The Republican Florida congressman Matt Gaetz eloped to southern California on Saturday, in order to marry Ginger Luckey in a small ceremony on Catalina Island.
Related: Trump booed after telling supporters to get Covid vaccine
Continue reading...Amid powerful resistance to mandates from Florida’s governor and his supporters, some parents are frustrated that others are ignoring safety protocols
In Pinellas county, Florida, Maggie, a mother of three, is sending her kids to school every day with two or three extra masks even if, in her fourth grader’s class, only a third of the children are wearing them. Just two days into the new school year, she received a call from school officials saying there were already five known cases of students with Covid-19.
“Based on my kids’ school, and the number of parents that have chosen to not mask their kids, it looks like we’re in the minority,” said Maggie, who asked to be identified by just her first name. “I think the voices who are very anti-mask are very loud.”
Continue reading...Florida’s governor declared a state of emergency for the state’s Panhandle region as Tropical Storm Fred moved through the Gulf of Mexico early on Sunday and parts of the Caribbean were preparing for the impact from Tropical Storm Grace.
Fred was forecast to move across the Gulf before reaching the coast Monday night or Tuesday morning, forecasters said. They said people from Alabama to the central Florida Panhandle should monitor the system’s progress.
Continue reading...Governors of states such as Florida and Texas, where the Delta variant is surging, have made masks and vaccines a partisan issue, in a lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism
The crowd gathered under a tent at the water’s edge, their tables decorated with the Stars and Stripes and checked tablecloths. In their midst in Austin county, Texas, last Saturday was the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, laughing with delight and playing the fiddle.
With the coronavirus roaring through the state and hospitals near breaking point, comparisons with Nero fiddling while Rome burned were irresistible, although journalist Alisha Grauso pointed out on Twitter: “Nero actually enacted sweeping relief efforts to try to quell the fire and also offer his people aid in the aftermath, particularly the lower class, so Abbott is somehow worse than a Roman emperor known today as being a psychotic tyrant.”
Continue reading...Daily Covid-19 cases in the US moved above 100,000 a day for the first time since February, higher than the levels of last summer when vaccines were not available, and came as health officials sounded alarm over lagging rates of vaccination driving the surge of the infectious Delta variant.
The seven-day average of hospital admissions has also increased more than 40% from the week before, with health workers describing frustration and exhaustion as hospitals in Covid hotspots were again overwhelmed with patients, almost 20 months into the pandemic in the US.
Continue reading...Ron DeSantis’s desire to keep state open amid Delta surge draws criticism from local leaders to the White House
Florida governor Ron DeSantis earned a new moniker this week as the resurgent coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on his state: the “Pied Piper of Covid-19, leading everybody off a cliff.”
The stark assessment of the Republican politician from Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, came as Florida continued to set records for new cases and hospitalizations, saw worrying surges in both deaths and rates of positivity, and led the nation in pediatric Covid admissions.
Continue reading...Florida’s ban on mask mandates came under increasing scrutiny from public health officials on Sunday as the surging Delta variant pushed new daily cases of Covid-19 in the state to a record high.
Related: US vaccinations rise but White House frustrated with media ‘alarmism’
Continue reading...2021 is already the deadliest year on record for Florida manatees. Scientists and activists are scrambling to avert further disaster
On a bright morning in July, a crowd gathered on a boat ramp in St Augustine, Florida, awaiting the arrival of a young male manatee named Gerard. The marshy Matanzas River gently flowed around oyster beds and sawgrass islands as biologists organized their equipment. Nearby about a dozen onlookers paced by the shore, waiting to catch a glimpse of Gerard’s return to the wild following weeks of captivity.
Earlier in spring, beachgoers discovered Gerard stranded and sunbaked in Palm Coast, about 25 miles south of St Augustine, on the Atlantic Ocean. Samaritans draped wet towels over the feeble marine mammal, keeping him cool and shaded from the subtropical sun, as a rescue team raced to the scene. Gravely thin, Gerard was transported to Jacksonville Zoo, where he spent the next 10 weeks in critical care until he was plump enough to re-enter the wild.
Continue reading...Fans in Nobel prizewinner’s favourite haunt of Key West hold their 40th competition on his birthday
Ernest Hemingway is survived as much by his macho mythology as he is by his writing. Hemingway was in two plane crashes in two days. Hemingway shot himself in both legs while wrangling a shark. Hemingway had at least nine major concussions – and four wives. He had brain damage. He won the Pulitzer and the Nobel prize. He hunted and fished and wrote plays and books and articles and stories, for ever in pursuit of the truest sentence. He was rageful, charming, violent, brilliant and drunk.
