Category Archives: Florida

Dead or alive: can bounty plan solve Miami Beach’s invasive iguana problem?

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City commissioner proposes paying per reptile to ramp up efforts to curb numbers of non-native species

A city commissioner in Miami Beach is proposing a novel solution to tackle an invasion of non-native iguanas overwhelming the popular tourist city: paying a bounty for the head of each reptile brought in dead or alive.

Commissioners have agreed to look into the iguana problem and the suggestion by council member Kristen Rosen Gonzalez to offer payments to hunters, which she says would offer an incentive for locals to take an active role.

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Texas sends another busload of migrants to Kamala Harris’s home

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About 50 mainly Venezuelan migrants including a baby deposited unannounced at Naval Observatory in Washington

About 50 migrants, including a one-month-old baby, have been sent in a bus from Texas to the Washington DC residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the latest move by Republican-led states to transfer migrants unannounced across the country.

The bus let off the migrants, who are believed to be mostly Venezuelan, outside the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of US vice-presidents, on Saturday morning.

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Chick-fil-A employee hailed for stopping man from carjacking mother with infant

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Thomas ‘Mykel’ Gordon praised as ‘one incredible individual’ after fighting off assailant outside Florida restaurant

An employee of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Florida is being praised as a hero after he fought off a man trying to steal a car from a woman getting her infant out of the vehicle in a harrowing parking lot confrontation captured on video.

Incredibly, it wasn’t even the first time that 26-year-old Thomas “Mykel” Gordon rushed to save someone in distress near his workplace. Four years earlier, he had reportedly helped rescue two girls after a construction crane fell on their car.

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Judge proposed by Trump named special master in Mar-a-Lago records case

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Judge Cannon appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to vet documents and denied the DoJ’s plea to continue reviewing the seized records

A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.

Florida-based US district judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday appointed Dearie to serve as a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over government documents the former president kept at his Florida resort.

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Nasa calls off Artemis 1 moon rocket launch for second time after fuel leak

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Head of US space agency suggests maiden test flight will probably be delayed until the middle of October

Nasa called off its latest attempt to launch the groundbreaking Artemis 1 moon rocket on Saturday after failing to stem a fuel leak discovered during tanking. It was the second time in five days that technical issues had kept the spacecraft on the launchpad.

Mission managers at Kennedy Space Center waited until late in the countdown to scrub the liftoff after the failure of several workarounds to try to plug the leak of liquid hydrogen as it was being pumped into the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

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Artemis 1: Nasa’s moon rocket springs hazardous leak ahead of launch

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Fuel leak comes after Nasa fixed an engine issue that postponed the original launch attempt five days earlier

Nasa’s pioneering moon rocket sprang a hazardous fuel leak Saturday, throwing into doubt chances of a successful launch on a test flight that must go well before astronauts climb aboard.

The Artemis 1 was poised to make a second attempt to fly on Saturday afternoon after the US space agency declared it had identified and fixed an engine issue that caused the postponement of the original launch attempt five days earlier.

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‘What’s this about?’: bodycam footage shows confusion as Florida man arrested for voter fraud

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Byron Smith registered to vote after a key amendment, but didn’t know he was ineligible – now he faces up to five years in prison

Byron Smith was standing outside his house when the Tampa police officer put the handcuffs around his wrists. “What’s this about?” Smith asked, flustered, standing in the early afternoon Florida summer heat.

Minutes later he was sitting in the back of a police cruiser, still trying to figure out why he was being placed under arrest, body camera footage obtained by the Guardian shows. “Did you vote?” the officer asked him. “Not this time, no,” Smith, 65, replied. “They took that right away from me.” The officer then told him a $1,000 bond had been set for him. “What’s the charge?” Smith asked. “It was for something about false voting and something else,” the officer said.

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Trump Mar-a-Lago home searched over ‘likely’ efforts to hide files, DoJ says

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Court filing alleges files were found despite Trump lawyers saying all documents had been returned

The FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after it obtained evidence there was probably an effort to conceal classified documents in defiance of a grand jury subpoena and despite Trump’s lawyers suggesting otherwise, the Department of Justice said in a court filing late on Tuesday night.

The filing, opposing Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized, amounted to the most detailed picture of potential obstruction of justice yet outlined by the DoJ.

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Nasa to try launching Artemis 1 mission again on Saturday

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An engine problem foiled Monday’s efforts but mission managers said a change in fueling procedures would help

Nasa will make a second attempt at launching its Space Launch System moon rocket this Saturday, the agency has said, five days after technical issues foiled an initial attempt.

The US space agency made the decision on Monday to delay its first attempt to launch a rocket capable of putting astronauts on the moon in 50 years due to engine issues.

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‘The Artemis generation’: Nasa to launch first rocket to the moon since 1972

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Test flight that will have no human crew aboard aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land them on Mars

For the first time in 50 years, Nasa on Monday is planning to launch the first rocket that can ferry humans to and from the moon.

The giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is scheduled to take off from Nasa’s Cape Canaveral, Florida, complex at 8.33am ET (1.33pm UK time) atop an unmanned Orion spacecraft that is designed to carry up to six astronauts to the moon and beyond.

