| September 17, 2008 | - A truck carrying 20 tons of money from the Philadelphia Mint to the U.S. Treasury in Miami crashed, killing one passenger and spilling 3.7 million nickels onto I-95. “It's shiny,” said Florida Highway Patrol trooper Kim Miller.
| Source 1:
Philadelphia Inquirer
Source 2:
WFTV
Source 3:
Miami Herald
|
| September 3, 2008 | - Police in Florida checked for fingerprints on a water-filled condom that had been used as a fake breast by a cross-dressing thief who snatched the purse of a 74-year-old woman.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 27, 2008 | - A pregnant woman sued Jacksonville
Jaguars receiver Dennis Northcutt, claiming he arranged for his cousin to beat her up in an attempt to harm her unborn child.
| Source:
Sports Illustrated
|
| July 29, 2008 | - A Department of Justice report found that senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke federal law by screening candidates for career positions using political and religious criteria, sexual rumors, and database searches for terms like “abortion,” “guns,” “homosexuality,” and “Florida recount.”
| Source 1:
TPM
Source 2:
NYT
|
| June 18, 2008 | - Giant iguanas continued their conquest of South Florida, surrounding Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioner Bob Kanjian at a golf course in Lake Worth. “I had 25 to 30 iguanas,” he said, “staring at me while I was playing.”
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| May 3, 2008 | - The Democratic National Committee determined that delegates from Michigan and Florida will be allowed half-votes at the party's convention. “At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen,” read a sign at a protest by supporters of Hillary Clinton outside the Washington hotel where the decision was made. Demonstrator Larry Sinclair, a Minnesotan who has posted videos on YouTube alleging that he took drugs and had oral sex with Barack Obama in 1999 but failed a polygraph test about his allegations, handed out a pamphlet titled “Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
The New Republic
|
| March 4, 2008 | - Alburn Edward Blake, a 60-year-old Jamaican-born landscaper, strolled out of the bathroom of a Wendy's in West Palm Beach, Florida, and opened fire on the lunchtime crowd, killing a local firefighter and wounding five others before taking his own life. “Looks like this was just another random shooting like we've seen around the United States,” said Paul Miller, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County sheriff's office.
| Source:
AP
|
| February 13, 2008 | -
Representative Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), a Holocaust survivor and superdelegate who was expected to back Clinton, died. At a memorial service, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni compared Lantos to “a shining blue Star of David emblazoned on an American Air Force jet.” Bono led mourners in an a cappella version of John Lennon's “All You Need Is Love,” and Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Florida) interrupted the closing speech by Elie Wiesel with a call for a vote to adjourn.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Jerusalem Post
Source 3:
Politico
Source 4:
Washington Post
Source 5:
Washington Post
Source 6:
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
|
| November 9, 2007 | - Companies in Florida were forbidding their employees to smoke, even in private. “If you are an alcoholic and we have the right to fire you, we will do so,” said the president of Westgate Resorts. “And if you are obese and there is a way for us not to hire you or to fire you, we will do that, too.”
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| October 23, 2007 | - In Florida one 18-year-old stabbed another after a squabble at the mullet festival.
| Source:
Northwest Florida Daily News
|
| October 5, 2007 | - The mother of a bullied Jacksonville, Florida, boy brandished a gun at his bus stop, asking his fellow pupils, “Does anyone have something to say?”
| Source:
Local6
|
| October 4, 2007 | - An autopsy could not reveal the identity of a baby found in a Big John's Pickled Sausage jar and left in a Florida cane field.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| October 3, 2007 | - A white family in Florida found three burning crosses in its back yard.
| Source:
Local6
|
| September 22, 2007 | - A University of Florida student was Tasered after his question for Senator John Kerry went on too long. An Ocala, Florida, man accused police of Tasering him after he refused to drop his Koran; police in Tustin, California, Tasered a 15-year-old autistic boy; and a Taser dart fired at a Vancouver, Washington, man ignited the cigarette lighter in his pocket, setting his pants on fire. Sales at Taser International were expected to reach $90 million this year.
| Source 1:
The Boston Globe
Source 2:
WRAL.com
Source 3:
OC Register
Source 4:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Source 5:
Times Online
|
| August 16, 2007 | - Bob Allen, the Florida state representative who was arrested in July after offering to fellate an undercover police officer, was stripped of his legislative-committee appointments but remained unfazed. “I'm waiting,” he said, “for the politics to say it's okay to hug Bob Allen again—and they will.”
