Florida is synonymous with oranges. The official state beverage is orange juice. The state flower: an orange blossom. And the official fruit is, of course, an orange. The citrus industry is worth an estimated nine-billion dollars to the Florida economy. Faced with new agricultural diseases and rising land values, the state’s signature industry is feeling the squeeze. W-G-C-U’s Russell Lewis has the story.

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Major league baseball has teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to build homes for people displaced by last year’s hurricanes. The Minnesota Twins did their part for the cause Monday pitching in to frame the walls for a new habitat home that will go up in Lehigh Acres. WGCU’s Valerie Alker reports.

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There are somewhere between 11 and 20-Million undocumented workers in the U-S, and their numbers are steadily growing.

The proposed legislation would build a wall along the entire length of the U-S / Mexican Border – and criminalize the presence of every undocumented person in the country…now a misdemeanor. The bill’s been passed by the House, but not in the Senate.

Wendy Vasquez (BASS-kez) is vice president of the United Latino Immigrants of Florida - a newly formed group advocating for the rights of the state's illegal immigrant work force. She says the proposal would criminalize more than just the illegal aliens.

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“And also they are going to criminalize you if you are in contact with illegal aliens. If you want to help illegal aliens through organizations, through churches…any entity that’s going to help migrant workers that are illegal in this country are going to be criminalized.”

The proposed bill would also give local law enforcement the power to act as immigration officers.

Critics say illegal workers take jobs away from legal ones. But Vasquez says although there’s a shortage of field laborers in Florida – no locals are showing up to fill those jobs.

Authorities closed Metro Parkway between Colonial and Crystal Drive until just after noon. The shutdown crippled LeeTran, the county’s public bus system, because their depot was in the cordoned-off area. As many as 4-thousand riders were left with no way to get to work. LeeTran spokeswoman Joann Haley says the closure was like a set of dominoes.

“The way that the impact kind of moves out in waves from the center of a situation whether it be an accident or a road closure.”

Investigators blocked off Metro as they searched for evidence in a fatal car shooting. Tens of thousands of motorists got trapped in the resulting parking lot traffic jam as they flooded other roads. The delay also meant a loss of money and productivity. William called into W-G-C-U’s Gulf Coast Live to say three houses didn’t get his tile deliveries.

“The homeowners are now a day behind and the general contractor now has to pay for an extra day for those houses to not be closing.”

The two-mile Metro shutdown is further proof of this region’s overtaxed roads. Planners say they’re doing what they can to make do with too many cars and not enough transportation arteries.

Music is listed as a core academic subject under the federal No Child Left Behind Act – but until now there’s been no unified way to measure student performance statewide.

So the Florida Music Educators’ AND the Florida School Music Associations have designed a test of general music knowledge that will soon begin pilot testing.

University of Florida music professor Timothy Brophy chaired the task force that designed the test. He spoke on WGCU’s Gulf Coast Live.

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“We’re looking at doing a statewide field test to set levels of achievement in spring of 2007 – for the 4th grade phase one test. Approximately a year after we do our initial pilot testing and we develop our final version is when we implement these statewide.”

At first only 4th graders will take the test – but plans call for similar tests for 8th and 10th graders once the kinks are worked out.

Florida joins a small, but growing number of states developing this kind of music assessment test.

The Bonita Fire department now has small, pet oxygen masks in its arsenal of tools. The special masks cover the snout of a dog or a cat. Fire-rescue spokeswoman Debbi Redfield says having the easy-to-use masks can make all the difference in a fire.

“Pets really become part of people’s families and some people even consider them as close as their children. And a lot of times pets become confused. They hide under beds. They hide under sofas. They get very scared when there is a fire instead of running out of the house. So they’re very susceptible to smoke inhalation injuries.”