Politics

All this week, we've been looking at the continuing foreclosure crisis sure crisis in Florida. Today, we check in back in with one woman who fears losing her home.

While there are many federal, state and private bank programs to modify troubled mortgages, each requires the lender to agree.

Unlike the more than 260 lenders in Florida who are helping, Marla Popkin’s mortgage holder won’t. Popkin is an Occupational Therapist in Miami. Work is slow and she has come into some rough times. Now she's trying to save her home. 

Making sure the judiciary "resembles the nation it serves,"  President Obama has nominated a black, openly gay Miami-Dade circuit judge for elevation to the federal bench.

The candidate is William L. Thomas, who's been a local judge since 2005. If he's confirmed, he'll be the first black, gay federal judge who is also a man. President Bill Clinton appointed the first black-gay-period judge when he nominated Deborah Batts for the Southern District of New York.

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.

Florida led the multi-state court case that tried unsuccessfully to derail President Obama's health care reforms last year.

But now, Gov. Rick Scott seems to be halfway through a complete reversal toward complying with Obamacare.

He's setting up an infrastructure to support the insurance exchanges that the Affordable Care Act would create. He's got a meeting with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius next week and his state Senate has already set up a committee to study Florida's Obamacare options.

Congress' fiscal cliff compromise may have protected Florida's middle class wage earners from a massive income tax increase, but the small tax increase it didn’t address remains a threat to the recovering state economy.

Starting Jan. 1, a two percent payroll tax holiday that President Obama put in place in 2010 expires, meaning that the paycheck deduction that funds Social Security will increase by that same two percent.

If a stranger attacks you inside your own home, the law has always permitted you to defend yourself. On the other hand, if an altercation breaks out in public, the law requires you to try to retreat. At least, that's what it used to do.

A federal court in Michigan has ruled that Domino's pizza founder and former owner Tom Monaghan has the constitutional religious freedom to exclude contraception from his employees' insurance coverage.

Now he's waiting to see whether that ruling will extend to the other institution he founded, Florida's Ave Maria University. Monaghan sold Domino's Pizza in 1998.

Florida pops to the top of the list anytime someone mentions home foreclosures.

The federal government and the major banks are trying to help people modify mortgages so they can stay in their homes. But those programs frequently come with caveats and conditions.

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.

The News Service of Florida

The deal between the White House and Congress narrowly approved Tuesday evening by the House to avoid going over the fiscal cliff would extend a 2008 farm law through September 2013.

That will keep milk prices from doubling but leaves other major issues unresolved.

Florida advocates have been worried about the farm bill, in part because of milk prices, but also because of its affect on food aid to the poor.

Most of the Florida delegation went along with last night's vote to stay on the high side of the fiscal cliff. But the big exception was Sen. Marco Rubio.

He voted no on the bill -- one of just eight senators to do so -- explaining that it was an historic tax hike that would hurt the economy.

"Rapid economic growth and spending reforms are the only way out of the real fiscal cliff our nation is facing," Rubio said.