Court Hears Challenge to Open-Carry Ban, Underwater Surveillance

wall cloud colin tropical storm — Chuck Russell of the Flagler Beach Photography Club took that picture of the wall cloud that placed parts of Flagler County under tornado warning Monday afternoon. It was Tropical Storm Colin’s biggest threat to the county. Click on the image for larger view. (© Chuck Russell)

Today: Partly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 90s inland…in the upper 80s coast. Northwest winds around 5 mph shifting to the east in the afternoon. Tonight: Partly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of showers in the evening. Lows in the lower 70s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Details here.
Today’s fire danger is moderate. Flagler County’s Drought Index is at 1.
Today’s tides: at the beaches, at the Intracoastal Waterway.
Today’s document from the National Archives.
The OED’s Word of the Day: puny, n. and adj..
The Live Community Calendar
Today’s jail bookings.

Today’s Briefing: Quick Links

First Light
In Flagler and Palm Coast
Local News Recap
Flagler Jail Bookings and Sheriff’s Crime Reports
In State Government
In Coming Days in Flagler, Palm Coast and Beyond
The Day’s Best Reads
Fact-Checking the Knaves
Palm Coast Construction and Development Progress Reports
Local Road and Interstate Construction
Cultural Coda

Mario Vargas Llosa. (Daniele Devoti) — Mario Vargas Llosa.
(Daniele Devoti)

“Hair was acceptable, it was a strong sexual seasoning, provided it was in the right proper place. On a head or a mons veneris, welcome and indispensable; under the arms, tolerable perhaps, if only so as to have tried everything (it was apparently an obsession with Europeans); but on arms and legs, definitely out; and between the breasts, never!”

—Mario Vargas Llosa, “In Praise of the Stepmother” (1990).

In Flagler and Palm Coast:

Note: all government meetings noticed below are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated. Many can be heard or seen live through each agency’s website.

Schools are closed for students, but not yet for faculty and staff, who have a post-planning day.

The meeting of the Public Safety Coordinating Council, scheduled for this morning at 8:45 a.m., was cancelled. The council had been set to take up the latest version of a proposal to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot in certain circumstances.

A workshop of the Palm Coast Planning Board scheduled for this afternoon was cancelled.

The Bunnell Code Enforcement Board meets at 7 p.m. at Bunnell City Hall, 201 West Moody Blvd. It will review five cases and appoint a chairman and vice chairman.

Ribbon-cutting: Amethyst Wellness LLC, marks its grand opening, 399 Palm Coast Pkwy SW, Unit 5, at 4 p.m.

Local News Recap:

Updated jail bookings and day and night shift incident summary reports are available here.

Bunnell Elementary Leads the Way as Flagler’s Problem Solvers Shine Again at Internationals: Leading the way, Bunnell Elementary won first place in the Team Global Issues competition, out of 52 teams, in a team made up of Karissa Jackson, Kenneth Logan, Michael Mwaura and Hope Romaine. They were coached by Jennifer Colindres. And Bunnell’s Community Problem Solving team was the grand champion for the junior division, in all divisions, for its Project H.O.P.E., a team made up of Romaine, Jackson, Christina Courson and Isabella Miller and Carmella Sweeney.

Counting the Days, Anna Pehota, Who Killed Husband in Hammock, Welcomes Trial in July: Docket sounding, the last step before trial, is set for July 14, and the trial itself set for the following week, on July 18.

Dog Bite at Ex-Flagler Beach Manager Campbell’s Property Sends Mail Carrier to Hospital: Benson was making her delivery rounds Friday (June 3) when, just after 12:30 p.m., she dropped off a package at Bruce Campbell’s door, and a dog bolted out and bit her.

Cody Lynch, 21, Jailed on Charge of Battering Pregnant Wife for Second Time in Two Years: Cody Lynch has been fortunate. Despite four arrests for various offenses since 2014, including violent offenses, felonies, and a charge of battering his pregnant wife, all charges but one were dropped, and the judge withheld adjudication on the one misdemeanor that stuck, a public drunkenness charge that netted him probation, which he violated.

Live Briefs:

In Florida and in State Government:

Note: Some proceedings below can be followed live on the Florida Channel.

Open Carry: The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments in four cases, including a constitutional challenge to the state’s ban on openly carrying firearms in public. The challenge was filed by Dale Norman, who was arrested in 2012 in Fort Pierce as he carried a holstered gun in plain view. (Wednesday, 9 a.m., Florida Supreme Court, 500 South Duval St., Tallahassee.)

–Compiled by the News Service of Florida and FlaglerLive

In Coming Days in Palm Coast, Flagler and the Occasional Beyond:

♦ June 10: Euro 2016 begins at 3 p.m. with a France-Romania match-up. France is hosting the month-long tournament, which features 24 of the world’s best national teams. The final is on July 10.
♦ June 14: Dr. Bill Mefford, Faith Outreach Specialist for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, leads a discussion entitled “Religion and Partisan Politics Don’t Mix,” hosted by the All Flagler Democratic Club at 7 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 US 1 North, Palm Coast. Call 386-447-7030 for best directions. This program is free, open to the public, all are welcome, no advance arrangements are necessary.
♦ June 16: The fourth annual commemoration of the largest mass arrest of Rabbis in U.S. History, an event that took place in St. Augustine on June 18, 1964, will be held on Thursday, June 16, at 7 p.m. in the Gamache-Koger Theater in the Ringhaver Student Center at 48 Sevilla Street in St. Augustine on the campus of Flagler College. The 90-minute event will include the reading of the letter written by the Rabbis in the Flagler County Jail and a video of the forum held with the surviving rabbis who gathered in St. Augustine in June, 2014. This event is free, all are welcome, no advance arrangements are necessary. Call (904) 819-6365 for best directions.
♦ July 5: A pre-trial is scheduled at 1:30 p.m. before Circuit Judge Matthew Foxman in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County Courthouse in the case of Joseph Bova II, the man accused of first-degree murder in the killing of Zuheily Roman Rosado in an execution-style shooting at the Mobil Mart on State Road 100 in Palm Coast in February 2013. Pre-trail hearings have been frequently continued, however. Bova has been held without bond at the Flagler County jail since May 11, 2015, when he returned from a state psychiatric hospital.
♦ July 18: The trial of Anna Pehota, 77, who faces a second-degree murder charge over the alleged killing of her husband in the Hammock in September 2015, is scheduled to begin with jury selection.
♦ July 20: The Flagler League of Cities, a gathering of the county’s mayors, meets at noon at Flagler Beach City Hall.

The Day’s Best Reads:

If you think the Democratic primary race is close, the 2008 one was even tighter https://t.co/WlNTfm68NP

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 7, 2016

How do you solve a problem like Trump? Senate GOP fights to protect majority against Trump's comments, w @burgessev https://t.co/h0ZLkr2c80

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) June 7, 2016

Deep ideological rifts between right & left in many European countries on EU powers https://t.co/Vmm5tY5RtJ pic.twitter.com/idqgoPTXso

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) June 7, 2016