Team Bush breezily subverts the free-market principles the president supposedly embraces. Consider the subsidies, surveillance and centralization the administration proposed during seven days in June.
• Dan K. Thomasson: Secrecy for the sake of secrecy
  WASHINGTON — If information has been published, does the government have a right, months later when it surfaces again, to contend that the information is still a secret vital to national security? That's what seems to be occurring in the case of recent reports that the National Security Agency had intercepted a coded conversation between al Qaeda operatives the day before Sept. 11. The conversation that clearly pointed to a terrorist operation scheduled for the next day wasn't examined until Sept. 12.
• Witness tells of 8 days of torture, blames Salvadoran general
  WEST PALM BEACH — Blindfolded and handcuffed, Carlos Mauricio suffered a blow to the head or stomach every time he refused to confess while being detained by soldiers in El Salvador in June 1983. He testified Thursday that during eight days of torture at the hands of the military, he often thought his arms, tied to a rope holding him up, would be pulled off.
• Maureen Dowd: The age of acquiescence
  A friend of mine over the weekend was recalling her days as an idealistic child of the '60s. Students sitting around the dorm, amid the water bongs, water beds, strobe lights and Che posters, listening to Led Zeppelin and Dylan, dreaming about remaking the world in their own image, trading nightmares about spying Big Brother and soul-robbing corporations. She recalled all the old leftist tracts in the Nixon years about a secret government plan to suspend the Constitution and declare a national security emergency and round up people without charges, and that the oil companies and banks would plunge us into nuclear war.

6/27/02

• Labor agency in final days
  Scraps of paper are taped to the arms of chairs and the legs of tables, proclaiming their new destinations. The nail-studded office walls resonate with that forlorn echo of emptiness.
• U.S. plan would ship radioactive waste through S. Florida
  Dozens of barges of radioactive waste could arrive at Port Everglades and the Port of Miami under a federal plan to store the nation’s nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
• Ethics complaint to Senate names Graham
  Bob Graham is accused of using Senate staff and offices to work on a state university ballot initiative.
• Federal scrutiny of law could let felons vote
  Questioning by the U.S. Justice Department may hold up elections officials' use of a state list to purge voting rolls.
• Voting database under fire
  Federal rejection of Florida's plan to stop felons from voting doesn't mean many ex-cons will illegally cast ballots, state and local elections officials said Wednesday.
• Elections officials: State likely won't stop felons voting
  TALLAHASSEE — Florida might not be able to stop felons from voting illegally in the September primary because of federal concerns a new state law might keep legal voters from casting ballots. The U.S. Justice Department this week ordered the state to delay implementing a new law that makes local elections supervisors purge those suspected of being felons from the list of legal voters.
• Voter-discrimination suit against state to proceed - TALLAHASSEE -- A lawsuit alleging rampant voter discrimination in Orange, Volusia and other counties during the 2000 presidential election will go to trial in Miami this August.
• Osceola County reaches terms of settlement with DOJ
  KISSIMMEE — Osceola County will avert a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice by agreeing to make voting easier for Spanish-speaking citizens. Orange County this week could finish hammering out a settlement similar to Osceola's proposed agreement, which requires more bilingual poll workers and a new "facilitator" in each precinct to trouble shoot any problems, elections officials said, The Orlando Sentinel reported Thursday.
• Orange settles vote complaint
  Orange County Election Supervisor Bill Cowles reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday to hire more bilingual poll workers, heading off a threatened lawsuit over complaints that Spanish-speaking voters didn't get enough help in the 2000 election.
• Too soft on soft money
  Perhaps Florida's Democratic and Republican party leaders should attend a workshop in Colombia on the tricks of money laundering. Then again, their skills already appear to be finely honed.
• First canker found in Keys
  Citrus canker has been discovered for the first time in the Florida Keys, making Monroe the 11th county in the state to get the tree disease since the latest outbreak began in 1995 in neighboring Miami-Dade.
• Workers return to cut citrus -- MIAMI -- Workers will return to Miami-Dade County yards this week to cut down nearly 800 citrus trees infected with canker.- 
  It will be the first widespread cutting since a judge found unconstitutional a new eradication law that gave canker crews access to private property to inspect and remove citrus trees.-- 
  At the same time, state workers will be asking owners of as many as 1,700 properties in Palm Beach County and inside the city of Boca for permission to remove their citrus trees, said Liz Compton, state Agriculture Department spokeswoman.
• Under Horne, Handy classes are politi-sized
  Playing with numbers to defeat class-size amendment.
• Agency left 13 kids with West Palm-area couple, despite neglect warnings
• Floridians say state agency most responsible for problems
  JACKSONVILLE — A statewide poll conducted in the wake of a 5-year-old Miami girl's disappearance shows a large number of Floridians believe the Department of Children & Families was most responsible for the case's problems. The poll, conducted the Florida Center for Public and Leadership, also found strong support for reform of the state's foster care system.
• Report: 6 in care of DCF were seeing men - Allegations that six Palm Beach County girls partied with adult men at a Residence Inn by Marriott has prompted the state's child welfare agency to halt the placement of children in hotels and also to halt their supervision by a private nursing company.-- 
  The Department of Children & Families began paying Maxim Healthcare Services Inc. to baby-sit the youngsters in local motels and hotels about six weeks ago as a short-term fix.
• DCF Oversight Must Improve
  The Florida Department of Children & Families just can't catch a break. Losing little Rilya Wilson was bad enough. Now comes word that six girls under the agency's care had been left alone at night in a hotel for three weeks and were seen partying with men who may have been sleeping with them.
• State Agency Sued Over Cause Of Firing-- TAMPA - A former employee filed a federal lawsuit on Monday, accusing the Florida Department of Children and Families of firing her because she is from Pakistan and practices Islam.
• Death sentences
  The Supreme Court's ruling was just and reasonable. And although Florida's death law has not been placed in immediate jeopardy, state legislators should act as soon as possible to change the state statute to comply with the court's decision.
• Witness waffles in case against ex-Senate chief -- PENSACOLA -- A key witness against suspended Escambia County Commissioner W.D. Childers testified Wednesday at Childers' trial on charges of violating Florida's open-government law.-- 
  Willie Junior, responding to a question from the lawyer for the former Florida Senate president, admitted having a memory problem.
