About 100 residents of the James E. Scott Homes gathered last Monday in an auditorium near the Liberty City housing project to discuss how they might avoid eviction. Most lived with relatives who had been arrested for serious crimes, thus violating their lease agreements with Dade County’s Department of Housing…

Art Teele wanted agenda item 6(A)9 dispensed with, and quickly. While his colleagues on the Dade County Commission shuffled through papers at their June 21 meeting, the chairman was already calling for a vote on the item, which authorized the commission to award a five-year, $35 million security contract for…

A few years ago a small North Carolina cable company launched a bold experiment in television. For the first time in broadcast history, viewers were provided with around-the-clock coverage of…a fish tank. A fish tank, in point of fact, full of fish. Though FishTV received little critical acclaim (none, actually),…

For more than a year basketball fans have fretted over whether the Miami Heat will remain downtown when their lease with the Miami Arena expires in 1998. Heat management claims the arena, built for the franchise six years ago at a cost of $46 million to city taxpayers, is not…

Nick Carter, a visiting lecturer at Florida International University, extended an unusual invitation this past semester. “Spend the Summer in the Amazon,” read the flyers he distributed to interested students, and they went on to describe a five-week expedition into the “most pristine rain forest left on the planet” with…

Marie-Antoinette, a very rich French queen who owned many buildings in Paris, is said to have expressed her contempt for the poor by exclaiming, “Let them eat cake.” Thomas Kramer, a very rich German financier who owns many buildings in South Beach, apparently has devised his own bon mot for…

In the current climate of mounting rancor about the cost of health care, radio-show host Bill Faloon broadcasts a tempting message. “Ladies and gentlemen, I contend that the Food and Drug Administration, along with the pharmaceutical drug cartels they support, are engaged in a conspiracy to commit genocide against the…

At 4:30 p.m. on Friday, April 22, the jury empaneled in the case of State of Florida v. Raul Rodriguez returned a verdict. It was nothing like in the movies. The jurors had deliberated just four hours, including lunch, but they looked cranky and out of sorts as they filed…

A few short years ago Steve Simon was fretting over the sudden expansion of his new business venture. The Miami Beach entrepreneur had just launched a company specializing in a unique investment opportunity A buying life insurance policies at a discount from the terminally ill, then cashing in the policies…

To passersby, it might have looked like just another traffic altercation, the sort of roadside scuffling that has made Miami a famously dangerous place to drive. But the incident staged this past Wednesday morning on a rain-slicked Interstate 95, in which two motorists allegedly came to blows, was no random…

As hosts of a hugely popular radio talk show, Ron Diaz and Ron Bennington spend most mornings trying to be funny. Which to them tends to mean poking fun at the world in general, with particular emphasis on gays, blacks, and female genitalia. But the Rons, whose Ron and Ron…

To private security companies, the county contract for guard service along Metrorail and the Metromover reads like a dream. The five-year deal calls for more than 150 guards, and is valued at anywhere from five to six million dollars per year. With the expansion of the Metromover, security duties will…

The senator spoke, as befits a Democrat from Massachusetts, with the moral indignation of a Kennedy. “Today is really a case study in the way a bank can foster the sort of conspiracy that rips at the fabric of our values,” John F. Kerry warned, his small mouth frowning. Though…

You might think a lawyer facing a federal fraud investigation and possible disbarment would keep a low profile. Not James Dougherty. Employing the legal rationale that the best defense is a good offense, he filed two lawsuits against his accusers this past December. While the Miami Beach attorney refused numerous…

The image everybody saw — the one everybody was supposed to see – was this: Lewis Schaffel standing before a pack of reporters on the last Tuesday in February, assuring the good citizens of Dade County that he was going to do everything possible to ensure that the Miami Heat…

Two years ago on the day after Easter, Anne Lanzetta, once the mother of six children, now the mother of none, decided to end her life. She was watching soap operas at the time, drunk on vodka. A pack of single-edge razors, purchased from the drugstore down the street, sat…

Comprising more than four years of legal brawling, the Nogues case can stake undisputed claim as the most tortured child-abuse battle in Dade history. The affair stems from a 1989 allegation that Kendall physician Andres Nogues sexually abused his teenage stepdaughter, Aimee; following Aimee’s accusation, child-protection workers removed the seven…

Paul Withers remembered meeting Greg Blue at a Broward health club. After striking up a conversation in the sauna, Blue had confided that he was questioning his sexual orientation. A gay man himself, Withers listened sympathetically. In subsequent chats Blue would confess his sexual desire for Withers, who demurred, advising…

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Danish pianist and comedian Victor Borge has strictly avoided the tabloids. Unlike today’s music stars, the onetime Broadway luminary has not been accused of drug abuse, or child abuse, or even keyboard abuse. Despite his advanced age, Borge keeps his 85-year-old fingers nimble with…

The players who sit facing one another are called partners. They are pitted against the second set of partners. One player deals out all the cards, thirteen to each player. The object of the game is to win as many tricks as possible. A trick consists of each player, in…

There were four shots in all, the first two of which missed, the next two of which whizzed past a hastily shut bathroom door and into the goosebumped flesh of one John G. Bennett, well-to-do perfume salesman, veteran of the Great War, and within minutes, a fresh corpse. The year…

It wasn’t quite the night before Christmas; the holiday was still eight days off. But there was plenty of stirring in the upper reaches of the Metro-Dade Government Center on Friday, December 17. The bureaucrats were playing host to a most unlikely guest. He appeared on the 27th floor –…