Free Republic

VIDEO AT LINK............. March 15 (UPI) -- A pair of Alabama fishing guides and their clients unexpectedly reeled in a great white shark in what is believed to be the first time a member of the species has been caught from a beach in the state. Dylan Wier and Blaine Kenny, the Pensacola-based owners of fishing guide service Coastal World Wide, said they were on Orange Beach in the early morning hours of March 7 when something started to pull on one of their heavy-duty lines. The men said they initially thought they might have hooked a large tiger shark,...

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico. The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of...

Residents in Josephine and Perdido Beach are using what they have -- hay and agricultural netting -- to create booms to protect the coastlines of their remote Baldwin County communities.  The idea, and the speed of boom making, greatly increased when a Christmas tree farm donated one of its bundling machines. The amateur boom makes saw their production go from 8 to 40 booms an hour.  It all started when a customer of Baldwin County Sewer Service called requesting a donation of hay, according to system spokesman Charlie Baumhauer. Finding out that the hay would be used to collect oil,...

PENSACOLA BEACH -- Souvenir shops that line this sugary white Panhandle beach display Confederate flag beach towels, window decals and T-shirts. Hooters and other bars fly POW-MIA, Marine and Navy flags and cater to the sailors and Marines from the nearby base. Vacationing Southern families usually fill the hotels and condominiums in this slice of paradise long nicknamed "The Redneck Riviera." But every Memorial Day they mostly stay away as this Florida Panhandle town becomes more like trendy Miami Beach -- 700 miles and a world away. Starting in the mid-1980s, gay men from New Orleans and other nearby cities...

000 WTNT32 KNHC 092028 TCPAT2 BULLETIN TROPICAL STORM BONNIE ADVISORY NUMBER 7 NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 4 PM CDT MON AUG 09 2004 ...BONNIE FORMS FROM THE REMNANTS OF TROPICAL DEPRESSION TWO IN THE SOUTHERN GULF OF MEXICO... AT 4 PM CDT...2100Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM BONNIE WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 23.2 NORTH...LONGITUDE 88.7 WEST OR ABOUT 410 MILES SOUTH OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. BONNIE IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 12 MPH...AND THIS GENERAL MOTION IS FORECAST TO CONTINUE TONIGHT. A GRADUAL DECREASE IN FORWARD SPEED AND A TURN TO THE NORTH IS EXPECTED...