Florida Panhandle

QUINCY, Fla. -- In 1922, tobacco farmers here hauled in a bumper crop and, at the urging of local banker Mark Monroe, plowed their profits into shares of Coca-Cola Co."Coke had just come public and Daddy liked the taste," said Julia Woodward, Monroe's 80-year-old daughter. "Plus, he figured the stock would be good collateral because folks would always have a nickel to buy a bottle."For the progeny of the farmers who heeded the banker and never sold, the payoff is dazzling. Today, they own 7.5 million shares valued at $375 million.

YES, OK, hurray for President Bush. He decided last week to spend $235 million to buy back oil and gas leases and thereby protect the beaches of Florida's Panhandle and 765,000 acres of the Everglades. It's the right thing to do, and it's popular, as well. Here's what's hard to figure out, though. The White House has pushed and pushed to allow oil companies to begin drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, though so far without success because of opposition in the Senate.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Taking aim on South Florida yesterday, Tropical Storm Katrina threatened to build into an 80-mph hurricane, unleash torrential rains and cause severe flooding. Landfall is projected for about 11 a.m. tomorrow, and the region should begin feeling the storm's effects this morning. By Sunday, it is expected to have dumped 6 to 12 inches of rain, with up to 20 inches in some areas. "We're going to get swamped here is what it amounts to," said meteorologist Jim Lushine of the National Weather Service in Miami, which issued a flood watch through Saturday night.

Eastern Shore farmers would like to donate thousands of bales of hay to feed starving livestock in the drought-ridden Florida Panhandle, but there's a legal hitch.The Maryland hayfields are registered in a federal conservation reserve program that pays farmers to take land out of production. They are required to plant a cover crop such as clover and grass that makes great hay, but they can't harvest the fields.Daniel Shortall, a vice president of the Maryland Farm Bureau, said the hay-lift initiative began Friday when his Centreville neighbor, Charles Jackson, "came to me and said, 'We have got to do something.

Aetna executive sues insurerA former executive at the Aetna Life and Casualty Co. contended in a lawsuit filed yesterday that the company's life insurance unit concealed from shareholders up to $1 billion in potential real estate losses during the 1990s and then dismissed him in retaliation when he went outside his department to tell what he knew.A spokesman for the Hartford, Conn.-based company said the accusations were investigated internally beginning last fall and found to be without merit and that the elimination of the employee's job in January had nothing to do with the issues he had raised.

MIAMI -- A mysterious cooling of waters in the northeast Gulf of Mexico is killing fish and chilling bathers along the beaches of the Florida Panhandle.Coastal water temperatures from near the Alabama line to as far east as Panama City plunged suddenly from the upper 80s last week to the low 70s -- the kind of surf temperatures you might expect off Cape Cod this time of year.What is most puzzling to scientists is that the clear, cold water is devoid of life. Fish are smothering in its extraordinarily low levels of dissolved oxygen.

WASHINGTON - It was 25 years ago today that Hurricane Agnes raged up the East Coast, taking 122 lives and forcing 210,000 people to flee their homes in what was then the most costly natural disaster in the nation's history.During its four-day march from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, Agnes devastated six states. Property damage exceeded $3.2 billion, and the entire state of Pennsylvania was declared a disaster area.If a hurricane like Agnes came ashore in 1997, meteorologists say property damage would be much worse but more lives would be saved.

A 350-LB. BLACK bear named No Neck walked all the way from the Florida Panhandle across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana until he got to Baton Rouge. That's the longest walk any recorded bear ever took, and he would have kept walking to the Atchafalaya Basin where about 300 black bears live.No Neck was apparently looking for a mate and thought the Atchafalaya community had possibilities. There are so few bears left, they must sense each other in the empty air; the bear frequency must ring with the poignant signals of their dying.

Former Baltimore police Commissioner and Maryland State Police chief Edward T. Norris, inmate No. 41115-037, is scheduled to be released tomorrow from federal prison in Atlanta. Norris, 44, pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to misuse money from the supplemental city police fund and to lying on tax returns. Prosecutors say Norris used the money to pay for romantic liaisons, lavish meals, hotel stays and gifts. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Norris last summer to six months' incarceration, followed by six months of home detention.

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Even as the family of Dr. David Gunn, who was fatally shot outside a new abortion clinic here Wednesday, prepared to bury him in Tennessee, both sides in the struggle over abortion here were preparing themselves yesterday for the next round of a confrontation that has been going on for more than a decade."