Category Archives: Florida

Trayvon Martin compared to Emmett Till on 10th anniversary of death

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Martin’s mother says fight for justice must continue as Al Sharpton makes comparison with teen lynched in Mississippi in 1955

Trayvon Martin’s mother used the 10th anniversary of his death on Saturday to urge those who sought justice for her family to continue to fight.

Sybrina Fulton spoke to the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by the Rev Al Sharpton in Harlem. She said she had come to New York City from Florida in order to support her supporters.

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Massive feeding effort underway to save starving Florida manatees

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First two months of 2022 alone have seen more than 300 manatee deaths as major conservation effort to rescue population

More than 80 Florida manatees are currently in rehab centers across the US as officials and conservations work to rescue a population that has been hit hard by starvation.

The data released by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and US Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday underscores the peril facing the manatees, and comes amid a major conservation effort that includes a feeding program distributing 3,000lb of lettuce daily at a site on the Florida coast.

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Bernie Madoff’s sister and her husband found dead in apparent murder-suicide

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Palm Beach county sheriff says Sondra Wiener, 87, and 90-year-old husband Marvin Wiener found dead on Thursday

The sister of the Wall Street fraudster Bernie Madoff and her husband were found dead in Florida in what investigators said was an apparent murder-suicide.

The Palm Beach county sheriff’s office on Sunday identified the couple as 87-year-old Sondra Wiener of Boynton Beach and her 90-year-old husband, Marvin Wiener.

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Maine family’s lost cat turns up after six years – in Florida

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Denis Cilley had given up her pet, Ashes, for dead but a microchip confirmed she had somehow made her way 1,500 miles away

A Maine family that long ago gave up on a lost family cat is being reunited – more than six years and 1,500 miles later.

Denise Cilley, of Chesterville, said she was shocked to get a voicemail last week announcing her cat, Ashes, had been located in Florida.

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Ten Cuban migrants in sinking vessel rescued off Florida coast

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Rescue comes after a boat believed to be used for human smuggling capsized with only one of 40 passengers surviving

Ten Cuban migrants in a sinking vessel were rescued off the Florida coast, according to the US Coast Guard.

A Coast Guard boat spotted the vessel on Thursday about 40 miles (about 64km) off Key Largo, the Coast Guard said in a tweet.

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Super corals: the race to save the world’s reefs from the climate crisis – in pictures

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Few corals are safe from warming oceans, a new study warns, but studies are finding surprisingly hardy corals, natural sunscreens and how coral ‘IVF’ can regrow reefs

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Teenager seeks $50k from Elon Musk to delete Twitter bot tracking private jet

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In DM exchange Tesla boss offers $5,000 for takedown but 19-year-old replies: ‘Any chance to up that to $50K?’

A row has broken out between the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, and a 19-year-old student and aviation enthusiast from Florida.

Jack Sweeney created the Twitter bot @ElonJet, which tracks Musk’s Gulfstream private jet and posts real-time updates of its location.

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Four more bodies found off Florida coast from capsized boat

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Discovery brings total to five, but search for survivors will be suspended if new discoveries are not made, says US coast guard

The US coast guard said it would call off the search for survivors at sunset on Thursday if no new discoveries were made following a boat capsizing off the Florida coast at the weekend with 40 people on board.

Four more bodies had been discovered, bringing the total to five, Capt Jo-Ann Burdian, commander of the coast guard’s Miami sector, said in a press conference on Thursday.

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Brian Laundrie admitted in notebook to killing Gabby Petito, FBI says

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  • Notebook discovered near Laundrie’s body in Florida swamp
  • Authorities say boyfriend alone responsible for ‘tragic death’

The boyfriend of Gabby Petito admitted killing her in a notebook discovered near his body in a Florida swamp, the FBI announced on Friday.

It was the first time authorities squarely pinned the blame for Petito’s death on Brian Laundrie, though he was the prime suspect all along.

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Florida health official put on leave after encouraging staff to get Covid vaccine

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State health agency conducting inquiry into Raul Pino to ‘determine if any laws were broken’

A health official who helped lead Florida’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been put on administrative leave as state officials investigate whether he tried to compel employees to get vaccinated.

The state health agency is conducting an inquiry into Raul Pino, director of the Florida department of health in Orange county, to “determine if any laws were broken in this case”, the state department of health press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, said in an email.

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Tens of thousands without power as winter storm blasts US south-east

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Dangerous storm with high winds and ice sweeps through as highway patrols report hundreds of vehicle accidents

A dangerous winter storm combining high winds and ice began sweeping through parts of the US south-east on Sunday, knocking out power, felling trees and fences and coating roads with a treacherous frigid glaze.

