Phil Latzman

It's been three years since an earthquake leveled Port au Prince and shook all of us indirectly in South Florida, home to the nation's largest population of Haitian-Americans.

Miami Herald reporter Jacqueline Charles remembers January 12, 2010, well.

That day, Charles was in the process of writing a story about Haiti's latest mess, a controversy over the government taking a loan from Venezuela to help the country rebuild an airport.

Ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez won't be able to attend his scheduled swearing-in this week. But his congressional allies have voted to allow the ceremony to be delayed while he recovers from his cancer surgery in Cuba. 

It's estimated that more than 100,000  Venezuelans now live in South Florida legally and many more are undocumented residents who left their homeland to flee Chavez’s leftist regime.

Perhaps you've noticed South Florida awash in a sea of green and crimson these past few days.

The visitors are fans of Alabama and Notre Dame, which meet to decide college football's 2012 national champion tonight at Sun Life Stadium.

No matter the color of the jersey, or where they are from, no one is happier to see them than local tourism officials.

For Broward County, it means an additional 25,000 to 30,000 visitors, some for the very first time.

How are Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Florida Gov. Rick Scott faring on PolitiFact Florida's Truth-O-Meter? Surprisingly similar, even though the just-reelected Gimenez remains popular, and Scott very unpopular.

The New Year marked 54 years since the Castro Revolution in Cuba. Since then, there have been 11 U.S. Presidents. Will 2013 finally be a year of major change on the island? Will Cuban-American relations improve?

We brought together two experts to look into their crystal balls, El Nuevo Herald reporter Juan Tamayo and Dr. Andy Gomez of the University of Miami's Institute of Cuban-American studies.

Editor's note: We've been re-airing some of our favorite stories of 2012. This one is from November.  

In my 22 years living in South Florida, if there's one establishment I can't enough of--it's Tobacco Road.

In 2012, Florida remained the state that can't vote straight. 

President Barack Obama sent Florida's GOP leaders in to shock by winning the state in November, and some Democrats followed his coattails to make the state slightly bluer. But while licking their wounds, Republicans remain in firm control of Florida's agenda.

2012 may be remembered in Latin American for what didn't happen more than for what actually did, especially in Venezuela and Cuba.

VENEZUELA

The year began ominously for Venezuelan nationals living in South Florida.  The U.S. State Department expelled the country's consul-general, alleging she was involved in a cyber-terrorism plot. In January, Venezuela's Miami consulate was shut down by President Hugo Chavez, who was facing a tough reelection campaign. 

From being detained by Cuban authorities, to experiencing the horror of dead bodies in post-earthquake Haiti, to reporting on a Honduran leader who was ousted in his pajamas, Frances Robles has been all over the hemisphere in her 19 years with the Miami Herald.

Former U. S. Sen. George LeMieux was once Charlie Crist's closest confidant as his chief of staff, so valued by the ex-governor that it was Crist who appointed him to fill out the term of the retiring Mel Martinez in the Senate in 2009. 

But things have changed drastically in three years.

After an unsuccessful attempt at being elected to a Senate seat last year in the Republican primary, the Broward native is now chairman of the Gunster Law Firm in Fort Lauderdale.

The Miami Dolphins will be marking the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest feats in sports history this weekend.

Their perfect season remains intact, and that's cause for celebration.

In 1972, The Dolphins went a flawless 17 and 0 on their way to a title in Super Bowl VII, and four decades later they remain the last NFL team to make it through an entire season unscathed.

2012 will be forever remembered as the year of Hurricane Sandy.

The storm did over $50-billion in damage in the Northeast, playing out a worst case scenario exacerbated by sea-level rise. In low-lying South Florida, the problem of rising seas is more apparent than ever, the issue has recently come front and center in planning for the future.

Talk about your good timing.

Sand dunes and steel sheets driven underground will be used as temporary fixes to shore up a portion of Fort Lauderdale beach and State Road A1A that have been overrun by the ocean.

The $4.5-million-dollar plan was announced at a public meeting Monday night, the Sun Sentinel reports today, and it will serve as a band-aid until a permanent fix is found.

Broward Mayor Kristen Jacobs says it's the best they can do to deal with the problem in the short term.

Leaders from throughout the region meet in Jupiter later this week for the fourth annual Regional Climate Leadership Summit, and the timing couldn't be better. Or worse, depending on your perspective. 

Pounding surf and high tides from Hurricane Sandy's passage have put the issue front and center, especially in Fort Lauderdale.

