On August 2, a group called Accountable Miami-Dade sent the county two U-Haul trucks packed full of signed petitions demanding a public vote on new campaign finance laws that would make it harder for wealthy contractors and lobbyists to donate wads of money to politicians. Two weeks later, those 127,000 petitions…
In Miami’s tourism-centered economy, any crisis that might lead to visitors intentionally avoiding the metro area could quickly snowball into a full-scale economic catastrophe. Thankfully — so far at least — the zika virus outbreak doesn’t seem to be having that effect. A study released yesterday by the University of Florida…
Contrary to the crotchety reporters who say millennials are immature slouches who hate responsibility, plenty of youngsters want to own homes — they simply can’t afford them. Especially in Miami. Case in point: A study released yesterday by the housing-research website Zumper found that 93 percent of Miamians say they’d…
A lot of weird stuff happens in Florida. It’s a state where, apparently, you can’t work as a pizza delivery driver, bank teller, or politician without getting accosted by total creeps and weirdos at any hour of the day. So, every Friday, we’re here to remind you that Florida will…
Judd Allison, the owner of 305 Films and the Wynwood event space Toejam Backlot, was already upset about Gov. Rick Scott’s handling of Miami’s Zika outbreak. And then he read about Miami-Dade County Mosquito Control experts spraying naled, a controversial pesticide linked to disorders in fetuses. During a meeting between Wynwood…
Even for a shameless opportunist like Marco Rubio, agreeing to host an event by a virulently anti-gay conservative group in Orlando later this month went beyond the pale. After all, Rubio had used the massacre of gay patrons at Pulse Nightclub as an excuse to get back into his Senate…
When the Centers for Disease Control tried to spray Naled, a controversial pesticide used to kill mosquitoes, over Puerto Rico to stamp out the Zika virus last month, the island’s residents erupted. The city’s streets filled with protesters, and Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro García Padilla forced the CDC to send back…
To Hillary Clinton supporters, Donald Trump is a boogeyman, a know-nothing Kremlin stooge, and a borderline fascist salivating at the idea of raining nuclear bombs down on anyone who insults him online. To Trump fans, Clinton is an oligarch run wild, a conspiratorial murderer, and a war criminal. Tension between…
With another medical marijuana legalization vote coming this November, legal weed opponents have spread a ton of misinformation over the last few months. The idea that pot is ten times as powerful now as it used to be? Straight-up lie. The rumor that marijuana caregivers will turn into “dope dealers…
Humans found the first instance of the Zika virus in Uganda’s Zika Forest in 1947. But, notably, the original Zika carrier wasn’t a person — it was a rhesus monkey. Since then, scientists have found the virus in all sorts of primates, including capuchin monkeys in Zika-affected towns in Brazil…
Long before the “Thanks, Obama” meme was a glimmer in your racist aunt’s eye, people were blaming things on Hillary Clinton. From Vince Foster to Benghazi to Emailgate, Hillary is old hat at battling away accusations by now. But there’s one thing that we actually can blame on Clinton today: She’s coming…
When Wikileaks published a trove of hacked Democratic National Committee emails in July, website founder Julian Assange promised the world he’d upend the 2016 presidential election. That hasn’t quite happened, but Assange did get to at least claim one politician as a trophy: The document dump forced Rep. Debbie Wasserman…
Zika panic is real, and it’s got Miami in its insect-like pincers. Your boss smells like DEET. Your friends have canceled their trips to come see you. And any pregnant people you know are, understandably, very worried. All this concern has sadly led to some folks spreading serious misinformation about…
Bad idea: Kicking any Muslim person off a plane just for being Muslim. Worse idea: Kicking a Muslim journalist with a large internet following off a plane just for being Muslim. Niala Mohammad, a reporter for the government-funded outlet Voice of America, said via Facebook on Wednesday that she, along with…
As an American, you have a right to know if the food you’re eating or the mosquitoes biting you have been genetically modified. As a Floridian, you also apparently have the right to ignore the opinions of thousands of scientists and scream your dang head off whenever anyone confronts you…
Since the 1980s, Miami residents have been able to judge their city’s relative economic health just by counting the number of cranes in the sky. More than 10? Congrats, the city’s in the midst of a housing bubble. Zero? Recession. Right now, the downtown Miami skyline is absolutely flooded with…
A whole lot of weird stuff happens in Florida. Every Friday, we’re here to help you take a load off, procrastinate at work, and sort through the weirdest news of the week. Among other items this week: A man got so pissed at a flamingo — a real flamingo, not…
After going door-to-door testing people, spraying the entire neighborhood by air, and demanding as many people as possible drain and cover and sources of standing water in their homes, the Florida Health Department announced today that a 10-block area of northwest Wynwood — a small portion of the “active transmission…
Before boarding her flight from Chicago to Miami in August 2014, five-foot-tall Nima Ayyash, then 51, found she couldn’t lift her carry-on bag into the overhead compartment in her American Airlines plane on her own. So, she asked a flight attendant to pack it for her. The plane landed at…
In the vast majority of controversial shootings by police, the victims have not lived to tell their side of the story. Thankfully, Charles Kinsey survived after getting shot by North Miami SWAT Officer Jonathan Aledda in July. Now, he’s going to tell his side of the story in court. Yesterday, Kinsey…
When the Miami Herald asked State Rep. Daphne Campbell in 2012 about $145,000 in tax liens the Internal Revenue Service had placed against her, Campbell denied that the liens even existed. “I don’t have no tax liens,” she told the paper, despite the fact that the Herald had obtained federal documents that said…
After a stream of controversial police killings, most large forces have adopted body cameras to help monitor their own cops. But in the scramble, critics say many have also started using the equipment without enacting the rules to properly use them. When Miami Police started testing body-cameras in 2014, the…
