The Lee County School board, community and business leaders gathered this afternoon to urge residents to contact their state lawmakers to implore them for more money for education. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports.

There’s a struggle brewing in Florida over abortion, contraceptives and a new town being built around a Catholic University near Naples. Domino’s Pizza founder and devout Catholic Tom Monaghan is bankrolling the project. He wants the community to exemplify his strict, conservative views. As WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports, that has some Southwest Floridians worried.

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For the first time a healthy Florida panther keeps getting too close to its human neighbors. Number 79 has discovered how to avoid hunting for his own food and has attacked pets and livestock in rural Collier County. Panthers usually eat wild hogs and deer. The last panther to act this way turned out to be sickly. So Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission panther biologist Darrell Land says they captured number 79 to make sure he was healthy. WGCU’s Amy Tardif spoke with him.

There are two opportunities for the public to comment regarding the state and federal government’s current approaches to panther conservation. The new Florida panther recovery plan is on line at the Fish and Wildlife service website. And later this month the federal wildlife service will release a document on what officials should do when more of the endangered cats start acting like number 79.

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Goodwill Industries has two new charter schools in Lee and Palm Beach counties teaching academics plus life skills to developmentally delayed high school students. Charter schools are public schools, run by private entities under contracts with school districts. As WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports, these specialty schools are an option for special needs students who may not get enough from typical high schools.

A local restaurant owner jumped into a canal, broke a van’s window with a rock and saved a Golden Gate Estates neighbor – whose van had plunged into the canal early yesterday morning.
48-year-old Sandra Ranew thought she was on another road but drove through two reflectors at the end of Shawn Teeters’ road and into the canal in the early morning darkness. She climbed to the back of the van and had about of foot of air left when she called 911 on her cell phone. But she gave the wrong street number to operator Sandra Long.

(hear part of the 911 call)

The crash woke the Teeters. Josi Teeters called 911 with the correct street while Shawn Teeters jumped in to rescue Ranew. He broke the window and pulled her by her hair out of the van, managing to get the panicking woman to the edge of the alligator infested canal. Josi Teeters told the News-Press Ranew is the sixth person who has driven off their street into the canal. The Teeters own Cheeburger Cheeburger in Naples Park and the Key Western Grill in Estero.

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Naples author Carl Steinhouse is out with the third book in his Holocaust series. WGCU’s Amy Tardif has more.

www.carlsteinhouse.com
www.authorhouse.com