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Weather: Mostly sunny. A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 90s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60 percent. Heat index values up to 111. Friday Night: Partly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening, then mostly clear after midnight. Lows in the mid 70s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. Today: The local economy, with guests including two local bartenders and Toby Tobin. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
Terrell Sampson Sentencing: Terrell A. Sampson is scheduled to be sentenced on three counts of attempted second degree murder in the shooting spree against Stephen Monroe, Devandre Williams and Tyrese Patterson in January 2022 that killed 16-year-old Noah Smith in Bunnell. Sampson tendered an open plea, meaning that while he faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years in prison, he could be sentenced to up to life. The sentencing is at 9 a.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins, at the Flagler County Courthouse, Courtroom 401.
The Flagler County Canvassing Board meets today at the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The meeting is open to the public. Check the time in the sidebar or in this chart, which includes the full year’s meeting schedule (the pdf schedule does not include the dates and times of required Canvassing Board meetings which may be necessary due to a recount called locally or statewide.) The board is chaired by County Judge Andrea Totten. This Election Year’s board members are Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart and County Commissioner Dave Sullivan. The alternates are County Judge Melissa Distler and County Commissioner Donald O’Brien. March-April meetings are for the presidential preference primary, such as it is. See all legal notices from the Supervisor of Elections, including updated lists of those ineligible to vote, here.
The Blue 24 Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
LGBTQ+ Night at Flagler Beach’s Coquina Coast Brewing Company: The monthly LGBTQ+ social for adults is scheduled for every second Friday of the month from 8 to 11 p.m. at Coquina Coast Brewing Co., 318 Moody Boulevard, Flagler Beach. “Come together, make new friends and share some brews. Going strong since Oct 2021! We feature many genres of local LGBTQ+ talent in our community; comedy, burlesque, belly dance, drag, musicians, bingo games, etc. There is never a cover charge but donations are greatly appreciated! When you register, your email is used to keep you up to date on future LGBTQ+ friendly events.
Notebook: Somehow August 4 came and went and not a word, so maybe Aug. 9–the anniversary of the nuking of Nagasaki, itself so often a footnote to Hiroshima–is just as acceptable a time to mark the fourth anniversary of that explosion at Beirut’s port that had the force of a tactical nuclear weapon, and that Lamia Ziade memorialized in her graphic novel, My Port of Beirut. She writes of those silos built in 1965 as Lebanon was imagining itself an emerging little trading power of the Middle East, those silos that accompanied my and every Lebanese childhood from then on (I was born with them, as they were constructed starting in 1964), the silos that would end up shielding much of Beirut from the force of that blast of some or all of the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate Lebanon’s usual suspects, that royalty of corruption and indifference, had left in a port warehouse illegally, unattended, until it blew when, as video indicates, fireworks also illegally stored there started going off. At least 218 people were killed, 6,000 injured, homes six miles away were damaged, the bast was heard in Cyprus, a 12-hour boat ride to the west, the crater was 400 feet wide. The 157-foot-high silos were demolished on one side, but on the other, they stood. Amazingly, they stood, white and as resplendent as ever, “the most unshakable symbol of Beirut, barely scratched during the fifteen years of war, standing so tall, so white, in the prodigious light of the port, as majestic as snowy Mount Sannin towering over them in the distance,” Ziade writes. Two years ago–while people were gathered to mark the two-year anniversary of the blast–fermenting grain in the silos caught fire, burned for a month, the sent half the silos crashing in yet another explosion, this one without casualties other than shards of memory. France supposedly has a plan to rebuild the port, but it doesn’t sound very ambitious: $60 to $80 million, or around the cost of a high school this side of the Atlantic. Nothing about rebuilding the silos. Families of the dead don;t want the silos demolished. They were once a monument. They are now a memorial.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
June 2025
Flagler County Commission Workshop
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Nar-Anon Family Group
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
Special School Board Meeting on Rule Development
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
The major Christian relics remained in the east, those of Christ being gradually moved from Jerusalem to Constantinople and those of the saints being preserved at their native homes. But it was often possible for a lucky pilgrim to acquire some lesser relic, while others were brought to the west by enterprising merchants. Not only did the hope of successful relic-hunting send more and more pilgrims to the east, but also the arrival and possession of the relic of some eastern saint in their home town would inspire western citizens to visit the lands where their new patron saint had lived. Whole embassies would be despatched with orders to bring home relics. Avitus, bishop lof Vienne, sent special envoys to find him a piece of the True Cross at Jerusalem. St. Rhadegund, ex-queen of Clothar the Frank, employed agents who brought her a rich haul, including a fragment of the Cross, acquired at Constantinople, and the finger of St. Mamas of Cappadocia, several of whose other bones were obtained by pilgrims from Langres. Women were particularly zealous in this pursuit. It was a lady from Guienne who returned home with a phial containing the blood of St. John the Baptist, and a lady from Maurienne who brought back his thumb.
–From Steven Runciman’s “The Pilgrimages to Palestine Before 1095,” in A History of the Crusades, vol. 1, Kenneth Setton, ed. (1969).
Chudrick Westphalen says
Erm… I’m not a drumph supporter but… fatphobic much?
