Category Archives: Florida

Trump gets access to sealed documents on witness threats in Mar-a-Lago case

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Prosecutors allegedly turn over exhibit on threats made against potential witness to Trump’s lawyers after judge ordered them to

Special counsel prosecutors have produced to Donald Trump a sealed exhibit about threats to a potential trial witness after the federal judge overseeing his prosecution for retaining classified documents ordered the exhibit turned over despite the prosecutors’ objections, people familiar with the matter said.

The exhibit was a point of contention because it detailed a series of threats made against a witness who could testify against the former president at trial, and the matter is the subject of a criminal investigation by a US attorney’s office. Prosecutors had wanted to withhold it from Trump’s lawyers.

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Two people killed after small private jet plane crash-lands on Florida highway

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Bombardier Challenger 600, carrying five people, ‘pulverized’ a car and slammed into a wall, scattering pieces of it across interstate

Two people have died after a small private jet plane attempted to make an emergency landing on Interstate 75 in south-west Florida on Friday afternoon, colliding with two vehicles and bringing traffic to a halt as a plume of black smoke rose into the air.

The crash landing happened near the Pine Ridge Road exit in Collier county, just north of where the interstate heads east toward Fort Lauderdale along what is known as Alligator Alley.

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Ex-DEA informant sentenced to life in prison for 2021 killing of Haiti president

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Haitian American Joseph Vincent, who admitted to helping plot assassination of Jovenel Moïse, is among 11 people accused

Joseph Vincent, a former informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), was handed a life sentence by a US court on Friday for his role in the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president.

A Haitian American national, Vincent admitted to helping plot to kill the Haitian president Jovenel Moïse in his home in Port-au-Prince, including advice about the political landscape and meetings with key community leaders.

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Florida schoolkids may have to study ‘threat of communism in the US’

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Republican bills likely to reach Governor Ron DeSantis, who has railed against indoctrination of students by ‘liberal elites’

Kindergartners in Florida might soon be compelled to balance learning their ABCs with lectures on the history of communism, if a Republican proposal moving through the state’s legislature becomes law.

House bill 1349 would also create a “history of communism taskforce”, hand-picked by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to recommend how the subject is presented in classrooms from elementary to high school starting in 2026.

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Florida bank robber fatally shot by sheriff’s sniper after taking hostages

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Police tried to defuse the situation at a Bank of America branch, but the suspect took two hostages and held a knife at one’s throat

A robber at a Florida bank took hostages after law enforcement arrived and was killed by a sheriff’s sniper as he held a woman in a headlock with a knife to her throat, authorities said.

Negotiators tried to defuse the situation on Tuesday at a Bank of America branch in Fort Myers, but the suspect instead took two hostages in the building, Carmine Marceno, the Lee county sheriff, said.

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Florida’s new anti-gay bill aims to limit and punish protected free speech

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SB 1780 would make it defamation to accuse someone of homophobia, transphobia, racism or sexism and punishable by fine

By day two of Florida’s legislative session, which started last month, lawmakers had introduced nearly 20 anti-gay or anti-trans bills. One such bill, SB 1780, would make accusing someone of being homophobic, transphobic, racist or sexist, even if the accusation is true, equivalent to defamation, and punishable by a fine of at least $35,000. If passed, the bill would severely limit and punish constitutionally protected free speech in the state.

Though SB 1780 is not likely to survive past higher courts, its introduction is indicative of a wider conservative strategy to stifle criticism of racist, sexist and homophobic behavior. The bill, critics argue, is being introduced to test the waters and see how far, legally, lawmakers can go until they are able to silence detractors.

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Convicted serial killer confesses to 1980 Florida spring break murder, police say

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Police in Jacksonville draw confession from Billy Mansfield, sentenced to life in prison for five other murders decades ago

After confessing to the murder of an Ohio high schooler on her spring break outside Jacksonville, Florida, in 1980, a jailed serial killer is continuing to talk to detectives investigating other homicides whose clue trails have gone cold, according to authorities.

Billy Mansfield’s confession of the killing of 18-year-old Carol Ann Barrett of Zanesville, Ohio, means officials have now confirmed that he has committed at least six murders. He had previously been handed life sentences in five of the killings, four of which were in California and one of which was in Florida, though officials investigating Barrett’s death made clear in a statement on Thursday that those numbers could grow.

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Florida woman’s family sues retirement home after an 11ft-alligator killed her

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Gloria Serge, 85, died in February 2023 after the animal sprang from a retention pond and dragged her back into the water

The family of an elderly woman killed by an alligator as she walked her dog near her Florida home is suing the retirement community where she lived for wrongful death.

Gloria Serge, 85, died in February 2023 after the 11ft alligator, known to residents as Henry, sprang from a retention pond at Spanish Lakes Fairways in Fort Pierce and dragged her back into the water.

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Ron DeSantis put nearly all his eggs in the basket of a ‘war on woke’

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The Florida governor, once billed as Trump without the baggage, ended up making a series of bad gambles

It began in a glitch-filled disaster on Twitter. It ended with a misattributed quotation on X. Just like Elon Musk’s social media platform, efforts to rebrand Ron DeSantis’s US presidential election campaign could not mask its fundamental flaws.

When in May the Florida governor announced his run during a chat with Musk on Twitter Spaces, the platform’s audio streaming feature, there were technical breakdowns that drew comparisons with one of Musk’s space rockets blowing up on the launchpad.

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Ron DeSantis drops out of Republican presidential race

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Hard-right Florida governor at one point thought to be future of party ends campaign to be GOP nominee

Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, has ended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsed Donald Trump.

