Florida

VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Nicole sent multiple homes toppling into the Atlantic Ocean Thursday and threatened a row of high rise condominiums in places where Hurricane Ian washed away seawalls and other remaining protections only weeks ago.

“Multiple coastal homes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea have collapsed and several other properties are at imminent risk,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a social media message. In the Daytona Beach area, most bridges to the beachside have been closed to all but essential personnel and a curfew was put into effect, he said.

MIAMI (AP) — Many people evacuated from vulnerable locations in the northwestern Bahamas as Tropical Storm Nicole approached Wednesday and residents of Florida braced for the storm, which could strengthen to a hurricane.

Nicole was expected to be the first storm to make landfall in the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a devastating Category 5 storm that hit the archipelago in 2019, before hitting storm-weary Florida on Wednesday night and moving into Georgia on Thursday.

MIAMI (AP) — Nicole strengthened to a tropical storm Tuesday as it churned toward the northwestern Bahamas and Florida’s Atlantic coastline, forecasters said.

A range of warnings and watches remain in place. Many areas are still reeling from damage caused by Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida’s southwestern Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm in late September, before dumping heavy amounts of rain across much of central part of the state. Forecasters said heavy rain could fall on areas still recovering from Ian’s flooding.

MIAMI (AP) — The head of the Organization of American States is facing growing calls, including from the Biden administration, for an external probe into possible misconduct tied to his intimate relationship with a subordinate.

The Washington-based group’s own inspector general in a memo this week said it is in the organization’s “best interest” to hire an outside firm to investigate allegations that Secretary General Luis Almagro may have violated the ethics code.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s two-day sentencing hearing began Tuesday with the families of the 17 people he murdered getting their first chance to speak to him directly, using emotional and often angry terms to describe the devastation he brought to their lives.

MIAMI BEACH (AP) — An evacuation order has abruptly forced out residents of a 14-story oceanfront building on the same avenue where a condominium collapse killed nearly 100 people last year.

The city posted an unsafe structure notice Thursday evening at the Port Royale condominium, Miami Beach spokesperson Melissa Berthier said in an email.

(AP) --- A Texas mother of a toddler, scraping by on her husband’s income, was desperate to return to work but struggling to afford child care. A young Florida warehouse worker had barely left behind a turbulent past of homelessness and abuse only to be mired in debt.

When both women learned they were pregnant, they came to the agonizing conclusion they couldn’t go through with it.

MIAMI (AP) — It was a deal that brought together oligarchs from some of America’s top adversaries.

“The key is the cash,” the oil broker wrote in a text message, offering a deep discount on Venezuelan crude shipments to an associate who claimed to be fronting for the owner of Russia’s biggest aluminum company. “As soon as you are ready with cash we can work.”

VENICE, Fla. (AP) — It was less than three weeks before the Sarasota County, Florida, school board election when the former White House national security adviser weighed in on the local political race.

“These ‘woke’ members need to be defeated in detail this upcoming election,” Michael Flynn posted on Telegram on Aug. 6. “Our children’s lives and futures are at risk when our school boards here in Florida and around the nation shove (critical race theory) and transgender nonsense down their throats.”

JACKSONVILLE (Florida, US), Oct 16 (NNN-XINHUA/AGENCIES) — NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 astronauts aboard the Dragon spacecraft safely splashed down off the coast of the southeastern U.S. state of Florida on Friday, NASA said.

The four-member international crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at 4:55 p.m. Eastern Day Time.