Florida Panhandle

Sara K. Krebs Moriarty, a former local newspaperwoman and longtime spokeswoman for the Maryland Port Administration, died of cancer Monday at her Inner Harbor apartment. She was 62. Ms. Moriarty retired in January after working 14 years as the manager of public affairs for the MPA, which operates the public terminals of the port of Baltimore and the 30-story World Trade Center in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Her job left her in charge of the day-to-day communications between the port - one of the busiest on the East Coast - and the news media, civic groups and the public.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Gulf Coast residents were put on alert yesterday as two tropical storms headed toward Louisiana, setting a record - and potentially ominous - pace for the young 2005 hurricane season. Tropical Storm Cindy was expected to hit the north-central Gulf Coast early today. The National Weather Service issued a tropical-storm warning from Intracoastal City, La., east to Destin, Fla. A more-threatening Tropical Storm Dennis, meanwhile, formed yesterday about 1,000 miles southeast of Key West in the Caribbean Sea. It was expected to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane that could skirt Florida's southwest tip before slipping into the Gulf early next week.

In Baltimore County Reisterstown man, 2 others killed when jet crashes in Fla. MARIANNA, Fla. -- A Reisterstown man and two others were killed yesterday when their Lear jet crashed while attempting to land at Marianna Municipal Airport in the Florida Panhandle. Killed were Timothy R. Hannon, 20, of the 200 block of Log House Way in Reisterstown; William L. Wilson, 38, of Ormond Beach, Fla.; and Matthew A. Spangler, 31, of Cottage Grove, Minn. A spokesman for the Marianna Police Department said the plane was attempting to land about 9: 30 a.m. CDT after a cross-state flight from Opa-Locka when it crashed into trees before sliding onto a road at a federal prison.

NEW YORK - He stopped for ice about an hour after the bars closed Friday night; a couple of bags from the Royal Farm Store at Ponca and O'Donnell streets just two red lights away from the ramp to I-95 north and Gotham. The convenience store clerk, who'd seen and heard just about everything on the late shift, had never witnessed this: A middle-aged man asking for tongs in the middle of the night while a posse of Chesapeake Bay blue crabs scuttled along the sidewalk outside. Nope. No tongs for Peter Walsh, artist, self-taught scholar and long-time Baltimorean with two bushels of live Chesapeake Bay blue crabs in the trunk of a rented Toyota.

No mosquitoes, no sharks, no dog poop, no noisy radios, no getting up at sunrise to stake claim to a grimy piece of sand.No freezing cold water, so New England was out. No wild surf, so Southern California was out. No overdevelopment, so Ocean City, Md., was out.Using rules like these, a University of Maryland geologist has rated America's 650 ocean beaches.He found the gems in places with strange-sounding names such as Kapula, Napoopoo and Bahai Honda. You need a plane ticket and a wallet full of cash to get from here to pearly sand so light it never gets hot, water so clear you can see your feet in it and waves so gentle you can swim forever.

There's not much we miss about South Florida. For nearly five years, we put up with the traffic and the crowds, the tacky strip shopping centers and the constant sense of danger from sun-crazed criminals and 80-year-old drivers retired from Long Island.But there is one place we truly miss -- a little-known spit of sand and sea-grape trees called Hutchinson Island on Florida's Treasure Coast, a two-hour trip north from downtown Miami and about 45 minutes from Palm Beach International Airport.

PHILADELPHIA - The apostles of New Urbanism have come to Pennsylvania with a message for suburbanites squeezed by sprawl: Move. Not deeper into the rural frontier, but back to the city, or to the small, aging towns on the inner rim. And if you must build, raise pedestrian-friendly villages instead of space-eating subdivisions. That's one tough sell to Philadelphia-area denizens, whose passion for single-family houses and big yards is among the most intense in the nation. But the fledgling Association for the New Urbanism in Pennsylvania is just as committed to an opposing dream: to rein in runaway development by promoting the kinds of communities that flourished until the last half of the 20th century.

BaseballMajor League Baseball -- Acting commissioner Bud Selig named an operations committee to explore ways to proceed through the uncertainties created by a players strike and the owners' canceling of the rest of the season. The group includes three people who operate clubs, John Harrington of Boston, Claude Brochu of Montreal and Rusty Rose of Texas; two general managers, Oakland's Sandy Alderson and Florida's Dave Dombrowski; two vice presidents of finance, Los Angeles' Bob Graziano and Minnesota's Kevin Mather, and two executive vice presidents, the Yankees' David Sussman and Philadelphia's Dave Montgomery.

SEAGROVE BEACH, Fla. - The normally carefree beach-goers along Florida's Panhandle had to seriously rethink going into the water last week after two recent shark attacks. Most decided to stay dry. The real panic, however, took place in the area's billion-dollar-plus tourist industry. Over the past few years, the beaches have been buffeted by negative publicity spawned by deadly riptides, devastating hurricanes and now a Southern version of Jaws. Heading into their busiest week of the year, tourism officials tried to put the best face possible on two horrific shark attacks - just 48 hours and 80 miles apart along the Gulf Coast - that generated international headlines.

Marylanders fascinated with the news of the burglary at Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate in Washington, probably paid little attention to a routine weather story.An Associated Press brief in The Sun June 20, 1972, reported: "Hurricane Agnes smashed the Florida panhandle with 80-mile-an-hour winds, heavy rains and raging seas yesterday, but its fury started to subside as it churned inland. At least 12 persons, five in Florida, were left dead in the wake of the 1972 hurricane season's first storm."