Inside the walls of Miami’s Federal Correctional Institution, Michael A. Stern typed out a desperate email to a longtime friend. The 56-year-old former Miami Beach developer, locked up for swindling an NFL player and collecting millions from fraudulent mortgages, was in panic mode. He’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer…
The Coral Gables Police Department, which patrols one of the safest, richest parts of Miami-Dade County, inexplicably has two military-grade, tank-like armored trucks called Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected trucks (MRAPS). The department got the truck from the U.S. Department of Defense, which outfits local cops with military-grade equipment for free, so long…
David Beckham’s crew said just about everything right last night. They’d pay for their new stadium entirely with their own money. Minority and locally owned contractors would have first dibs on the construction, and then the team would create at least 50 full-time jobs. They’d offset a lack of parking with new public transit options. It all sounded great.
In 2017, legalizing medical marijuana is not a crazy fringe position. To date, 29 states plus Washington, D.C., have all allowed sick people access to the drug. In November, an overwhelming majority of Florida voters agreed that the Sunshine State should also write legal medical pot into the state constitution…
As another hot AF summer commences in Miami, mosquitoes will once again be unavoidable. Testing is still underway as scientists work to develop a Zika vaccine, but in the meantime, public health officials’ best advice for preventing transmission seems to be just telling people not to get bit. In South…
Longtime Overtown residents and Miami historians will both tell you that highway overpasses destroyed the neighborhood. The formerly segregated community, which used to be called “Colored Town,” was full of renowned clubs, brightly colored homes, churches, and a thriving mix of Caribbean and African cultures that played itself out in city streets each day.
There comes a point in life when you grow tired of living in six-person apartments, swatting flies from the leftover pastelitos your roommate left congealing on the table, and cleaning up after the feral cats your other housemate insists on bringing into your tiny space. For a huge number of people, that desire comes right after college ends.
It’s been nearly three years since LeBron James left the Miami Heat for his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers. To be precise, it’s been 1,041 days, of which 715 were work days, not that we’re counting or anything. For Miami, it was supertough to see the greatest athlete on the planet leave our favorite team, but as time has passed, the pain has subsided.
Miami Beach’s moratorium on medical marijuana is officially coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be a whole lot easier to open a dispensary in the city. A little more than a week after state legislators gave up on passing rules for medical marijuana, city commissioners are set to consider regulations of their own — and they’re among the strictest rules debated anywhere in the state.
Here is a brief but not exhaustive list of negatives surrounding North Miami Beach’s plan to outsource its water utility to a massive private company: The FBI looked into the deal. So did the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office. The city’s own Public Utilities Commission did not sign off on the plan.
Mosquito season in Miami begins every year when the so-called black salt marsh mosquitoes, a buzzing cloud of bugs not known to carry the Zika virus or other tropical diseases, descends upon the area. The insects arrived a few weeks early this year — so, after sundown tonight, Miami-Dade County will send airplanes to blast naled, the controversial mosquito-killing pesticide, over wide portions of Homestead, the Redland, Florida City, Cutler Bay, and South Miami-Dade.
Look, not wanting to be associated with Donald Trump right now is totally understandable. After years of eating little but cake, overcooked flank steak, and McNuggets (and refusing to exercise due to a set of nutritional beliefs that appear to date from Elizabethan England), Trump’s brain seems so oxygen-starved that…
Records show that everyone in Vernon’s immediate family, from Ziel to his first wife to all three of his children, have accused him of domestic violence.
Miamians still don’t spend enough time worrying about global warming. Sure, we’ve got multiple city task forces dedicated to making sure Dade County isn’t underwater by the year 2100. But construction across town has continued to boom, to the point that it seems like real-estate developers believe they’re building in landlocked Colorado as opposed to a city that can adequately be described as “pre-Venice.”
The GOP health-care bill, which is opposed by virtually every major health-care and hospital group in the nation and could leave 24 million Americans without insurance, snuck through the U.S. House by just four votes earlier this month. In other words, without the backing of two Miami legislators — Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart — it wouldn’t have passed.
On April 3, the City of North Miami Beach began negotiating with a global engineering firm to take over the city’s water utility, which services close to 200,000 people in North Miami-Dade. Clean-water activists vehemently opposed the move, citing research that water utilities run by private companies tend to get much more expensive over time and typically provide services at “cheaper” rates by cutting staff or services.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Bruno Barreiro would like to be a congressman. He announced this past week he’s officially running as a Republican to replace longtime incumbent Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a moderate GOP congresswoman who will retire this year (and likely can’t stand dealing with Donald Trump’s carnival sideshow any more days than she legally must).
Miami Rep. Carlos Curbelo is demonstrably full of shit. According to the Miami Herald’s Patricia Mazzei, before Curbelo voted to repeal Obamacare last week, the U.S. congressman recorded two video statements — one to explain if he voted for the measure and one to explain if he voted against it.
Hepatitis C is not all that difficult to treat. A class of drug called direct-acting antivirals, or DAAs, has been proven at least 90 percent effective in curing the condition. Just 1 percent of the U.S. population typically lives with hep C — but that rate is far higher, up to 17 percent, among state and federal prisoners.
Three days after state lawmakers failed to pass a bill establishing rules for medical marijuana, Miami Springs Vice Mayor Bob Best shook his head at a council meeting Monday night as the city attorney explained it was time to extend the city’s moratorium on dispensaries.
When his family finally found him at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Holmer Avellan was sitting alone in his wheelchair and weeping. Spirit Airlines was supposed to have an employee escort him to his connection. Instead, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week, Avellan — who as result of a stroke is confined to a wheelchair, cannot use his arms, and struggles to communicate — was left alone in the airport for hours.
Hi, I’m Kristin. I’m the art director at Miami New Times, and I’m used to suffering in South Florida’s agonizing traffic. Most days I spend at least 40 minutes each way trapped in my car, slogging between my house in Broward County and our office in Wynwood.
