Tom Hudson

Thousands of college students are crowding South Florida beaches as they normally do this time of year for spring break.

Most spring breakers land on Miami Beach, but the city is not happy with what it's seeing. According to the Miami Herald, there have been beach brawls,  heavy drinking and injured police officers.

Lake Okeechobee may be a natural feature of the Florida landscape, but politics also come into play when it comes to it.

More than $1 billion of federal support has been spent to help restore the Everglades and fix the plumbing around the lake. That money, along with other money for the Army Corps of Engineers, starts flowing from the House Appropriations Committee.

The Florida International University community marked Friday one year since the devastating bridge collapse that killed six people — including a student and a bridge worker.

The school held a memorial service, and a moment of silence took place at 1:47 p.m., the time of the collapse.

Eduardo Padrón's first role at Miami Dade College was student. In August, he will resign from the role he has played for the past 24 years -- president of the school.

As he prepares to leave in August, state funding for state colleges is under pressure, the low unemployment rate has reduced enrollment, the nation's debate over immigration has affected students, and the adjunct faculty is voting on whether to unionize.

A conflict last fall over union recruitment at Miami Dade College resulted in multiple municipal police officers pointing guns at a labor organizer on the school's campus in Doral.

The Sept. 13, 2018, incident was one of several alleged dustups that have led the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to file a complaint against the college charging unfair labor practices, a claim that is still pending under Florida's Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC).

Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., who represents Hialeah and is chairman of the Senate Education committee, says South Florida charter schools shouldn’t be excluded from money generated by voter-approved property tax hikes.

“Those referendum that say they’re going to be used for public school teachers should go to all public school teachers, not only union school teachers,” Diaz told WLRN Thursday.

Odilon Almeida was 25 when he first walked into a Western Union. He was working for Colgate Palmolive in Toronto and wanted to send money to his nephew back in Brazil for his birthday.

Almeida wasn't impressed with the experience. "I have a very big Latin name," he remembers, "and they were not used to that."

Today, Almedia runs global money transfers for Western Union from Miami. The division generates 80 percent of the company's revenues -- over $4 billion per year.

The 2019 legislative session begins Tuesday. Over 60 days, lawmakers will tackle the states’ biggest issues, including school safety, education and health care.

Juanes. Luis Fonsi. Maluma. 

They’re some of the artists invited to perform at Friday's Venezuela Aid Live concert in Cúcuta, Colombia, on the border with Venezuela. The show aims to benefit the effort to move tons of humanitarian aid into Venezuela on Saturday.

A year after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Robert Runcie says he wants to make Broward County Public Schools the safest in the nation.

Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said he wants schools in his county to be the safest in the nation.

His pledge comes one year after 17 students and staff members were murdered, and another 17 were injured, during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Tensions continued mounting in Venezuela. The issue even came up at President Trump’s State of the Union speech.

“We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime,” he said on Tuesday.

Familiar battlelines are being drawn over the biggest pieces Florida's state budget -- healthcare and education.

Republicans plan on going after healthcare regulations they contend drive up the cost of care. Democrats say, after three failed attempts, Medicaid expansion returns as their priority.