Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed $371 million from the state budget Friday and signed a spending plan that strips away key proposals backed by major Republican lawmakers.

Crist, now running for U.S. Senate as an independent, waited until the afternoon of his last day to sign the budget. And what he signed was a slimmed-down, slightly-more-than $70 billion spending plan rid of a much-debated raid on transportation funds, a reduction in Medicaid funds to nursing homes and many local and higher education projects.

The pursuit of a wood-burning biomass power plant that could generate 100 megawatts of electricity for Gainesville overcame a major hurdle Thursday.

After a lengthy debate, the Florida Public Service Commission approved the Gainesville Renewable Energy Center by a vote of 3-2.

The high-profile project is a step forward in supporting renewable energy development in the state, the commission decided in its need-determination hearing, despite uncertainty about its impact on rate payers.

A member of Floridas congressional delegation and a conservative Florida think tank say the largest federal financial regulation reform act proposed since the Great Depression doesnt fix the problems that created the current recession.

From the Florida Retail Federation headquarters on Adams Street in Tallahassee, Rick McAllister oversees efforts to ensure retailers in the state can keep their doors open.

Florida finally received the $25 million BP promised it would give to advertise that Floridas beaches are unsullied by oil, Gov. Charlie Crist announced Tuesday afternoon. The money came less than eight hours after the Cabinet and one senior senator slammed Crist for not doing enough to expedite receipt of the oil company's check.

Florida's tourism industry has yet to receive the $25 million in emergency cash it needs to immediately advertise that Floridas beaches are open and unsullied by oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, and there is still no word of when or how the industry will receive the money promised by BP earlier this week.

Hedge funds have become the bogeymen of the investment marketplace. They can conjure bad memories of fraudulent operators like Bernard Madoff of Palm Beach and Arthur Nadel of Sarasota.

But hedge funds also can protect against sudden downturns in the market, an investment expert said Thursday.

A long-favored plan for creating an inland distribution center to maximize cargo taken in by the maritime industry in South Florida is dead, and the sugar company that proposed it is recommending that the Port of Palm Beach start over in its search for a location.

Florida Crystals plan to host the 318-acre South Florida Regional Intermodal Logistics Center in western Palm Beach County has been taken off the table, and the company is offering instead an 850-acre plot elsewhere in the poverty-stricken rural area.

The U.S. Department of Labor just opened the way for Florida and other states to grab as much as $1 million in federal funds each over three years, but the state has not decided whether it will compete for the funds.

States that overhaul the way they track their workforce statistics could receive a piece of $12 million being offered as part of the Workforce Data Quality Initiative, announced by the department Monday. The initiative attempts to get states to keep better track of the data and tie it to educational statistics.