Three men from the Miami area are accused of stealing thousands of dollars in perfume from a North Naples store.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office says Donta Bradshaw, 23, of Miami, and Derrick Trannon, 23, of Sunrise, went into the Ulta Beauty store at Mercato on Friday and made off with designer perfumes that included Chanel and Dior, with an estimated total worth of more than $15,000.

The CCSO report states that the pair were seen on video filling pillowcases with boxes of perfume before they left and got into a waiting car driven by Eugene Merrell, 22, of Miami. The car, identified by witnesses, was later pulled over by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper on I-75 near mile marker 88. The report states that boxes of high-dollar perfume were found inside the car, and the suspects were also believed to have stolen items from Ulta stores in Hillsborough County a few hours earlier.

Deputies say the total amount of stolen merchandise could reach $20,000 or more.

The report states that Trannon and Merrell admitted to the thefts and named Bradshaw as their partner in the crimes.

All three were taken to the Collier County Jail, where Bradshaw and Trannon remain, facing charges of grand theft. Jail records show Trannon has warrants out of Broward and Palm Beach counties for theft.

Merrell, also facing a grand theft charge, has since bonded out.

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The Harry Chapin Food Bank will be providing free food at these locations from Dec. 21 to Dec. 23.

Monday, Dec. 21

10 a.m. – Noon
Bonita Old Library
26876 Pine Ave., Bonita Springs, FL 34135

10 a.m. – Noon
Fleamasters Flea Market
4135 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Fort Myers, FL 33916

Tuesday, Dec. 22

10 a.m. – Noon
Boys and Girls Club of Immokalee
1155 Roberts Ave. W., Immokalee, FL 34142

10 a.m. – Noon
Copperhead Golf Club
20910 Copperhead Dr., Lehigh Acres, FL 33936

Wednesday, Dec. 23

10 a.m. – Noon
Chalo Nitka Grounds, Moore Haven
301 10th St., Moore Haven, FL 33471

10 a.m. – Noon
Golden Gate Community Center
4701 Golden Gate Pkwy., Naples, FL 34116

10 a.m. – Noon
Feeding with Hope, (John Boy Auditorium) Clewiston
1200 W C Owen Ave., Clewiston, FL 33440

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The College Football Playoff semifinal scheduled to be played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Jan. 1 is relocating to the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium in Texas, a move prompted by California’s ban on spectators at sporting events during the pandemic.

College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said Saturday night that conference commissioners who make up the CFP management committee and the Tournament of Roses mutually agreed to relocate the game because of the “growing number of COVID-19 cases in Southern California.”

“The game in Dallas will still be played in the mid-afternoon window on New Year’s Day,” Hancock said in a statement. “We are pleased that parents and loved ones will now be able to see their students play in the game.”

The decision, announced about 13 1/2 hours before the playoff field was scheduled to be set Sunday, is just the latest twist during a college football season played through myriad COVID-19 disruptions.

The Rose Bowl, known as the Granddaddy of all college football’s postseason games, has been played every year since 1916.

Coaches and school officials with playoff contenders have complained about the Rose Bowl being unable to accommodate players’ family members because of California’s COVID-19 restrictions, put in a place as the state tries to fight a public health crisis that is straining its hospitals.

Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly even suggested that if the Fighting Irish were selected to play in the Rose Bowl, the school would boycott if players could not have family attend.

None of the teams in contention to be selected for the playoff are from the western United States.

The Rose Bowl asked the state for an exception to the restriction, but was denied twice, including earlier this week. The restrictions have been in place since March and UCLA has played its home football games at the Rose Bowl since November, including its regular-season finale Saturday night.

“We know that the decision was not an easy one to make,” said David Eads, Tournament of Roses CEO and Executive Director. “While we remain confident that a game could have been played at the Rose Bowl Stadium, as evident in the other collegiate and professional games taking place in the region, the projection of COVID-19 cases in the region has continued on an upward trend.”

The other College Football Playoff semifinal on Jan. 1 will be held in New Orleans at the Sugar Bowl, with current plans to allow 3,000 fans at the Superdome. The championship game is scheduled for Jan. 11 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Hancock said it had not yet been determined if the semifinal at AT&T Stadium in Arlington would still be called the Rose Bowl. The name is part of the licensing agreement and is co-owned by the Pasadena Tournament of Roses and the City of Pasadena.

If not, it would be the first time in more than 100 years no Rose Bowl game was played after a college football season. The first Rose Bowl was played Jan. 1, 1902.

