Baseball’s Annual Ritual Generates Millions for the State On Tuesday (March 1), the new year began for those who live by the baseball calendar, as major league teams squared off against each other for the first time in 2016. For Florida, it also signaled the beginning of an annual economic bonanza for the state. Spring […]

College sports are a high-dollar business.

Publisher’s Note: We received a Letter to the Editor from Bob Rohrlack, president and CEO of the Tampa Chamber regarding our cover story in the last issue about Cuba and the normalization of relations. We encourage discourse about important topics that impact our state and nation. We invited Mr. Rohrlack to write this guest blog. There are […]

What lies beneath the surface of normalized relations and what the future may hold for U.S.-Cuban relations. Since President Obama last December announced his intent to normalize relations with Cuba, something of a frenzy has emerged. Especially in Florida. There is talk of economic opportunity, of trade ventures, of potential riches for American businesses. It’s […]

United States relations with Cuba have been fraught with misunderstanding and conflict from day one because politics has bested pragmatism. Cuba is Latin America’s oldest dictatorship and relations with the U.S. have been frozen in time, until now. President Obama initiated a policy of engagement and diplomatic rapprochement with Cuba last December — some 54 […]

This is a continuation of our June 2015 cover story, Why Cuba? Why Now? At press time we were sent this statement from Pastor Amado.  We wanted to post it so our readers can hear his story first hand. Used with permission from Maranatha Baptist Church. The full letter reads: Dear brothers and sisters: Esteemed friends: For […]

As Stetson University puts an emphasis on study abroad, a classroom to the south continues to emerge. Bill Andrews considers Cuba a whiteboard for learning. Andrews, chair of the International Business department in the School of Business Administration at Stetson University, first visited Cuba with students in 2002. Two years earlier, the U.S. House of […]

Tourism is the first industry taking off in the rapprochement with Cuba. For decades, Cuba was like a roomful of expensive wine locked away in a cellar. Now that American travelers can finally peek through a crack in the door, they hunger for their first taste of what was once forbidden. To help slake this […]

From a very early age, I was fascinated by cars. It was the late 1950s and each mo loed different. Most all of them were American-made. So it was mere child’s play, even as a toddler, to watch the road and play guessing games with my uncle. I could name every car from a distance. […]