Florida
Friday’s Daily Pulse
State, nationwide jobless claims lower
First-time unemployment claims in Florida and throughout the nation dipped final week, whereas a examine confirmed small companies persevering with to grapple with supply-chain points. The U.S. Division of Labor on Thursday estimated Florida had 6,072 unemployment claims in the course of the week that ended June 25, down from a revised rely of 6,500 in the course of the week that ended June 18. The preliminary estimate for the week ending June 18 was 5,778. Florida declare totals are just like the tempo earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic brought about huge job losses in 2020. [Source: News Service of Florida]
Enterprise Beat – Week of July 1st
Get prime news-to-know with Florida Pattern’s headline-focused video newsbrief, hosted by digital content material specialist Aimée Alexander.
Supreme Courtroom’s EPA ruling may gradual Florida’s local weather change struggle
A Supreme Courtroom ruling that limits how federal environmental regulators can pressure energy vegetation to shift away from fossil fuels may delay efforts to struggle local weather change, together with in Florida, authorized consultants say. In an opinion launched Thursday, Justices voted 6-3 to restrict the Environmental Safety Company’s authority. Republican attorneys common representing 18 states (together with Mississippi’s governor) introduced the case, West Virginia v. EPA. Florida was not amongst them. [Source: Tampa Bay Times]
Crypto curious: Teachers, bankers, entrepreneurs look to the way forward for cash
Monetary establishments are more and more waking as much as the truth that cryptocurrencies are right here to remain and the forward-thinking ones may even profit from them. Dunedin-based Achieva Credit score Union, for instance, just lately grew to become the primary Florida credit score union to supply bitcoin buying and selling companies by way of its cell app, producing charges from every transaction. [Source: Business Observer]
Invasive big African land snail present in Florida can carry meningitis, officers warn
Florida officers warn that the enormous African snail can carry the parasite rat lungworm, which is understood to trigger meningitis in people. In keeping with the Florida Division of Well being, folks can get contaminated by the parasite by consuming uncooked or undercooked snails, which can be present in small fragments on unwashed produce. Extra from WESH and KIRO.
ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:
› Low attendance at job truthful as firms battle to rent in Southwest Florida
The indicators are laborious to overlook. Assist wished, now hiring and on-the-spot interviews. And nonetheless, employers can’t discover sufficient folks. At a job truthful on Wednesday, there have been extra hiring managers than job seekers. The job truthful was seeking to fill 200 jobs. However that was wishful pondering. The room was almost empty.
› Choose to briefly cease Florida’s 15-week abortion ban
A Leon County circuit choose stated he’ll briefly block Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, discovering it unconstitutional. However when the order will take impact is unclear. Though the abortion ban takes impact Friday, Choose John Cooper stated his momentary injunction won’t take impact till he indicators the order. “It won’t be in the present day,” Cooper instructed attorneys on Thursday.
› Florida decreasing charges to reinstate suspended driver licenses
The charges required to pay for reinstatement of a suspended driver license in Florida are about to be lowered, as a brand new state legislation takes impact on Friday. The legislation will make it extra inexpensive to repay court docket charges and reinstate licenses to drive. Starting July 1, Home Invoice 397, among the many legal guidelines permitted by the governor, makes adjustments to how court docket clerks cost residents for fines and different penalties. Upfront funds in full will not be the one technique to repay charges for site visitors violations and different citations.
› Will Disney get on board the Brightline, SunRail Sunshine Hall?
A historic quest to pair public commuter and personal intercity practice service throughout the Orlando area – spanning from the gargantuan development coming to the east, to the centrally positioned worldwide airport and west to theme parks – has taken on blockbuster drama. Will the feds grant billions of {dollars} for Central Florida rail desires? Will the SunRail commuter system’s native governments flip to dysfunctional bickering over inflating prices? Will Orange County voters approve a penny enhance in gross sales tax to underwrite transportation upgrades?
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Florida
3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class
Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.
Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.
As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.
Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.
The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.
Florida
U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida
Noah Kent is heading home.
The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.
Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.
And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.
Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.
Florida
State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com
There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.
Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).
The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.
For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.
The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.
The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.
This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.
So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.
Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.
Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.
Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.
Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.
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