News

Hitting the malls on Thanksgiving night is becoming more common in South Florida. Stores are offering more than sales to entice shoppers away from the dinner table. 

Details from WLRN-Miami Herald News. 

Long before there were TV cooking networks, there were cooking segments and Art Ginsberg as "Mr. Food" was arguably the most popular one in the country.

An internal investigation of Citizens Property Insurance in Florida, a government-run home insurer of last resort and the state's largest insurer, found that the company has a sordid history of sex scandals, cover-ups and big spending. 

Recently, Citizens has gotten a lot of scrutiny because it has been consistently hiking up premiums or removing coverage from large numbers of people in the state.

However, a recent investigation found that the problems with the 10 year-old not-for-profit insurer starts with the people running the show over there in Tallahassee.

UR1 Music & Arts Festival is following in line with the newest trend for South Florida music festivals.  

It goes like this: announce a huge show with a killer line up.  The people get hyped, and buy tickets.  Then, with the festival just a few days away, make a big announcement.

The show has been canceled.

Florida Senate President Don Gaetz was sworn in Tuesday along with his plans to move ethics reform forward in the  Legislature this year.

Gaetz has said in the past that he will make anti-corruption measures for state lawmakers a focus of his leadership in the Senate. In the past, bills aimed at passing ethics reform have failed in the Florida Senate.

Howevever, Gaetz has already made good on his promise to change ethics rules by changing some Florida Senate rules.

A non-profit investigative news site found an interesting link between whom a state voted for in this election and the rate of traffic deaths there.

According to FairWarning, a state that voted for President Obama in this past election (a blue state) is likely to have fewer deathly traffic accidents compared with  a state that went for Mitt Romney in November (a red state).

The news outlet also reports that there is really no concrete explanation as to why there is this red state-blue state divide when it comes to traffic deaths.

The shrieks of horror and howls of grief are dying away on Capitol Hill as defeated representatives and senators accept their fates and pack for the long ride home to find real jobs.

Fifteen-year-old Jordyn Alexander Howe boarded the school bus with a loaded gun in his backpack. He pulled it out, it went off and fatally wounded fellow student Lourdes Guzman-DeJesus, 13.

Miami-Dade police say the shooting on a charter school bus in Homestead was an accident. Howe was charged with manslaughter and carrying a concealed firearm. He spent the night at the Miami-Dade Juvenile Assessment Center.

There's more trouble for state-run Citizens Property Insurance.

Investigators look into lavish spending, misuse of resources and other ethical lapses.

Gov. Rick Scott has asked his Chief Inspector General to investigate Citizens after all four people in the company's ethics office were fired.

Miami-Dade police have charged a 15-year-old boy with manslaughter in the shooting death of a 13-year-old girl on a school bus.

Listen to the file above for details.

The Allen West - Patrick Murphy Congressional standoff is now over. The one-term congressman came close to winning the new District 18 that he had to move to run in, but not close enough, so he conceded today on Fox News. West maintains there were enough ballot irregularities to warrant a close look. And there is no disputing there were voting problems in St. Lucie County. The outgoing GOP Congressman gave no definitive plans for his future. Winner Patrick Murphy has already been through freshman orientation in Washington. 

Even though activists were sure earned sick pay would be an easy fight in Miami-Dade, a proposal that required employers to give earned sick pay to all workers died on first reading in a county commission meeting Tuesday.

The Miami Herald's Patricia Mazzei tweeted the vote count:

Earned sick time legislation at Miami-Dade commission failed 8-4. In favor: Edmonson, Jordan, Monestime, Suarez.

The Marlins latest fire sale is official: Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig approved the trade of 5 of the team’s top players.  

Good reading for your holiday plane ride: Businessweek's studious indictment of the Transportation Security Administration and the entire post-9/11 homeland security apparatus.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL, gave reporters some details about what the GOP version of the Dream Act might look like recently.

Many of the service workers at South Florida's busiest airport for Thanksgiving holiday travel say they can't afford a traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year.

About 60 members of a local airport workers' union held a rally Monday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to try to persuade airline contractors to pay them higher wages.

The Workers

The United States Southern Command has a new boss. 

Florida's Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that five of the country's biggest mortgage companies are forking over $3.6 billion dollars for "foreclosure abuses and unacceptable mortgage servicing practices," which spurred the state's foreclosure crisis.

The race for a contested South Florida congressional seat is finally over.

Allen West issued a statement early Tuesday morning conceding the race for the 18th Congressional seat to Democrat Patrick Murphy.

Housing is on the upswing in South Florida.

Sales and prices for existing homes are way up from a year ago.

Congressman Allen West has given up. According to an early post from Politico, the one-term Tea Party favorite from South Florida has acknowledged there's no way he can overcome Democratic opponent Patrick Murphy's 1,904-vote victory margin in District 18, which spreads over St. Lucie, Martin and Palm Beach counties.

Richard DeNapoli, the Chairman of the Broward Republican Party, has announced he will not run for a second term.

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Jordan is going to introduce an ordinance on Tuesday mandating earned sick pay for workers in the county.

The Florida Book Awards (FBA) panel had it all—brilliant readings, thought-provoking discussion, and a harmonica solo. It featured four of the 2011 award winners. Leonard Nash, himself an FBA winner and then judge, introduced the writers with a combination of standard credentials and lesser known facts.

Lynne Barrett (general fiction award) read from her story collection Magpies. In "One Hippopotamus," a story comes to light and a romance unfolds thanks to a so-Florida event—a thunderstorm-induced power outage.

Miami New Times scored an interview with Anne Onymous, the reputed maker of the 47 percent video that so catastrophically damaged the Mitt Romney presidential campaign.

Republican Congressmen Allen West is still refusing to concede the election to his Democratic opponent, Patrick Murphy, after an attempted recount by the St. Lucie County Canvassing Board this weekend.

U. S. Senator Marco Rubio spent the weekend in Iowa where he starred at the 66th birthday party of Republican governor Terry  Branstad and, as many believe, soft-launched a GOP 2.0 presidential campaign.

As Politico reports this morning, the Republicans are losing no time putting GOP 1.0 in their rear-view mirror.

Statewide media consultant Ron Sachs went on a Facebook rant after Florida companies were skipped over for a local government contract in Tallahassee.

“The Tallahassee Airport leadership outsourced - without competitive bidding - a web development contract for about $23-thousand to an Atlanta-based company.”

Democrat Patrick Murphy has declared victory in a contested South Florida congressional race. But Republican incumbent Allen West still isn't giving up.