The last time the Rose Bowl game was played outside Pasadena, California, was 1942. The game between Oregon State and Duke was played in Durham, North Carolina, because the West Coast was deemed unsafe after the attacks on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

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Top Washington negotiators, propelled by a late-night agreement on the last major obstacle to a COVID-19 economic relief package, said a Sunday agreement is all but inevitable to deliver long-overdue pandemic aid of almost $1 trillion.

“I am very hopeful that we get this done today,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

The breakthrough involved a fight over Federal Reserve emergency powers that was resolved by the Senate’s top Democrat and a senior conservative Republican. Aides to lawmakers in both parties said the compromise sparked a final round of negotiations on a handful of remaining issues.

An aide to a key GOP lawmaker said it would likely require all of Sunday to finalize and draft the final agreement, which is already guaranteed to be the largest spending measure yet, combining COVID-19 relief with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill and reams of other unrelated legislation on taxes, health, infrastructure and education.

The measure is finally nearing passage amid a frightening spike in coronavirus cases and deaths and accumulating evidence that the economy is struggling. Lawmakers and aides say it would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans. It would provide a fresh round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and money for schools, health care providers and renters facing eviction.

President Donald Trump is supportive, particularly of the push for providing more direct payments. “GET IT DONE,” he said in a late-night tweet.

It would be the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the $1.8 trillion CARES Act passed virtually unanimously in March.

The COVID-19 legislation was held up by months of dysfunction, posturing and bad faith. But talks turned serious last week as lawmakers on both sides finally faced the deadline of acting before leaving Washington for Christmas.

The measure is being added to a $1.4 trillion spending bill and combined with lots of other unfinished work, including previously stalled legislation to extend tax breaks, authorize water projects, and address the problem of surprise sky-high medical bills for out-of-network procedures.

It would be virtually impossible for lawmakers to read and fully understand the sprawling legislation before a House vote expected on Monday. Senate action would follow.

In the meantime, with a government shutdown deadline looming at midnight Sunday, lawmakers faced the reality of needing to enact another temporary spending bill — the second in as many days — to avert a shutdown of non-essential activities by federal agencies on Monday.

Lawmakers had hoped to avoid that step, but progress slowed Saturday as GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania pressed for the inclusion of a provision to close down Fed lending facilities. Democrats and the White House said it was too broadly worded and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration, but Republicans rallied to Toomey’s position.

The Fed’s emergency programs provided loans to small and mid-size businesses and bought state and local government bonds. Those bond purchases made it easier for those governments to borrow, at a time when their finances were under pressure from job losses and health costs stemming from the pandemic.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that those programs, along with two that purchased corporate bonds, would close at the end of the year, prompting an initial objection by the Fed. Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law passed after the Great Recession, the Fed can only set up emergency programs with the support of the treasury secretary.

Toomey defended his provision in a Senate speech, saying the emergency powers were designed to stabilize capital markets at the height of the pandemic this spring and were expiring at the end of the month anyway. Democrats said that Toomey was trying to limit the Fed’s ability to boost the economy, just as President-elect Joe Biden prepared to take office.

“This is about existing authorities that the Fed has had for a very long time, to be able to use in an emergency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “It’s about a lending authority for helping small businesses, state government, local government in the middle of a crisis.”

Toomey disputed that, saying his proposal “is emphatically not a broad overhaul of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authority.” His office issued a statement early Sunday calling the compromise with Schumer “an unqualified victory for taxpayers” that met Toomey’s aim of shutting down the emergency facility.

The emerging agreement on virus aid would deliver more than $300 billion in aid to businesses as well as the extra $300-per-week for the jobless and renewal of state benefits that would otherwise expire right after Christmas. It included $600 direct payments to individuals; vaccine distribution funds; and money for renters, schools, the Postal Service and people needing food aid.

The governmentwide appropriations bill would fund agencies through next September. That measure was likely to provide a last $1.4 billion installment for Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall as a condition of winning his signature.

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Another day of gorgeous weather is ahead for Southwest Florida, with a mix of sun and clouds, and highs reaching the upper 70s to lower 80s.

Heading into tonight, our next cold front will approach the area. The front will sweep across the area Monday morning. Ahead of the front, a few showers will be possible, but expect rapidly clearing conditions during the day tomorrow as cooler and drier air filters into the region.

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Florida’s unemployment rate was 6.4% last month, remaining unchanged from the month before, according to state figures released Friday.

Florida gained 9,800 jobs in November, but there were still 651,000 jobless Floridians out of a workforce of 10.1 million people.

