Local News - Florida Today

Brevard County may expand lifeguard service this season, ahead of a proposal to do so in next year's budget. County commissioners said during a budget meeting Thursday they would consider committing more money for lifeguards, days after the county's first ocean drowning of the year over the weekend.

Donna Pauquette beamed as half of her new manufactured home backed down her driveway near Tadlock Avenue. "I think it's beautiful!" she said, like a kid on Christmas morning. "Look at the chandelier!"

Despite a rash of brush fires that captured headlines earlier this year, the summer of 2008 won't go down as a "drought" in the Brevard County record books.

Homes that double as marijuana greenhouses and meth labs could see a higher tax bill under a plan unfurled by one Brevard County Property Appraiser candidate.

Police say it was an inside job plotted by two brothers -- one an Office Depot employee and the other a promising Brevard Community College student -- who tried to take money from a cash room at the office supply store.

Melbourne police used pepper spray to smoke a suspect out of a sweltering attic at a University Drive apartment complex Thursday after a two-city police chase that reached speeds up to 100 mph.

Want to earn more money? Getting a job with the federal government might be a goo£d start. A FLORIDA TODAY analysis of government payroll data for most federal employees in Brevard County found that they made more than twice as much as private sector workers here.

An Orlando doctor facing drug-trafficking charges in Brevard County pleaded no contest Wednesday to lesser charges, and will not be going to prison. David Wang was charged in 2005 with illegally prescribing drugs at a Cocoa clinic. He faced more than 60 years in prison if convicted.

Officer Joe Yorkey worked a decade in the Panhandle patrolling the streets of Fort Walton Beach. He spent the past 11 years with the Melbourne Police Department, logging stints as a detective and K-9 officer with his now-retired dog, Boomer.

Superintendent Richard DiPatri "exceeds expectations" or is "outstanding" in nearly every category, school board members said Wednesday as they began putting together the school chief's annualevaluation.

Shutter scam artist Andrew Fernald apologized Wednesday to several of his victims, promising to pay them back, then was taken from the courthouse to start serving a three-year prison sentence.

While her husband, Sen. Barack Obama, tours the Middle East and heads for Germany, Michelle Obama was making several campaign stops in Central and South Florida on Wednesday and today.

Johnny Lee Holder hoed a row of okra at the Brevard County inmate work farm, tearing out the weeds that would otherwise choke out the growing vegetable.

Carleen Beard is learning valuable lessons this summer; not about recreation and travel, but about technology. The fourth-grade science teacher is learning about life support in space, to be exact, and will bring the lessons back to her Freedom 7 Elementary classroom this fall.

Crisis counselors met with Office Depot employees Wednesday, a day after three of their co-workers were involved in a botched store robbery by two armed and masked men.

The candidate's wife brought hors d'oeuvres from Sam's Club. The county commission candidate Andy Anderson mingled to try to raise money at his campaign's kickoff. There was dancing, but not too much. As Anderson noted, these were Republicans.

Congress bailed out nearly 1 million Florida boaters, including about 40,000 in Brevard, on Tuesday who could have faced stiff fines under new rules this fall limiting the dirty waters that can spill overboard.

The remnants of the two airboats that collided Monday afternoon are in a Titusville evidence compound where officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will investigate the cause of the crash.

Before 2004, few would have paid much attention to tropical waves peeling off Africa's west coast. Thirty hurricanes later, such disturbances elicit a bit more worry.