• Childers' dark sunshine -W. D. Childers' position on the Sunshine Law is ludicrous. Monologues count.-- 
  Legendary state lawmaker W.D. Childers always has walked a fine ethical line, artfully manipulating the little understood vagaries of the political system to his own perceived benefit.
• Seniors go hospital shopping
  Blue Cross will no longer pay for some seniors' visits to Orlando Regional hospitals.
• Pensacola charter school dean accused of armed robbery
  PENSACOLA — A charter school dean, whose duties include disciplining students, has been charged with the armed robbery of a convenience store. Anthony B. Woods, 37, a former assistant coach for the Pensacola Barracudas, a minor league arena football team, was arrested Tuesday, a day after the robbery. He remained at the Escambia County Jail under a $100,000 bond Wednesday.
• RTA Proposal Clears A Hurdle
  There may yet be hope for South Florida. The region still has an ever-worsening problem with transportation gridlock, but at least the political gridlock seems to be easing.
• County Shakes Up 2 Jobs To Revamp Growth Division - TAMPA - Hillsborough County officials removed two key planning and growth employees from their positions this week, opening the door for widespread changes to how the county handles community development issues.
• Prairie fenced off
  A strip of highway that has become one of the area's hottest spots for gator-watching was deserted Wednesday, except for a Florida Highway Patrol car and a few workers unrolling a band of metal fencing on the grassy shoulder on the west side of U.S. 441.
• End run on Everglades
  Decide water standard before the election.
• Parkway doesn't hurt protected species, court rules
  The Sierra Club failed to prove any threat to the animals, the appeals court says.
• Bat colony infested Bradenton apartment; extermination illegal
  BRADENTON — Grant Griffin's one-bedroom apartment isn't big enough for him and the bats that have turned up in his shower, sink and sheets. But it's Griffin that's moving.Exterminators are not allowed to kill the bats, which are considered native wildlife and can't be trapped or poisoned, said University of Florida assistant professor Mark Hostetler.
• Bright lights could confuse Florida's sea turtle hatchlings
  SARASOTA — Sea turtles have begun hatching along Florida's coasts, so it's time to dim the lights. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is asking residents and visitors along the shore to turn down their lights at night until the hatching season ends in early fall. Baby turtles hatch in the sand at night. They instinctively head toward light, which to them, signifies the ocean.
• Misguided people a threat to 'Hershey'
  A wildlife officer asks that specifics about bear sightings be kept confidential until it's caught.
• Waitress is latest Broward hepatitis victim
  A waitress at the Hard Rock Cafe at Sawgrass Mills has been diagnosed with hepatitis A, prompting the Broward County Health Department to urge patrons who might have been exposed to the contagious disease to call the department.
• Volusia encephalitis death may not be mosquito related
  DAYTONA BEACH — Health officials have sent specimens to a state lab to determine if an encephalitis death in Volusia County was caused by disease-transmitting mosquitoes. Initial laboratory results indicate Laurence Williams, 40, of Daytona Beach, did not contract the disease from a mosquito bite, said Kate Holcomb, a spokeswoman for Halifax Medical Center.
• Workers Accused Of Covering Up American Indian Grave - POMPANO BEACH - Two builders hoping to avoid construction delays purposely reburied ancient skeletal remains unearthed while digging a trench, investigators said.
• Federal court rules Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional-- “And to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, ----------, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Everyone who’s been to school in the past five decades knows what’s missing in that final stanza of the Pledge of Allegiance.
• Pledge's history: Changes, controversy
  First penned in 1892 by a Baptist minister, the Pledge of Allegiance has sparked two Supreme Court cases.
• Pledge Author Lived In Tampa
  TAMPA - People in Tampa might take the Pledge of Allegiance a little more personally than others because its author, Francis Bellamy, wrote the final chapter of his life here. ...
• Where the religion is the (U.S.) state
  How Utah's papers cover America's 'theocracy.'
• INS vigilantism: Deportation in absentia assaults liberty
  As of Tuesday, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was imprisoning 130 people at the Clay County Jail (where the INS has been sending prisoners for a year and a half). Although 90 percent of them are Cubans from the Miami area, it is impossible to know how many of those prisoners are being held for legitimate reasons. But legitimacy is an issue. Details about the cases of two prisoners are disturbing enough to seriously question the legality and propriety of INS actions against immigrants.
• Dale McFeatters: Signs a company is headed for financial disaster
  You have to love the language. Due to what was daintily called accounting "errors" or "improprieties" or "gimmicks," WorldCom is out $3.8 billion. Post-dating a $25 check on the iffy expectations that $25 will be there to cover it is a "gimmick." Mislaying $3.8 billion is the mother of all accounting frauds.
• Guest editorial: A threat of derailment
  Reckless brinkmanship in Washington is threatening to disrupt the Northeast's economy and jeopardize millions of Americans' summer travel. The Bush administration has said it will find a way to provide Amtrak with the $200 million it needs to hobble on until the end of the current fiscal year, but it has yet to do so. David Gunn, Amtrak's president, has warned that without a transfusion, the railroad will be forced to shut down.
• U.S. employees left holding bag as CEOs bail
  Now comes WorldCom, the latest conglomerate to destroy the lives of its employees.
• WorldCom's ex-CFO owns Boca home
  By Alexandra Clough, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
  Scott Sullivan bought the home for $170,000 in 1990. Now he's building a $15 million mansion.
• O'Neill: Executives Should Go to Jail
• Guest editorial: Don't just say no
  Conservatives in Congress are undoubtedly right when they say that abstinence is the best way for teenagers to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. If you don't engage in sexual activity, you can't very well get into trouble on either count. But they are recklessly wrong when they insist that sex education programs in the schools should teach abstinence only. The Senate Finance Committee needs to modify the government's blinkered approach when it meets on Wednesday to mark up the latest welfare reform bill.
• Molly Ivins: Start working out to forget about Bush's foreign policy
  AUSTIN, Texas — How nice, President Bush has found his nickey at last (nickey is the East Texas pronunciation of niche), The Presidential Pepster, the First Gym Rat, the P.E. Teacher in Chief has turned his talents to getting us to shape up. Getting the nation perfectly fit is a perfect fit for a man of his talents.
• Washington Today: U.S. has mixed record of trying to install new leaders
  WASHINGTON — If it's any consolation to Yasser Arafat, he has a lot of company. The United States has a long history of trying to get rid of foreign leaders who don't measure up. Some methods are more decorous than others. President Bush made known his desire that Arafat be removed in a nationally televised address. Elsewhere over the years, U.S. efforts at regime change have been less gentlemanly. In this category are outright assassination, invasions, covert plots.
