News

Well everybody, I have a new assignment. I'm WLRN's Flawed-But-Fabulous beat reporter.

Miami-based shark researcher Neil Hammerschlag, whose work WLRN has covered in the past, is getting international attention with his latest study on the feeding habits of the ocean's most feared and misunderstood creature: the great white shark. 

We were invited to El Paso, Texas to cook at a gathering of ‘Oldways Preservation’, a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachussetts. ‘Oldways’ is one of the premier educational forums for focusing on healthy, culturally diverse and historically respectful eating. They put on conferences around the world and invite scientists, farmers, professors, chefs and food/wine media to promote positive lifestyles.

Join us for an hour of conversation about the week's news on The Florida Roundup, live at noon on WLRN.  Here's what we're watching:

Sen. Bill Montford, a Democrat from North Florida, doesn't like the Parent Empowerment in Education bill. It's much better known as the parent trigger bill.

“We know overall that the majority of students that are successful have parents that are involved,” Montford said. “It's critical to have parent support and involvement in the schools.”

Montford is CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.

Online shoppers in Florida may have to budget an extra 6 or 7 percent for their Web purchases if State Sen. Nancy Detert's sales tax bill (SB 316) makes it through the Legislature this year.

But they may get some of that back. She's making the legislation politically palatable by ensuring most of the revenue is returned in the form of tax breaks.

Behind the allure of bikinis and board shorts, Miami residents possess a sea of Star Trek costumes.

At least that's one conclusion you might draw from a recent article in Movodo, a real estate website.  The criteria used to determine the winners, while not scientific, is telling of the "nerd demographic" that our city has nurtured over the years.  Here is a quick rundown of the data used to determine the winners:

1969.  Seventh grade.  School trip to an amusement park.  While sitting with a friend in a shaded and secluded spot, I was surrounded by 5 or 6 kids who demanded our ride tickets.  When I stood to my 6-foot-2-inch frame and invited them to try and take my tickets, they decided to pick on someone else.

1975.  A high-school football linebacker decided to test the band major in the boys’ locker room.  Football linebacker had a sore nose.  Band major was unscathed.

As part of WLRN's Remix the News Challenge: Sun Life Stadium Edition, we're asking people (both expert and amateur) to help us hear what the stadium renovations debate sounds like to them.

Seven or eight years ago, during a sociology class at Miami-Dade College, the professor asked us to write a sociological history of our lives. It was the first time I thought long and hard about my life in the scheme of history, about the chain of events that brought me to my life in Miami as a Cuban-American.

For people of my generation, you simply could not avoid getting a crash course on Cuban politics and the dream of a free Cuba.  The reason we are here. We are here because of him. Because of Fidel.

The Florida House has passed a bill that would preempt local living wage ordinances and a similar version is making its way through the Senate.

The House measure would not allow local governments to mandate that their vendors pay employees more than a set minimum or provide them with special work-related benefits.

Here's a question we received from one of several hundred South Florida residents who attended a recent WLRN/Miami Herald Town Hall that was held just prior to the current legislative session.

This one comes from friend-of-WLRN Piyush Agrawal, a scholar, educator, businessman and philanthropist who lives in Weston:

"Why does Florida's constitution still allow the state to prohibit foreign citizens from owning real estate?"

Back from his recent trip to Havana, rapper Jay-Z quickly released a new song, Open Letter, in which he not only addresses controversy about the trip but speaks his mind in a way that is likely to stir up some of the deep passions Americans have toward Cuba and the communist island's tumultuous relationship with the United States.

Who's growing cocktails in their gardens? In a manner of speaking, Blackbird Ordinary and Broken Shaker are. The two Miami-Dade bars are growing plants they use to make simple syrups, infusions and garnishes. You can also grow your own "cocktail garden." Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist, visits Books & Books this Friday, and she'll be giving gardening tips.

A patient, we’ll call him John, called my office several years ago, frantic over the behavior of his son Aaron. “My son thinks there are helicopters circling our home, following his movements,” he said.