| Source:
Orlando Sentinel
|
| August 3, 2007 | - Bob Allen, a Florida State Representative who sponsored a bill to curtail sex in public parks, said that he recently offered oral sex to a man in a park because he was afraid of black people.
| Source:
AP via myfoxtampabay.com
|
| August 1, 2007 | - Several boys playing in a forest in Florida discovered a dead man sitting in a chair,
| Source:
local6.com
|
| July 25, 2007 | - A prisoner in Ft. Lauderdale was convicted of indecent exposure for masturbating in his cell.
| Source:
The Smoking Gun
|
| July 24, 2007 | - Law-enforcement agents issued decks of playing cards featuring missing-persons cases to Florida convicts.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| July 11, 2007 | -
Florida State Representative Bob Allen (R., Merritt Island) was arrested for offering to perform an unspecified sex act on an undercover police officer for $20.
| Source:
Orlando Sentinel
|
| July 4, 2007 | - Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in an attempt to prevent gay sex, planned to install a quarter-million-dollar robot toilet.
| Source:
South Florida Sun Sentinel
|
| June 12, 2007 | - A 15-year-old Florida girl who has suffered for months from chronic hiccups ran away from home.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 21, 2007 | - A group of deep-sea explorers in Tampa, Florida, announced that they had recovered $500 million in sunken treasure from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.
| Source:
China View
|
| May 18, 2007 | - In Orange County, Florida, a woman was helping her father move out of his home when she discovered photographs of both her father and her deceased mother molesting her daughter.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| May 10, 2007 | -
Jeb Bush joined the board of Tenet Healthcare Systems, which in 2006 agreed to pay $725 million to resolve claims that it cheated Medicare.
| Source:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
|
| April 5, 2007 | - In Miami, the Department of Corrections was housing registered sex offenders under a bridge.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| March 24, 2007 | - A Florida man who pleaded guilty to homicide was ordered to exhibit a two-foot-wide picture of his victim in his home. The judge specified that the image should be displayed prominently and include the phrase “I'm sorry I killed you.”
| Source:
AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer
|
| February 10, 2007 | -
Anna Nicole Smith dropped dead on the floor of a casino hotel in Hollywood, Florida.
| Source:
The online wire
|
| February 9, 2007 | - A Florida production of “The Vagina Monologues” changed its name to “The Hoohaa Monologues” after a woman claimed the title was offensive.
| Source:
iol.co.za
|
| January 29, 2007 | - A ring-neck duck named Perky, who was found alive in a hunter's refrigerator two days after being shot, died, then came back to life in Tallahassee.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 25, 2007 | - In Leisureville, a retirement community in Florida, a registered sex offender died of heart disease while looking at pornography on his computer while naked.
| Source:
Forida Sun-Sentinel
|
| January 18, 2007 | - After a teacher at a nearby school complained, a Florida Hooters removed a sign from the front of the restaurant that read “plagiarism saves time.”
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| January 5, 2007 | - A woman watching New Year's fireworks in Florida avoided serious injury when a shot fired into the air glanced off the golden strap of her “very cheap” brassiere.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| December 4, 2006 | - A man in Tampa was selling his soul on the Internet.
| Source:
Chicago Sun Times
|
| November 30, 2006 | - Sheriff's deputies in Polk County, Florida, rescued a naked, drug-addled man from the jaws of an attacking alligator.
| Source:
CNN
|
| November 12, 2006 | - Fourteen ducklings were stomped to death in Florida.
| Source:
TBO.com
|
| October 28, 2006 | - Machines used for early voting began to malfunction in Florida,.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| October 26, 2006 | - A physicist at the University of Central Florida proved that vampires are mathematically impossible.
| Source:
Livescience.com
|
| October 5, 2006 | - Further allegations emerged regarding the behavior of recently-resigned Congressman Mark Foley (R., Fla.) with underage pages. “He didn't want to talk about politics,” said one former page. “He wanted to talk about sex or my penis.” Congressman Jim Kolbe (R., Ariz.) said that he had confronted Foley over inappropriate contact with pages as early as 2000, and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert vowed not to resign over the scandal.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| August 26, 2006 | - Katherine Harris, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida, told a Baptist newspaper that “if you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 22, 2006 | - In Sorrento, Florida, a sixty-year-old man was accused of biting a six-year-old boy's genitals after the child refused to stop touching himself.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| August 15, 2006 | - A secretly pregnant 21-year-old in Florida went into labor, sneaked out of her parents' house, crashed her car into a canal, then delivered standing up in the wreckage. She named the baby Myracle.