• American priest tells of Salvadoran torture - WEST PALM BEACH -- A father was shot in front of his children and people were taken from their homes and killed in El Salvador during the early 1980s, an American priest testified Wednesday in the civil trial of two former Salvadoran generals.  ...  The Rev. Paul Schindler, now a priest in Akron, Ohio, said he regularly helped bury bodies in 1980 and 1981, when he worked in El Salvador.- "Constantly there would be people who disappeared...
• Witnesses testify to rights abuses in trial of Salvadoran generals
  The civil trial of two former Salvadoran generals continued Wednesday with testimony from people who said serious human rights abuses were committed by the military against the civilian population during the turbulent early 1980s.
• McCain attacks campaign finance rules
  Sen. John McCain charges that federal regulators are gutting the nation's new campaign finance law and announced a multi-front counterattack.
• Don't Relax Faulty System
  The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, has come up with a troubling statistic: From 1998 to 2001, 3,000 domestic abusers were able to buy firearms because the FBI was not able to complete required criminal background checks within three days.

6/26/02

• Moving road draws mixed reviews
  For the third time this year, The St. Joe Co. drew a big crowd in Franklin County, this time for its proposal to move the coastal highway.
• Road project stopped for now
  Leon County has halted temporarily a road project through the Apalachicola National Forest because of concerns about it possibly harming wildlife.
• Protesters share nuclear waste transport fears  (photo)
  Motorists traveling through Volusia and Flagler counties could share Interstate 95 with trucks carrying three tons of nuclear waste if the U.S. Senate allows the radioactive cargo to be transported to Nevada for disposal.-- Special interest groups alarmed by the potential dangers stopped in Daytona Beach on Tuesday on a cross-country public relations tour, urging elected officials to oppose a plan to ship the waste to Yucca Mountain, Nev.
• Chain saws returning for canker
  Armed with new search warrants, state citrus-canker eradication crews plan to return to 470 yards around Miami-Dade County on Thursday or Friday to cut down infected trees.
• Canker crews to ask Palm Beach County residents for OK to cut trees - Florida Department of Agriculture officials, frustrated by their inability to use search warrants to hunt for citrus canker, have decided to ask Palm Beach County residents for permission to cut trees exposed to the disease.-- 
  "Based on a recent court decision, the logistics involved in imposing restrictions make it cumbersome and difficult to go forward in an efficient and practical manner," said Mark Fagan, spokesman for the department.
• Attack plan is 'no' to them all
  Bristling at the costs of citizen ballot initiatives, businesses may lobby voters to kill everything.
• Teachers union gives Florida an F
  TALLAHASSEE -- When it comes to class size, teacher salaries, test scores and five other indicators, Florida doesn't make the grade, the state's teachers union said Tuesday.
• Teacher's union gives state education system an 'F'
  TALLAHASSEE — Florida's public education system got a failing grade from the teacher's union Tuesday just two weeks after state government said 9 out of 10 schools earned a grade of C or above. The Florida Education Association, a longtime critic of Gov. Jeb Bush, graded the state's K-12 school system in eight "subjects," ranging from how much is spent on schools to graduation rates and SAT scores.
• Teachers union flunks state's education system - TALLAHASSEE - Florida's teachers union, citing data from the U.S. Department of Education, said Tuesday the state public school system deserves a failing grade for poor funding, lackadaisical student achievement and overcrowded schools.
• Union Calls Schools Rock Bottom - ``We want to be part of a Florida public school system that isn't rock bottom and getting worse,'' said Maureen Dinnen, president of the 122,000-member Florida Education Association.
• U.S. to give state $300-million for reading program
  TALLAHASSEE -- Florida will receive $300-million over the next six years in federal reading grants, education officials announced Tuesday.
• Florida gets $45.6 million in federal reading money
  TALLAHASSEE — Florida will get $45.6 million in federal funds for reading programs this year, the U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday. The grant was one of the first made under the $900 million federal Reading First initiative; Alabama also got a grant of $15.5 million and Colorado got a one-year grant of $9 million.
• Strict rules limit bonuses for teachers-- Volusia County School District's rules for its new merit-pay program are so tough only a fraction of its teachers could receive the bonuses officials are required to offer this coming school year.
• FAMU board hikes tuition
  Florida A&M University students can expect to pay 5 percent to 20 percent more tuition this fall for the same education. FAMU trustees Tuesday raised tuition to the maximum amounts allowed by the state.
• FAMU agrees to pay new president $350,000 yearly - ...Humphries, who left FAMU in late December to become president of the Washington-based National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, earned $183,000 a year.-- 
  Gainous becomes Florida's highest-paid university president, temporarily.
• Gainous' salary $275,000
  Fred Gainous starts work Monday with a higher paycheck than other public university presidents in Florida. Florida A&M University trustees Tuesday approved a compensation package that includes a $275,000 base salary. That sum tops the pay of leaders at the state's other 10 schools, according to information from each university.
• County says no to deal with DCF-- KISSIMMEE -- Children who have already been victimized by their parents and guardians need not be victims of the state's stinginess, Osceola County commissioners decided this week when they refused to sign a deal with a state agency that has custody of them.- 
  Commissioners instead want to join forces with Orange County to demand more money from the state Department of Children & Families, which now pays both counties $55 a day for the care of each child under state custody.-- That amount doesn't cover the cost of care. Osceola, for example, spends $121 each day on each child.
• Florida got bulk of soft money for 2000
  More "soft money" was funneled from national political parties to Florida than to any other state during the 2000 elections, according to a report released Tuesday by three Washington-based public policy groups.
• Felon Votes May Plague Fla. Primary
  TALLAHASSEE - Florida likely will have no way to block felons from illegally voting in the Sept. 10 primary, and the problem could spill over into November's general election, officials said Tuesday. ... The U.S. Justice Department on Monday ordered the state to delay implementing a new law that compels local elections supervisors to purge those suspected of being felons from the list of legal voters.- - Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio applauded the delay, citing the example of one county resident wrongly denied the right to vote in 2000.-- Earlier this month, more than 1 1/2 years after the 2000 election, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement acknowledged it was wrong when it informed Iorio three times in 2000 and 2001 that Wallace McDonald was a convicted felon and prohibited from voting.
