There’s no “Cutest Critter in Florida” contest but, if there were, I can name a few contestants. The diminutive Key deer, for one. The seagrass-munching manatee for another. And, of course, the friendly Florida scrub jay. You may not be familiar with the scrub jay. Contrary to what The Trashmen used to sing, not everybody’s heard about the bird. They’re classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, which means they’re not fluttering all over the state. If you’re lucky enough to spot one, though, you’ll find it quite charming. I once visited Oscar Scherer State Park in Osprey accompanied by a ranger who knew how to summon scrub jays. One swooped in and landed right on my photographer’s head. It stood there as the photographer handed me her camera and I took the bird’s picture. Not everyone is a fan of these little birds, though. While I was in Charlotte County recently, I heard about a lawsuit aimed at robbing scrub jays of their federal protection. Michael Colosi is an Ave Maria resident who’s been described as “a young tech entrepreneur.” He recently moved to Florida from New Jersey. In 2024, he bought a 5-acre parcel in Punta Gorda and planned to build a house there. But because the parcel is in scrub jay habitat, he’s required to pay Charlotte County a hefty fee.

“You’re holding the guitar wrong.” I’m sitting across from Fabián Carrera, guitar professor at Whitworth University. It’s our first lesson. He has just strummed “Happy Birthday” and asked me to play it back to him. I’ve not yet played a note and he has already offered a correction. “When we get into more technical material, you’ll want the guitar up like this,” Carrera says. He shifts his guitar so that the neck is no longer parallel to the floor but running diagonal to it. “And your wrist, flat. That will make it easier to play quick.” He gives me a footstool. I put my left foot on it, and as my guitar raises into classical posture, my clawed wrist straightens into an easy, natural, comfortable position. I strum “Happy Birthday.” “Good. Can you play it like this?” Carrera asks, fingerpicking the chords as he sings along. This, too, I do. We go back and forth, each rendition of “Happy Birthday” a little more difficult than the previous. “And this? Can you do it like this?” Carrera now plucks the melody in single notes. I stumble a bit finding the melody but after two tries get it. “Now, listen to this,” he says, and here, Carrera plays the song with jazz chords—a major chord to begin, then some major and minor seventh chords, a ninth, and a diminished too, as he ascends the fretboard. The song is over before I can process what I’ve heard. I strum the first chord, stumble into the second, and then my fingers fail. “Okay then,” Carrera says. “This is where we begin.”

Documents obtained by KMVT revealed the sheriff was under investigation leading up to his announcement.

Video posted on social media depicts a rendering of the proposed 50-storey gargantuan structure decked in gold

On January 10th, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Joe Rogan and put on quite a performance. He talked about how the Biden administration had pressured Meta to take down content. He detailed how the Biden administration had apparently pressured Meta to take down content — how officials called and screamed and cursed — and how, going forward, he was a changed man. A champion of free expression, done forever with government demands to remove content. And a whole bunch of people (especially MAGA folks) cheered all this on. Zuckerberg was a protector of free speech against government suppression! Twenty-four days later, he texted Elon Musk — a senior government official at the time — to volunteer to remove content the government wouldn’t like. Unprompted. As I wrote at the time, the whole Rogan interview was an exercise in misdirection. The “pressure” Zuck kept describing was the kind of thing the Supreme Court explicitly found, in the Murthy case, was standard-issue government communication — the kind of thing Justice Kagan said happens “literally thousands of times a day in the federal government.” The Court called the lower court’s findings of “censorship” clearly erroneous. And Zuck himself kept admitting, over and over, that Meta’s response to the Biden administration was to tell them no.

The sheriffs’ union spent thousands to cast the deputy at Ward 86 as a hero, even after clinic staff said they'd stopped the attack.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to tighten voting rules by creating a national list of eligible voters and limiting mail ballots.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sent a challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” – treatment intended to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity – for young people back to the lower courts for them to apply a new standard. By a vote of 8-1, the justices agreed with Kaley Chiles, the licensed counselor challenging the law, that the ban discriminates against her based on the views that she expresses in her talk therapy. A federal appeals court, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, should have applied a more stringent standard of review, known as strict scrutiny, to determine whether the law violates the First Amendment as applied to Chiles. But the Supreme Court also strongly hinted that the ban would fail that test. In his 23-page opinion, Gorsuch stressed that in cases like Chiles’, Colorado’s ban “censors speech based on viewpoint.” Because the First Amendment “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth,” Gorsuch continued, “any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter. She argued that the majority’s opinion “could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers.”

The meeting of the Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed the "God Squad" because of its power to grant exemptions to the Nixon-era Endangered Species Act, was attended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who requested the exemption because litigation was threatening Gulf oil and gas production. "We cannot allow our own rules to weaken our standing ​and strengthen those who wish to harm us," Hegseth said during the livestreamed meeting. "So for these reasons, exemption from the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf ​is not just a good idea, it is a critical matter of national security."

The Trump admin wants to make it illegal for reporters to ask "unauthorized" questions of the government — a broadside attack on free speech.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed the so-called 'millionaires tax' into law, enacting a 9.9% income tax on earnings of more than $1 million a year.

Birmingham’s water utility said previous leaders had stopped fluoridating the drinking water at three of its four plants without telling the public. Now, it’s making the change permanent.

Of the many images captured months ago during a Thanksgiving briefing, one of Karoline Leavitt incensed the White House, resulting in a remarkable chain of events that led to its removal from the photo wires, Status has learned.

During the conflict in the North of Ireland, British security forces colluded with loyalist paramilitaries responsible for hundreds of sectarian murders. The record of collusion should be a cautionary tale for the contemporary US as the far right grows.

At least three families won multimillion-dollar wrongful death suits against former Skyline Healthcare owner Joseph Schwartz. They haven’t collected a cent.

This is how Rahm Emanuel eats a salad: He rips open its clear, clamshell container with two hands. He grabs the ramekin of the dressing. He pours it across the salad. Then he picks up the salad container, shaking it with an intensity and ferocity that forces the balsamic throughout, giving no quarter to the greens and the grilled chicken. This is material information, mind you, for his would-be 2028 Democratic presidential primary rivals. Because how Rahm eats a salad is how he does anything and everything: with intent and with verve and without mercy.

Bigoted moron refuses to grasp that he’s the bad guy.

The legislation makes the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed acts of terrorism by a military court. According to the bill, those sentenced to death will be held in a separate facility with no visits except for from authorised personnel, with legal consultations conducted only by video link. Executions will be carried out within 90 days of sentencing. Israel has rarely used the death penalty, applying it only in exceptional cases, with the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed, in 1962. The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the bill’s strongest backers, has repeatedly worn a noose-shaped lapel pin, symbolising executions under the proposal. He described hanging as “one of the options” alongside the electric chair or “euthanasia”, claiming some doctors had offered to assist.

The U.S. government may be pocketing billions in immigration fees — with zero intention of processing the accompanying applications.

Jack Karlson’s rallying cry of ‘democracy manifest’ added to national collection of sound recordings that hold historical, cultural and aesthetic significance