A 23-year-old Florida man was struck and killed by an A train on the Upper West Side early Thursday morning.

Bobby Legrand Guin, of Mary Esther, Fl., was hit by a northbound A train at approximately 5:14 a.m. at the West 109th Street and Central Park West station, cops said. He was transported to St. Luke’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Police officers found some $20 bills in Guin’s hand and on the tracks, leading them to believe that the young man may have dropped the money and jumped down to retrieve it, The Daily News reports.

Guin had moved to New York to pursue a business career, the News reports. His family was notified of his death on Thursday.

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Florida rescue personnel on Saturday searched for a Florida man who disappeared into a sinkhole that swallowed his whole bedroom while he was asleep in his suburban Tampa home.

Jeff Bush, 36, who is presumed dead, was in bed when the other five members of the household who were getting ready for bed on Thursday night heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming.

Jeff’s brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, jumped into the hole and furiously kept digging to find his brother.

Jeremy himself had to be rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush’s bedroom, all he saw was a widening chasm but no sign of Jeff.

“The hole took the entire bedroom,” said Duvall. “You could see the bedframe, the dresser, everything was sinking,” he said.

Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy’s fiancée who also lived in the house, ran to get a flashlight and shovel.

“It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house,” Wicker said.

Authorities have not detected any signs of life after lowering listening devices and cameras into the hole.

“There is a very large, very fluid mass underneath this house rendering the entire house and the entire lot dangerous and unsafe,” Bill Bracken, the head of an engineering company assisting fire and rescue officials, told the news conference late on Friday.

“We are still trying to determine the extent and nature of what’s down there so we can best determine how to approach it and how to extricate,” Bracken said.

After suspending the search overnight, it resumed at daylight on Saturday, with engineering consultants trying to determine the extent of the collapse so that a perimeter boundary can be established for setting up heavy equipment for future excavation.

In addition, listening devices were being used to detect any evidence of life although Bush was presumed dead. Rescue officials said they were focusing on engineering analysis including soil samples, ground penetration radar and other techniques to determine the extent of the ongoing collapse.

Several nearby homes were evacuated in case the 30-foot (9-meter) wide sinkhole got larger but officials said it only appeared to be getting deeper.

The Bush brothers worked together as landscapers, according to Leland Wicker, 48, one of the other residents of the house.

The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state’s porous geological bedrock, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock, causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse.

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Severe jellyfish stings and a lightning storm prompted her crew to pull her from the ocean about halfway through her swim, according to CNN.

She had been in the water for about 60 hours. Nyad’s face and lips were swollen, but she wasn’t seriously injured, according to her crew.

From the first night of her swim, she faced adversity. She was stung by jellyfish on her lips, forehead, hands and neck. Later, a storm caused her to veer of course.

Her previous attempts were also cut short by severe weather, jellyfish stings and an asthma attack.

Nyad had said she hoped her swim would inspire a mature generation to reach their goals.

“When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, ‘I’m going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I’m going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I’m going to adopt a child. It’s not too late, I can still live my dreams,’ ” she had said, according to CNN.

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Just weeks after Ronald Poppo had 75 percent of his face chewed off by a crazed, naked man, rumored to be high on bath salts, two more flesh-biting cases have been reported.  

In the most recent incident, 26-year-old Charles Baker of Palmetto was visiting his children at his girlfriend’s house Wednesday night when, according to police, things took a very strange turn. His girlfriend told police Baker appeared to be high on some unknown substance when he became aggressive: swearing, throwing furniture and tearing off his clothes, according to WPTV.

Another man at the home, 48-year-old Jeffrey Blake, reportedly tried to get Baker to calm down, but Baker sunk his teeth into Blake’s arm, biting off a piece of his flesh and swallowing it.

After that, Blake was able to restrain Baker until cops arrived at the home, but that wasn’t the end of it. Baker was wildly thrashing around, screaming, and resisting arrest. An officer used a Taser on him, but Baker ripped the barb out of his skin and continued on his tangent.