• Deadlock on Florida lawsuit over 2000 election
  MIAMI — The state and counties have reached a deadlock with civil rights groups who sued over the bitterly disputed 2000 presidential election, attorneys told a judge Tuesday. "As far as I'm concerned, this case is going to trial," U.S. District Judge Alan Gold told the attorneys on both sides after they told him mediation had failed. "It's disappointing, but it is what it is."
• Voting rights lawsuit headed to trial-- A voting rights lawsuit against the state, Miami-Dade and several other counties stemming from the disputed 2000 presidential election is headed to trial later this summer after attorneys deadlocked on a settlement, a federal judge said Tuesday.
• LePore cleared in election inquiry
  Palm Beach elections chief Theresa LePore did nothing corrupt or criminal.
• Citizens discover government as Miami becomes capital for a day
  MIAMI — Hundreds of local residents lined up in a convention center to meet top state leaders including Gov. Jeb Bush, who declared Miami the state capital for the day and listened to their concerns. Local politicians, leaders of grass-roots organizations, concerned citizens and political junkies lined up to meet the politicians and take pictures with them. They also visited booths set up by state agencies to advertise their services
• Guest editorial: On Gov. Jeb Bush's loquaciousness
  It was one of those moments right out of the mouth of former Vice President Dan "He Really Didn't Say That, Did He?" Quayle. Only this time, Florida's governor was talking. "It's about time a woman became governor of the state of Florida," Gov. Jeb Bush told a group of 300 female high school students last Tuesday during a Capitol visit.
• NASA grounds shuttles to study fuel line leaks
  WASHINGTON -- Choosing safety over schedule, NASA has grounded the space shuttle fleet while engineers try to determine why tiny cracks are developing in the fuel line feeding the main rocket engines.
• Make way for new event - 'Boomer Beach Break'
  Just when beachside residents were hoping for relief from the traffic, noise, trash and wild behavior of special events, hoteliers are busily giving birth to a new attraction.
• Skin cancer on rise
  Slap on the sunscreen, but realize this summer the white coat may not provide the shield that lotion-makers lead people to believe.
• Homeless center soil contaminated
  Arsenic, lead and petroleum-related contamination laces soil at a playground and a recreation area outside Jacksonville's I.M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless, officials announced Tuesday, prompting testing to begin for the first of dozens of people.
• County restricts water usage
  Commissioners reluctantly give in to Swiftmud, which ordered tougher watering rules for the south-central area.
• SAVE THE CORAL REEFS
  The results of a new study on what's killing elkhorn coral in the Keys produced an answer that surprises no one. The study by University of Georgia scientists looked for the cause of the ''white pox'' disease that is decimating the once abundant elkhorn coral that ranged like forests across vast expanses of tropical sea bottom.
• Challenges to Everglades cleanup back in court
  MIAMI — Everglades pollution got an airing before a federal appeals court Tuesday as environmental activists question whether lofty cleanup goals will be achieved in the endangered South Florida marshland. The Friends of the Everglades, a group founded by the late Everglades champion Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was in court to challenge findings made by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1999.
• Death row's answers live in hearts, not behind bench
  To show you how good I am at predicting these things, back in February I declared that U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would never vote to overturn hundreds of death sentences in an Arizona case the court was considering.
• Death penalty ruling strays from founders' intent
  One can agree (or not) with last week's 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court that the death penalty should not apply to retarded citizens because it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment," and still be troubled by the twisted road the court took to reach its destination. Reading the history of the Eighth Amendment shows that it proceeded from concerns over the methods the state could use to take the life of a convicted criminal - not the intelligence level of...
• Death knell: Court bares flaw in capital punishment
  The case for the American death penalty is coming unraveled, exposing the injustice and illogic at its core.
• More questions - The latest death-penalty ruling argues for gubernatorial panel.
• Childers' lawyer offers monologue defense in 'sunshine' trial
  PENSACOLA — W.D. Childers didn't violate Florida's open-government "sunshine" law because his talks with other Escambia County commissioners were monologues, not discussions, his lawyer told a jury Tuesday. The former Florida Senate president made statements to other commissioners that expressed his views, but he neither sought nor received responses, defense lawyer Fred Levin said in his opening statement at Childers' trial.
  • Pensacola News Journal on Escambia trials
• Keep Amtrak rolling
  Passenger rail travel is too important to let disappear. The government should continue to subsidize Amtrak even after it bails the company out of its current crisis.
• Organizers expect 160,000 at ship fest
  ST. PETERSBURG -- It is the first time they've charged admission. They're lacking a lead sponsor. And ticket sales need to increase sixteenfold to meet organizers' projections for the first-time festival.
• Czech's farewell taps Miami
  In a swan song to his decade-plus presidency, Czech President Vaclav Havel plans to make a September swing through Miami to meet with former Cuban political prisoners and host a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for his human rights foundation.
• Do better on cable, Broward commissioners tell AT&T
• Adelphia files for Chapter 11
  The nation's sixth-largest cable TV provider has reached a tentative loan agreement for $1.5 billion.
• WorldCom hid billions
  Company uncovered $3.8 billion in expenses hidden in accounting irregularity.
• Markets Plunge on WorldCom Scandal - HONG KONG -- Asian shares plunged Wednesday on fears the accounting scandal at U.S. telecom giant WorldCom Inc. could cause widespread financial troubles.
• Ex-U.S. ambassador testifies in torture case
  Robert White said that his initial impresssion of one of the generals was 'too optimistic.'
• Witness says Salvadoran generals knew of abuse but ignored it
• Missile system price tag unknown
  Congress has no figures to work with as it debates whether to cut funding for the program.
• Guest editorial: A nuclear Japan?
  Japan's consistent post-World War II position of opposition to nuclear weapons is now being called into question in Japanese government and opposition political circles. Three related reasons seem to lie behind the review — a slight resurgence of militarism as a function of national pride, doubt about American security guarantees, and Japanese perceptions of more relaxed U.S. attitudes toward nuclear-weapons capacity after Sept. 11. (Bush's new world... "war is peace")
• Cost of stamps to rise to 37 cents on Sunday

6/25/02

• Ruling muddies death penalty
  A Supreme Court ruling that juries, not judges, must give a defendant life or death adds to uncertainty over such sentences around the nation.
• As many as 10 sentences in state may be commuted
  A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday with national implications for the death penalty could result in as many 10 convicted killers in Florida -- and perhaps more -- seeing their death sentences commuted to life in prison.
