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10:34 am
Wed April 24, 2013

Going The Distance To Test Those Feel-Good Coffee Labels

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Credit Dan Charles / NPR
Luis Fernando Vasquez has been a coffee farmer in the central valley of Costa Rica his entire life.
Credit Starbucks
Credit USDA.gov
Credit Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center
Credit Fairtrade.net
Credit Rainforest Alliance
Credit Rainforest Alliance
Credit Dan Charles / NPR
Luis Fernando Vasquez's coffee farm in Costa Rica. Vasquez says farmers have changed their methods in recent years. Where they once would cut down trees, he says, "now we are coming to understand that the tree plays a role" in a healthy coffee plant ecosystem.
Credit Dan Charles / NPR
Christian Mora is the general manager of AFAORCA, a fair trade coffee cooperative in Costa Rica.
Credit Dan Charles / NPR
Angelina Zuñiga Godinez and Fanny Cordero Mora grow coffee for Coopetarrazu, one of Costa Rica's largest coffee cooperatives. These bags of coffee are labeled with the towns where they are grown
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Originally published on Fri April 26, 2013 11:29 am

What does it take to find guilt-free coffee?

Much of our coffee comes from places where the environment is endangered and workers earn very little — sometimes, just a few dollars for a whole day's work. Coffee farmers have helped cut down tropical forests, and most of them use pesticides.

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Nature
8:30 am
Tue April 23, 2013

Father Saves Boy From Alligator Attack With Stranger's Help

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Credit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A Fish and Wildlife Service team caught and killed an alligator after the animal attacked a 6-year-old boy Friday. The boy survived with only incidental wounds.
Credit Google
An image from Google Maps shows the area of the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge where Joey Welch, 6, was attacked by an alligator.
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Originally published on Tue April 23, 2013 3:05 pm

A 6-year-old boy's day off from school Friday left him with a vivid story to tell his classmates, after he was seized — and eventually released — by an alligator in South Florida. The attack occurred at a wildlife refuge near Boynton Beach, Fla., where Joseph Welch had taken his son, Joey, for a canoe ride.

As Welch, a native of Rhode Island who now lives in Pompano Beach, says in a Morning Edition interview airing Tuesday, his idea had been to do "something new and different."

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News
7:00 am
Tue April 23, 2013

How Urban Explorers Record History South Florida Forgot

Credit abandonedmuse.com
Aerojet Missle Silo (not to be confused with Nike Missile Silo, this facility is outside of the Everglades and not open to visitors)
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Built in 1964 as part of the Cold War response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Nike Missile Silo was abandoned in 1979, but the former complex remains eerily intact within the southern portion of Everglades National Park. It is a reminder of a time when South Florida was a focal point of international politics, and it's also one the region's more famous abandoned sites.

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Health Care
11:20 am
Mon April 22, 2013

Fraudsters Target Seniors Amid Confusion About Obamacare

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Credit Matt Nager for NPR
Confusion over the details of the new health care law is leaving many people vulnerable to con artists. Evelyne Lois Such, 86, was recently the target of an attempted scam.
Credit Matt Nager for NPR
Confusion over the details of the new health care law is leaving many people vulnerable to con artists. Evelyne Lois Such, 86, was recently the target of an attempted scam.
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Originally published on Mon April 22, 2013 10:18 am

One recent morning, Evelyne Lois Such was sitting at her kitchen table in Denver when the phone rang. Such, who's 86, didn't recognize the phone number or the deep voice on the other end of the line.

"He asked, 'Are you a senior?' and I said yes, and he said, 'Well, we are sending out all new Medicare cards, and I want to make sure I have all your statistics just correct,' " Such recalls.

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Trade
10:09 am
Mon April 22, 2013

How Coffee Makes The World Go 'Round

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Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The best coffee comes from high altitudes with a warm climate like in Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
Credit Michael Tsegaye / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Workers separate beans at a coffee warehouse in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. Coffee originated in Ethiopia, but now grows in more than 50 countries around the world.
Credit Jean-Marc Bouju / AP
A woman rakes coffee beans that are drying at a coffee plant in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Coffee is the country's top export.
Credit Benjamin Lowy / Getty Images
Forty percent of all coffee comes from Brazil. Here, coffee plantation workers pour sun-dried coffee beans into burlap sacks in Minas Gerais.
Credit Bay Ismoyo / AFP/Getty Images
An Indonesian "Starbikes" vendor prepares coffee from his bicycle for street laborers in Jakarta.
Credit China Photos / Getty Images
Farmers gather coffee beans in Yunnan province, China.
Credit Yuri Cortez / AFP/Getty Images
Workers clean coffee beans at the Los Ausoles coffee plantation in Ahuachapan, El Salvador. Global exports of green coffee beans are worth $15 billion a year.
Credit Hoang Dinh Nam / AFP/GettyImages
Vietnamese farmers grow a species of coffee tree called robusta. It grows fast and produces a big crop, but the bean has a bitter taste. Pictured is a coffee shop in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Credit Michael Tsegaye / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Workers separate beans in the coffee warehouse in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. Coffee originated in Ethiopia, but now grows in more then 50 countries around the world.
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Originally published on Wed April 24, 2013 11:05 am

Coffee is more than a drink. For many of us — OK, for me — it's woven into the fabric of every day.

