Jacksonville, Duval County | featured news

Duval School Board member Scott Shine Sunday night accused Board Chairman Ashley Smith Juarez of plotting to vote to get rid of Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.
Shine said in an email late Sunday that Smith Juarez has tried to “coerce” Vitti to resign and that she just called a special board meeting for this Friday morning to hold a vote on whether to terminate Vitti “with minimal public input.”
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Prayer not politics was the priority, Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Mike Pence said as he and his wife, Karen, joined the congregation of First Baptist Church Jacksonville downtown for the 10:30 a.m. Sunday worship service.
Pence received a warm welcome punctuated by repeated cheers, applause and standing ovations from the congregation that filled the church auditorium as he spoke of his religious faith, how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks affected him and how Christians have a duty to vote as well as a duty to God.

As Hurricane Hermine threatened Jacksonville, Briana Oliver endured 32 hours of labor, trying to deliver her first child.
Javian took his time.
“He didn’t want to come at all,” she said.
But Oliver, 22, used all she had learned in a pre- and post-natal care class called SHARE, for Support Health Assessment Relationships Education. Javian finally arrived Sept. 2, all 6 pounds, 11 ounces of him. Mother and son emerged fine.
Oliver said that because of the class she felt more prepared.

Evan Whiting grew up with a fascination of what is probably the state’s most iconic animal: the American alligator. Now he’s among the scientists helping to map the history of the species.
The University of Florida graduate and Florida native is the lead author of two studies recently published in the Journal of Herpetology and Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
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A group of public housing residents are suing a city official for not enforcing building-quality standards at federally subsidized apartments, saying the policy has unfairly left low-income tenants to languish in poor living conditions that are illegal under city law.
Landlords are required by the city building code to keep rental properties in decent condition, but the city typically doesn’t inspect or enforce those requirements at federally subsidized programs, according to the lawsuit.

The photographer started by taking a few photos of Eveline Cheshire sitting quietly in a wheelchair, holding her brother’s poodle/terrier mix named Frank and, in honor of the family name, a stuffed Cheshire cat.
Michelle K. Smith then focused her lens on Cheshire, who turns 80 on Friday, flanked by brother Ed, 69, and his wife, Stephanie.
The photos, taken on a small patio near Woodland Grove Health and Rehabilitation Center, the Southside Jacksonville nursing home where the elder sibling lives, would be cherished family photos.

An unrelenting market force and not poor investment choices and mismanagement by an ill-equipped director and inattentive board of trustees put the Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund into its troubling financial position, claims a report issued to the pension fund’s trustees Friday.
The report, created by the pension fund’s South Florida legal firm, is in response to the blistering forensic investigation last year by Edward “Ted” Siedle of Benchmark Financial Services.

A Jacksonville business that defaulted on a $590,000 agreement with the city for a barbecue sauce plant has put its Commonwealth Avenue building up for sale.
It’s not clear how a sale would affect the city’s attempt to enforce the development agreement after months of deadlines have passed without any resolution.
The business, called Cowealth, is co-owned by City Council member Katrina Brown and her mother Jo Ann. Jo Ann Brown’s husband is Jerome Brown, the namesake of Jerome Brown BBQ Sauce.

A father and son are hospitalized in critical condition after shooting each other Friday evening in the city's East Arlington neighborhood, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.
The Sheriff's Office said it responded to the 1200 block of Soaring Flight Lane after a report of two people shot at about 7:20 p.m. and found one person with gunshot wounds outside a home and another inside, both with life-threatening injuries.

The pilot of a small float airplane was rescued by authorities using a boat when the aircraft took on water after safely landing on the St. Johns River in Putnam County.
The pilot, whose name wasn’t available, was uninjured in the incident on the river in the 1100 block of Putnam County Road 309 near Renegades Resort. That is the Fruitland area in the southern end of the county, Capt. Joseph Wells of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, said in a news release Saturday morning.