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News at noon: What you need to know before today's Rays-Montreal news conference; Florida newsrooms band together to cover the effects of climate change; and more

 
Check tampabay.com for the latest breaking news and developments.
Check tampabay.com for the latest breaking news and developments.
Published June 25, 2019

Here are the top five latest headlines and updates on tampabay.com.

What you need to know before today's Rays-Montreal news conference

Top Rays officials are set today to start explaining publicly why moving half their home games to Montreal each season is the best and potentially only way to keep Major League Baseball in the Tampa Bay area long term. Getting fans and area leaders to believe them — that this is not just a ploy to re-start stadium negotiations locally or a plan to relocate and leave the area completely — will be a major-league challenge. Watch live, beginning at 1 p.m., as principal owner Stuart Sternberg and team presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman hold a media conference to share details of the unprecedented concept at the Dali Museum.

Florida newsrooms band together to cover the effects of climate change

A group of Florida newsrooms have banded together to cover climate change. The Tampa Bay Times will be joining the Miami Herald, the Orlando Sentinel, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post and WLRN Public Media to produce stories about climate change. Other media partners are sure to come aboard. Topics the media partnership will explore include the dangers of increasingly destructive hurricanes, the effects on native species and the impacts to the economy. We'll also probe what lies ahead for coastal towns and cities jeopardized by rising sea levels.

Tampa is interested in re-bricking Seventh Avenue. But they can't find the bricks

When Tampa embraced asphalt in the 1960s, the bricks that once made up its roads were offered to anyone who asked. "They were just given away," said Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of the Tampa History Center. People, he said, used the red clay bricks to build garden walls, patios and yard paths. The city now wishes it could take all those bricks back. There is growing interest in accentuating the historic look of Seventh Avenue — Ybor City's main thoroughfare — by once again paving it with brick.

Willie Robinson Jr. spent much of his life hoping to save an essential piece of Tampa history

Maybe you know the stories about the legends rumored to have once stayed the night at an old wooden house in downtown Tampa. They include Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Jackson House, at 851 E. Zack St., sits on the Florida Black Heritage Trail, the National Register of Historic Places and at the crossroads of history and development. For Willie Robinson, Jr., it was also home. He was born there, like his mother. In his adult life, he hoped to save it.

We're excited to welcome our new food critic, Helen Freund

You're going to start seeing a new face around the table: Our new food critic Helen Freund arrives this week. We're excited to welcome Freund to a role that remains crucial as Tampa Bay's culinary scene continues to expand. She comes from New Orleans, so she's no stranger to warm climates and a strong food culture. Freund was the food and dining editor and restaurant critic for Gambit Weekly, New Orleans' alternative weekly newspaper, and a contributing writer for the New Orleans Advocate.

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