Local News

Nine ghosts rose from the dead at Chestnut Cemetery Saturday night. Portrayed by local actors and elected officials, the twice yearly Ghost Walk, sponsored by the Apalachicola Area Historical Society, drew about 250 visitors, and raised more than $1,650 to help in the restoration of the historic cemetery. Included in that total were about $250…

Apalachicola city commissioners worked to come to terms Tuesday evening with Gov. Ron DeSantis order Monday to suspend all local-government coronavirus emergency orders. The governor signed a bill that makes permanent his ban on COVID-19 vaccine “passports” and limits the authority of cities and counties in future health-care crises. “My message is that the vaccines…

TALLAHASSEE — With Democrats likening the measure to Jim Crow-era practices aimed at keeping Black people from voting, the state Senate on Monday passed an elections package that would make it harder for Floridians to cast ballots by mail.  A single Republican — Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg — crossed party lines to join Senate…

What drove a 4-year-old male red wolf to leave St. Vincent Island and swim to the mainland can only be surmised. Perhaps it was the excitement of the weekend, or a nagging curiosity, a feral drive towards a mysterious something out there he had to find. Perhaps it was his knowing that a 7-year-old female…

Yes, they are going to dredge the Eastpoint Channel, and Two-Mile. But it hasn’t been easy, and it’s still not clear when. Alan Pierce, the longtime county administrator who has been working with the Army Corps of Engineers in recent years to advance the county’s pursuit of the dredging, vented his frustration with the process…

In a case that has drawn interest from a wide range of civil-liberties groups, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that a state inmate can seek punitive damages in a lawsuit that alleged threats by guards at Florida Correctional Institution violated his First Amendment rights. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Conraad…

TALLAHASSEE — After years of legal battling, the U.S. Supreme Court last week unanimously rejected a lawsuit in which Florida argued Georgia has used too much water in a river system shared by the states. The 12-page ruling dismissed the lawsuit that Florida filed in 2013 after the oyster fishery collapsed in Franklin County’s Apalachicola…

Both Franklin and Gulf counties are pushing back against a state plan to shutter up to four state prisons, a plan spreading alarm throughout Florida’s rural regions where correctional institutions have played an outsized role in providing jobs and supporting businesses for decades. “If we no longer have any inmates, will we need to hire…