  • FLORIDA CASES MOST AFFECTED BY RULING
• Supreme Court ruling cast doubts on Florida sentences
  JACKSONVILLE — The U.S. Supreme Court decision that only juries and not judges can impose a death sentence could result in most of Florida's 370 death row inmates having their sentences overturned, defense attorneys said Monday. Prosecutors and other state officials disputed that, saying Monday's decision probably will affect only a few inmates.
• Community's conscience
  The Supreme Court has ruled logically in saying that only a jury can decide the facts that will determine if a defendant will face execution.
• Juries only can mete out death
  The Supreme Court ruling is expected to unleash a slew of appeals from inmates on Death Row.
• Make juries in Florida the last word on death
  Supreme Court's ruling spotlights the state's record.
• Handy's 'facts' on class size flunk smell test
  There are lies, damn lies and whatever it is that's been coming out of Phil Handy's mouth about class size. (education)
• The price isn't right
  No way to figure costs of proposed amendments.- Should Florida schoolchildren be in smaller classes? How much is the public willing to pay to have Florida schoolchildren in smaller classes? Those are different questions. Since the first is likely to be on the Florida ballot in November, lawmakers wanted voters to think about the second.
• State puts price tags on new amendments
  State economists this week will hash out the costs of smaller classrooms, preschool for everyone, the return of the regents and uncaged pork.
• Misdirection: Ballot questions divert voters
  Looking at the number of constitutional amendments barrelling toward voters in November, it's clear what this state needs: A Legislature.
• Jacksonville has a crisis that needs action ASAP
  Only three in 10 Duval County public high school students passed the reading section of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
• State won't allow foster children to be kept in hotels anymore-- Allegations that six Palm Beach County girls partied with adult men at a Residence Inn by Marriott has prompted the state's child welfare agency to halt the placement of children in hotels and also to halt their supervision by a private nursing company. (DCF)
• DCF Oversight Must Improve
  The Florida Department of Children & Families just can't catch a break. Losing little Rilya Wilson was bad enough. Now comes word that six girls under the agency's care had been left alone at night in a hotel for three weeks and were seen partying with men who may have been sleeping with them.
• New voting districts in Palm Beach County criticized
• Amtrak's woes
  Despite the railroad's problems, it's too soon to call it quits.
• Choice for high court may cast history in new light
  Gov. Jeb Bush has a chance to make history by naming the first Hispanic Florida Supreme Court justice. Many political observers say Miami lawyer Raoul Cantero, 41, is the leading contender. His appointment could play well come November. (courts)
• TV, politics and strange bedfellows
  Real life and action on the small screen swirled together in curious new alignments when Martin Sheen, a.k.a. President Jed Bartlet, espoused Janet Reno's gubernatorial campaign.
• Al-Arian's story tests our sense of fair play
  Over the weekend, the smoke that shrouds USF professor Sami Al-Arian thickened. 
• The AME's new man
  Bishop Adam J. Richardson Jr., a Tampa native, takes the helm in front of about 2,500 churchgoers and guests, some from as far as Africa.
• Gainous may get record salary
  New Florida A&M University President Fred Gainous may be taking home an annual salary of $275,000 - making him the highest-paid public university leader in the state. (universities)
• Interim chief charms USF faculty council
  But some staff members at USF St. Petersburg question how the decision was made.
• USF St. Pete, Genshaft Hit Another Bump
  ST. PETERSBURG - University of South Florida campus leaders were almost done interviewing Ralph Wilcox on Monday when President Judy Genshaft made it clear: She already had decided to name him interim chief of USF St. ...
• Florida Atlantic increases tuition of graduate, out-of-state students
  BOCA RATON — Florida Atlantic University's trustees adopted tuition and fee hikes Monday of 5 percent for in-state graduate students and 10 percent for all out-of-state students. The cost per semester hour for Florida graduate students will now be $147.67. Out-of-state undergraduates will pay $302.99 per semester hour and out-of-state graduate students will pay $469.20 per semester hour.
• 16-year-old ash may be out of Stuart by weekend - STUART · The remainder of a shipload of incinerator ash shunned by ports and landfills around the world for 16 years should be shipped out of Stuart by the weekend and in its final resting place back home in Pennsylvania by early July, state environmental officials said on Monday.
• Water supplier to ask for strict enforcement
  Tampa Bay Water wants a crackdown on outdoor watering so that it doesn't exceed its pumping permit. 
• Jury selected for Childers' Pensacola trial
  PENSACOLA — Jurors are scheduled to hear opening statements and initial testimony Tuesday in the trial of suspended Escambia County Commissioner and former Florida Senate President W.D. Childers on charges that he violated the state's open-government "sunshine" law. Six jurors and two alternates were chosen Monday from a 150-member pool that was assembled because the case's high profile was expected to make seating a jury difficult. Of 38 prospective jurors individually questioned by lawyers, all but one knew of Childers and all knew of his lead attorney, Fred Levin.
  • Childers trial testimony starts today  (panhandle)
• Shrimper ban off Florida waters aided rare sea turtles - BRUNSWICK, Ga. - Emergency restrictions on shrimp trawling from North Carolina to Florida came to the rescue of some endangered sea turtles, experts said.-- The 30-day ban, which ended Sunday, prevented shrimpers from dragging at night in federal waters from Cape Fear, N.C., to St. Augustine, Fla. Shrimpers also were required to equip their nets with devices designed to allow even the largest sea turtles to escape.
• Fingerprinting Polluters
  TAMPA - A pair of environmental sleuths are slinking around Blackwater Creek, searching out clues that could reveal who is fouling the water. ...
• Boca biological tests get probe
  A Senate panel is investigating whether Boca Raton tests of biological weapons in the 1950s caused harm.
• Farmworkers push study of chemical links to illness
   Apopka farmworkers met Monday night to try to get some answers, but learned they'll have to start speaking louder when asking tough questions about health concerns in their community.
• Immigrant health benefits
  Florida Sen. Bob Graham has the right idea on welfare-reform reauthorization. He plans to offer an amendment in committee today that would give states more flexibility to offer federal health benefits to legal immigrant pregnant women and children. His plan makes good sense, in both human and financial terms, and should be supported by his colleagues in the U.S. Senate.
• A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
  At a time when states, including Florida, are slashing health benefits, restoring federal funding for legal immigrants is a life-and-death issue. That's why the Senate needs to approve the Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act.