| Source:
Palm Beach Post
|
| August 10, 2006 | - In Florida a man was missing after a large turtle pulled him into the sea.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| July 21, 2006 | - A 950-foot luxury sea liner unexpectedly listed off Port Canaveral, Florida,.
| Source:
EITB24.com via Google News
|
| July 18, 2006 | - A taxidermist from Lake County, Florida, was arrested after urinating on $500 worth of frozen food.
| Source:
Local 6.com
|
| July 11, 2006 | - Bees killed four dogs in Florida.
| Source:
Local 6
|
| June 30, 2006 | - In Florida thieves stole the 31-year-old remains of a 6-year-old boy.
| Source:
wftv.com
|
| June 24, 2006 | - Seven men were arrested in Florida for talking about blowing up the Sears Tower.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 18, 2006 | - The Lakeland, Florida, English
swan population, which is descended from swans given to the city by the Queen of England in 1957, was being eaten by alligators at three times the normal rate.
| Source:
NewsNet5.com
|
| June 9, 2006 | -
Florida's
wildlife officials decided to remove the manatee, which has a mild taste that readily adapts itself to recipes for beef, from the state's endangered-species list.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 7, 2006 | - A group of high school students in Florida found a real corpse at a fake crime scene.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 2, 2006 | - A snake bit a woman at a Wal-Mart in Florida. “Thank goodness for sweat pants with elastic,” said the woman, “because he tried to climb up my britches' leg.”
| Source:
WFTV.com
|
| May 14, 2006 | - In Florida an alligator that recently killed a jogger was caught with the jogger's arms in its stomach.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 29, 2006 | - A Liverpool, England, man was sentenced to 100 hours of community service for getting drunk and singing "YMCA" on a flight from Florida to Manchester while his wife wept and comforted their three children. "He makes no excuses," said the man's lawyer, "for his loutish, idiotic behavior."
| Source:
Mirror.co.uk
|
| April 25, 2006 | -
Scientists in Florida were working to improve a "brain port" device that will allow soldiers to perceive things through their tongues.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| April 25, 2006 | - A wheelchair-bound woman in Florida, who refused to put down a knife and a hammer, died after being tasered by policemen.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| April 21, 2006 | - In Florida, a beehive with 15,000 bees was removed from a tree.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| April 20, 2006 | - An elderly Miami man was in trouble for going door-to-door offering free breast exams.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| February 7, 2006 | - A Florida man named Frank Feldmann broke into a lighthouse and tied himself to its lightning rod in order to raise awareness for children. Police had difficulty communicating with Feldmann due to heavy winds and his tiger costume.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| February 1, 2006 | - During the State of the Union address activist Cindy Sheehan was handcuffed and thrown out of the House chamber for wearing a T-shirt that read "2245 Dead: How Many More?" and Beverly Young, the wife of Representative Bill Young (R., Fla.), was told to leave because she was wearing a T-shirt that read "Support the Troops: Defending Our Freedom." Young later held up his wife's shirt on the House floor and said, "shame, shame."
| Source:
ABC News
|
| January 26, 2006 | - A grandfather in Florida died of a heart attack after all seven of his grandchildren were killed in an automobile accident.
| Source:
News Channel 5
|
| January 5, 2006 | - A policeman in Florida tasered a bear.
| Source:
SFGate.com
|
| December 29, 2005 | - In Florida a 16-year-old named Farris Hassan decided to complete a school project on the Iraq war by going to Iraq; he made it to Baghdad, and was sent back to Florida by United States authorities. “This place,” explained an official, “is incredibly dangerous to individual private American citizens.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| December 15, 2005 | - A Florida
owl was found to be high on marijuana.
| Source:
9News.com
|
| December 8, 2005 | - In Miami an air marshal shot and killed an American Airlines passenger, Rigoberto Alpizar, who, according to the air marshal, claimed to have a bomb in his backpack. Before the shooting, Alpizar's wife attempted to explain that her husband was bipolar and off his medication. No bomb was found.
| Source:
Detroit News
|
| November 24, 2005 | - A 1,600-inmate faith-based
prison opened in Crawfordville, Florida.
| Source:
Gainesville.com
|
| November 23, 2005 | - Violent shopping incidents occurred in Hamilton Township, New Jersey; Elkton, Maryland; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Orlando, Florida; and Sunrise, Florida, where a 72-year-old woman was trampled.
