Category Archives: Florida

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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Florida Republican party chair under investigation for alleged sexual assault

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Christian Ziegler mentioned in heavily redacted police documents that includes the word ‘raped’, reports say

The chairman of Florida’s Republican party, Christian Ziegler, is reported to be under investigation for sexual battery – a potential political bombshell in a state that Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis call home.

According to heavily redacted police department documents, Ziegler is mentioned in the context of an “active criminal investigation” after an individual reported being “sexually battered” at home in Sarasota on 2 October.

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Florida’s revival of death penalty fuels rise in US executions in 2023

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Governor Ron DeSantis scheduled six of the country’s 25 executions this year amid his presidential election bid

The US saw a rise in executions in 2023 as a result of Florida’s revival of the death penalty, amid Ron DeSantis’s “tough on crime” campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

DeSantis scheduled six executions this year – the first time the state has judicially killed people since 2019 and the largest number in almost a decade. Florida also handed down five new death sentences this year, more than any other state.

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DeSantis v Newsom debate: governors clash on housing, taxes, immigration and more – as it happened

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Republican and Democrat to take to the stage in Alpharetta, Georgia, for debate moderated by Sean Hannity

Newsom has called out DeSantis’ lagging poll numbers.

“You’re trying to find migrants to play political games to get some news attention so you can out-Trump Trump, and by the way, how’s that going for you, Ron? You’re down 41 points in your own home state.”

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Florida state official lay collapsed for 24 minutes outside Ron DeSantis’s office

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Peter Antonacci, the chief elections fraud official, died after a heated meeting in the governor’s office and slumped in the hallway

Ron DeSantis’s chief elections fraud official collapsed after abruptly leaving a “contentious” meeting in the Florida governor’s office, then lay dead or dying for almost half an hour in the hallway outside until he was found, an investigation published Monday has revealed.

Previously unreported details of the September 2022 death of Peter Antonacci in the Tallahassee capitol building appeared on the website of the Florida Bulldog, an independent online watchdog of the state’s politics and government.

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Trump classified documents trial running about four months behind schedule

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Judge Aileen Cannon put off setting deadline for Trump to submit notice about what classified information he intends to use at trial

Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and obstructed justice is running about four months behind schedule after the federal judge presiding in the case in Florida declined to set a crucial filing deadline until at least next March.

The US district judge Aileen Cannon put off setting a deadline for Trump to submit a notice about what classified information he intends to use at trial – currently set for May – until after a hearing next year that almost certainly precludes the pre-trial process from finishing in time.

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Pro-Palestinian student group sues DeSantis over ‘deactivation’

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Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine say order by Republican governor violates their free speech rights

A pro-Palestinian student group in Florida is suing the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and the university system for trying to “deactivate” it in a manner that violates the students’ free speech rights.

The University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (UF SJP) filed the suit on Thursday in a federal court in Gainesville. It calls on the court to block what amounts to one of the first attempts in the US to silence a pro-Palestinian student group amid the roiling fallout of the Israel-Hamas war on American campuses.

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Support for Israel and verbal sparring propel fiery third Republican debate

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Candidates clash over Ukraine and immigration and grapple with abortion questions as Donald Trump holds rally nearby

The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and other foreign policy issues dominated Wednesday’s fiery third debate of Republican presidential hopefuls in Miami. Candidates pledged wholehearted support for Israel’s military response following last month’s Hamas attacks, and clashed over Ukraine, China and immigration.

The debate, minus Donald Trump, the runaway favorite for the party’s 2024 nomination who was hosting his own private rally elsewhere in the area, was a more bitter affair than its predecessors in Wisconsin and California. Lively verbal sparring sometimes regressed into insults, with Nikki Haley at one point calling one of her rivals “scum”.

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