Free Republic

The St. Petersburg Times will offer an enhanced retirement option to reduce its payroll and, depending on response, could resort to layoffs later this year. The newspaper also is imposing a one-year wage freeze for remaining employees. In a letter to staff, Times editor and chairman Paul Tash said the measures were a response to a “difficult economic climate” that has been especially hard on advertising, the largest source of newspaper revenue. Over the last two years, the Times’ fulltime staff has dropped from more than 1,500 to fewer than 1,300, mostly by attrition. “We are navigating a period of...

The St. Petersburg Times will be seriously redefined on May 19. That's when the paper will implement changes designed to emphasize material readers have told us they value most in the weekday paper and bring down costs. The big changes: Floridian, our daily features section, will publish just on Sundays, while our business section will merge with our B section metro news in a new section. TV listings, comics, Dear Abby, crossword puzzles and the more popular syndicated elements of our features section will move to a new section called BayLink. As always, when circumstances compel the Times to reimagine...

It has been said that 80 percent of all the mosques and Islamic centers inside the United States are financially and spiritually tied to a radical form of Islam originating from Saudi Arabia. This ideology, identified as Wahhabism, does not promote the inclusion of persons into democratic society. One of the American locations that Wahhabi influence has been overtly prevalent is the Tampa-St. Pete area of Southwest Florida. It is here that Sami Al-Arian, a college professor, created a wide-ranging operation that assisted in terrorist activity abroad, through Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Within Al-Arian’s universe lies a little known mosque, which...