| Source 1:
WTOPNews.com
Source 2:
NBC10.com
Source 3:
The Miami Herald
Source 4:
Reuters
Source 5:
KYW.com
|
| November 19, 2005 | - A Florida woman was run over by ten different cars while attempting to walk across a highway. Police marked parts of her body with traffic cones. “It is crazy out here,” said a trooper, “to try to cross the median.”
| Source:
Florida Today
|
| November 17, 2005 | -
Fidel Castro said that Florida Governor Jeb Bush was fat; Bush, who at 225 pounds is between 18 and 44 pounds above the ideal weight for his height and frame, said he was flattered by the criticism. “It is not a criticism,“ clarified Castro, “rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health.”
| Source:
AP
|
| November 11, 2005 | - A Florida man was arrested for putting his girlfriend's five-year-old son in a freezer, breaking a state law against caging a child.
| Source:
7NewsOnline
|
| October 25, 2005 | -
Hurricane Wilma struck Florida and left millions without power.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 20, 2005 | - A 93-year-old Florida man driving a Chevy Malibu struck and killed a pedestrian, then drove three miles with the body on his windshield. "Obviously," said a traffic investigator, "he was confused."
| Source:
St. Petersburg Times
|
| October 14, 2005 | - In Florida one Walgreens employee stabbed another during an argument over who would be first to microwave her soup.
| Source:
AP
|
| October 4, 2005 | - A Florida teacher was fired after he mistook a ninth-grade student's beeping insulin pump for a ringing cell phone and ripped it from the boy's body.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| September 24, 2005 | -
Hurricane Rita, the third-most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, struck Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, killing 36 people and causing flooding, tornadoes, and storm surges, and re-flooding parts of New Orleans. Hurricane evacuations caused miles of traffic jams in Texas, and a bus filled with elderly people exploded when an oxygen tank caught fire, incinerating at least 24 passengers.
| Source 1:
Wikipedia
Source 2:
Houston Chronicle
|
| September 5, 2005 | - In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the United States declared disasters in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Taken together, the 90,000-square-mile disaster area would be the twelfth largest state. Emergencies were declared in Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
| Source:
U.S. Department of Defense
|
| August 26, 2005 | -
Hurricane Katrina killed 11 people in Florida, and more than a million homes and businesses lost power. Katrina then crossed over the Gulf of Mexico and went ashore east of New Orleans, becoming a Category 5 storm along the way. "PERSONS . . . PETS . . . AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS," said the National Weather Service, "WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK . . . WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS." The hurricane eventually weakened to a tropical storm; winds tore off parts of the roof of the Superdome, where thousands of poor people sought shelter, and at least 55 people were killed in Mississippi.
| Source 1:
AP
Source 2:
The Roanoke Times
|
| August 25, 2005 | - A man was arrested in Tallahassee, Florida, after threatening to blow up Governor Jeb Bush.
| Source:
The Tampa Tribune
|
| August 22, 2005 | - South Florida's
iguana problem was growing more severe. "It was like Jurassic Park in my toilet," said a Pompano Beach woman.
| Source:
UPI
|
| August 19, 2005 | - Hundreds of people in Florida attended a museum exhibit of preserved corpses encased in silicone.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| August 12, 2005 | - A Florida man was cited for painting “die you miserable bitch” on the side of his house; the words were directed at his seventy-three-year-old neighbor, who has cancer.
| Source:
The St. Petersburg Times
|
| August 5, 2005 | - A Florida man pleaded guilty to beating his wife to death because she wanted to cuddle after sex.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| July 26, 2005 | -
Florida was infested with iguanas.
| Source:
St. Petersburg Times
|
| July 21, 2005 | -
Florida police were looking for a naked man who steals into the homes of elderly women late at night and tickles their feet.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| July 15, 2005 | - A blind man in Florida got lucky with his guide dog, a yellow lab named Lucky.
| Source:
Talahassee Democrat
|
| July 13, 2005 | - A Florida man, worried that his three-year-old son might become a gay sissy, was accused of beating the boy to death.
| Source:
TBO.com
|
| June 29, 2005 | - A woman in Florida won the right to bare her breasts in public.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| June 26, 2005 | - A shark killed a fourteen-year-old girl in Florida.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| June 26, 2005 | - A Florida man on an oxygen machine died when the electric company turned off the electricity to his son's home.
| Source:
HeraldTribune.com
|
| June 16, 2005 | - A county commissioner in Marion County, Florida, was promoting his plan to send sex offenders to Mexico.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| June 15, 2005 | -
Florida police found six endangered gopher tortoises in the back of a car. The owner of the car said that he was planning a soup.
