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Weather: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after noon. Partly sunny, with a high near 88. South wind 6 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph.
Sunday Night: A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms between 7pm and 8pm. Partly cloudy, with a low around 75. Southeast wind 6 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 10%.
- 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 Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at the Bridges United Methodist Fellowship at 205 North Pine Street, Bunnell (through the gate, in room 8), and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
“Once on This Island,” a musical, at Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. Book tickets here. 7:30 p.m. except on Sunday, 2 p.m. Once on This Island is a vibrant Caribbean-inspired musical that tells the story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl who rescues and falls in love with a wealthy boy from the other side of her divided island. Guided by watchful island gods, her journey explores love, class, sacrifice, and destiny. Blending folklore, rhythmic music, and heartfelt storytelling, the show celebrates resilience, community, and the transformative power of hope.
Notably: The caption of the photograph reads, “The President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun, receives the commander of the army, Rodolphe Haykal, in Baabda, on March 3.” Baabda is a small town right above Beirut, the location of the presidential compound. The image appears in L’Orient-Le Jour, Lebanon’s French daily. My eyes were caught by the object in the middle of the president’s desk, with the Lebanese flags. I couldn’t make out what it was. I blew up the picture. It’s an ashtray: they’re still smoking with abandon in Lebanon. It’s not just an ashtray. The little object to the side is a lighter. Is that a vaping stick in the ashtray? Incidentally, you are looking at a pretty brutal man –I mean Aoun, the president, whose long career in bloodletting had its coming out with the 1976 planning and execution of the massacre of Tel el Zaatar, the Palestinian refugee camp in what was then East Beirut, back when Aoun was part of the Phalangists, the Christian militia. On the other hand, he supposedly organized the protection of the Palestinians at the Bourj el Brajneh refugee camp so they wouldn’t be massacred the way the same Phalangists, with Israeli aide, massacred the civilians of the Sabra and Shatila camps in 1982. He is also credited for waging the war against Syria near the end of the civil war, then launching the war against the more bloodthirsty Christian chief, Samir Geagea, a civil war within the civil war that ravaged Lebanon’s Christian sectors. And now he reigns on the artifice known as Lebanon: he does not seem to have the stomach to take on Israel, and can only sit helpless by his ashtray as Hezbollah turns the entirety of south Lebanon into a suicide bomb of its own making.
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 2026
Phoenix Crossings Charity Golf Tournament
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
‘The Battle of Shallowford,’ at Limelight Theatre
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
‘The Battle of Shallowford,’ at Limelight Theatre
Al-Anon Family Groups
East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board Meeting
Flagler County Commission Evening Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
In many ways, Tell Zaatar was symbolic of the Palestinian plight in the Middle East. A heavy fortification in the midst of an industrial suburb, home away from home for a whole generation of displaced peoples; nothing in the Tell Zaatar refugee camp held out any promise of a better life for the tens of thousands who lived there. A strategic obstruction on a vital communications route, Tell Zaatar became the focal point of Lebanon’s civil war, just as the Palestinian issue stands astride the Middle East peacemaking proce’ss. The camp was too pivotal to be bypassed, it acquired an abstract meaning too emotional to be abandoned. At Tell Zaatar, humanity was made to suffer for ideological advantage; the defenders chose resistance to the end. The fall of Tell Zaatar yesterday, after seven weeks of siege, wanton murder and duplicity, gives Lebanon’s Christian community its long sought territorial contiguity between its strongholds of eastern Beirut and the Mediterranean littoral northeast of the capital. In itself, that solves none of Lebanon’s real problems. But it may begin to set up the situation in which those problems can finally be addressed, the start of a new political dispensation for Lebanon’s heterogeneous society. For the Palestinians, the loss of their Tell Zaatar base could generate a trauma far deeper than would normally follow the collapse of a strategic position. In the weeks to come, Palestinians of all factions—no less than the influential forces outside—would benefit from a fundamental rethinking of an ideology of war and revanchism that has sapped the energies of a whole generation, and achieved nothing.
–From “The Fall of Tell Zaatar,” a New York Times editorial, April 13, 1976.
Pogo says
Sorry to see the lack of progress on the chronic wound; sad, and unfortunate.
Elsewhere
A victory for free speech in Florida
A biologist working for the state who was fired for her social media post about Charlie Kirk will be paid nearly half a million dollars. Florida taxpayers will foot the bill.
