Florida

Go ahead, stretch out in the soft grass. It's comfortable. You're surrounded by a smorgasbord of prey. You may belong half a world away, but here in the Everglades, life is good. Except you're a Burmese python, and the state wants to hunt you down and kill you. It hasn't put a bounty on your head, but it may as well have: If caught, you're decapitated. In this moonlit world of marsh, bug and fanged danger, snake hunter Jeff Fobb is top predator.

Have you been bitten by a vicious dog? Been the victim of a surgical mishap? A sexual assault on a cruise ship? There's a lawyer waiting for your call. Boca Raton, Fla.-based firm WhoCanISue.com has scores of billboards and bus-shelter signs dominating the local landscape. The service matches website visitors with lawyers. Choose your complaint from a drop-down menu -- nursing home abuse, for example -- and then a sub-category, such as bedsores, dehydration or falls and fractures.

Cpl. Stacy Wigand of the Unicoi County Sheriff's Department has long been accustomed to the prescription drug problem that plagues his mountain community in eastern Tennessee. But his discovery on a recent Friday night was indicative of the new wave of trouble sweeping through the hills and hollows of Appalachia -- trouble that is increasingly coming from sunny South Florida.

With a spray of water, Guy Gleichmann surfaces from a 40-foot dive during which he helped set his mother's remains in their final resting place: a sunken city where brightly hued fish shimmy among fantastical architecture. "I didn't want to leave," Gleichmann says, doffing mask and mouthpiece. "It's so beautiful down there. It's so serene." The 48-year-old investment manager and diver from Pompano Beach, Fla.

The cancer-stricken father of a U.S. Marine serving in Afghanistan was arrested at his Florida home last week and is scheduled for deportation to his native Hungary. The detention of Janos Lutz, 53, has outraged his family, including his son, Pfc. Janos V. "Johnny" Lutz, a machine-gunner serving in Helmand province. "We are out here fighting . . . and I find out the United States of America is deporting my dad?" Lutz, 21, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Afghanistan.

Two NFL players were in a group of four boaters missing Sunday in the choppy seas off Florida's Gulf Coast. Oakland Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper and defensive end Corey Smith, a free agent who last played for the Detroit Lions, were in a group of friends that left in Cooper's 21-foot boat early Saturday morning for a day of fishing off the coast of Clearwater, Fla., and did not return that evening as expected. Officials did not receive a distress signal from the missing craft.

The Spanish government will receive detailed information about a shipwreck site where a Florida company found $500 million worth of coins and artifacts last year, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. will reveal the location of the shipwreck and items found onboard, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo said. The company will also disclose the locations of two other wrecks, he said.

As his Republican rivals campaigned in snowy Michigan, Rudolph W. Giuliani addressed voters at two events in balmy Florida on Saturday, continuing his tropical strategy of betting everything on a win here. Despite news this week that his campaign coffers have gotten shallow, Giuliani appeared upbeat as he sought to sway voters in two cities on the Gulf of Mexico coast. Giuliani often mocked the Democratic candidates and repeatedly returned to his well-worn topic of the Sept.

The nation's ailing economy dominated Florida's Republican presidential race Monday as the four leading candidates in next week's make-or-break contest fanned out from Miami's Little Havana to the Panhandle. John McCain and Mike Huckabee arrived in Florida to join rivals Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani in the tightly contested fight for the biggest delegate prize so far in the campaign for the party nomination.

After dominating the Republican presidential race for nearly a year, Rudolph W. Giuliani has faced nothing but defeat in the opening contests: He finished fourth in New Hampshire and sixth in Iowa, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina. With time running short, no sign of a turnaround has emerged. He has lost his front-runner's perch in California, a new Field Poll has found. Other surveys show sharp drops for Giuliani in Florida, New Jersey and New York, his home state.