• Bob Herbert: How hot is too hot
  One of the more startling stories in The New York Times recently was Timothy Egan's article on the climate in Alaska, where the average temperature has risen 7 degrees in the last 30 years and mosquitoes have shown up in normally frigid Barrow, the northernmost town in North America. Large portions of Alaska are melting and other strange things are happening. Just a few hours' drive from Anchorage, a 4-million-acre spruce forest has been killed by beetles, a development that is both astonishing and depressing.
• Bonnie Erbe: Wake up and support the treaty
  International women's rights is not a topic most Americans get excited over these days — this American included. Things are tough enough at home — an ailing economy, a hovering terrorist threat, uninspired leadership — these are the issues that predominate. So I cannot say with any accuracy that I have been anxiously awaiting Senate consideration of the CEDAW treaty — to wit, the Convention on Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
• Karzai names new Afghan Cabinet
  Afghan president Hamid Karzai decided not to reappoint women's activist Sima Samar.
• Dan K. Thomasson: No rush on Homeland Security
  WASHINGTON — The last thing the nation needs now is a half-baked Department of Homeland Security removed from the oven too quickly because of obvious political considerations. That, of course, is what Americans will get if the process of cobbling together such a diverse and all-encompassing entity is accelerated to meet the symbolic but relatively meaningless deadline of the first anniversary of Sept. 11.
• Guest editorial: Baked Alaska
  Alaskan landscapes are responding dramatically to climate change, and of all the questions this raises, perhaps the least interesting is precisely how much of the warming can be traced to human activity. It is now clear to nearly everyone that the Earth is warming at an abnormal rate overall, and that the burning of carbon-rich fuels is a major contributor. Debate over the details of climate mechanisms and modeling will not be resolved for a long time, if ever. Meanwhile the world as we have known it is changing, and in Alaska the changes seem to be unusually broad and rapid.
• THE BUCKS START HERE
  The seven-year fight to overhaul the nation's campaign-finance rules culminated in March with passage of the McCain-Feingold legislation, which bans large donations to national political parties. Though the law is sorely needed, its passage was only the first hurdle to actual enactment of strong campaign reforms.
• Morton Kondracke: Congress should heed Hart-Rudman report
  Utterly vindicated on Sept. 11 and since, former Sens. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Gary Hart (D-Colo.) deserve to be heeded now -- not only on homeland security, but on education, scientific research and the upgrading of government service. The two chaired an all-star Commission on National Security that warned in 1999 that a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil was inevitable and called in February 2001 for creation of a Department of Homeland Security.
• Bush: Arafat must go
  President Bush said the birth of a new Palestinian state requires a new leader.
• Yucca's false promise: Nukes repository a gift to nuclear power industry
  The nuclear power industry on one side and the Bush administration on the other are trying to surround and disarm Nevada's resistance to becoming the nation's permanent nuclear waste dump.

6/24/02

• Jeb touts Won Florida
  Gov. Bush keeps trying to declare victory for his One Florida plan by proclamation. Touting his One Florida Accountability Commission is the latest attempt. (see One Florida)
• Gov. Bush's popularity stumps Democrats
  A year ago, Democrats were seething over President Bush's contested victory in Florida, vowing to hit the White House where it hurts by unseating brother Jeb in 2002. (see JEB2002)
• FCAT is undermining good students and good schools
  Nancy Cook Lauer was right in her June 7 column ("Real people, hard choices for Gov. Bush"), suggesting that Gov. Jeb Bush would do well to spend a few days in the shoes of those he purports to represent. He might understand why many see his educational policies as a destructive plot against Florida's children and its educational system. (see education)
• Bush: No grand jury on DCF kids
  But a state legislator demands more action in finding kids in state care. (see DCF)
• Bush says grand jury not needed to investigate missing children
  MIAMI — Gov. Jeb Bush has refused a request to create a statewide grand jury to investigate the 1,237 children under state care who can't be located. The Department of Children and Families has classified most of these children as either runaways, out-of-state or taken from their home by a family or relative. None of them were visited in May.
• Child welfare dilemma
  Child protective investigators should have more options for children in troubled homes than having to choose between child safety and family preservation.
• Fund Mental Health Service
  State health and social service officials shouldn't have to rob Peter to pay Paul to maintain children's mental health services. Unfortunately, that's what must happen to offset a multimillion-dollar mistake.
• More clients mean less attention
  Having more clients than budgeted in the county's felony Drug Court program has generated concern that a steady increase will strain the project's resources and, some say, ultimately hurt its track record for helping drug offenders. (drug treatment)
• 'Broadbanded' pay categories a lateral change
  (re state jobs:) ...Service First required the Department of Management Services to create no more than 50 occupational groups, with a maximum of six levels for jobs in each group. DMS reported to the Legislature last December that it had come up with 38 groups, each with three to six levels.-- This meant they'd lower the floor and raise the ceiling for many jobs in each new band. For now, they take the lowest salary of the lowest pay grade in a band and the highest pay grade of the top grade in a band, and that's your new band width. (see Service First)
• Farmworker advocates seek answers - APOPKA -- Former farmworkers, health-care workers and advocates are set to meet tonight to discuss whether common ailments shared by former muck-farm laborers are going unnoticed.
• A needed tool in prisons
  Letting prisoners play basketball could help corrections officers maintain order. (see DOC)
• What Serrano shows
  Update state policy on mentally ill criminals.
• Reno thinks numbers can work in her favor - TALLAHASSEE -- Campaigning in sweltering North Florida, Democrat Janet Reno told the crowd that the key to her victory over Gov. Jeb Bush rests on pulling Floridians to the polls in numbers rivaling those of a presidential contest. (see Reno)
• Jones pushes for campaign donors
  State Sen. Daryl Jones said he plans to raise $2.5 million for his campaign for governor as he opened his Seminole County headquarters Sunday. (see Jones)
• Gargan planning run for Congress
  CEDAR KEY — Jack Gargan, who was briefly the national head of the Reform Party and one of the people who convinced Ross Perot to run for president, is jumping into the race for a Florida congressional seat. Gargan, 71, said he will seek the 5th District congressional seat as an independent. He was ousted in 2000 as chairman of the Reform Party amid internal squabbles over the party's direction.
• Genshaft, ensnarled in parochial quagmire, can take high road
  The roots of St. Petersburg's decidedly mixed feelings toward the University of South Florida -- which is your state university and my state university, no matter where we live around here -- are deep and go back more than 40 years. (see colleges)
• Battle heats over ‘board certified’
  A state Board of Medicine decision that changes standards for "board certified" doctors irks some.
