News

Usually you become a rap superstar and then get into crazy shenanigans on South Beach. It sure is a bummer that a hooker almost bit off Vince Shlomi’s tongue, because beforehand, he obviously had a golden flow…

Swine flu officially hit my Facebook news feed late yesterday, as a status update from a contact in Miami came up indicating he’d just been tested for the virus. Then I saw the Herald was reporting there are 20 “suspect” cases in Miami-Dade. Add to this the report that a…

  Hello, Kitty  I am a divorced Caucasian/Jewish straight dude, new to Miami Beach, and I have a problem. I am in my late 40s — an age when men are supposed to be making serious dough. But I changed careers a few years ago and have a couple of…

Liberty City Shootings Raise Questions

The Guantánamo torture memos were released last week, allegedly ushering in a new age of government transparency. Riptide aims to cut the crap on a local level, too, beginning with our own self-aggrandizing cops. Nearly every police department has some warm and friendly motto to adorn the sides of its…

“Craigslist Killer” Headlines Threaten to Overshadow Craig Newmark’s Memorial Speech for Victim

On a treeless cement slab of Northwest Miami-Dade, a swarm of spruced-up families filters into New Harvest Missionary Baptist Church. In a cluttered office at the building’s rear, Terry Durham sits quietly on a folding chair, his knee bobbing anxiously. He’s dressed with flamboyant confidence in white alligator skin boots…

Broke Miami boat owners sink their ships

FIU Spends Big Bucks on Bureaucrats

After we kind of trashed the poor Kardashian clan and its latest attempt at reality television, a dear friend of ours reminded us that one Kardashian, and one Kardashian alone, is actually somewhat reminiscent of a real human being. That would be Khloe, apparently. And, truth be told, she came…

After four years of basically taking it lying down, Wackenhut — the firm contracted to provide security for Miami-Dade Transit — came out swinging this afternoon at a press conference at the InterContinental, announcing a $20 million lawsuit against the county, which has basically accused the Palm Beach Gardens company…

Queen fight! Attention, everyone, Queen fight! No, seriously: It’s South Beach’s reigning queen versus the self-proclaimed “Queen of All Media” fighting over a beauty queen. Miami’s premier drag queen and local paragon of sophistication and elegance, Elaine Lancaster, took to Steve Rothaus’s Herald Blog today to give Perez Hilton a videotaped…

The fine country of Austria reported its first case of swine flu today according to the World Health Organization. The patient, a 28-year-old woman, who recently returned from a trip to Guatemala to visit her parents, is expected to recover. The woman flew from Guatemala to an airport in Mexico…

If you’re caught with five grams of crack cocaine, you get a mandatory five-year prison sentence. To get the same sentence for possession of powdered cocaine, you’d have to have 500 grams of the stuff. Clearly there’s a disparity, one that tends to harshly punish lower-income, mostly African-American crack users,…

A quick followup of sorts to our post Monday highlighting the Obama administration’s inaction on HIV/AIDS during his first 100 days in office. Yesterday it was announced the president has chosen Dr. Eric Goosby to head PEPFAR. Goosby served in the Clinton administration as deputy director of the National AIDS…

Depending on who you ask, swine flu is either the 12 Monkeys virus come to scour the earth of humanity, or it’s an overhyped limited-scope bug that the media has recklessly sensationalized. Though we’re inclined to believe it’s the latter- – those media sure are scumbags — we still don’t…

Local Carnival Cruises is canceling all of its stops in Mexico, because of swine flu. [CBS4] Eugenio Montoya handled the finances of a major Colombian drug trafficking outfit. He was sentenced to 30 years in jail in a Miami court yesterday. [BBC] Cutler Bay, Doral, and Miami Gardens may finally…

Earlier today WFTV in Orlando reported that a case of the dreaded swine flu has been reported in Florida. Turns out they may have jumped the gun in a major way. WFTV? More like WTF, uh V. An official at Florida Hospital in Orlando sent an email to a reporter…

Yesterday, a veteran Miami-Dade prosecutor told New Times he thinks a story by CBS4’s Jim DeFede that aired last week triggered a drive-by shooting in Liberty City on Sunday that left five young men wounded.Today, the video report in question appears to have disappeared from CBS4’s website, although a written…