It also connects us to far corners of the globe.

For instance, every Friday, a truck pulls up to the warehouse of Counter Culture Coffee, a small roaster and coffee distributor in Durham, N.C., and unloads a bunch of heavy burlap sacks.

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Job Opening
12:10 pm
Sat April 20, 2013

Senior Editor for News at WLRN-Miami Herald News

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Station:                       WLRN

Company:                   South Florida Public Media/Friends of WLRN

Job Title:                     Senior Editor, News, WLRN-Miami Herald News

FLSA Status:               Full-time, Exempt

Reports to:                 News Director

Schedule:                   10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday – Friday or as job demands

Reason for Opening: New

Location:                     Miami, FL

To apply:

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News
12:06 pm
Sat April 20, 2013

Senior Editor for Digital Media at WLRN-Miami Herald News

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Station:                       WLRN

Company:                   South Florida Public Media/Friends of WLRN

Job Title:                     Senior Editor, Digital Media, WLRN-Miami Herald News

FLSA Status:               Full-time, Exempt

Reports to:                 News Director

Schedule:                   10 a.m-6 p.m. Monday-Friday or as job demands

Reason for Opening: New

Location:                     Miami, FL

To apply:

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Journalism
6:00 am
Fri April 19, 2013

Pursuing Reckless Cops Wins Sun-Sentinel Its First Pulitzer

Credit Christine DiMattei
Sun-Sentinel Investigative Reporter Sally Kestin
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It was a humdinger of a story.

A Miami police officer in a marked squad car is pursued, pulled over and handcuffed by a Florida state trooper after speeding down the turnpike like race car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

A dash-cam video of that pre-dawn October chase in 2011 went viral and sparked a three-month investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper into how local police officers routinely endangered the general public through reckless driving.

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Boston Marathon Bombings
3:21 pm
Wed April 17, 2013

A Love Letter To Boston By Way Of Miami

Credit Wikipedia
This photograph by Charles Porter of a OKC firefighter holding a dying infant won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996.
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April 19th, 1995

My Louisville-born husband wakes up from a dream he just can't seem to shake. He knows, of course, that I'm an Oklahoma City girl, though many years removed. It's April. It's a tornado, he thinks. Oklahoma City has been hit, he thinks. I'll turn on the TV, he thinks. That something is wrong, he knows.  

"KELLLLLLLEY!!!!!"'  

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Environment
9:43 am
Wed April 17, 2013

Invasive Species: Hungry Lionfish Haven't Gone Away

Credit Cammy Clark / MCT/Landov
Lionfish, like this one spotted in the Bahamas, are a nonnative predatory fish that can decimate native fish populations.
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Originally published on Thu April 18, 2013 1:45 pm

A gluttonous predator is power-eating its way through reefs from New York to Venezuela. It's the lionfish.

And although researchers are coming up with new ways to protect some reefs from the flamboyant maroon-striped fish, they have no hope of stopping its unparalleled invasion.

Lad Akins has scuba dived in the vibrant reefs of the Bahamas for many years. But when he returned a couple years ago, he saw almost no fish smaller than his hand.

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Arts
8:12 am
Wed April 17, 2013

Arts Garage Wins Real Estate Tug-Of-War In Delray Beach

Credit Christine DiMattei
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Much to the relief of Delray Beach arts lovers, the city has decided to let a popular cultural hub stay in the space it’s called home for the last two years.

The fate of the Arts Garage has hung in the balance since last summer, when a law firm offered to buy the city-owned property that the arts incubator occupies downtown.  Since then, Delray Beach has been forced to choose between the new jobs the law firm says it would bring and the wildly popular performance venue.

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Boston Marathon Bombings
5:21 pm
Tue April 16, 2013

Update: Organizers To Beef Up Security At South Florida Races

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By Kaylois Henry

Update 5:11 p.m. - Organizers of the Mercedes Benz Corporate Run races in West Palm Beach tomorrow (Wednesday, April 17) and Miami next week (Thursday, April 25) say both events will be held as planned but with additional security measures in place.  

-----

It isn't just Boston that's been affected by the bombing. Two major road races here in South Florida may also fall victim to the blast.

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Boston Marathon Bombings
2:29 pm
Tue April 16, 2013

Boston Bombings Meets Definition Of "Act of Terrorism," Expert Says

Aaronson: The Boston Marathon bombings don't have the signs of an Al Qaeda attack.
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By Eric Barton

Trevor Aaronson was running errands when he heard about yesterday's bombings at the Boston Marathon. The news coming across the radio caught his attention, maybe more than the rest of us, and he soon found himself forgetting about his dry cleaning and going to Twitter for clues.

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Community Contributor
8:01 am
Mon April 15, 2013

Close Call At Hairy Intersection Shows Need For Bicycle Education

Bike riders head north on Biscayne in 1940. Things have gotten tougher since then for bicyclists.
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By Ryan Shedd

One particular evening will always stick with me. I was commuting home from work and at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Southwest 27th Avenue, which is a pretty intense during evening rush hour.

As I crossed the intersection, I was cut off by a driver who was clearly unaware of my presence, despite the bike lane. The car came within inches of my bike. Being familiar with this intersection, I know when and where I need to be watching. Had I not known where to look, I would not have been able to break in time.

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