• Gripes surge as water bills rise
  Tampa - New reclaimed water rates are causing homeowners associations to turn to the County Commission for relief.
• Pinellas county town has people living in it after all
  The federal government has discovered life in this tiny Pinellas County town. Census bureaucrats had thought the place uninhabited, which was discouraging to the people who thought they lived here. Statistics released recently by the Census Bureau have corrected their earlier figures, which showed zero population for the tiny, upscale community. Odd, considering county voter rolls showed more than 90 registered voters. 
• Taylor County's wish granted
  Taylor County has continued to have problems with its beach water quality since 2000, and now some financial help from the state is on the way.
• Editorial: Growth management
  Call it "A Tale of Two Roads." One follows the modern story line, that new roads cannot be built fast enough to ease the sting of growth. That is the case with Immokalee Road, which Collier County Commission Chairman Jim Coletta wants completed ASAP to help bring Immokalee and Naples closer together for business, education and recreation.
• Benefit plans only give approval to high drug costs
  At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful old man, I'm not as thrilled as you might expect with the House Republican bill to add prescription drug benefits for seniors.
• Guest commentary: Sacrifice is for losers
  Last weekend marked the media's self-congratulatory 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, and it would have spoiled the mood to suggest that all the energy expended on searching for ol' Deep Throat might be better spent trying to crack the Watergate under way right now. This time the cancer is not on the presidency but on the economy, where the malignancy is a flood of corporate transgressions whose scope and scale, in the words of The Wall Street Journal this week, "exceed anything the U.S. has witnessed since the years preceding the Great Depression."
• Guest editorial: Insiders trading
  Insider trading is so closely associated with the late 1980s, the time of the last epic popping of a stock market bubble, that there is a certain elegiac quality to the latest scandal on Wall Street. When Samuel Waksal, the former chief executive of ImClone, was arrested at home recently and charged with insider trading, one couldn't help but think of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. The latest bubble was all about a supposed new economy, but some of its dirty tricks may have been timeless classics.
• Guest editorial: Striking first
  For the past half-century, American military planning has proceeded from the assumption that the United States would respond quickly to aggression but would not be the first to strike. Now the Bush administration is arguing that such a purely defensive policy has become outdated in an age of international terrorism, rogue states and unconventional weapons.
• Maureen Dowd: How about some buff minds in the White House?
  WASHINGTON — As I sit in my office, munching Pirate's Booty, sipping my caramel macchiato and watching a sweaty President Bush on TV extolling the glories of exercise and nutrition, I have some questions: Why is the most fitness-crazed president in the nation's history sometimes so short on stamina? Does it ever occur to Bush and his aides to vacate the gym and nail down a Middle East policy?
• Thomas Sowell: Judicial ad hocracy
  Maybe it was not the most important case before the Supreme Court of the United States. But still it was a galling example of the way some justices casually wave aside the rights of ordinary people for the sake of some special interest that they favor. The case involved a village in Ohio that required door-to-door solicitors to get a permit before going to the homes in that village.
• Global security focus of G-8 summit
  Leaders from eight of the world's mightiest nations will focus on global security at a meeting.
  
  

6/23/02

• Transformation of Florida company means vast changes to Panhandle coast
  PORT ST. JOE — For decades, a 40-mile stretch of snowy-white beaches and unspoiled bays on Florida's panhandle has stayed out of the limelight, protected from development because its owner, St. Joe Paper, was interested mostly in cutting trees. But now the company, Florida's largest private landowner and developer, is transforming the region by embarking on a construction boom that would be the most extensive in Florida since Disney came to Orlando. (see "GreatNorthwest"
• The real Florida
  "Most books about Florida are about ecology or theme parks. I wanted to focus on the people and small towns," Warner said in his book, "Vanishing Florida: A Personal Guide to Sights Rarely Seen." (WF:... and quickly disappearing!)
• Anstead's view on need for independent judiciary -- "We require an independent judiciary that is not going to be influenced by a mob gathering someplace or by somebody outside ... making a speech that this would be very unpopular.  (see courts)
  • Anstead to take over as chief justice July 1
• United States can do better on drug benefits
  Americans age 65 and older make up about 13 percent of today's population, but they account for more than 40 percent of all spending on prescription drugs. Eight out of 10 use a prescription drug every single day.
• Florida can't be far behind to suffer from global warming
  TALLAHASSEE -- Florida, which came from the sea, is heading back there faster than Nature intended. Global warming is the reason why, and those who still don't believe it belong in the Flat Earth Society. (see environment)
• Phil Lewis: More conflict than usual on election scene
  Florida's newspaper editors get together once a year to exchange ideas, discuss the craft and bestow awards. This year's session was held a week ago in Cape Canaveral. Normally, a portion of the two-day conference is reserved for speeches from political leaders, who often welcome a chance to meet with editors. Last June, Janet Reno addressed the conference as she primed for her current run for governor. (see electoral reform)
• Reno looking toward November - TALLAHASSEE · Campaigning in sweltering North Florida this month, Democrat Janet Reno told the crowd that the key to her victory over Gov. Jeb Bush is pulling Floridians to the polls in numbers rivaling that of a presidential contest. (see Hats in the Ring)
• McBride's plan of action
  "I've sized up Jeb Bush," Bill McBride was saying, "and I can take him." Shuttling from an AFL-CIO rally in one Walt Disney World hotel to an NAACP banquet in another, McBride spoke with a selective optimism familiar to traveling salesmen and first-time candidates. He seeks the Democratic nomination for governor with a casual confidence rooted in decades of success as an attorney, athlete and decorated Marine combat commander - but what he doesn't say is sometimes as telling as what he emphasizes... (see see Hats in the Ring)
• GOP senators revive battle for leadership - It's summer, and in Florida that means steamy days, twilight barbecues and, yes, mean-spirited blood feuds in the state Senate.
• Union endorses Maddox
  INSIDE POLITICS Scott Maddox this week received the first major endorsement in his campaign for state attorney general when he got the nod from the Service Employees International Union.
• Lobbyist law gives a look at inside - FORT LAUDERDALE · Lobbying, by its nature, is a behind-the-scenes activity the public generally never knows about. Except in Fort Lauderdale. (see money and politics)
• Bush: Better education will lead to fewer arrests
  MIAMI BEACH -- Gov. Jeb Bush touted education as a way to aid law enforcement as he accepted an endorsement Saturday from the Fraternal Order of Police for his re-election campaign.
