The Florida Roundup | WLRN

None of the more than 1,000 nursing homes and assisted living facilities in South Florida are on Florida Power & Light’s highest priority list for power restoration. FPL rejected Broward and Miami-Dade counties’ lists, which included these facilities, according to the Sun Sentinel . The decision comes nine months after a dozen patients at a Hollywood nursing home died when temperatures inside The Rehabilitation Center of Hollywood Hills rose, after it lost its air conditioning, along with

A Palm Beach Post investigation has uncovered Florida's role in igniting the country’s heroin epidemic in 2011. The state’s repeated failure to control its own prescription drug problem would eventually lead to more addicts turning to heroin not only on Florida, but in other states around the country. WLRN’s Christine DiMattei fills in for Tom Hudson as host of The Florida Roundup. She sat down with Pat Beall , investigative reporter at The Palm Beach Post, to explore the so-called “ Oxy Express

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump reversed his controversial policy of separating undocumented children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, but questions still remain about what the future holds for immigrant children detained in American facilities, including one located in Homestead. This week, answers about conditions inside that facility were hard to come by. The day before the president’s reversal, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson and Miami state

President Donald Trump came to Miami one year ago, on June 16, 2017, to announce he was rolling back some of the Obama-era changes in America’s Cuban policy. In doing so, Trump went after the communist dictatorship on the island. While working to isolate Cuba, this week, President Trump met with a different communist despot – Kim Jong Un of North Korea. After their summit, the president called this dictator “talented." This week’s The Florida Roundup considers two dictators one year apart. Host

The threat of sea-level rise stretches well beyond the coastline. Higher seas are pushing into the source of our drinking water . They could increase the cost of insurance across the region, and local governments trying to fund resiliency projects may deal with higher taxes and fees. South Florida residents are trying to catch up, too. Mary Jo Aagerstoun of West Palm Beach says sea-level rise wasn’t on her radar until 2013. “My grandchildren, who are going off to college, are facing a dying

Since January, the Teatro Trail in Little Havana has been showing the play, “Tres Viudas en un Crucero” (“Three Widows on a Cruise”), to sold-out crowds. The Spanish-language production featured a blackface character. A fair-skinned actress wore brown face makeup and overdrawn big red lips. The theater recently decided to eliminate blackface from the play after an El Nuevo Herald report denouncing it. Blackface was once popular in racist minstrel shows in the U.S. but has since been regarded as

Donald Trump is reshaping South Florida politics. Longtime Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen decided not to run for re-election in a district that increasingly leans Democratic. Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro resigned his position on the county commission to run as a Republican in the congressional district. That triggered a special election for his former seat with the county. This week, Barreiro’s wife Zoraida and political newcomer Eileen Higgins were the top two vote

Derek Cintron has lived most of his life in Miami Lakes. He says he loved the area so much that he decided to buy a house there five years ago. Now Cintron is considering a move. He lives 10 minutes away from the site of the future American Dream Miami, the $4 billion retail theme park the county voted Thursday to approve. It would be the largest mall in North America at 6.2 million square feet – big enough to house an artificial ski slope and submarine rides. Read More: American Dream Mega-Mall

The threat of sea level rise affects all of South Florida – from the ocean to the Everglades. The sea has risen nine inches in the past century. It’s predicted to rise another two feet in less than half that time. Evidence of the higher seas can be seen around the region – including increased flooding, raising roads, flood pumps and encroaching saltwater. Read More: Is South Florida Doomed By Sea-Level Rise? Given this scope, The Miami Herald, The Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post have teamed

Antwan Johnson, a guard at the Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center, was arrested as he was getting ready to go to work Monday morning. A grand jury charged Johnson with encouraging inmates to beat up other inmates, including 17-year-old Elord Revolte. He died in 2015 when more than a dozen detainees jumped him – allegedly urged by Johnson. The practice is called honey-bunning – bribing teens in juvenile lock-up with sweets or other enticements to carry out physical violence on other

Commuting in South Florida apparently takes herculean patience and resilience to bouts of “traffic trauma.” ApartmentList.com released a report showing a share of commuters in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties travel at least 90 minutes to get to work. South Florida joins a national trend – dubbed a “supercommute” – that’s plaguing other cities, including New York and Washington, D.C. The debate over transportation seems perennial in South Florida. This week, Miami-Dade County

Teachers nationwide are protesting their paychecks. Educators in Arizona voted to walk out, joining similar efforts in Oklahoma, West Virginia and Kentucky. Teachers are speaking up at the same time that students around the country are mobilizing against gun violence. Thousands of public school students across the country planned to walk out on Friday in remembrance of the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting that killed 13 people in 1999. Read More: Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Kimson Green, a sophomore at Northwestern Senior High School about to be inducted into the National Honor Society, was shot and killed on Sunday, April 7. According to police, gunfire erupted while Green was talking with friends in front of an apartment building in Liberty City. On Tuesday, hundreds of Northwestern students walked out and marched to protest gun violence. Teachers and staff joined as they walked through the housing project where the shooting happened. Read More: Miami

Students at Florida International University made a somber return to campus this week after spring break. They prayed at vigils and walked to a memorial erected near the site of last week’s pedestrian bridge collapse. READ MORE: Campuswide Vigil At FIU Honors Bridge Collapse Victims In the aftermath of the recovery, local and national officials are trying to piece together what could have caused the collapse. Miami-Dade Police and the National Transportation Safety Board are conducting separate