By Darryl Fears, Monday, January 30, 7:37 PM

Every child learns this sad and basic truth about nature: The snake eats the rabbit.

But in the southernmost part of the Florida Everglades, things have taken a really wild turn. Pythons and anacondas are eating everything. The most common animals in Everglades National Park — rabbits, raccoons, opposums and bobcats — are almost gone, according to a study released Monday.

The snakes are literally fighting with alligators to sit atop the swamp’s food chain. In October, a 16-foot python was found resting after devouring a deer.

“There aren’t many native mammals that pythons can’t choke down,” said Robert N. Reed, a research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geologial Survey’s Fort Collins Science Center and a co-author of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Officials can’t stop invasive pythons and anacondas from marauding in the Everglades, Reed said; they can only hope to contain them. “We’re trying to prevent spread to the Florida Keys and elsewhere north.”

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There are new laws and other changes that go into effect Sunday.

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE: The Florida minimum wage goes up to $7.67 per hour.

By Terry Dickson

An anonymous man bought $500 in gift cards at a Waycross McDonald’s Monday morning and handed them right back to the shift manager asking that they be used for the hungry and homeless, the restaurant’s owner said.

“No name.

September 23, 2011 at 10:26 AM

Updated today at 12:22 PM

Applications will be accepted online-only from 6:30 a.m. on September 28 through 4 p.m. on Friday September 30 – or until a total of 6,000 new applications have been received.

»www.whas11.com/video?id=130420323&sec=553497

By Andrew Restuccia - 08/24/11 05:20 AM ET

Virginia's largest earthquake in more than a century shook the East Coast on Tuesday and is likely to revive a long-standing debate about the safety of the country's nuclear power plants.

The 5.8 magnitude earthquake caused the shutdown of two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Va.

»www.liberty2010.org/realid/index.php

What is the REAL ID Act?

The REAL ID Act is a law passed by Congress in 2005. It makes the States change the way they issue ID cards and driver licenses.

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY

Consumers will get emergency alerts for hurricanes, tornadoes and other disasters on their cellphones as part of a new alert network to be announced Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission.

The Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) will allow emergency officials to send geographically targeted text messages to cellphones in areas where danger threatens.

By Brian K. Sullivan and David Mildenberg -

Residents of Louisiana and Mississippi should be ready for flooding along tributaries, bayous and spillways as the swollen Mississippi River pushes record amounts of water south to the Gulf of Mexico, the states’ governors said.

(Reuters) - The rising Mississippi river lapped over downtown Memphis streets on Thursday as a massive wall of water threatened to unleash near record flooding all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Water lapped over Riverside Drive and onto Beale Street in Memphis, and threatened some homes on Mud Island, a community of about 5,000 residents with a river theme park.

By BOB JOHNSON

More than a thousand students from colleges across Alabama rallied in front of the Alabama Statehouse Thursday seeking additional funding for Alabama colleges and universities.

Several of the students said they also want legislators to do something about rapidly increasing tuition on Alabama campuses.

After listening to politicians including Gov. Robert Bentley and several legislators speak at the football-style pep rally, Jacksonville State University freshman Chase Brisendine said he didn't hear any of the speakers talk about the rising cost of tuition, which he said is making a college education unaffordable for many students.

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By LUCAS L. JOHNSON II

Small businesses in Tennessee oppose any kind of health care mandate, including one approved in the House on Thursday that would require insurance companies to include hearing aids for individuals up to 18 years of age in their policies, said the state director for the National Federation of Independent Business.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) The severe storms that rumbled across North Carolina and South Carolina are long gone, but their effects are lingering.

By Amanda Evans

News of the budget deal has many in Central Florida breathing a sigh of relief.
It means military families will keep getting paid and some national parks will remain open.

JEFF HARRINGTON
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Regulators have approved an average rate hike of 18.8 percent for Florida homeowners covered by State Farm, according to state documents filed Friday.

(Reuters) - The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season will be nearly as busy as the one that just ended, Colorado State University meteorologists predicted on Wednesday.

The forecasting team anticipates 17 tropical storms, with nine of those strengthening into hurricanes during the season that runs from June 1 to November 30.

The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.

A Senate committee is looking for ways to help slow down Florida's runaway home foreclosures problem that is hampering the state's growth and prosperity.

Officials from the attorney general's office told the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on Tuesday that nearly all of Florida is considered to be in a high state of foreclosure and that not a lot of folks are doing much about it.

They said the foreclosure process in Florida is in total disarray.

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CELEBRATION, FL (CNN) - Tragedy strikes in a Florida town built by Disney. Authorities in Celebration said they're dealing with the first homicide in the 14-year-old picture-perfect town.

The state of Florida is considering pardoning singer Jim Morrison posthumously for his 1970 indecency and profanity convictions.

"It is very important to prosecute the guilty, but it is more important to exonerate the innocent, and I can't help to have that over and over in my mind with Jim Morrison," state governor Charlie Crist said.

Florida has joined Arizona on the front lines of battling illegal immigration with a new bill released this week that seeks to crack down on the estimated 800,000 undocumented workers in the state.

The bill, filed by state Sen.

SANDESTIN — The damage the economic recession caused to Florida was worse than a hurricane, according to an economist who spoke at last week’s Gulf Power Economic Symposium.

Henry Fishkind, an Orlando-based economist who founded Fishkind & Associates in 1988, described the recession as an invisible hurricane that has set the state back years.