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Artemis 1: crowds flock to watch Nasa’s most powerful rocket blast off to the moon

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Megarocket to lift off from Florida on Monday morning, one of final crucial test steps before astronauts’ return to the moon

The most powerful space rocket ever to leave Earth will take a 50-year leap across the heavens when it rises from its Florida launchpad on Monday, one of the final crucial test steps before humanity’s return to the moon for the first time since 1972.

Artemis 1, comprising Orion, a six-person deep-space exploration capsule, atop a 98m (322ft), 2,600-tonne (2,875-ton) Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, is scheduled for its maiden liftoff at 8.33am ET (1.33pm UK time) from the same Cape Canaveral launch complex that staged the Apollo lunar missions half a century ago.

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Florida governor suspends school board quartet over Parkland shooting report

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Ron DeSantis acts on recommendation in report from grand jury investigating 2018 shooting in which 17 people were killed

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, on Friday suspended four members of the Broward county school board, acting on a recommendation in a report from a grand jury investigating the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in which 17 people were killed.

In a statement accompanying his executive order, DeSantis said: “It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance.”

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Federal judge orders release of redacted Trump search affidavit

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Affidavit is expected to contain information about investigation into Trump’s retention of government secrets at Mar-a-Lago

A federal judge ordered on Thursday that the affidavit justifying the search warrant used to seize sensitive government documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this month should be partly unsealed according to redactions proposed by the justice department.

The order from Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the FBI search warrant and is overseeing the case, instructed the justice department to release a redacted version of the affidavit that he had reviewed before noon on Friday.

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Duo plead guilty to plot to sell Biden daughter’s stolen diary to Project Veritas

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Aimee Harris stole items from Ashley Biden’s room and conspired Robert Kurlander to sell them to activist group, prosecutors say

Two people have pleaded guilty in a scheme to peddle a diary and other items belonging to Joe Biden’s daughter to the conservative group Project Veritas for $40,000, prosecutors said Thursday.

The two, both from Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams’s office said.

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Florida: Charlie Crist wins Democratic primary to challenge Ron DeSantis

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Former Republican governor who became a Democratic congressman edges out Nikki Fried to face the Donald Trump protégé in November

Charlie Crist will challenge Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in November after trouncing Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner, in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who switched parties and became a Democratic congressman, fought a campaign touting his experience in office and opposition to the 15-week abortion ban signed by DeSantis.

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Donald Trump reportedly kept hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – as it happened

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Florida and New York go to the polls as Democrats seek to defend their congressional majority in November

In other Florida news, voters are casting primary ballots as Democrats look ahead to November, where they’ll mount a challenge to governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. Joan E Greve has the latest on what to expect from today’s polls:

Florida voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to determine which candidates will have the chance to face off in this November’s general election. Voters will cast ballots in races for the governorship and Congress, all the way down to circuit courts and local school boards.

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Epaulette sharks can walk on land for two hours, researchers say

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A species of carpet shark is evolving to better survive warming seas and the climate crisis

Researchers at a Florida university say a small but feisty species of carpet shark with an extraordinary ability to walk on land is evolving to better survive warming seas and the climate crisis.

The epaulette shark, commonly found on shallow reefs of Australia and New Guinea, can walk for up to 30 meters on dry land using paddle shaped fins, and survive hypoxia – a deficiency of oxygen – for up to two hours.

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Student shot dead in Alabama forest by woman posing as stranded motorist, police say

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Duo charged with murder over killing of Adam Simjee, 22, who was forced to walk into woods with girlfriend and died after gunfight

When Adam Simjee and his girlfriend Mikayla Paulus stopped their car in the Talladega national forest in Alabama last week, after being flagged down by what the college students thought was a stranded driver, the couple did not think much of it.

But the “stranded driver” – a woman named Yasmine Hider – turned out to be a gun-wielding robber who forced Simjee, 22, and Paulus, 20, to walk into the woods. Simjee pulled out his own handgun and shot Hider in defense of his girlfriend and himself, but he did not survive the confrontation – police allege Hider shot him dead.

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Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible release

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Justice department opposed release of document but Florida federal judge said portions of it ‘could be presumptively unsealed’

The Justice department must redact the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Donald Trump’s resort in Florida in such a way not to jeopardise the investigation in case he decides to unseal the document next week, a federal magistrate judge ordered on Thursday.

The surprise order from Judge Bruce Reinhart charted a middle ground between the justice department’s motion to oppose unsealing any part of the affidavit, and motions from a coalition of media outlets – and calls from the former president – to release the highly sensitive document.

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Florida officials arrest and charge 20 people with illegal voting, DeSantis says

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Move designed to show muscle of a new office tasked with policing voting in the state and comes days before primary election

Florida officials have arrested and charged 20 people with felony convictions and charged them with illegal voting, Florida governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday, a move designed to show the muscle of a new office tasked with policing voting in the state.

The announcement came just days before the state’s primary election and as early voting is under way. DeSantis, flanked by law enforcement, said the 20 people were charged with voting in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, some of the most Democratic in the state.

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