Collier deputies investigating car submerged in waterFGCU softball reflects on season and team’s legacy
NAPLES Collier deputies investigating car submerged in water The Collier County Sheriffs Office is investigating the scene of a submerged vehicle in Naples.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball reflects on season and team’s legacy FGCU softball reflects on the historic season following their elimination doubleheader Saturday as well as what made this team special.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Scattered storms in the forecast for your Sunday Expect sun and clouds throughout the day, along with scattered rain. Some of the storms have the potential to become severe.
CAPE CORAL Do we need a federal gun database for mental illness? One family says yes One family is on a mission to create a new national gun database. It would require medical professionals to enter mental health information.
ALVA Three dead in triple drowning near the Franklin Lock in Olga The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is responding to a scene of a water rescue where three people were recovered.
PUNTA GORDA The Weather Authority helps you prepare for the hurricane season at the 2024 Charlotte County Hurricane Expo With hurricane season less than two weeks away, it’s important to start preparing.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball senior balances EMT training and Regional play Ahead of NCAA Regional play, FGCU senior outfielder Riley Oakes started EMT training as she works toward being a trauma surgeon.
PUNTA GORDA Homes For Our Troops grants veteran new home Through all the cheers and a community-wide escort, it’s a ‘welcome to your forever home for army sergeant veteran Brandon Rethmel and his family.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weather The Weather Authority has issued a heat advisory for portions of South, Southeast, and Southwest Florida from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
FORT MYERS Leaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge Should residents endure two years of partial lane closures, or fully shut the Caloosahatchee bridge down for 10 weeks?
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball parents cherish NCAA Tournament experience The parents of the FGCU softball team are relishing seeing their daughters play in the NCAA Tournament.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Hot, hot, hot Heat advisory in place for Saturday until 8 p.m.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers teen finds dead body in bed of his truck A 16-year-old in Fort Myers drove to school, drove home, drove to the barbershop and back home again. Then, he noticed a swarm of flies in the back of his truck.
Scottie Scheffler facing felony charges; local attorney reacts The attorney we spoke with told us that, at a minimum, we’d spend the night in jail before having our first appearance and getting bail.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
NAPLES Collier deputies investigating car submerged in water The Collier County Sheriffs Office is investigating the scene of a submerged vehicle in Naples.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball reflects on season and team’s legacy FGCU softball reflects on the historic season following their elimination doubleheader Saturday as well as what made this team special.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Scattered storms in the forecast for your Sunday Expect sun and clouds throughout the day, along with scattered rain. Some of the storms have the potential to become severe.
CAPE CORAL Do we need a federal gun database for mental illness? One family says yes One family is on a mission to create a new national gun database. It would require medical professionals to enter mental health information.
ALVA Three dead in triple drowning near the Franklin Lock in Olga The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is responding to a scene of a water rescue where three people were recovered.
PUNTA GORDA The Weather Authority helps you prepare for the hurricane season at the 2024 Charlotte County Hurricane Expo With hurricane season less than two weeks away, it’s important to start preparing.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball senior balances EMT training and Regional play Ahead of NCAA Regional play, FGCU senior outfielder Riley Oakes started EMT training as she works toward being a trauma surgeon.
PUNTA GORDA Homes For Our Troops grants veteran new home Through all the cheers and a community-wide escort, it’s a ‘welcome to your forever home for army sergeant veteran Brandon Rethmel and his family.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weather The Weather Authority has issued a heat advisory for portions of South, Southeast, and Southwest Florida from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
FORT MYERS Leaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge Should residents endure two years of partial lane closures, or fully shut the Caloosahatchee bridge down for 10 weeks?
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball parents cherish NCAA Tournament experience The parents of the FGCU softball team are relishing seeing their daughters play in the NCAA Tournament.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Hot, hot, hot Heat advisory in place for Saturday until 8 p.m.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers teen finds dead body in bed of his truck A 16-year-old in Fort Myers drove to school, drove home, drove to the barbershop and back home again. Then, he noticed a swarm of flies in the back of his truck.
