While you were sleeping, we compiled the biggest stories of the day in one place. Each story has a quick and easy summary, so you're prepared for whatever the day brings. Just click on the links if you want to know more!
1. Palm Beach, Boca Raton and more consider beach smoking bans
A new law took effect in Florida last Friday that allows counties and cities to ban smoking at their beaches and parks.
HB 105 was passed by the House and Senate earlier this year and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 24.
Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Lake Worth Beach and Delray Beach are considering measures to ban smoking at beaches.
2. Average US gasoline price falls 19 cents
Drivers across the state of Florida are once again feeling some relief at the gas pumps with prices dropping for a fourth straight week.
The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline plunged 19 cents over the past two weeks to $4.86 per gallon.
The average price at the pump is down 24 cents over the past month, but it's $1.66 higher than it was one year ago.
3. Florida agency considers stripping transgender therapies from Medicaid coverage
Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is considering new rules that would strip transgender therapies from Medicaid coverage.
LGBTQ-advocacy groups decry the idea, saying it'll hurt thousands of Floridians. The state agency published the proposed rule on gender dysphoria in June.
If approved — Florida's more than $30 billion Medicaid program will no longer cover puberty-blocking meds, hormones, sex-reassignment surgeries nor "other procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristic."
4. NASA to release Webb telescope's 'deepest' photos of space
President Joe Biden will unveil the much-anticipated first full-color image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope at 5 p.m. on Monday, agency officials confirmed.
The James Webb is the successor to the famed Hubble telescope, which, over the decades, brought stunning views of the cosmos to the world.
Webb is far more advanced than Hubble, the most powerful telescope ever sent into space, and it is traveling a greater distance.
5. Trump ally Bannon now willing to testify before Jan. 6 panel
Steve Bannon, a former White House strategist and ally of Donald Trump who faces criminal charges after months of defying a congressional subpoena over the Capitol riot, has told the House committee investigating the attack that he is now willing to testify.
Bannon's turnabout was conveyed in a letter late Saturday from his attorney, lawmakers said, as the committee prepares to air some of its most striking revelations yet this week against Trump in what may be its final set of hearings.
Bannon had been one of the highest-profile Trump-allied holdouts in refusing to testify before the committee, leading to two criminal counts of contempt of Congress last year for resisting the committee’s subpoena.
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On This Day In History
On July 11, 1804, in one of the most famous duels in American history, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy, died the following day.
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