Survivors to return to ‘scene of the crime’ for shadow congressional hearing into abuses committed by Epstein

Survivors of r Jeffrey Epstein will return to the “scene of the crime” in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday for a shadow congressional hearing into abuses committed by the late sex offender.

Several members of the Democratic House oversight caucus are scheduled to join the victims and several expert witnesses at the hearing close to Epstein’s former waterfront mansion where he procured girls as young as 14 to perform sexual services for wealthy guests.

A Florida man was arrested after police said he was flying a drone while under the influence of alcohol.

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Florida wildlife commission investigating cause of incident that left passengers with burns and traumatic injuries

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A suspected boat explosion at a Miami sandbar sent at least 11 people to the hospital on Saturday with some suffering from burns and traumatic injuries, according to Juan Arias, the Miami Dade fire rescue battalion chief.

First responders received reports roughly around 12.45pm of a possible boat explosion on the water, Arias told WPEC 12.

Florida agreement grants US president control of licensing and merchandising at renamed airport, analysts say

It was a week in which one prominent name in aviation, Spirit Airlines, disappeared, killed in the company’s own admission by high fuel prices resulting from Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

Within days, however, another moniker was already flying high in industry circles: the president’s own.

ISTANBUL, May 9 — US federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke the American citizenship of imprisoned former US Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha, claiming he obtained it under false pretences while secretly serving Cuba’s interests for over five decades, Anadolu Ajansi reported, citing NBC News.

The Miami federal court filing alleges that Rocha falsely denied Communist ties and criminal conduct during his 1977-1978 naturalisation process while covertly working for Cuba, according to NBC News’ report yesterday.

Colombian-born Rocha was charged in December 2023 with conspiring to act as a foreign agent and defraud the US.

He pleaded guilty in 2024 to acting as an illegal foreign agent and defrauding the US, with a judge saying he had “betrayed the United States” for over five decades.

According to the filing, Rocha admitted in a 2024 plea deal that he began working covertly for Cuban intelligence in 1973, years before gaining US citizenship, and later used his government roles to support Havana’s interests.

“Victor Manuel Rocha was not a low-level operative. He was a former United States ambassador and senior government official who admitted he secretly served the Cuban regime for decades,” US Attorney Jason A. Reding Quinones said in a news release Friday morning.

“The Southern District of Florida helped take down one of the most prolific Cuban spies ever uncovered in the United States,” Quinones said, adding that Rocha acquired his citizenship “through lies, concealment, and betrayal.”

A person who secretly serves communist Cuba should not keep the privilege of United States citizenship, even while in prison,” Quinones stated.

Rocha is currently serving a 15-year sentence at a federal prison in Florida.

He was allegedly recruited in Chile in 1973 to spy for Cuba. He later earned graduate degrees from Harvard and Georgetown, which prosecutors say supported his covert work.

He joined the US State Department in 1981 and served in Honduras, and then as a political officer at the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic from 1982 to 1985.

According to the US Attorney’s Office, Rocha was recorded in meetings with an undercover FBI agent in 2022 and 2023, where he discussed his role as a Cuban intelligence agent.

During the exchanges, he referred to the US as “the enemy” and used “we” when speaking about Cuba. He also praised Fidel Castro as the “comandante” and called his Cuban intelligence contacts his “compañeros”. — Bernama-Anadolu

Thomas Shaknovsky botched the surgery of William Bryan, 70, who died on the operating table

A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death.

In a deposition from November that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply”.

Men were convicted in Miami federal court for plotting to kill Jovenel Moïse at his Port-au-Prince home in 2021

Four south Florida men were convicted on Friday of plotting to kill the Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021 by hiring mercenaries to assassinate him at his Port-au-Prince home, court records show.

Prosecutors argued during the nine-week trial in a Miami federal court that the men assembled two dozen former Colombian soldiers and supplied them with money, guns, ammunition and tactical vests in a conspiracy to kill Moïse. The 53-year-old president was shot dead in July 2021 at his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince, a killing that left a gaping political vacuum in the Caribbean nation and emboldened powerful gangs.

In Miami, it’s essential to stay alert for tropical storm and hurricane warnings. Torrential rains and high winds are compounded by rising sea levels due to global warming caused by climate change. South Florida’s porous limestone foundations act like a sponge. As sea levels rise, groundwater rises to the surface. To prevent Miami from becoming Atlantis, the only option is to raise it above the water, a project underway in Sunset Harbour and other residential areas — see the MB Rising Above cell phone app for details. This strategic plan is part of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact.

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Musician whose real name is Bill Kahan Kapri is charged with trafficking MDMA after incident last November

Kodak Black, the Florida-based rapper, was scheduled to appear in court in Orlando on Thursday on a felony drug charge stemming from an incident last year in which gunshots were allegedly fired near a children’s educational building.

The musician, who has a long history of arrests and was sentenced to a three-year prison term on a firearms charge in 2019 before being pardoned by Donald Trump, turned himself in to the Orange county jail on Wednesday, multiple media reports said.

Video shows ‘looksmaxxing’ influencer shooting an apparently already dead alligator in the Everglades

A controversial social media influencer known as Clavicular is facing charges in connection with a video showing him shooting an apparently already dead alligator in the Everglades, local Florida media has reported.

Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters and is known for the practice of “looksmaxxing”, faces charges of unlawfully discharging a firearm in a public place or residential property, according to legal files obtained by television station ABC6 in South Florida.