Free Republic

A Florida fisherman changed his luck recently in a big way. Captain Jose Rodriguez Jr. of Cudjoe Key, Florida, takes clients out four to five times a week on a Florida Keys fishing charter to reel in trophy fish. But he’d never come close to catching a monster 500-pound swordfish. On Feb. 18, Rodriguez, along with a Pennsylvania family, landed a giant 480-pound swordfish, one of the largest of its kind caught in the Keys in recent years. “It was definitely a fight and a struggle,” Rodriguez, who helps run the family business, Above & Below Fishing Adventures, told Fox...

Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released for the first time in the United States as part of an experiment to combat insect-borne diseases such as Dengue fever, yellow fever, and the Zika virus. UK-based biotechnology firm Oxitec, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said it released the mosquitoes in six locations in Monroe County’s Florida Keys: two on Cudjoe Key, one on Ramrod Key, and three on Vaca Key. It’s part of an effort to help tackle a disease-transmitting invasive mosquito population—the Aedes aegypti mosquito species—that’s responsible for “virtually all mosquito-borne diseases transmitted to humans,” according...