It took two shocks from a stun gun to finally subdue Baker. He was arrested and taken for a psychiatric evaluation before going to jail.  

Just days before that incident, Naples man Giovanni Martinez was arrested for drunk driving and brought to jail, where he fell unconscious. When he awoke in the hospital, he threw a wild fit, according to the Huffington Post. He bit a nurses arm, spit blood at hospital staffers, and threatened eat their faces off “like that Miami guy.”

This cannot be good for Florida’s tourism industry.

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Radar Online is reporting that America’s most hated mom, who was acquitted of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee’s murder, has gained so much weight that her puffy face is unrecognizable in the Florida community where she is under probation.

The past six months have been busy for Anthony, between getting baptized and packing on the pounds.

“She hasn’t needed to wear a disguise because of the physical transformation. Casey is finding comfort in food and she is clearly eating a lot. She typically goes out at night to rent DVDs and pick up food to go from restaurants. She is very careful to not linger anywhere when she does and tries not to make eye contact with anyone,” a source told Radar Online. “Casey doesn’t feel safe anywhere and just wants to leave the country and begin a new life.”

But she’s going to have to wait before she gets her international start. Her probation for writing bad checks is set to end in a few months, but she is facing a lawsuit from Zanaida Gonzalez, who was dragged through the mud after Anthony told investigators that a woman by that name took her daughter, Caylee. Anthony will have to attend the trial, which is set to begin in January 2013.

Anthony was last seen online in January when a video diary she recorded was posted on the web. In it, Anthony talked about getting a new camera and phone and her hope for a new pet, but never mentioned her daughter.

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Florida is voting today and you know what that means: Broken hips and highway pileups. (‘Cause they’re old!) Of course, it also augurs more ominous tidings: A cornucopia of news articles — citing a vast array of polls, surveys and insider guesses — attempting to bypass the vote and just tell us who will be walking away from Florida a winner. This is ours.

Despite Gingrich’s surge in South Carolina, most polls have since shown Romney with a leg up in the Sunshine State, though just how high that leg goes has been highly volatile. Some pollsters have him way up — a 20-point advantage in one, 19 points in another — but others (one by InsiderAdvantage, for instance) put the gap in the mere single digits.

We’re sticking with our predictable prediction that Romney will win — though don’t let this affect your vote, Florida readers! — based on the numbers and also because we don’t think Gingrich, with his narrative of onerous marital infidelities, can pull the state. (‘Cause they’re old! You know, the
“chinos-wearing set”, as one GQ campaign reporter put it.) 

But don’t count your chickens just yet, America. Anything goes, and evidence suggests that Gingrich will stay in the race long after pandering to the Space Coast subsides.

GET FED

Because sometimes you’ve only got time to skim the headlines:
   
“Gingrich memo … looks ahead to Super Tuesday” The Daily Caller
“Newt May Be Mad and Mental Enough to Fight On Long After Florida” Daily Intel
“InsiderAdvantage Poll: Gingrich Surging, Race ‘Tighter Than Expected’” newsmax.com
“Florida is a tie-breaker but no game-ender”? CNN
“A glimmer of a glimmer” Legal Insurrection
“Another double-digit Florida lead for Romney”politico.com
“Could Newt Win Florida?” The Daily Beast

Bishops take politics to the people

“The Obama administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

excerpt from Letter read aloud (with regional variations) to churchgoers this weekend in thousands of U.S. parishes, regarding the new requirement for all employers to provide health insurance — including contraception coverage — to their employees. many catholics feel that this infringes upon their religious beliefs.

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Where to stay
The Trump International Beach Resort offers 390 oversized rooms, including junior and deluxe suites with kitchen facilities for families who want to make their own meals. Feel like eating in? The resort has two restaurants: Neomi’s, offering contemporary American cuisine, and Fusion Restaurant and Lounge, offering a new take on Asian, located off the lobby. The grounds of the resort — which is in the final stages of an update — includes tennis courts, two pools and beach access.