Ray W. says
More on the allegations of collusion between OPEC and several American shale oil producers to coordinate restrictions on worldwide crude oil production in order to drive up prices in the worldwide marketplace.
Despite knowing that he was not a party to an FTC decision to allow Exxon to complete its purchase Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion in exchange for Exxon’s promise that it would not allow him to serve on Exxon’s board of directors, Scott Sheffield, Pioneer’s former CEO, filed what can be described as a self-serving statement claiming that the FTC had smeared his name by finding that he had colluded with OPEC “to fix oil production levels in a bid to inflate crude prices.” As Exxon was the only party to the FTC settlement, and as Exxon formally waived its rights to contest the terms of the settlement, Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer, lacked standing to complain about the settlement or any of its terms.
In response to Sheffield’s complaint, an FTC spokesman stated: “There is no question that Mr. Sheffield publicly urged Texas oil producers to limit production, all while having regular, private back-and-forth communications with senior OPEC representatives over a period of years.”
Did JimboXYZ have to pay more for gasoliine over the past three years because American energy producers were colluding with OPEC to constrain production? Was Dennis C. Rathsam defrauded of money because American shale energy companies engaged in greed?
I wasn’t able to find anything new about the status of the federal class action collusion case filed on behalf of consumers who might qualify for damages from having to pay too much for their gasoliine since February 2021, when OPEC first voted to cut production and American shale oil CEO’s began making public statements that their companies would not respond to the cuts by upping their own production, but such cases can take time. Be patient, FlaglerLive readers.
Dennis Harrington says
You claim to be an equal news source. All I see is anti tump cartoons. When Joe Biden is a gold mine for cartoons. Your news for local news is good , take a look at all your anti trump cartoons . If it was up to me I would fire you
Ray W. says
While randomly looking for articles about the Russian economy since it invaded the Ukraine, I came across a paper published by the regional St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, titled “Rising Productivity, Declining Population Impact Russia’s Economy.
The main takeaway?
Since 1998, the year the Russian economy hit rock-bottom after the dissolution of the USSR in 1989, the Russian economy, under 9% of America’s GDP per capita at the time, rebounded to roughly 15% of the U.S. GDP per capita. At the time of the fall of the USSR, Soviet GDP had been at 18% of the U.S. GDP per capita.
That’s right, in the 14 years after the fall, Soviet GDP per capita dropped from 18% of our GDP per capita to under 9% of our GDP per capita. It then rose back to 15% of our GDP per capita. After 14 years, the average Russian citizen was still worse off, compared to the average American, than she was when it all fell apart.
I don’t suppose that any FlaglerLive reader will dispute that during those 14 years the rise of the Russian oligarch class saw them garnering the vast majority of what little wealth the Russian economy produced. Guess who endured the losses? Was it the poor, the dispossessed, the elderly, the weak? Who shouldered the brunt of the economic dislocations when the huge apparatus known as the Soviet state disappeared?
Let this be a red flag to those few FlaglerLive commenters who engage in rich fantasies that an overthrow of the U.S. government will usher in a golden age to the American rank-and-file. No, the oligarchs among us will benefit amidst the chaos.
Just the other day, a commenter shared his rich fantasy that the Declaration of Independence, his polestar of founding thought, mandates that the military is required to overthrow the Constitution whenever some surreal unnamed entity decides it needs overthrowing, even though every member of our military swears an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. Does that commenter really think that he and other fellow oathbreakers would ever usher in a new and better government should they succeed?
Over the 16 years from January 1998 and January 2014, the Russian population fell by 3%. The author offered no explanation of why Russian population figures dropped.
Pierre Tristam says
Dennis, your equivalencies are cute, but no cigar.
Dr Lev Blaufarb says
Shame upon Pierre.
FlaPharmTech says
Pierre, you are a class act. J’adore.
FlaPharmTech says
It fits the narrative.
FlaPharmTech says
You nailed it! Tump T Dump for the win. If only reason and morals were for sale…sigh, yawn.
Pierre Tristam says
I suppose in some people’s world William Howard Taft was as lithe and sculpted as an Olympic diver, so why not reconstruct the regurgitant blob of slime above into an Olympian David?
Dr. Lev Blaufarb says
You are gay
Laurel says
Trump has done that himself with his digital trading cards. His body has been drawn with Superman muscles. Flags have been drawn with Trump having a Rambo likeness. He has the sophistication of a ten year old, yet a ten year old has the filter to keep it to himself.
Pierre Tristam says
I wish. Alas, we all have our crosses to bear.
Sherry says
Priceless Pierre!
Ole Lev has reminded me that “name calling is the last refuge of a fool”.
The interesting thing is that some of the very best people I know are gay. . . better educated, more kind, more sophisticated, more community oriented, more honest, more trustworthy, more reasonable, more reliable, more honorable, more noble than the average person. Therefore calling someone gay is certainly NOT the insult lev was trying to land.
Are you absolutely sure he’s not a Russian or Chinese “BOT”?
Ray W. says
Please, Chudrick Westphalen, consider the fact that former president Trump called Governer Chris Christie a “fat pig” at a fairly recent rally. It’s called “opening the door” and it significantly weakens your point.
Oy vey!