• Bush: Education improvements are way to help law enforcement
  MIAMI BEACH — Gov. Jeb Bush touted education as a way to aid law enforcement as he accepted a nomination Saturday from the Fraternal Order of Police for his re-election campaign. He said that the children who benefit from their education now will grow up to be good citizens, making the streets safer for law enforcement in the state. Improving literacy and graduation rates will decrease the number of arrests officers have to make, Bush said.
• Education debate needs more ideas and less politics
  Whatever you think about Gov. Jeb Bush's education reforms, he deserves credit for igniting a long overdue debate on how to improve Florida's public schools. It's too bad so much of the debate is framed by opposing ideologies. Bush's A+ Plan is harshly denounced by Democrats who have little to offer other than calls for more spending without reform. The Republicans, meanwhile, seem to think the only way to turn around failing public schools is to offer parents vouchers to send their children to private schools that are unaccountable to the state for student achievement.
• Poorest schools get most F's
  Analysis rebutted state leaders' claims and showed race, wealth, grades linked.
• Graham initiative may affect UF leader -- All the state's universities have a lot riding on whether U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's ballot initiative passes or fails in November, but perhaps none more so than the University of Florida. (Universities)
• Abuse reports soar in months after Rilya-- A 33 percent surge in abuse reports, plummeting worker morale and a flurry of firings and resignations have pummeled Florida’s already unstable child welfare system in the two months since the state discovered a 5-year-old girl in its care had been missing for more than a year.
• Israel Ties Al-Arian To Jihad Board
  TEL AVIV - Sami Al-Arian, the professor being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for alleged ties to Middle East terrorists, helped found the governing council of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and then served on it, current and former senior Israeli intelligence officials say. ... (Sun Coast)
• Sports gear for inmates criticized
  Florida prisons plan to buy basketballs and other sports gear under a new law that allows the purchase of ''wellness equipment'' and apparently reverses a ban on purchases of recreational equipment for inmates. (DOC)
• Citrus disease threatens industry, homeowners' rights
  BOCA RATON — While Gloria Drummond was at a morning exercise class, agriculture workers let themselves into her back yard and searched her plants and trees for canker, a disease threatening Florida's $9.1 billion citrus industry. Workers are chopping down healthy trees if they are too close to those infected or exposed to canker, a bacteria that spreads through the air, weakening trees and causing unsightly lesions on citrus fruit. (citrus canker) 
• Why canker is winning canker fight
  For those who think that the current controversy over citrus canker exemplifies a decades-old conspiracy between the industry and the state to drive away backyard competition, look at the record.
• In trial, suspended official asks help of old ally
  When W.D. Childers goes to court on charges of breaching the state Sunshine Law, friend and lawyer Fred Levin will be by his side. (Panhandle)
  • Childers faces Sunshine Law trial Monday
  • Junior's testimony may not be enough to convict others
• Editorial: White-collar crime
  Prosecuting real estate predators is such a chore. It might hurt their feelings. So let's just surrender to them, ask buyers to watch out and put up big signs at the Collier County lines embracing fraud: "Welcome to the land of milk and honey. Anything goes." Why not? The county's first line of official defense against white-collar crime, a task force including the State Attorney's Office, has assumed a ho-hum attitude on a case involving $1.5 million in home buyers' escrow funds.
• Jeff Lytle: When city, county or state spends money, a consultant wins
  If bureaucratic bungles and tortured, wasteful studies by consultants were bits of twine, and you saved them up for the past few weeks, you'd have a mighty big ball. We blow a lot of money on weird notions, bad service and the buddy system. Let's start with Allan Bedwell, a high-ranking official with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
• Millions for partying, pennies for doing good
  Last year, United Way raised $28.4-million in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. The money went to social agencies across the bay area.
• Orlando: Growing to pieces
  The city often annexes plum land, aiding its tax base but shortchanging some older areas. (central Florida)
• Cocoa Beach alliance has city's future all sewn up
  At 86, Mary Lund hardly seems a formidable foe, but the frail, silver-haired senior is a charter member of a mostly elderly alliance that has hoteliers, restaurateurs and other merchants in this beachside community running scared.
• Gas line to help stabilize prices
  A 581-mile pipeline that ends near this quiet Osceola County community is Florida's first new source of natural gas in 40 years.
• Bacterial infection kills Gainesville woman
  GAINESVILLE — A 35-year-old woman who died of bacterial meningitis was the second such death in Florida in six days. The Gainesville woman, who health officials declined to name, died at Shands at Alachua General Hospital on Wednesday.
• Heavy rains fuel mosquito concerns - ... with the almost daily deluge of rain these days, experts are watching carefully to make sure the insects do not cause a problem.
• Homeowners to be told of houses' flaws
  Although the state disciplined engineers, in the past buyers were not told their homes could fail in high winds.
• Gated communities have less crime
  By Thomas R. Collins, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
  The high-security developments are getting more sophisticated all the time, creating their own standards for safety.
• Overpopulation crowds South Florida animal shelters
   The cages are filled, as they almost always are, with dogs and puppies nervously barking, cats and kittens plaintively mewing. They come in with names like Toto, Angel and Sam, though many are known only by a number
• High court stands up for a civilized society
  Justices ban execution of mentally retarded.
• THE HIGH RISK OF SMOKING
  Anew study showing that tobacco smoke may be even more dangerous than previously believed gives new ammunition to opponents of smoking.
• Misguided emissions policy discourages clean-air technology
  For the past three years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has treated routine maintenance and repair at older coal-fired power plants as a major plant modification under the Clean Air Act.
• WOMEN'S RIGHTS: STILL WAITING
  The title of a treaty that's been signed by 169 nations -- the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- is about as straightforward an explanation of an international agreement as you can get. (NOW)
• Liberals attack free speech to suit their purposes
  When the history of today's liberalism is written, the writers may marvel at that political persuasion's remarkable reversal of convictions regarding persuasion. Nothing more tellingly illuminates the contemporary liberal mind than the retreat from the defense of First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
• Officials: Mailed Anthrax Was Fresh
  WASHINGTON - Scientists have determined that the anthrax powder sent through the mail last fall was fresh, made no more than two years before it was sent, senior government officials said. The new finding has concerned investigators, ...

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