Charlotte County, Punta Gorda | featured news

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — The soldier on trial for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood was allowed to continue representing himself on Thursday after the judge barred his standby attorneys from taking over, despite their claims that the Army psychiatrist...

DALLAS (AP) — A former teacher who moonlighted as Dallas Mavericks hip-hop dancer for several years was charged Thursday with capital murder in the fatal shooting of his estranged wife and her daughter.
Erbie Lee Bowser, 44, was arrested late Wednesday a...

LAKESIDE, Calif. (AP) — A search for a man suspected of abducting a 16-year-old girl after abandoning her mother and possibly her younger brother in his burning house expanded on Thursday to four western states, Mexico and Canada, with dozens of tips pour...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are counting on some Southern comfort to win Senate control next year.
The fate of Democratic incumbents in GOP-trending Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, the ability of the 71-year-old GOP leader to hold his Kentucky s...

WASHINGTON — Americans who have a job may take comfort in knowing that companies are laying off fewer people than at any time since before the Great Recession.
The government said Thursday that weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits have aver...

SANAA, Yemen — The U.S. has sharply escalated its drone war in Yemen, with military officials in the Arab country reporting 34 suspected al-Qaida militants killed in less than two weeks, including three strikes on Thursday alone in which a dozen died.
Th...

ROSEVILLE, Minn. — A Minnesota man claimed his third of a $448 million Powerball jackpot on Thursday, wasting no time before revealing his good fortune to the world and saying he had “been waiting for this day my entire life.”
Paul White, 45, a project en...

MIAMI — When Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi visited Miami a year ago, they touted a new law that would allow sex trafficking victims to go to a safe, therapeutic place instead of being jailed as prostitutes.
The state’s first short-term sa...

NEW YORK (AP) — Miners and other companies dealing in commodities helped pull the stock market out of a three-day slump on Thursday.
News that China’s trade rebounded last month signaled the end of a six-month slowdown for the world’s biggest buyer of raw...

There were signs all over the area that the community and businesses support fallen Charlotte County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Wilson and his family....