The state’s unemployment rate was slightly below the national rate of 6.7%. November’s unemployment rate was 3.6 percentage points above the year before.

Wakulla County had the state’s lowest unemployment rate at 3.9%, followed by St. Johns County at 4% and Santa Rosa County at 4.1%.

Osceola County had the highest unemployment rate at 9.7%, followed by Orange County at 8.1% and Putnam County at 7.7%.

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At Arlington National Cemetery, people laid 250,000 wreaths as a part of Wreaths Across America. Closer to home, those in the community came together to honor our fallen soldiers.

The Vietnam War changed Jack Baum’s life and took his brothers. “It was tragic. I came back a big war hero and they had the draft back then,” Baum said. He’s a former Navy Seal.

“My brother didn’t have to go but he joined, he wanted to be like big brother,” said Baum.

His family never forgot his brother or let go of his sacrifice. But, Jack could see the difference in his parents.

Baum said, “But my parents were never the same after that. It was horrible.”

Those who gave their lives to serve this country will always be missed. And for the families of those fallen soldiers, the holidays are often a reminder of their loss.

“It’s a sad time for me, because about two weeks before we got him for Christmas,” Baum said.

That’s why veterans like Stuart and Belle Berman laid out 900 wreaths for the heroes we’ve lost.

“When my husband was in the Navy, when he was in Vietnam, it was not a big thing when they came home, people weren’t happy about it that they were in Vietnam,”  said Belle. “So it’s nice to know they’re not forgotten. It’s just very special.”

“Never again will one generation of veterans be left behind,” Stuart said.

It serves as a symbol to be there for each other. “We usually have one or two that are from World War II. Which they’re in their 90s,” Stuart said. “And still come out here in their wheelchairs or walkers just to come out and be here.”

For people like Jack, it means the world. “To me, a lot of people here sacrificed and to see them honored like this,” Baum said. “It means a lot.”

More than 100 people helped put wreaths at each veteran’s grave today. Every single one of these was made possible through donations.

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Collier County Public Schools has posted its draft 2022-2023 academic calendar along with a survey so parents, employees and other community members can weigh in on it.

The survey will be available until 3 p.m. on Jan. 8, 2021.

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As of 5 p.m. Saturday, there have been 1,193,165 positive cases of the coronavirus recorded in the state. The case count includes 1,173,409 Florida residents and 19,756 non-Florida residents. There are 20,473 Florida resident deaths reported, 291 non-resident deaths, and 59,851 hospitalizations at some point during illness, according to the Florida Department of Health.

*Numbers are released by the DOH every afternoon.

STATEWIDE NUMBERS

Total number of recorded cases: 1,193,165 (up from 1,181,483)
Florida resident deaths: 20,473 (up from 20,401)
Non-resident deaths: 291 (up from 289)
Total deaths in state (Fla./non-Fla. residents combined): 20,764 (up from 20,690)

  • 11,682 total new cases reported Saturday
  • 72 new resident deaths reported Saturday
  • 2 new non-resident deaths reported Saturday
  • Percent positive for new cases in Fla. residents: 8.35%
    • This percent is the number of people who test PCR- or antigen-positive for the first time divided by all the people tested that day, excluding people who have previously tested positive. 

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA NUMBERS

Total recorded cases in SWFL: 70,208 (up from 69,548)
Deaths: 1,267 (up from 1,264)

  • 660 total new cases reported Saturday
  • 3 new deaths reported Saturday

Lee County: 36,520 cases (up from 36,145) – 632 deaths (2 new)
Collier County: 20,770 (up from 20,629) – 315 deaths
Charlotte County: 6,475 (up from 6,384) – 213 deaths (1 new)
DeSoto County: 2,719 (up from 2,707) – 50 deaths
Glades County: 739 (up from 734) – 11 deaths
Hendry County: 2,985 (up from 2,949) – 46 deaths

Click HERE* for a case-by-case breakdown – updated daily.

*If not linked, the final report has not yet been made available.

TESTING DATA

Effective Oct. 27, the Florida Department of Health ceased releasing data showing overall testing numbers. Their statement: “The Florida Department of Health is making adjustments to the COVID-19 dashboard and daily report to provide clear, accurate information for Florida families. Moving forward, the daily report will focus on the number of tests reported to the state by day and the corresponding positivity rate by day. The previously reported cumulative number did not reflect the current status of the pandemic in Florida. This change is in line with the CDC recommendation that calculation of percent positivity [is] applied consistently and with clear communication, will allow public health officials to follow magnitude and trends effectively, and the trends will be useful for local public health decision making.”


