Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE - -- All Florida students in kindergarten through second grade would get mandatory Spanish lessons starting in 2007 under a new bill filed by state Sen. Les Miller, D-Tampa. "More and more of our young people need to learn a second language," said Miller, the Senate minority leader. "We just thought that this was a good start for these young people." Some people like the idea but wonder about its practicality. Younger students "learn a foreign language without pain," said Dorothy Carregal, superintendent of foreign languages for Hillsborough schools. But the legislation, Senate Bill 522, doesn't say how schools...

ORLANDO -- What's in an acronym? Apparently not a lot of business if the acronym is CAFTA and the region is Central Florida. Although the Bush administration is ardently pushing for approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, even the pact's supporters admit few businesses locally or statewide are clamoring to do business with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. "I can't tell you who will benefit because I don't know who will benefit," says Barney Bishop, president of Tallahassee-based Associated Industries of Florida, a pro-CAFTA group which represents 10,000 businesses. "It's not an...