At my office the next day, dad was frantic. Aaron, who appeared disheveled and preoccupied, presented his experiences in a matter-of-fact style. He was certain some authority had singled him out to be placed under surveillance. He had no insight into the psychotic nature of his thinking.

Sea turtle nesting season is off and crawling this year with the first reported sea turtle nest in Boca Raton. The nest, made by a leatherback turtle, was recorded on Sunday morning in South Beach Park by Marine Turtle Specialists with the Boca Raton Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program based out of Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. 

Florida lawmakers are doing something they haven't done in years: adding money to state programs.

The recession sent the state into multi-billion-dollar budget shortfalls that led to big cuts in education and state government payrolls.

But this year, lawmakers have money to play with. Gov. Rick Scott has proposed a budget of more than $74 billion for the fiscal year that starts in July. That's about a $4-billion increase in spending over the current year.

So where did the extra money come from?

The work of the iconclastic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick is part of a retrospective this week at O Cinema in Wynwood.

South Florida native Rodney Ascher directed Room 237, a new documentary exploring the many interpretations of Kubrick's The Shining. Both films will be shown at O Cinema this week. 

Sure, logging a stint with South Florida's largest theater company's rigorous high school mentorship program looks good on a college application. But the Maltz Jupiter Theatre's Youth Artists' Chair is about much more than beefing up a resume. 

It may surprise some of you but I used to be quite shy when it came to going into restaurants and trying dishes and ingredients I had not known growing up, (as I had) in a small town in Northern Illinois. Now I am known for being “all in” when it comes to that… but we all have our ‘earlier selves’...don’t we?

This Sunday, Venezuelans return to the polls for yet another presidential election.

This vote is to replace the late Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer last month after winning re-election in October.

Interim president Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's former vice president, has tried to embody his former boss as he runs for the permanent job. The man who was defeated in the fall -- Miranda state Gov. Henrique Capriles -- is waging a more aggressive campaign.

Current climate change and sea level rise models indicate a very grim -- and water-logged -- future for South Florida and Miami in particular. But new imagery from researcher/artist Nickolay Lamm paints an almost hypnotic picture of these proposed realties for American cities like Miami, Boston, Washington D.C., and New York.

Marathon talks between the Miami Dolphins and Miami Dade County officials appear to have delivered a tentative deal.

In the agreement, the Dolphins would receive $7.5 million a year in hotel sales taxes to renovate Sun Life Stadium. The deal also stipulates that the Dolphins repay the county between $110 million and $120 million over the next 30 years. The team would face huge penalties if it fails to bring high-profile sporting events to the stadium, including four Super Bowls and four college football championship games.

For the third Saturday in a row an under-utilized patch of land in South Florida was transformed.

Throughout the month, WLRN will celebrate the Everglades in audio, visual, and written form. On Sunday, Florida's singular River of Grass got a national shout-out when the weekend edition of NPR's "All Things Considered" profiled an exhibition of recently "rediscovered" photographs of Seminole subjects living in the Everglades in 1910.

In her introduction to the story, host Jacki Lyden spoke of her annual spring pilgrimage to the Everglades: "There's nothing quite as evocative as the Florida of mangrove swamps and inhospitable terrain that you will find in the Seminole territories..."

Isaac Klein is standing arm-in-arm with his wife at the edge of three small steps. They lead down to a pond that surrounds Kenneth Treiester’s famous Sculpture of Love and Anguish.  

Klein shared his personal account of tragedy at the hands of the Nazis.  “I will tell you a little story, a sad story about myself,” he said. “I am a holocaust survivor and one of the twins of Dr. Joseph Mengele.”

P. Scott Cunningham is the founder of O, Miami, a biennial poetry festival in Miami organized by the University of Wynwood and with support from the Miami-based Knight Foundation. The festival is happening this month.

WLRN: Tell us a little bit about yourself. The real P. Scott Cunningham. 

Once upon a time, nurses were not allowed to take blood pressure – only the doctor could do that. Times change.

  But they haven’t changed enough. For 19 years, nurse practitioners in Florida have tried to get the right to practice to the full extent of our education and capability, which includes prescribing scheduled substances. So far, our efforts have been fruitless.