Jacksonville, Duval County | featured news

Jacksonville-based Mac Papers has completed an acquisition of an Alabama company.
A Mac news release Monday said Mac finalized the acquisition of Higdon Paper & Packing based in Birmingham, Ala. The deal adds about a half dozen workers to the Mac Papers payroll. The acquisition deal closed Friday.
Terms of the acquisition were not provided.
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Kimberly M. Sole joined IBERIABANK as senior vice president, commercial relationship manager.
Sole’s responsibilties will include developing new commercial loans and deposits.
 
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Governor Rick Scott announced the appointment of Wayne Veitch to the Commercial Motor Vehicle Review Board.
 
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Duval’s School Board split down the middle on a vote Tuesday night, barely approving Superintendent Nikolai Vitti’s newest literacy plan.One of three board members voting against it, Constance Hall, said she couldn’t approve it because she was “heartbroken” and losing sleep over a lack of progress in closing achievement gaps. She said black and Hispanic students remain far behind their white and Asian peers, especially in reading. “We’re in the emergency room and we need help,” she said.

In 2006 Rabbi Shmuli Novack and his wife, Chana Novack, founded what they hoped would become a cultural and religious center for Jacksonville’s Southside Jewish community and a “home away from home” for Jewish students at the University of North Florida and other area colleges.
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The new chief executive of the Wounded Warrior Project, one of the nation’s largest veterans charities, said he anticipates laying off an undisclosed number of employees and cutting the amount of financing it provides smaller veterans groups amid a restructuring that follows scrutiny of the nonprofit organization’s spending.
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Mayor Lenny Curry doesn’t go out much in public anymore without plugging his pension-tax plan. Not even a Donald Trump rally will stop him.
He doesn’t put on a Ross Perot-style show with graphs and pie charts. There is no PowerPoint presentation. It’s more like a detailed stump speech that Curry can recite with remarkable consistency.
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One of the world’s favorite edible and useful sea creatures, the oyster, is facing decline, and the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience is trying to reverse the trend.
And the staff at Whitney is asking for a little help. It wants people interested in becoming oyster farmers.
The project is part of the lab’s oyster restoration initiative. It requires 50 volunteers who live along the waterways between St. Augustine and Palm Coast.
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More than a dozen sailboats careened down the Intracoastal Waterway with flared sails Sunday afternoon; every single helm handled by women wearing concentrated expressions.
The wind – in the most temperamental of manners – bullied sailboat sterns and churned the water under the hulls. Spray decorated the air and misted the ladies’ faces. Sails, like unruly clouds, puckered and strained every which way.
And a couple of times during it all, Madalin Keeble was a little unsure of herself.

Jacksonville’s EverBank announced Monday a sale was finalized in a deal to TIAA.
Business Wire press release services reported TIAA announced the agreement to acquire EverBank (NYSE: EVER), a nationwide consumer and commercial bank with $27.4 billion in total assets. An EverBank spokesman confirmed the deal is done.
The acquisition significantly expands TIAA’s banking and lending products and complements the company’s full suite of retirement, investment and advisory services available to help customers achieve financial well-being.

One of the world’s favorite edible and useful sea creatures, the oyster, is facing decline, and the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience is trying to reverse the trend.
And the staff at Whitney is asking for a little help. It wants people interested in becoming oyster farmers.
The project is part of the lab’s oyster restoration initiative. It requires 50 volunteers who live along the waterways between St. Augustine and Palm Coast.
read more