Charlotte County, Punta Gorda | featured news

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — San Antonio’s leaders on Thursday approved anti-bias protections for gay and transgender residents, despite the disapproval of top Texas Republicans and religious conservatives who packed a City Council hearing and occasionally shamed s...

CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) — NASA is headed back to the moon, this time to explore its thin atmosphere and rough dust.
The robotic spacecraft LADEE (pronounced LA’-dee), will fly to the moon by way of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Liftoff is set for late Friday nigh...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy is showing strength as summer nears a close — a trend that’s raising the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will slow its bond buying later this month.
The steady improvement is also lifting hopes for Friday’s report on job ...

NEW YORK (AP) — More evidence of an improving job market helped lift the stock market Thursday.
The Labor Department reported that the four-week average of applications for U.S. unemployment benefits has fallen in the past month to its lowest point since ...

BOCA RATON (AP) — More than 500 sea turtle hatchlings were gently released by hand Thursday onto sea beds off Florida’s Atlantic Coast, where the turtles have a better chance to survive.
The U.S. Coast Guard assisted with the release about six miles off t...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency, working with the British government, has secretly been unraveling encryption technology that billions of Internet users rely upon to keep their electronic messages and confidential data safe from prying eyes...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Barack Obama pressed fellow world leaders on Thursday to support a U.S.-led strike on Syria, but he ran into opposition from Russia, China and even the European Union — which condemned the deadly recent chemical weapons ...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care law appears to mirror a trend in job-based insurance, where employees are being nudged into cost-saving plans that require them to pay a bigger share of their medical expenses.
Two independent studies out ...

CAIRO — Egypt’s interior minister narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Thursday when a suspected car bomb tore through his convoy, wounding 22 people and leaving a major Cairo boulevard strewn with debris — the first such attack since the military ou...

WASHINGTON — Call it a hidden ally: The right germs just might be able to help fight fat.
Different kinds of bacteria that live inside the gut can help spur obesity or protect against it, say scientists at Washington University in St. Louis who transplant...