“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” he said in a statement posted on X. “He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”

Adam Gabbatt contributed reporting from New Hampshire

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Gravesites from former Black cemetery discovered at Florida air force base

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Officials say search will continue after as many as 121 unmarked graves were located at MacDill air force base in Tampa

As many as 121 unmarked graves in a former Black cemetery have been discovered at a US air force base in Florida, military officials confirmed.

A nonintrusive archaeological survey performed over the past two years at the MacDill air force base in Tampa identified 58 probable graves and 63 possible graves, base officials said on Thursday, WFTS-TV reported.

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‘Black snow’: sugarcane burning makes our lives hell, Florida locals say

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Fire and ash from burning cane fields has worsened health near Lake Okeechobee, US’s largest sugar-growing region

Pastor Steve Messam was driving to a service on Christmas morning when he looked to the sky and watched the first flakes starting to fall. Lighter at first, then thicker and more frequent, not quite a blizzard, but enough to leave a coating on the porch and parking lot of his First Church of God in South Bay, Florida.

This was, however, no picturesque winter holiday scene – just a regular day during harvesting season in the nation’s largest sugar-growing region. The “black snow”, as locals call it, is ash from burning sugarcane fields. Studies have blamed the smoke generated by the fires, sometimes dozens a day, for respiratory problems and increased mortality among the poor, mostly immigrant population of the rural area south of Lake Okeechobee known as the Glades.

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Florida senator Rick Scott’s house ‘swatted’ by police

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Prank call to police claimed a shooting occurred at Scott’s Naples home, prompting a Swat team to deploy before standing down

The Republican Florida senator Rick Scott has said that his home was “swatted” on Wednesday night.

While he was dining with his wife, Ann, local Naples authorities responded to what was revealed to be a prank call intentionally made to lure resources like a Swat team to a location to respond to a false threat of danger, otherwise known as a “swatting call”.

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States to award anti-abortion centers roughly $250m in post-Roe surge

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At least 16 states will fund largely unregulated facilities that try to convince people to continue their pregnancies

In the months since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, at least 16 states have agreed to funnel more than $250m in taxpayer dollars towards anti-abortion facilities and programs that try to convince people to continue their pregnancies.

Much of that money is set to go to anti-abortion counseling centers, or crisis pregnancy centers, according to data provided by the Guttmacher Institute and Equity Forward, organizations that support abortion rights. It has been paid out throughout 2023 and will stretch into 2025.

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Florida teen allegedly shoots and kills sister over Christmas gift spat

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The 14-year-old was then allegedly shot and wounded by his 15-year-old brother in retaliation; both are now in custody

A Florida woman holding her 11-month-old son in a baby carrier was fatally shot by her 14-year-old brother while trying to defuse an argument over Christmas gifts he was having with a 15-year-old brother who also was armed, authorities said.

The 15-year-old brother then shot his 14-year-old brother, though not fatally, for killing their sister on Sunday in Largo, Florida, which is located in the Tampa metro area, the Pinellas county sheriff’s office said in a news release.

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One person killed, another injured in shooting at Florida shopping mall

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Police say the victim was likely ‘targeted’ in the attack at the Paddock mall in Ocala, about 80 miles north-west of Orlando

A man has died in a shooting at a shopping mall in central Florida two days before Christmas in which the victim was apparently “targeted” for the attack, police said.

Ocala police chief Mike Balken told reporters on Saturday evening that the man was killed after he was shot multiple times in a common area at Paddock Mall in Ocala, located about 80 miles north-west of Orlando. A woman was shot in the leg, police said.

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Weather tracker: Nor’easter drenches US south-east coast

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Up to 127mm of rain falls on Florida and gusty winds and flash flooding hit parts of Georgia and South Carolina

Last weekend, a low-pressure system that had developed over the Gulf of Mexico tracked north-east across the Florida peninsula. Lashings of heavy rain and strong winds were brought to Florida during the early hours of Sunday morning, dumping up to 127mm (5in) of rain on the state in its passing.

The low-pressure system, termed a “nor’easter”, continued to track north-east, strengthening and bringing gusty winds and flash flooding to the coastal parts of the south-east US, including Georgia and South Carolina.

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Book bans use ‘parental rights’ as cover to attack civil liberties, Democrat warns

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Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who introduced Fight Banned Books Act, says bans are ‘baseless attack on our civil rights’

The growing number of book bans in the US are using a so-called parental rights movement as cover for a wide-ranging attack on civil rights in America, a Democratic congressman has warned.

Earlier this month, a new study by PEN America revealed that there had been at least 5,894 book bans in US public schools from July 2021 to June 2023, with more than 40% of them in Florida, birthplace of a rightwing parents group called Moms for Liberty.

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Former US diplomat arrested in Florida is accused of serving as an agent of Cuba

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Manuel Rocha, 73, who once served as ambassador to Bolivia, is accused of working to promote the Cuban government’s interests

A former American diplomat who served as US ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested in a long-running FBI counterintelligence investigation, accused of secretly serving as an agent of Cuba’s government, the Associated Press has learned.

Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in Miami on Friday on a criminal complaint and more details about the case are expected to be made public at a court appearance Monday, said two people who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing federal investigation.

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Florida congressional map need not be redrawn, says court in reversal

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September decision finding Republicans discriminated against Black voters with reconfigured districts overruled on appeal

A Florida appellate court ruled on Friday that lawmakers do not have to redraw the state’s congressional map, reversing a September decision that found Republicans discriminated against Black voters when it reconfigured districts in the northern part of the state.

The ruling from the first district court of appeal is the latest development in a long-running legal battle over Black representation in the state. In 2015, the state supreme court imposed a district that stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee in order to give Black voters there a chance to elect the candidate of their choosing. From 2015 until 2022, voters in the fifth congressional district elected Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, to represent them. But in 2022, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, went out of his way to dismantle it, chopping it up into four majority-white districts that all elected Republican candidates.

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