Hemingway is also something of a Key West mascot, especially for a week every July, when a festival called Hemingway Days, which coincides with his birthday (this year, he would be 122) honours his legacy by gathering his lookalikes together.
Continue reading...Reza Baluchi told the coast guard he was headed 1,000 miles north in a running wheel contraption but ended up 30 miles south
A Florida man startled beachgoers when he washed ashore inside a hybrid bubble-running wheel device.
The man, identified by a local news channel as Reza Baluchi, washed ashore in Flagler county on the east coast of Florida on Saturday.
Continue reading...Firefighters have officially ended their efforts following one of the nation’s deadliest engineering failures
Firefighters have declared the end of their search for bodies at the site of a collapsed Florida condo building, concluding a month of painstaking work removing layers of dangerous debris that were once piled several stories high.
The collapse on 24 June at the oceanside Champlain Towers South killed 97 people, with at least one more missing person yet to be identified. The site has been mostly swept flat and the rubble moved to a Miami warehouse. Although forensic scientists are still at work, including examining the debris at the warehouse, there are no more bodies to be found where the building once stood.
Continue reading...State officials report ‘unprecedented’ deaths due to starvation as pollution and algal blooms take toll
More manatees have died already this year than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds, state officials have said.
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that 841 manatee deaths were recorded between 1 January and 2 July, breaking the previous record of 830 that died during the whole of 2013 because of an outbreak of toxic red tide.
Continue reading...Authorities searching for victims of a deadly condo collapse in Florida said Sunday they hope to conclude their painstaking work in the coming weeks as a team of first responders from Israel departed the site.
The Miami-Dade county mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, said 90 deaths have now been confirmed in last month’s collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Surfside, up from 86 a day before. Among them are 71 bodies that have been identified, and their families have been notified, she said. Some 31 people remain listed as missing.
Continue reading...Six victims were recovered Thursday morning, with 80 still unaccounted for as officials say no chance of life in rubble
Rescue efforts at the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida, officially ended late on Wednesday night as officials have said there is no chance of life in the rubble.
Six victims were recovered on Thursday morning, bringing the death toll to 60 and the number of unaccounted to 80. Of those who were recovered, 35 have been identified.
Continue reading...A weakened Tropical Storm Elsa made landfall in Florida on Wednesday, killing at least one person in the state and injuring several others when a possible tornado struck a campground at a navy base in south-east Georgia.
The National Hurricane Center said Elsa still packed 45mph (72kph) winds more than nine hours after making landfall along Florida’s northern Gulf Coast. The storm’s center was sweeping over south-east Georgia by Wednesday evening.
Continue reading...Emergency workers have given up hope of finding survivors in a collapsed Florida condo building, telling distraught families that there was “no chance of life” in the rubble as crews shifted their efforts from rescue to recovery mode on Wednesday.
The announcement followed increasingly somber reports from officials, who have told relatives to brace for the worst.
Continue reading...Florida governor declares state of emergency in 15 counties, including site of collapsed condo
Tropical Storm Elsa was expected to make landfall in Cuba on Monday afternoon, after 180,000 people were evacuated from southern regions amid fears of heavy flooding.
Elsa is expected to bring tropical storm conditions to Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including Miami-Dade county, where the partially-collapsed Champlain Towers condominium was demolished with explosives on Sunday night.
Continue reading...More than 115 still unaccounted for after remaining structure is brought down
Three more victims were discovered in the rubble of the collapsed South Florida condo building on Monday after crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the last of the structure, allowing search efforts to resume.
Miami-Dade’s assistant fire chief, Raide Jadallah, told family members that the bodies of three more people had been found, raising the death toll to 27 people. More than 115 people remain unaccounted for.
Continue reading...Rescuers hope demolition will give them access to underground garage of Surfside building where victims may be buried
Rescuers were given the all-clear to resume work looking for victims at a collapsed South Florida condo building after demolition crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the building’s remains in a plume of dust.
Miami-Dade County’s mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, said the demolition went “exactly as planned” at about 10.30pm on Sunday.
Continue reading...The partially collapsed Miami-area condo has been demolished. Demolition crews set off explosives to bring down the damaged remaining portion of a collapsed South Florida condo where no one has so far been found alive. The demolition Sunday night was key to resuming the search for victims of the 24 June collapse, with the approaching Hurricane Elsa storm adding urgency to the project. So far, rescuers have recovered the remains of 24 people, with 121 still missing.
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