Last week, Stephen Bittel, a Miami real-estate magnate and major political donor, made the first play in a House of Cards-esque political drama he hopes ends with his running Florida’s Democratic Party. First, though, he needed to secure a humbler role as a Miami-Dade County state committeeman, which he did in a quiet midnight vote.
Natasha Joseph’s almond-shaped eyes brim with tears as she cradles her pregnant belly and recounts the horror of her journey to the United States. There were the dust-choked buses, the corrupt cops, and the thieving coyotes. Some stretches of Central America were so perilous that walking in the dead of night was the only option.
For years, independent journalist and activist Grant Stern has fought Walmart’s plans to build a sprawling store on North Miami Avenue in midtown Miami, near nightlife hot spots such as Gigi and Bardot. Stern has filed lawsuits against the project, helping to stall the plan since June.
Charles Hashim captured Miami as it began to shift from a sleepy Southern town to the international city it is today.
Miamians with cars are forced to bend over backward each day to avoid the nonstop gridlock that is downtown traffic during the day. Trying to travel between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.? Good luck getting to Doral in less than an hour. Ditto driving across the MacArthur Causeway.
Gary Catronio stands in the middle of his daughter Marisa’s small bedroom inside a tidy Coral Springs home. A portly New Yorker with a head of white hair and a trimmed white beard, he is careful not to bump or knock anything over. He points to a pile of women’s…
Former South Florida Congressman Allen West is meeting with Donald Trump today, for the second time in seven days. To put things mildly, this is less than ideal. West has a demonstrable hatred of Muslims: He was kicked out of the military a decade ago for psychologically torturing an innocent Iraqi cop, spent his two-year congressional career calling Islam a threat to the West, and Saturday retweeted a meme calling for the “extermination” of Muslims.
The rumors spiked across Twitter on Friday: David Beckham was finally ready to pull the plug on his tortured attempts to bring Major League Soccer back to Miami. Instead, one soccer writer suggested, he was turning his sights to the more pliable city of Las Vegas.
For nearly 20 years, Florida has planned to buy back land from Big Sugar companies south of Lake Okeechobee to help restore clean water flow to the Everglades. The plan is nearly universally backed by scientists and climate experts, who blame sugar companies for pumping pollutants into the state water supply, ruining Lake O, and occasionally turning the coasts into green sludge.
Just in time for the holiday season, two Miami-Dade County Police officers this week were filmed handcuffing a frail, legless woman, dropping her on the ground, and letting her lie on the asphalt as she screamed for help, all because the woman panhandled a single dollar outside a Chevron gas…
On September 1, a Miami-Dade Police detective walked into Kareta Kafe on Bird Road in West Miami-Dade and sat down at the bar. He ordered a beer, which the bartender happily handed over. He then ordered $20 worth of cocaine, and the bartender gave him that too.
The strange saga of Alberto Chang-Rajii — the tech guru who wowed Miami with an elaborate backstory that turned out to be totally made-up — took an even stranger turn earlier this year when he fled to the tiny isle of Malta as his business imploded and criminal charges were filed in his native Chile.
On December 8, 2014, 60-year-old Charlie Bradley drove from Sarasota to Miami for a meeting of Friends of Miami Marine Stadium, a group that has sought to restore the historic, graffiti-covered structure on Virginia Key. Walking around the stadium that Monday, Bradley — a retired schoolteacher who grew up in Miami —pulled out his cell phone and began recording video of the colorful graffiti that adorned the walls. That’s when a police officer stopped Bradley and threatened to throw him in jail.
Mary Luis Brown, a disabled woman missing both her legs, was caught panhandling for a single dollar at a Chevron gas station this past Saturday when two Miami-Dade Police officers tried to arrest her. Thanks to a bystander’s footage of two cops handcuffing her and dropping her to the ground, that confrontation went viral.
America lost a hero Thursday. John Herschel Glenn Jr. is dead. He was 95. Doctors said he had been ill for some time. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth, and he later became the oldest human to fly in space. He resonated with Americana — God, family, country…
Few energy projects in recent memory were more blatantly damaging and offensive than the Dakota Access Pipeline. After regulators worried the pipeline was too dangerous to pass near Bismarck, North Dakota, the pipeline was re-routed — straight into sacred Native American land. After the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe basically stood…
Last month, a truly heroic traveler strolled into Miami International Airport, strode up to the TSA security line, and whipped out a gold-plated gas mask spiked with high-caliber ammunition. Turns out, as the TSA notes, “post-apocalyptic, bullet-adorned gas masks” are not allowed aboard airplanes. Who knew?
Miami Beach — a paradise for both tourists and the people who cater to tourists — remains one of the most repressive cities in America when it comes to room-sharing. In most of the city’s residential zones, short-term rentals have long been illegal. Lately, the city has dropped the hammer on Airbnb users, jacking up fines to $20,000 a pop this year. The city has levied more than $3.2 million in fines since March.
Mary Luis Brown is missing both of her legs. She’s also 52 years old, gets around in a wheelchair, and isn’t armed with any kind of weaponry. It’s hard to imagine any situation where she’d be a serious threat to trained police officers. So why did two Miami-Dade cops…
Famed Miami boat captain Mark “the Shark” Quartiano was taking clients fishing around 8 a.m. when he noticed something bobbing in the water and turned back. His crew fished out a package he believes contains cocaine or cash.
Women make up more than half the population of Miami-Dade County. They also make up half the world’s general population, and, above all else, are human beings. We somehow still need to repeat that last part in 2016. But according to a report released yesterday, women in Miami-Dade are doing objectively worse than their male counterparts…
Florida is basically one gigantic hunk of porous limestone with pythons, buildings, and Medicare frauds sunning themselves on top. Underneath is South Florida’s main source of drinking water, the Biscayne Aquifer, a pristine pool of underground liquid that’s become increasingly susceptible to pollution and saltwater intrusion.