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
|
| June 11, 2005 | -
Janet Reno had a fender-bender in Florida.
| Source:
Florida Today
|
| May 12, 2005 | - A man was suing a hospital in Orlando, Florida, for injecting him with green and red sparkling glitter instead of Demerol.
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| April 30, 2005 | - The state court of Florida blocked a thirteen-year-old girl from having an abortion. “Why can't I make my own decision?” the girl asked a judge. “I don't know,” the judge answered.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Sun-Sentinel.com
|
| April 8, 2005 | - In Florida, investigators traced an outbreak of E. coli to a petting zoo.
| Source:
KansasCity.com
|
| March 29, 2005 | - Noting their mutual hatred of Jews, a neo-Nazi in Florida called on Al Qaeda to join forces with the Aryan Nations.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| March 27, 2005 | - Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead woman in Florida, was still alive.
| Source:
ABCNews.com
|
| March 25, 2005 | - A man who wanted to “rescue” Terri Schiavo was arrested for attempting to steal a gun from a Florida gun shop.
| Source:
AP
|
| March 23, 2005 | -
Florida lawmakers were considering an Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, intended to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism,” that would allow students to sue teachers who insist that evolution is factual.
| Source:
Alligator.org
|
| March 20, 2005 | - The U.S. Senate subpoenaed Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1991, to testify before the Health, Education, and Labor Committee. The subpoena was intended to make it impossible for Schiavo to be taken off the feeding tube that allows her to survive; the order, however, was defied by a Florida judge, and the feeding tube was removed. Schiavo then began to die of dehydration. The House and Senate held emergency sessions in order to pass a bill that would transfer the case from state court to federal court. The bill was then signed by President George W. Bush, who had flown in from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the occasion.
| Source:
Wikipedia
|
| March 18, 2005 | - Police in Florida arrested a five-year-old girl at her kindergarten, binding her hands with plastic ties and placing handcuffs around her ankles. The girl, who weighs forty pounds, was upset about some jelly beans. “They set my baby up,” said her mother.
| Source:
AP
|
| January 11, 2005 | - A Florida
minister died at the pulpit. His last words were, “And when I go to heaven. . .”
| Source:
AP
|
| January 10, 2005 | - A Florida man, upset over hurricanes, beat a puppy with a hammer.
| Source:
St. Petersburg Times
|
| December 5, 2004 | - Four people who received Botox injections in south Florida were hospitalized for botulism poisoning.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 7, 2004 | - Voters in Montana approved the use of medical marijuana; they also approved a "right to hunt" amendment. Florida and Nevada raised the states' minimum wage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2004 | - It was noted that anomalous voting patterns in Florida (where a disproportionate number of Democrats apparently voted for George W. Bush) were all confined to counties where optical-scanning machines are used to read paper ballots. Such votes are tabulated by Windows-based PCs that are vulnerable to tampering.
| Source:
Truthout
|
| November 6, 2004 | - A six-year-old Florida girl took $1,000 worth of crack cocaine to school; her mother said she must have got it trick-or-treating.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| November 5, 2004 | - Some voting machines in Broward County, Florida, started counting backward once they reached 32,000.
| Source:
Palm Beach Post
|
| November 3, 2004 | - Votes were also lost in Palm Beach County, Florida.
| Source:
Bradenton Herald
|
| October 31, 2004 | - Early voters in Florida, especially in heavily Democratic districts, were standing in line to vote for up to six hours.
| Source:
Talking Points Memo
|
| October 29, 2004 | -
Broward County's election supervisor said that up to 15,000 absentee ballots would be resent to voters whose ballots mysteriously disappeared.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2004 | - A Sarasota man failed to run over Florida Republican representative Katherine Harris in his car. "I intimidated them with my car," he said. "I was exercising my political expression."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 4, 2004 | -
Election officials across the country were reporting record numbers of new registrations, and Republican state officials in Ohio and Florida were doing their best to invalidate them on technicalities.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 27, 2004 | - Another hurricane hit Florida.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 3, 2004 | - Millions of people in Florida were evacuated because of Hurricane Frances.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| August 14, 2004 | -
Hurricane Charley killed 13 people in Florida and caused an estimated $20 billion worth of damage.
| Source:
Reuters, New York Times
|
| August 12, 2004 | - A 480-pound Florida woman who had not left her couch for six years died when doctors attempted to separate her from the couch, which was fused to her body.
| Source:
WFTV.com
|
| July 24, 2004 | -
Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, warned doctors that it had "minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims" about Risperdal, an anti-schizophrenia drug; the drug can cause stroke, diabetes, and other fatal complications, the company said, and contrary to claims on the label it is not safer than similar drugs. It was reported that some boys who were given Risperdal in Florida, where it is used as a "chemical restraint" in state facilities, developed lactating breasts.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| July 22, 2004 | - An alligator bit off a landscaper's arm in Florida.
