News

President Barack Obama will be visiting PortMiami Friday to talk about the economy.  Gov. Rick Scott, meanwhile, is asking the federal government to repay Florida for the money it has spent on port improvements.

Although Scott often criticizes the federal government for spending too much, he says this is different.

Playing cards -- even though you hate it.

Going shopping -- although you already have a closetful of clothes.

Staying home and watching television? Yawn.

Golf?  Not on your life.

Many of the senior citizens who gathered Tuesday in solidarity at Boynton Beach’s Cleopatra Arcade paint a grim picture of a future without their beloved senior arcades.

On a mostly sun drenched South Florida day, about 900 former Miami Herald employees—myself included-- joined the current staff on Wednesday to reminisce, cry, and mourn the loss of the once proud building by the bay that will soon become a hotel/condo and possible mega casino now planned for the old property.

The Miami Herald isn’t going away. The newspaper operations, along with news partner WLRN, will move out to Doral in April.

North Perry and Boca Raton airports are among 149 small facilities nationwide where federal budget cuts have forced closures of air traffic control towers.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced the decision today, nearly a month after it released a preliminary list of towers that could be affected.  

The tower at Miami-Dade's Opa-locka Airport had originally been considered for closure, but it's now on the list of only 24 towers nationwide that will be kept operational.

The Archdiocese of Miami is using a TV ad to encourage the Catholic faithful to come to confession this weekend as part of the Lenten season.

Fifteen thousand people are leaving Puerto Rico every year, and half of them are coming Florida. Many are leaving because of an explosion of violence on the island. Over the last several years, the murder rate has been between five and seven times the national average. 

Miami New Times reporter Michael E. Miller traveled to Puerto Rico to find out how things got so bad. The answer? Drugs and police, says Miller. Here's what he found out. 

Inside Jose Moreno's Judaica shop in Aventura, there's an entire wall lined with Hebrew books.  Other shelves hold glistening menorahs and there's a rack filled with special Passover games and toys for children.

An elderly customer enters the shop wearing a yarmulke and Moreno greets him in Spanish.

Moreno, 71, was raised in Venezuela and for many years owned a similar store in Caracas.

"Most of the Jewish people had good businesses and [a] good living standard,” Moreno said.  “We had a lot of synagogues, temples, schools.”

Pope Francis may not be from the United States, but for many in South Florida, the fact that he's from Argentina is even better.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski has hailed the selection of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as a "great thing” for the hemisphere, and called the new Pope an American.

“Latin America, as Pope Benedict described it, is the continent of hope. And it is the continent in which we have the largest growing number of Catholics in the world.”

Over the weekend, public transit advocates in Miami built a temporary train station along an imaginary transit line. They called it the Purple Line, sticking with the theme of Miami’s other two commuter rail lines, the Orange and the Green. Organizers of the project say this mock train station is going to help improve public transit in the city.