News

Update: 

8 p.m. The City of Milton is also mandating face coverings beginning 12:01 a.m. June 28. Read more here.

5:23 p.m. The City of Gulf Breeze announced that face coverings will be required inside businesses within the City of Gulf Breeze limits. Read the post here.  

Having enrolled more than 300 people for an expanded Meals on Wheels program the past two weeks in EscaRosa, there’s now a call for more volunteers to deliver them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created the need for hundreds of additional meals, says Will Wirth, program manager at the Council on Aging of West Florida. But it’s not the sole reason for the jump – enter a partnership between COA and Primal Nosh.

The Pensacola Museum of Art has reached deep into their in-house collection for an exhibit that symbolizes the mood of the coronavirus pandemic.

“All of the works are from our permanent collection,” said Anna Wall, the chief curator at the Pensacola Museum of Art. “In addition to all of the traveling exhibitions that we bring to Pensacola, we actually have a collection of 700 art works on site that are for exhibition, research, they are really a resource for the community.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis is again rejecting the notion of a statewide mandatory use of face masks to protect against the coronavirus – despite a massive increase in such cases.

For the fifth time in six days, Florida has topped the 3,000 mark in new COVID-19 cases.  As of Wednesday, Escambia County recorded a massive jump overnight, increasing 88 positive cases for a total of 1,312. Santa Rosa increased 16 cases, bringing its total to 371.

In 2010, Crist was the state’s Republican chief executive. Speaking to Escambia and Santa Rosa county commissioners and other officials in the days after the spill, he said the Florida Panhandle was on the “front lines” of the disaster.

“You’ve got 85 million people a year come to visit Florida; and I guarantee you a majority of the reason is because Florida is beautiful,” Crist told them. “And we have more coastline than any of our neighboring states.”

In this Gulf Stories Moment, Scott Satterwhite, an instructor with the UWF English Department, who tells us about the history of the punk scene in Northwest Florida.

Florida is reporting nearly 3,500 new cases of the coronavirus, a dip from the record-breaking numbers of recent days. However, there are no changes on the horizon when it comes to Pensacola’s reopening schedule.

Last Friday, The University Of West Florida Board Of Trustees approved a draft plan to reopen the school to students in the fall. That plan was approved by the Florida Board of Governors Tuesday.

“I’ll ask for a motion to approve the University of West Florida reopening plan for Fall of 2020,” said UWF Board of Trustees Chairman Dave Cleveland during a virtual board meeting on Friday morning, asking for board approval of the university’s draft plans to reopen in the Fall. The plan was unanimously approved.

In a couple of weeks, Escambia County residents will get a chance to weigh in on a proposed ballot initiative that would establish a dedicated tax totaling nearly $8 million annually to fund a Children’s Services Council known as the Escambia Children’s Trust. 

As young athletes in Florida and nationwide resume coronavirus-delayed preparations for their upcoming sports seasons, they, their coaches, and parents, are getting advice from one of the country’s pre-eminent sports physicians.

“Safe, slow and steady” is the mantra from Dr. James Andrews, an orthopedist who founded the Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze, and has treated a large number of high-profile athletes.