Facing a June federal court trial date, Florida Fish and Wildlife Executive Director Roger Young agreed last week to settle a lawsuit filed in September by former FWC biologist Brittney Brown for $485,000.
Brown had reposted to her private Instagram a parody of how a whale might see the world:
“The whales are deeply saddened to learn of the shooting of charlie kirk, haha just kidding, they care exactly as much as charlie kirk cared about children being shot in their classrooms, which is to say, not at all.”
For that, Brown was fired, prompting the lawsuit alleging retaliation and viewpoint discrimination violating her First Amendment rights.
Brown will receive $275,000, $40,000 of which represents back wages. An additional $210,000 is for attorneys’ fees and costs…”
https://www.jcbruce.com/p/weekly-debrief-she-was-fired-for
EC: File
Sherry says
While our rights and freedoms are being ripped to shreds. To those of you who constantly post that “if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear” from trump’s encroaching fascism. . . as I’ve said before, your rights and freedoms are only as strong as the $$$ needed to hire an attorney to protect them!!!
If you are poor, You Are Fuc$%^!!!
Ray W. says
Windward, a news outlet self-described as maritime in outlook, reports that on May 23, 2026, 10 cargo vessels, including one tanker transited the Strait of Hormuz westward into the Persian Gulf. 11 cargo vessels, including two tankers, exited the Strait into the Gulf of Oman.
Normal two-way daily traffic prior to the outbreak of war 85 days ago was up to some 140 cargo vessels per day, including tankers.
Satellite imagery examined by Windward revealed 35 or more stationary IRGC armed fast-attack boats in or around the Omani waters of the Strait. Some four more IRGC armed fast-attack boats were spotted operating independently near an island in the Strait. For the first time, IRGC hovercraft were seen operating in or near the Strait.
Make of this what you will.
Laurel says
Trump and Iran, in their pissing match, have effected the freedom of the seas, which also effects all of us.
“Freedom of the seas is a principle in international law that allows ships to navigate the oceans freely, as long as they adhere to international regulations. This concept is crucial for maintaining peace and order on the high seas, where no single nation has sovereignty.”
– Wikipedia
Ray W. says
A former senior European Georgia Ministry of Defense official, Emzari Gelashvili, wrote an opinion piece for The Hill. In it, he argued that Russia is no longer the unwounded bear of 1980; it is now seriously wounded and it knows it. To Gelashvili’s mind, a Russian bear that believes it has been wounded is a far more dangerous animal.
Proof of its wounds comes not only from the Russian Federation’s internal economic and military reports; it manifested itself in the 2026 May Day parade. For the first time in decades, no tanks or items of heavy military equipment were displayed in the parade.
The Russian Defence Ministry attributed the absence to a “current operational situation.” According to Gelashvili, the “whole world knows” that the absent tanks and heavy military equipment have either been destroyed in the Ukraine or they are still “committed” to the Ukraine, or they are needed elsewhere to defend other borders and regions.
As for the Russian government’s internal reports referred to previously, he writes that approximately 1 million of Russia’s best educated and most productive men have left the country since the 2022 invasion of the Ukraine. Over the same time, some 213,000 soldiers have been killed, among a total casualty figure of over another million more wounded.
In essence, he writes, the Russian army has become but a “phantom” of what it once was in 2022. Russia’s economy, to the author’s eye, looks “grim.”
Gelashvili concludes:
“The West must stop fearing the Russia that no longer exists and start preparing for the risks posed by the one that does.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Is the author correct in concluding that once a country acknowledges the severity of its wounds, it may actually become more dangerous? Is it reasonable to argue that persisting in holding to a strategy developed for an unwounded adversary may misread the capabilities actually at issue? In the past few days, reports have it that Russia is firing missiles packed with highly radioactive materials, i.e., some sort of “dirty” bomb. If accurate, exactly how should these reports of the Russian distribution of highly enriched fissile materials be evaluated?
Pogo says
I wonder what Xi will call Russia after he rescues it.
Pierre Tristam says
Mao’s Mall Annex.
Pogo says
On the Shining Path.
Kenneth Frymyer says
consequence’s when you steel an ELLECTION !!! WE THE PEOPLE ARE PISSED OFF !!