Digest

Dateline Florida

By TIMES WIRES
Published July 11, 2007

Orlando enclave may get funnier

Comedian Chris Tucker will soon be able to call Florida home. Tucker, who's new movie Rush Hour 3 opens next month, bought a $6-million mansion just outside Orlando, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The 14,000-square-foot waterfront home sits on little more than an acre in a gated community in southeast Lake County called Bella Collina. The two-story home boasts five bedrooms, 6 1/2 baths and a basement built like a pirate ship, with a wooden deck and rails, a mast, a sail and rigging. Seats along the stern face a giant home-theater screen. The community's other famous residents include pro golfers Nick Faldo and Hale Irwin, as well as Lucille O'Neal, Shaquille O'Neal's mother.

Gators are bad ...

Bartow is unhappy about an increasing segment of its population: alligators. A trapper there captured two large gators in a lake where a dog was attacked two weeks ago but saw at least five during the hunt. Now the city has contracted with the state's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to hire a professional trapper to patrol its lakes and ponds in search of nuisance alligators, the Ledger reported. "There are getting to be too many alligators in our lakes," Les Barr, assistant director of parks and recreation, told the Ledger. Officials say alligators use drainage pipes to move from lake to lake.

but hurricanes good?

Now is the time of year when we're all gearing up for the possibility of a big hurricane (or at least we should be). But a study out this week claims that hurricanes aren't all bad. Scientists believe they may help coral because their high winds cool surface waters enough to promote the rapid growth of a needed algae. Why is that important? Warmer waters, possibly due to global warming, kill that algae, resulting in bleached coral. The study, from the University of Miami, was published in the July issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Just try to say that three times fast.

[Last modified July 10, 2007, 23:59:00]