After  helping direct a successful re-election campaign, a top Democratic official says President Obama wants South Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to stay on as party chair.

The Atlantic Hurricane season comes to its merciless end today.

It concludes in a busier-than-expected year punctuated by one of the most damaging storms on record, Hurricane Sandy.

When it began, forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a near-normal season of anywhere between 9 and 15 named storms.

The final number turned out to be 19, with most systems--including the season's only major hurricane, Michael-- spinning out harmlessly in the ocean and posing little threat to land.

Things are changing in Tallahassee, but how much?

Republicans have lost their supermajority control of the Florida Legislature after Democrats made modest gains in both chambers in this month's elections.

What will that mean for future policy decisions and the state's unpopular governor Rick Scott?  

Why will 2013 be his most important year, and is Florida's former Gov. Charlie Crist breathing down Scott's neck? Will Crist go after his old job?

A small group of fans recently gathered at the Marlins' new half-billion dollar stadium in Miami's Little Havana to protest in both in Spanish and in English. They want new owners after the team's latest purge: the trade of All-Stars Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson to the Blue Jays in return for seven mostly unknown players.

The move, which came after the team finished in last place, will save the Marlins more than $160 million in future payroll obligations. It comes within a year of the Marlins' move into their new, mostly taxpayer-funded stadium.

The  Miami Book Fair International is happening through the weekend , and all week, we're hearing from some of the Florida authors appearing at Miami-Dade College for the fair.

11/09/12 - This week on the Florida Roundup.  The election is over, but again Florida is the state that can't vote straight.  Long lines for early voting and on election night in Miami-Dade leave voters frustrated, and Florida blank on the electoral map for days.  Even without the state's results President Obama wins reelection and Florida becomes bluer - with Democrats making gains at the state and national level, while Republicans take a hit.

 While many waited for hours to vote today in Miami-Dade, for some, voting was breeze in parts of Broward. Wait times of an hour or more had evaporated to virtually nothing by lunchtime, when Constance Ann-Getchoff arrived to vote, happy that she had waited until election day, and didn't stand in line toearly vote. "When I saw the lines, I'm glad I didn't.

We are in the homestretch of what will be another historic election that has the eyes of the nation on Florida.

Recently, PolitiFact Florida's Aaron Sharockman talked to WLRN's Phil Latzman about some of PolitiFact's final fact checks on races for Senate and President here in the biggest battleground state of all.

First, Sharockman says that the otherwise ho-hum U.S. Senate race between Sen. Bill Nelson and Connie Mack has produced some less than accurate ads.

"There are a lot of claims in this race... but a lot of them are misleading," he says.

Amanda Rubio, 12, remains hospitalized in fair condition with a head injury following a golf cart accident over the weekend. A spokesperson for Senator Marco Rubio says the long term prognosis is positive for the Senator's oldest daughter. 

Remnants of Hurricane Sandy have left us in South Florida with gusty winds, big waves and large swells.

That has resulted in some coastal flooding along the Atlantic seaboard.  And a coastal flood advisory is in effect until 10 a.m. this morning.  

More than 51,000 people in Miami-Dade County waited in long lines Saturday and Sunday to vote early. About 54,000 people in Broward County cast their ballots and about 21,000 in Palm Beach County. 

Meanwhile, many others in South Florida are still wondering where their absentee ballots are. 

Legal expert Lee Rowland with the Brennan Center for Justice tells us where Floridians can track their absentee ballots online. 

The elephants not in the room at Monday night's final presidential debate at Lynn University?

Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers. 

President Obama and Mitt Romney barely touched on our own hemisphere, sticking mostly to the Middle East and China in a debate that may be most remembered here for what wasn't discussed.

President Obama and Mitt Romney meet in their second presidential debate tonight in Hempstead, NY. Then, Boca Raton becomes the center of the political universe next Monday, October 22 when Lynn University hosts the final encounter between the two candidates before election day.

Voting in Florida has always been a contentious issue.  But now, it's even more so thanks to new voting laws passed by the Florida Legislature.

House Bill 1355 - passed in April 2011 - mandates a total of 80 changes to Florida's election laws. 

Among the most noticeable are  restrictions on voter registration, form filing deadlines and reductions in early voting days.  

How they may impacting the 2012 election is the subject of a new documentary airing on CNN this Sunday, called "Voters in America: Who Counts."

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama debated the state of the American economy this week - we analyze what that might mean for Florida's economy. How has federal stimulus impacted Florida’s recovery? We hear from you on whether stimulus money has worked where you live. And we explain the troubles of US Century Bank.