Politics

UPDATE 4:36 p.m. - The Florida Senate passed SB 1770 today, 24-15.

Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland, believes he has the votes to put his sweeping overhaul of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. up for a final vote in the Senate on Thursday.

Simmons was busy lobbying his colleagues over the proposal (SB 1770) during the floor session on Wednesday after the measure was postponed for the second time in nine days from being put up for a final Senate vote.

To create a tax break for the Miami Dolphins, Florida might eliminate a tax break for Miami’s foreign banks.

On Thursday, the state Senate is scheduled to vote on a bill allowing Florida to pay out $15 million a year in sales-tax rebates for stadium renovations, including a possible $3 million yearly subsidy for the Dolphins’ Sun Life Stadium. To pay for the new stadium dollars, the legislation would end a tax deduction reserved for international banking operations, which in Florida are clustered in the Miami area.

Around this time of year, a lot of people walk to achieve the highly coveted yellow-polka-dot-bikini body.

Lauren Book walks to help mend lives.

Book ended her fourth annual trek on Tuesday, walking 1,500 miles from Key West to Tallahassee.

She was joined on the last mile of the trip by an army of supporters in blue shirts adorned with footprints and the words “Walk In My Shoes 2013.”

Join us for an hour of conversation about the week's news on The Florida Roundup, live at noon on WLRN:

The Florida Legislature is considering big changes to Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

The state-run insurer is supposed to be the last resort for property owners in high risk areas who can't get coverage in the private insurance market.

Citizens Property has about 1.3 million policy holders.

The company is trying to reduce its risk by raising premiums and sending hundreds of thousands of customers back to the private market.

It's been a busy week in Washington, D.C.

As lawmakers react to the Boston Marathon bombings, parts of the Capitol had to be evacuated after suspicious letters addressed to U.S. Senator Roger Wicker and President Barack Obama were intercepted at mail screening facilities.

While dealing with that scare, members of Congress are getting their first look at a proposal for immigration reform put forth by the so-called "Gang of Eight" Senators including Florida's freshman Republican Marco Rubio.

In the mid ‘70s, I had recently left the Army and started working as an emergency physician at a hospital in Huntsville, Alabama. It was a Wednesday, church night, and I was working the evening shift.

A woman in her thirties was brought in with a bullet wound in her leg. She told us that her boy friend had shot her during an argument. The wound didn't look serious; bleeding was minimal. It appeared to have been caused by a 32- or 38-caliber hand gun. I placed her in a room, ordered an X-ray, and sat at the physician desk to write up the chart.

Nicolas Maduro, heir to the late Hugo Chavez, appears to have won Venezuela's presidential election.

But it's by a margin so thin that opposition candidate Henrique Capriles is challenging the legitimacy of the results, demanding a full recount.

Maduro, acting president since Chavez's March 5 death, held a double-digit advantage in opinion polls just two weeks ago, but electoral officials said he received just 50.7 percent of the votes compared to 49.1 percent for Capriles. With nearly all ballots counted, that's a difference of about 300,000 votes.

Cuban American musician Pitbull has come out with his own song about Cuba just days after rapper Jay-Z released an "Open Letter" about a controversial trip to the communist island with wife Beyonce.

Several ecologically-significant tracts of public land in Palm Beach County will go under the microscope this month as a state agency continues its multi-region assessment of state-owned lands throughout South Florida.