New Smyrna Beach city manager: 'You're an idiot'

Pam BrangaccioNEW SMYRNA BEACH -- It's nice to know what people really think about you.

New Smyrna Beach City Manager Pam Brangaccio was direct in telling me: "You're an idiot."

The city manager seems a bit sensitive when people ask where she lives.

I told her people have told me she lives in Ponce Inlet. She says New Smyrna Beach.

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Daytona Beach's Main Street becomes party central Saturday with 8th annual Crawfish & More Festival

Headline Surfer
Daytona Crawfish FestivalDaytona Crwfish FestivalHeadline Surfer photos by Sera Frederick / Young partiers had no worries about drinking in public during Saturday's Crawfish & More Festival on Main Street in Daytona Beach. The cops were looking the other way.

DAYTONA BEACH -- A young group of people were trying to get a middle-aged man's macaw to drink some beer. It was party central Saturday night on Main Street with hundreds enjoying themselves and they didn't have to stay inside the bars to enjoy the cold brew, many drinking from large plastic see-through pitchers. After all, it was the eighth-annual "Crawfish & More Festival."

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Investigative Reports

Bankruptcy benefactor Robert Lott campaigns for County Council candidate Jim Hathaway

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New Smyrna Beach City Commissioner Jim Hathaway, at far left, has a new supporter in his campaign for Volusia County Council: Former Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce President Robert Lott, who, along with his wife, received bankruptcy protection, having owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to creditors.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Longtime City Commissioner Jim Hathaway and Robert Lott were polar opposites when it came to approval for the $16 million Hampton Inn.
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Daytona police chief promotes patrol supervisor who taunted female cop for more than a year

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Daytona Beach police Capt. Jim NewcombCapt. Jim Newcomb, shown here, is now the third ranking administrator in the Daytona Beach police force, despite a checkered past that includes verbal abuse.

DAYTONA BEACH -- For more than a year, Daytona Beach cop Kelly Fishpaugh endured taunting from then-Sgt. Jim Newcomb who continually asked her how her pregnancy was going despite the fact she wasn't pregnant. The taunting lasted more than a year.

Newcomb was also responsible for a lesbian cop being fired after she rejected overtures of another woman who made allegations that weren't substantiated. The cop, who had no disciplinary record until the bogus incident, finally got her job back two years later. Despite these and a host of other issues, Newcomb was promoted just a week ago Monday by Chief Mike Chitwood to the rank of captain and that has the police union up in arms.
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Race and the great divide as witnessed in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case

Blog /

NSBNEWS.net Investigative Reporting

Previous coverage click below:

Justice for Trayvon: A Search for AnswersTrayvon Martin

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid, Of people whose eyes are oddly made, Of people whose skin is a different shade, You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are 6 or 7 or 8, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught.
-- Song lyrics from the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musical South Pacific
 
Ellen DardenBy Ellen Darden
Blog: Politics and Policies

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- I’m a child of the South and yet not. I was born in Atlanta and raised primarily in Jacksonville, during the '50s and '60s. In those times, neither city could claim to be a shining example of racial acceptance and equality.

However, my parents were from elsewhere, and it is my great fortune that their views about race sharply contrasted with those found in some of my friends’ homes. My sisters and I were taught that there is but one race: the human race.

It was a tough time in the South during my youth. I witnessed much turmoil as people struggled to continue to defy or hold true to an essential founding principle of our Nation: “That All Men are Created Equal.”
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Trayvon Martin's parents in exclusive interview after Miami rally: 'We are not alone in this fight for justice'

NSBNEWS.net Investigative Reporting

Previous coverage click below:

Justice for Trayvon: A Search for AnswersTrayvon Martin

NSBNews.net video by Henry Frederick / While countless media outlets covered Sunday's downtown Miami rally for Trayvon Martin, the slain teen's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, granted an exclusive interview to NSBNews.net, which you can watch by clicking the video. Highlights are in the story below. 

MIAMI -- The contrasting emotions of two parents grieving over the gunshot slaying of their teenage son were evident following the big rally in Miami attended by thousands of people demanding justice for Trayvon Martin.
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Community Spotlight

Benefit golf tournament Saturday in New Smyrna Beach to benefit March of Dimes

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- The second annual Lester C. Weimer Memorial “Birdies for Babies” golf tournament benefiting the March of Dimes takes place on Saturday at Hidden Lakes Golf Club, 35 Fairgreen Ave. All proceeds go to the March of Dimes.