Where to visit
Once destined to become a housing development, Oleta River State Park has been allowed to grow back into a natural reserve in the midst of a city. The park, with more than 1,000 acres, is popular with joggers, hikers and anyone who just wants to get away from the hustle-bustle of the city for the afternoon. The Blue Moon Outdoor Center rents kayaks, canoes and bicycles so visitors can explore waterways frequented by manatees and dolphins, or bike through 15 miles of trails. Rough it, Miami-style, in one of 14 air-conditioned “primitive cabins” that come with double beds and bunk beds. You need to bring your own sheets. 

Shopping
Sunny Isles Beach is close to some of the region’s premiere shopping centers. Anchored by Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s, Aventura Mall features more than 300 stores and restaurants; it’s among the top five highest-grossing shopping centers in the U.S. A short drive away is The Village at Gulf Stream Park, an outdoor shopping and entertainment center where you can also drop a few coins in the slot machines or place a bet on the horses — just like the Rat Pack did in the mid-’60s.

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For 34 years, the family of Harold Wayne Lovell thought he had fallen victim to infamous Clown killer John Wayne Gacy. Lovell had left his home near Aurora, Illinois when he was 19, telling his family he was off to find a construction job. When his family didn’t hear from him, they became convinced that he was killed by Gacy, who targeted young men between 14 and 21.

The Lovell family spent 34 years believing that Harold was murdered, pained by the knowledge that they might never know what really happened to him … until recently, when his family tracked him down through a mug shot website, according to the Chicago Tribune. It is probably the only time in history a family has been ecstatic to find a mug shot of a loved one busted for marijuana possession.

It turns out Lovell had moved to Florida and worked odd jobs in restaurants instead of going after that construction job in Illinois. Lovell’s family got in touch and he was reunited with two of his siblings this week.  

“I feel bad that they had to go through life thinking that I’d been killed like that,” Lovell said. “I feel terrible. But I was a teenager, and who didn’t want to go to Fort Lauderdale, where it’s nice, sunny and hot?”

We don’t know about you, but, to us, that seems like a perfectly good explanation for not clearing it up to your family that you were not, in fact, murdered by a serial killer.

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Nyad kissed her dream of swimming the 103 miles from Cuba to South Florida goodbye after being stung by a jellyfish … multiple times.

According to USA Today, Nyad was pulled from the water after being stung by a Portuguese Man O War. After attempting to re-enter the water the following morning, the 62-year-old woman was stung again.

Doctors told her more jellyfish stings could lead to death. That’s right, folks, death. Apparently sometimes the cure isn’t as simple as pouring vodka, vinegar or urine on the sting.  Good to know.

There’s no work on whether Nyad plans on going back to finish the swim. She had completed 49 of the 103-mile trek.

This was Nyad’s second attempt to swim between Cuba and Florida. The first time was back when she was just a 28-year-old young woman who had to call it quits after swimming into a shark cage for 42 hours.  You read correctly, a shark cage.

Maybe, just maybe, the jellyfish were a sign form the universe telling Nyad that some things in life, such as swimming in shark-filled waters, are unnecessary.

Or maybe the universe is telling her – and us, for that matter – that there’s no need to visit south Florida.

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Judge Belvin Perry ruled that Anthony must reimburse $97,676.98 in investigative costs incurred between July 15, 2008 — when Anthony first told detectives her daughter had been kidnapped by a nanny — and September 29, 2008, when detectives determined Caylee likely was dead rather than missing.

Anthony was charged with Caylee’s murder and four counts of lying to investigators. In a nationally televised trial this summer, Anthony was acquitted of the murder but found guilty of the lies.
Prosecutors requested she repay $517,000, the full cost several police agencies and the prosecutor’s office said was incurred as a result of her lies.

Perry explained why he ordered the lesser payment from Anthony, who is living in an undisclosed location while serving a year of probation for a 2010 check-fraud case: “[Anthony’s] lies or series of lies are inextricably intertwined with the entire investigation.”

Perry left open the door to increasing the amount Anthony must pay. The judge told the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to provide more detail about the work of 30 deputies and employees on the case so the cost of their time and effort may be added to Anthony’s bill.

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