Tens of thousands of customers were without power in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Highway patrols were reporting hundreds of vehicle accidents, and a tornado ripped through a trailer park in Florida. More than 1,200 Sunday flights at Charlotte Douglas international were cancelled more than 90% of the airport’s Sunday schedule, according to the flight tracking service flightaware.com.

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Crisis, what crisis? Florida Republicans deny Omicron is straining hospitals

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State becomes focal point of politicized debate over whether Omicron is dangerous enough to overwhelm hospital systems

While Florida has experienced a record number of Covid-19 cases and sharp increase in hospitalizations in recent weeks, there is disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over whether the Omicron surge has actually overwhelmed the state’s healthcare system.

For example, Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio posted on Twitter that there “is no Omicron hospital ‘surge’ in Florida. People admitted for non-Covid reasons get tested. If they test positive they get counted as a ‘Covid patient.’”

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‘A lot of abuse for little pay’: how US farming profits from exploitation and brutality

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Two dozen conspirators forced workers to pay fees for travel and housing while forcing them to work for little to no pay

In June, a farm worker from Mexico, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, was transported through a trafficking network from Monterey to work on farms in Georgia.

They paid the traffickers 20,000 pesos, about $950, loaned from their mother, taking frequent trips back and forth to Monterey, before being told it was safe to leave. Then they were finally transported across the border.

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British estate agent shot dead ‘by evicted tenant’ in Florida

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Sara Trost, from Southend, Essex, fatally wounded as she waited to show property in Coral Springs

A British woman who worked as an estate agent in Florida has been shot dead while preparing to show a property, allegedly by an evicted tenant.

Sara Trost, 40, from Southend, Essex, was shot on Thursday while sitting in her Jeep outside a house in Coral Springs, 40 miles north of Miami, at about 12.33pm.

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Rod Stewart and his son plead guilty to battery in 2019 Florida altercation case

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The singer entered the plea to ‘avoid the inconvenience’ of a high profile court trial. Neither will do jail time or pay any fines

British rock icon Rod Stewart and his son have pleaded guilty to battery in an assault case stemming from a New Year’s Eve 2019 altercation with a security guard at an exclusive Florida hotel.

Court records released on Friday show that the singer and his son, Sean Stewart, 41, entered guilty pleas to misdemeanor charges of simple battery.

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Brian Laundrie died by suicide, autopsy report reveals

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23-year-old Florida man’s disappearance sparked a nationwide hunt after the disappearance and death of Gabby Petito

Brian Laundrie, whose disappearance sparked a nationwide manhunt in September after his fiancee, Gabby Petito, went missing and was later found murdered, killed himself, an autopsy report released on Tuesday revealed.

Laundrie’s remains were found in a Florida nature preserve last month, one month after Petito, 22, was found strangled to death on the edge of Wyoming’s Grand Teton national park, where the couple had been travelling together in a van.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

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Winter, celebrity dolphin given prosthetic tail, died of twisted intestines

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Clearwater Marine Aquarium mourns dolphin whose recovery after losing tail was chronicled in the film Dolphin Tale

Florida’s most famous dolphin, Winter, beloved by fans around the world and star of the movie Dolphin Tale, died of twisted intestines, according to necropsy results released by an aquarium on Saturday.

The dolphin’s intestines were in an area impossible to reach through surgery.

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Human remains found in search for Gabby Petito fiance Brian Laundrie

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  • FBI says remains and personal items found in Florida reserve
  • Remains have not been identified as officials continue search

Partial human remains were found on Wednesday in a Florida wilderness area where authorities were searching for Brian Laundrie, the fiance of Gabby Petito, a young woman who disappeared on a road trip with Laundrie, the FBI said on Wednesday.

They also found items believed to belong to Laundrie after his parents, Chris and Roberta Laundrie, took part in the search with the FBI and police, more than a month after Laundrie was reported missing after heading to the vast Carlton Reserve park.

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Parkland shooter pleads guilty to 17 counts of murder

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Defense attorneys turn their focus to saving Nikolas Cruz from a death sentence for 2018 shooting massacre at Florida high school

Nikolas Cruz has pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder for the 2018 shooting massacre at a Florida high school, leaving a jury to decide whether he will be executed for one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.

Relatives of the victims who sat in the courtroom and watched the hearing via Zoom shook their heads or broke down in tears as Cruz entered his pleas and later apologized for his crimes.

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Nasa’s Lucy rockets into the sky with diamonds to explore asteroids

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Spacecraft with name inspired by a skeleton and the Beatles, and with lab-grown gems, starts 12-year quest

A Nasa spacecraft named Lucy has rocketed into the sky with diamonds on a 12-year quest to explore eight asteroids.

Seven of the mysterious space rocks are among swarms of asteroids sharing Jupiter’s orbit, thought to be the pristine leftovers of planetary formation.

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