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Ponce Inlet to celebrate Memorial Day at new veterans monument in front of lighthouse

Ponce Inlet MemorialPONCE INLET -- State Rep, Dorothy Hukill, R-Port Orange, will be among a contingent of dignitaries on hand to commemorate the Memorial Day Holiday with the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse veterarans memorial as a backdrop in Davies Lighthouse Park, 4931 S. Peninsula Drive. 

The 11 a.m. Sunday, May 29, ceremony includes a flyover by the Spruce Creek Gaggle, remarks from Ponce Inlet Mayor Gary Smith and guest speaker Mihael White, director of veterans services for Volusia County. The Spruce Creek High School Trumpeteers will play "Taps" and there are a host of other related activities.

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Outdoor fire ban remains in effect for Oak Hill, Pierson, Lake Helen and unincorporated Volusia County

NSBNews.net / Headline Surfer video and photo by multimedia editor Sera Frederick
Smoke chokes the air in the woods of Pioneer Trail in Samsula near New Smyrna Beach as shown in this video.

SAMSULA -- A 55-acre fire that raged in the woods of Pioneer Trail left the unmistakable stench of smoke for days.

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Latest Blogs

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Linda Hyatt
Bravo to all who made Oak Hill's charter school such a success this year
OAK HILL -- Now that its almost the end of the school year, people need to reflect on how well Burns Sci-Tech. Charter School has done. We have won awards for the best school, our teachers have...
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Dr. Rick Martorano's picture

Living the Good Life

Dr. Rick Martorano
Not everyone can sing the blues
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- I had a musician friend of mine who is a blues musician ( he won’t play any other style of music no matter how much you pay him) send me this memo. It is adorable and so...
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Michael Visconti's picture

American Patriot

Michael Visconti
If we could read the first lady's mind, this is what she would be thinking
EDGEWATER -- If we could read First Lady Michelle Obama's mind, this would probably be what she is thinking: "Please! Please! Vote for my Husband! "When he is re-elected I will be able to...
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Musings

Darlene Vann
Mailing items to our military men and women overseas no easy task
EDGEWATER -- A friend forwarded a request from a military friend of hers in Afghanistan telling her they were hit really hard and lost all their personal things. He said they needed towels, razors,...
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Benefit golf tournament Saturday in New Smyrna Beach to benefit March of Dimes
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Bike Week body paint model at Cabbage Patch outside New Smyrna Beach strikes a pose

Sophia Smith

Sophia Smith

NSBNews.net photo by Henry Frederick / Is she for real? That's what the Bike Week crowd kept asking at the Cabbage Patch.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Those who walked by a vendor tent for helmet art work at the Cabbage Patch in Samsula during Bike Week wondered if the life-like figure in body paint was the real thing at the Cabbage Patch. Few dared to ask and those who did didn't get an answer.

Only with a sharp eye or a strong camera lens could see that this was a living, breathing creature, whose beauty was accentuated by the flourescent green paint. With little in the way of actual clothes and a lot to be left to the imagination, 38-year-old Sophia Smith was a head turner.
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Biketoberfest 2011 PostScript: Blue Oyster Cult rocks Destination Daytona

NSBNews.net videos by Sera Frederick / Blue Oyster Cult brought down the house at Destination Daytona and NSBNews.net was right there on stage with the classic rock band during its Saturday night Biketoberfest concert.

ORMOND BEACH -- Blue Oyster Cult rocked Biketoberfest at Destination Daytona on Saturday before 6,500 screaming fans and NSBNews.net was right there on state with the classic rockers as they performed signature songs "Godzilla," "Burnin' for You" and the biggest of them all, "(Don't Fear) the Reaper."
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Air Supply lost in love in Plant City Strawberry Festival

Pavlina Osta of Port Orange talks with Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock, the super duo known as "Air Supply" during their spring concert at the Strawberry Ferstival in Plant City.

Pavlina Osta By Pavlina Osta

Pavlina's Place

PLANT CITY -- I talk with the fabulous duo Air Supply, backstage, before their performance at the Strawberry Festival in Plant City.

Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock have such famous songs as "Lost in Love," "All out of Love", "The One that You Love," "Sweet Dreams" and "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" and each one has achieved multi-million plays on the radio.
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The Great Depression: Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes of the past?

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- I am a child of the Great Depression. I was a mere 4 years old when it ended a couple years after after Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland. When I came into the world in 1935, six years had already passed since the New York stock market crash of 1929, that sent seismic shocks around the world for a decade. Rations were part of my youth in Cincinnati before my family moved to New Smyrna Beach where I started my high school years. Are we destined now to repeat history?
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