SEBRING — When the flames during a brush fire start licking the roof, it might be too late to save your home. So the idea is to start early, as about 40 members of the Leisure Lake Homeowner Civic Association learned first-hand Monday. Firefighters with the Florida Division of Forestry showed the residents how to best protect themselves and their structures from wildfires. "There's just not enough fire equipment to save every home, so we're asking the community to protect their homes," said speaker Melissa Yunas of the Florida Division of Forestry at the Lake Bishop Park Community Center. "Take a step to educated yourselves – to protect yourselves." Fire officials told residents about the Firewise Communities USA recognition program, a federal program where participants are grouped by neighborhoods that are deemed most susceptible to wildfires. ...more

February 19, 2008

Al Gore advised Wall Street leaders and institutional investors Thursday to ditch businesses too reliant on carbon-intensive energy - or prepare for huge losses down the road. ...more

February 15, 2008

Recent efforts to hammer out a proposal to temporarily freeze interest rates on certain troubled subprime mortgages have brought up an interesting quandary. Is it the government's job to intervene in what is in part a crisis wrought by greedy lenders and naive and imprudent borrowers? Agreed, the government should not bail out financial irresponsibility, but sometimes there's no alternative. Those opposed to any government initiative to rescue the market before 2 million loans adjust to a higher interest rate –– and borrowers are stuck with payments they cannot afford –– are forgetting that the ripple effect of not doing anything could seriously hurt the general economy. ...more

December 3, 2007

Quicken Loans is relocating its corporate offices and 4,000 jobs from the suburbs to Detroit, a move the online mortgage company hopes will help revive downtown by attracting housing, stores and other businesses. ...more

November 14, 2007

Commuters may have noticed a bright yellow 17-foot by 10-foot banner off the Howard Frankland Bridge on the way to work. It's pretty hard to miss. The Green Armada and Environmental Defense have launched the campaign to help get the word out on a hot-button issue - the choices Americans, especially Floridians, need to make on global warming. ...more

October 10, 2007

Col. Chris Knight resigned as the Florida Highway Patrol's chief after a six-month state investigation that found he falsified a memo's date, but cleared him of most other allegations, according to a report released Tuesday. ...more

September 19, 2007

The number of deaths in the United States rose in 2005 after a sharp decline the year earlier, a disappointing reversal that suggests the 2004 numbers were a fluke. Cancer deaths were also up. ...more

September 13, 2007