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Students from 17 Leon County schools took part in the second annual STEM Bowl on Friday. The competition put teams of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders through three events focusing on skills in science, technology, engineering, and math.

In the first phase, teams took a test.  The top four finishers went on to compete in a Brain Bowl.

Florida’s 2013 lawmaking session is slowly fading into the mists of history.  But although lawmakers may have finished their work, some of what they did or didn’t do could prompt much more work on the part of the state’s courts.  It’s a bit like a game of legal ping pong.

Florida used to have a law that fined people whose car radios could be heard more than 25 feet away. Last year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who challenged that law. The verdict? Turn it up.

Florida’s public university administrators are celebrating after the legislative session. Lawmakers restored funding they’d lost in the recent past. And, higher ed officials say, things like “preeminent” status for Florida State University and the University of Florida should help keep more Florida high-schoolers in state for college.

People who run Florida’s public universities are breathing a collective sigh of relief after the recent legislative session.

It could take weeks before a Florida appeals court decides whether to allow the Florida Department of Corrections to move forward with privatizing the prison health care services in several Florida regions. It’s all part of a continuing legal battle between the department and unions representing employees who fear they’ll lose their state jobs.

Tourism has close to $70 billion in economic impact on the state of Florida and in the last two years, the Sunshine State has broken tourism records. Now, the state’s visitors have hit an all-time high for the first quarter of 2013.

“For the month of April Florida’s unemployment rate has dropped to 7.2 percent which puts us once again, below the national average.”