Scottie Scheffler facing felony charges; local attorney reacts The attorney we spoke with told us that, at a minimum, we’d spend the night in jail before having our first appearance and getting bail.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
MGN Online HAVANA (AP) – Even Cubans who don’t speak a word of English eat “un cake” on their birthdays. They wear “los tennis” and “bloomers.” Their kids go crazy for Taylor Swift and “The Big Bang Theory.” U.S. science fiction master Ray Bradbury has pride of place on their bookshelves beside revolutionary poet Jose Marti. Far beyond the antique Chevys on its streets and the memorials to Ernest Hemingway, Cuba is a country whose language, music, literature and fashion are steeped in American influence despite a half-century of official hostility. The U.S. flag that rises over the Havana waterfront at the symbolic reopening of the U.S. Embassy on Friday will instantly be the most powerful symbol of the American presence in communist, anti-imperialist Cuba. But it will be far from the only one. Immaculately polished red granite letters spell out “Woolworth’s” in the sidewalk outside a sparsely supplied government-run Havana variety store. An “R” and a “K” poke out from behind the post-revolutionary Banco Metropolitano sign at what used to be the National City Bank of New York. There’s a national love of baseball, French fries and milkshakes. Cuba’s strain of Caribbean Spanish is rich with borrowed American words. Some, such as the greetings “brother” and “man,” are as current as the pirated pop culture consumed by the island’s youth. Others are comically outdated, like “bloomers” for women’s underwear or “tencens” for the shops that used to be 10-cent stores before the 1959 revolution. “U.S. influence was very strong and touched every aspect of life, from food to movies,” said cultural critic Ciro Bianchi. “It has always persisted.” Observers of the two countries say U.S.-Cuban cultural ties are about more than shared tastes in sports and movies. The fact that the two countries remained culturally close through decades of conflict is likely to prove essential as the U.S. and Cuba move beyond the reestablishment of diplomatic relations symbolized by Friday’s ceremony and enter a new phase of broader economic and political normalization. U.S. cultural influence in Cuba is transmitted from child to parent, among cousins and schoolmates, through the hundreds of thousands of families and groups of friends divided by decades of emigration. Relatives and friends living in Florida, New Jersey and Texas return home with new expressions, clothing brands and TV shows and music. Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders have long said they opposed the U.S. government, not its people. American influence is so present and unremarkable that when the government built dozens of state-run gas stations in the 1990s, it painted many with the pre-revolutionary English-language slogan “friendly service 24 hours” without raising eyebrows. Freed from Spain in 1898, Cuba quickly became a virtual colony of the United States, its corrupt politics and oligarchical economy dominated by U.S. interests. From sugar to telephones to banks, most businesses were U.S. subsidiaries. The casinos and nightclubs that drew swarms of American tourists were owned by U.S. mobsters. Cuba turned against Washington after Fidel Castro overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. A generation of Cubans grew up with Russian cartoons, clothes and canned food. But the country never truly shook off its deep ties to North America. Bradbury is so revered in science fiction-loving Cuba that state television dedicated a lengthy report this week to the 60th anniversary of the Spanish translation of the author’s “Martian Chronicles,” a 1950 book about the colonization of Mars. Even in the 1970s, at the peak of revolutionary fervor in Cuba, authorities allowed showings of Disney cartoons and American movies like the first two “Godfather” films, including the famous scenes in “Part II” showing Mafia meetings on the eve of Castro’s takeover of the island. “I’ve traveled a lot through Latin America and I feel more at home in Cuba than in other places,” said Ted Henken, a Cuba expert at Baruch College in New York. Jazz took root in Cuba with spectacular results and American musical forms influenced other Cuban genres such as son, mambo and timba, art critic Joaquin Borges Triana said. The “new journalism” of Tom Wolfe and the gritty poetry of Charles Bukowski inspired the writing of Cuba’s novisimos, writers who dived into themes of sexual desire and marginalization amid the economic collapse of the 1990s. And American noir detective novels have been a powerful influence on the country’s most celebrated contemporary writer, Leonardo Padura. “American dirty realism had a strong influence on an entire zone of literature,” Borges said. “Those writers were the masters for young Cuban writers of that generation.” The strong cultural ties between the U.S. and Cuba “don’t just have to do with globalization,” Borges said. “This is about a more profound relationship.”