MIAMI — A Florida magnate with close ties to the Republican Party helped set up the recent meeting between Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and President Donald Trump’s special envoy, laying the groundwork for a major deal that would allow the Caracas regime to boost its oil sales to the United States in exchange for accepting hundreds ...Read more

MIAMI — Three Miami Beach brothers whose high-flying lives were upended with their arrests on sex trafficking charges pleaded not guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Friday.

Twins Alon and Oren Alexander, 37, and Tal, 38, had their arraignment almost two months after their arrests on Dec. 11 because of protracted detention hearings in ...Read more

More than 90 people have been reported ill on board a Royal Caribbean ship sailing out of Tampa, Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

An outbreak of an unknown illness with primary symptoms of diarrhea, vomiting has stricken 89 of 2,164 passengers as well as 2 of 910 crew on board the Radiance of the Seas, according to a ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan says deportations to Venezuela will begin in the next 30 days.

The announcement comes at the heels of Trump saying last week that the South American country has agreed to take deportees back and to supply their transportation. His Department of Homeland Security also ended a parole process for ...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Alaska Senate unanimously adopted a resolution Friday calling on President Donald Trump to reverse his order changing the name of North America’s tallest peak. The Senate joined the House in approving the resolution.

Trump had issued an executive order during his first day in office changing the name of the 20,310-...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Authorities said Friday that a Bering Air plane with 10 people aboard dropped suddenly before it went missing Thursday afternoon on a flight from Unalakleet to Nome.

The U.S. Coast Guard said “some sort of item of interest” was spotted by search aircraft around midday Friday, but the identity of that object or the ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — A Wake County Superior Court judge on Friday rejected Republican Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to throw out 65,000 ballots cast in November’s Supreme Court election.

Affirming the decision of the State Board of Elections, which dismissed all of Griffin’s protests in December, Judge William Pittman wrote that the board’s...Read more

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries Friday accused divided Republicans of dropping the ball on negotiations with Democrats on a spending plan to avoid a looming government shutdown.

The Democratic House Minority Leader said his GOP counterparts were too busy squabbling amongst themselves to put a proposal to the table that will keep the government funded past...Read more

Vice President JD Vance was reportedly tapped Friday to forge a deal to save TikTok.

President Trump has assigned Vance to find a buyer for the popular Chinese-owned social media app ahead of an April 5 deadline for it to be sold or shut down.

Vance, who ran a hedge fund before running for office, will be looking to find a deep-pocketed tech ...Read more

NEW YORK — City Council leaders are considering taking legal action to block what they are calling Mayor Eric Adams’ “appalling” new policy that gives municipal workers the greenlight to allow federal immigration workers onto city property without warrants if their presence makes them “reasonably feel threatened.”

The policy first ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The tragic death of 7-year-old Elienisse Zoe Diaz Rodriguez in a drag-racing accident at a popular east Orange County speedway is generating grief, sympathy, and focus on a sport that enthusiasts insist is generally safe — even for children too young to drive a regular automobile.

“Junior drag racing has been very, very, ...Read more

Finding and keeping a good Black man in a relationship has become a cottage industry. From celebrities and reality TV stars to social media influencers, for better or worse, there is no shortage of relationship advice to people seeking to figure out Black men.

And while much of this content is understood to be for entertainment ...Read more

Each Valentine’s Day, when I see images of the chubby winged god Cupid taking aim with his bow and arrow at his unsuspecting victims, I take refuge in my training as a scholar of early Greek poetry and myth to muse on the strangeness of this image and the nature of love.

In Roman culture, Cupid was the child of the goddess Venus, ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — State troopers will be deputized and trained to help the Department of Homeland Security round up and detain illegal immigrants under an agreement between Florida and the Trump administration announced by Gov. Ron DeSantis Friday.

The agreement would expand the Florida Highway Patrol’s authority to arrest and detain ...Read more

The Trump administration will begin deporting undocumented Venezuelans back to their home country in a few weeks, marking the latest step in the federal government’s mass deportation efforts.

Trump border czar Tom Homan told the New York Times that direct deportation flights to Venezuela, which have been paused for a year because of ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The University of Central Florida has temporarily suspended the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity after viewing a photo of a blindfolded pledge holding a Nazi swastika.

The university learned about the image in the fall 2024 semester and determined it depicted an off-campus hazing incident from 2023, according to Courtney Gilmartin, ...Read more

ATLANTA — It’s been nearly three decades since Atlanta-born child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey was brutally killed in her Colorado home. Her family now hopes advances in DNA technology can help solve the case soon, but it’s unclear if police have engaged the private companies at the center of the cutting edge technology that is ...Read more

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, who has faced protests outside his offices this week, says he won’t vote to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees to lead Health and Human Services and the country’s national intelligence agencies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

“I have met with most of the Cabinet nominees and have...Read more

President Donald Trump has reached his final — paper — straw.

In a social media post shared on his platform, Truth Social, Trump on Friday declared his intentions to rollback former President Joe Biden’s efforts to phase out plastic straw use across the federal government.

“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ...Read more

CHICAGO — After two straight days of silence, jurors in the corruption trial of former House Speaker Michael Madigan sent a note Friday with a deep-in-the-weeds legal question about how they should define “something of value” — but ended the day a few hours later without returning a verdict.

The eight-woman, four-man jury has now ...Read more