Subscribe to The Point, arriving in your inbox Monday through Friday at 8 a.m.

---

The top stories near you

• If the City of Gainesville is to someday become a broadband internet provider, it likely won’t have done so alone. That was the initial conclusion of city commissioners yesterday afternoon after they heard a consultant’s report on the subject. Mayor Lauren Poe will be sending letters to other local governments and educational institutions to gauge their interest in joining such a project. (WUFT News)

• In other news about Poe, the city is paying for him to go to a conference of mayors in Hawaii, and people are upset about it. Ocala Mayor Kent Guinn is also attending. (Gainesville Sun, WCJB)

• U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho announced he’s supporting President Donald Trump’s reelection effort, which began in earnest earlier this week in Orlando. (Facebook)

• Williston’s Regional General Hospital faces more financial difficulty. We reported on its utility debt back in February. (WCJB, WUFT News)

• UF Health has stopped using a procedure called gastric residual evaluation on premature babies following a recent finding from University of Florida researchers. (The Alligator)

• You’ve likely noticed the stickers featuring state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried’s face at some Florida gas station pumps. The legislature banned stickers with anything besides “lettering, numbering, words, or the department logo,” but the her department already paid for them, so they’re staying on the pumps for now. (News Service of Florida)

• A UF/IFAS researcher says she found orange peels can help the heart: “We hope this project can not only positively impact human cardiovascular health via the promotion of gut health, but will also provide a simple and effective usage of the orange peel.” (UF/IFAS News)

• Former Florida Gators’ soccer star Havana Solaun plays for the Jamaican women’s national team, and while she and her teammates ended their time in the World Cup this week, she made history by scoring the team’s first goal. (Miami Herald)

• Clarification from yesterday’s edition: The fear in Marion County is that the state would act unilaterally, not unanimously as written in our summary of this Ocala Star-Banner story on new toll roads. We apologize for the mixup.

---

Today’s sponsored message

---

Around the state today

• This report on the costs of climate change is likely to come as neither a surprise nor with many uplifting insights for Floridians. The Center for Climate Integrity says it’s going to cost $11 billion in The Keys alone to build seawalls adequate to protect the islands from frequent flooding. The state as a whole would need to spend $75 billion on the seawalls, a figure not all that short of Florida’s total annual budget of about $90 billion. (WLRN, WUSF)

• The possibility that at least 27 more graves could exist at the Dozier School site in Marianna is leading the state to begin an investigation next month with an $850,000 budget behind it. A team of archaeologists and anthropologists from the University of South Florida will lead the work. (Tallahassee Democrat)

• “If it weren’t for our state’s open-records law, how would we know?” state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez asked about the essentially accidental revelation that another child sexual abuse allegation had emerged from the Homestead facility for housing migrant children. Rodriguez has frequently criticized the facility, which is run by the federal government. (News Service of Florida)

• Not even a full week after the bill allowing people to ride electric scooters on some Florida roads became law, and police yesterday said a rider in the Tampa area was hit by a truck. (Tampa Bay Times)

• A poll shows Florida Republicans are now split right down the middle over whether the state should allow marijuana possession for personal use, and other groups in the poll support it. The most likely path to further legalization would be through a petition drive to get the issue on an upcoming election ballot. (Florida Politics)

• Nearly half of Florida school districts are now participating in the state’s armed guardian program. (WJCT)

• One of the stranger stories to come out of Major League Baseball recently involves a Florida franchise wanting to play half its games in Tampa Bay and half in Montreal, a city that lost its own franchise 15 years ago. (AP, WUSF)

---

From NPR News

• National: New Alabama Law Permits Church To Hire Its Own Police Force

• National: Pilots Criticize Boeing, Saying 737 Max ‘Should Never Have Been Approved’

• Health: Pulling Back The Curtain On Alzheimer’s, Through Its Lighter And Darker Moments

• Health: A Russian Biologist Wants To Create More Gene-Edited Babies

• World: African Migrants Are Becoming A New Face Of The U.S. Border Crisis

• World: David Ortiz Shooting Was A Case Of Mistaken Identity, Dominican Officials Say