RESOURCES

NOW HIRINGSWFL companies adding jobs

FOOD PANTRIES: Harry Chapin mobile food pantry schedule, week of Dec. 14

REPORT COVID-19 DIAGNOSIS/TEST: International self-reporting system


IF YOU FEEL SICK:

The Florida Department of Health has a 24-hour COVID-19 Call Center at 1-866-779-6121. Questions may also be emailed to covid-19@flhealth.gov. Email responses will be sent during call center hours.

LINKFlorida Department of Health COVID-19 updates

*The map is best viewed on a desktop computer. If you don’t see the map above tap HERE for a fullscreen version.

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Before 2020 comes to a close, Jupiter and Saturn will be so close that they will appear to form a “double planet.” Such a spectacular great conjunction, as the planetary alignment has come to be known, hasn’t occurred in nearly 800 years.

When their orbits align every 20 years, Jupiter and Saturn get extremely close to one another. Jupiter orbits the sun every 12 years, while Saturn’s orbit takes 30 years, so every few decades Jupiter laps Saturn, according to NASA.

The 2020 great conjunction is especially rare — the planets haven’t been this close together in nearly 400 years, and haven’t been observable this close together at night since medieval times, in 1226.

“Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to one another,” Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan said in a statement. “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.”

What is a great conjunction?

In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered both the four moons of Jupiter — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — and the rings of Saturn. Not long after, in 1623, the two planets were spotted aligning for the first time.

The conjunction is sometimes nicknamed the “Christmas Star” or “Star of Bethlehem” for its connection to the Christian nativity story. In the story, the star guides the wise men to the home of Jesus, which many Christians believe was a miracle. Astronomers have attempted to link the star to several rare celestial events — including a comet, a supernova and a conjunction.

Aligning with the winter solstice on December 21, 2020, the two planets will be just 0.1 degrees apart — less than the diameter of a full moon, EarthSky said. The word “conjunction” is used by astronomers to describe the meeting of objects in our night sky, and the great conjunction occurs between the two largest planets in our solar system: Jupiter and Saturn.

The planets will be so close, they will appear, from some perspectives, to overlap completely, creating a rare “double planet” effect. So close, that a “pinkie finger at arm’s length will easily cover both planets in the sky,” NASA said.

However, while they may appear from Earth to be very, very close, in reality, they are still hundreds of millions of miles apart.

How to watch the great conjunction

During the last great conjunction in 2000, Jupiter and Saturn were so close to the sun that the event was difficult to observe. But skywatchers should have a clearer view of the celestial event this time around. The great conjunction will be shining bright shortly after sunset, low in the southwestern sky, as viewed from the Northern hemisphere, NASA said.

Through the entirety of December, skywatchers will easily be able to spot the two planets with the naked eye. You can look up each evening to watch them get closer and closer in the sky — they are so bright, they are even visible from most cities.

Jupiter currently appears brighter than any star in the sky. Saturn is slightly dimmer, but still just as bright as the brightest stars, with a recognizable golden glow.

Saturn will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter, and will even look as close to the planet as some of its own moons, visible with binoculars or a telescope. Unlike stars, which twinkle, both planets will hold consistent brightness, easy to find on clear nights.

“You can imagine the solar system to be a racetrack, with each of the planets as a runner in their own lane and the Earth toward the center of the stadium,” said Henry Throop, an astronomer in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “From our vantage point, we’ll be able to see Jupiter on the inside lane, approaching Saturn all month and finally overtaking it on December 21.”

The event is observable from anywhere on Earth, provided the sky is clear. “The further north a viewer is, the less time they’ll have to catch a glimpse of the conjunction before the planets sink below the horizon,” Hartigan said.

The planets will appear extremely close for about a month, giving skywatchers plenty of time to witness the spectacular alignment throughout the holiday season. The event coincidentally aligns with the December solstice, marking the shortest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere.

“Conjunctions like this could happen on any day of the year, depending on where the planets are in their orbits,” said Throop. “The date of the conjunction is determined by the positions of Jupiter, Saturn, and the Earth in their paths around the Sun, while the date of the solstice is determined by the tilt of Earth’s axis. The solstice is the longest night of the year, so this rare coincidence will give people a great chance to go outside and see the solar system.”

To learn more about when and where to look up to see the conjunction, Throop will be live on NASA’s website to answer questions on Thursday afternoon.

This will be the “greatest” great conjunction for the next 60 years, until 2080. Hartigan said that, following that conjunction, the duo won’t make such a close approach until sometime after the year 2400.

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