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 7, 2004 | - Governor Jeb Bush was asked to list the angles on a three-four-five triangle, a question that appears on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which high school students must pass to graduate. Bush replied: "I don't know, 125, 90, and whatever remains of 180?"
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 2, 2004 | - More than 2,100 Florida residents were found to be wrongly included on a list of ineligible voters.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| May 19, 2004 | - The Humane Society complained that racing
dogs in Florida were being given cocaine.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 15, 2004 | - A man in Ocala, Florida, was in trouble after his fiancée caught him raping her rottweiler dog.
| Source:
Ocala Star Banner
|
| April 13, 2004 | - A Democratic club in south Florida took out a newspaper ad saying that Donald Rumsfeld should be "put up against a wall" and shot.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| February 12, 2004 | - An elderly Florida man robbed a bank to pay for his wife's medical bills.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| February 12, 2004 | -
Florida's state department decreed that touch-screen votes need not be included in manual recounts of elections.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 22, 2004 | - An expert panel that was asked to review a Pentagon-funded Internet voting system declared that the system was fundamentally flawed. "Using a voting system based on the Internet," said one of the experts, "poses a serious and unacceptable risk for election fraud." The Pentagon nonetheless said that it "stands by" the program, which will be used in several primaries this year. "We feel it's right on," said a spokesman, "and we're going to use it."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 20, 2004 | - President George W. Bush made his State of the Union address just one day after the Iowa caucuses and appealed to voters to reelect him so that he could continue to wage war on terror.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 11, 2004 | - A 64-year-old webmaster sued the Tallahassee, Florida, Department of Elder Affairs for age discrimination.
| Source:
Talahassee.com
|
| November 29, 2003 | - A Wal-Mart shopper in Orange City, Florida, was trampled and knocked unconscious during a stampede at a Wal-Mart Supercenter; the stampede occurred at the 6 a.m. opening of a big sale. The victim, who was first in line, was found clutching a DVD player.
| Source:
Daytona Beach News-Journal, New York Times
|
| October 9, 2003 | - A lightning bolt killed 20 pregnant cows in Florida.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 3, 2003 | - Paul J.
Hill, a Christian who murdered an abortion doctor in Pensacola, Florida, was executed by lethal injection.
Hill said that he was looking forward to getting his reward in heaven.
| Source:
New York Times, New York Post
|
| August 22, 2003 | - Tampa, Florida, shut down its face-recognition software that scanned crowds in the Ybor City neighborhood for criminals but led to no arrests after two years. "I wouldn't consider it a failure," said one policeman.
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| August 6, 2003 | - It was reported that Florida
police are building an "antiterrorism" database called Matrix that will be used to detect patterns of suspicious activity among the citizenry; the system, which will be partially financed with federal funds, is remarkably similar to the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness program. Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington, D.C., said that District police are working with police in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York to build a similar data-mining system.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| May 15, 2003 | - Governor Jeb Bush of Florida asked a court to appoint a guardian to safeguard the rights of a fetus.
| Source:
New York Times
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| April 29, 2003 | -
“On principle, we don't want the United Nations running around Iraq.” Hans Blix, the U.N.
weapons inspector, pointed out that “We found as little, but with less cost.” Military officials admitted that they were holding children in the high-security prison for terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, even though they have not been accused of any offense, and said that they would be detained “until we ensure that they're no longer a threat to the United States.” A Florida mother said she accidentally stabbed her 19-year-old son in the buttocks with a 12-inch knife when he wouldn't get out of bed for work.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
Florida recalled an AIDS brochure that quoted Scripture and urged compassion toward AIDS patients but made no mention of AIDS prevention.
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| March 18, 2003 | -
The United States tested its “mother of all bombs,” a Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB), at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida.
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| March 4, 2003 | -
Lightning struck a small plane that was carrying Florida governor Jeb Bush but failed to destroy it.
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| January 7, 2003 | -
The Naples, Florida, branch of the Salvation Army refused a $100,000 donation from a lottery winner because its director won't take money associated with gambling.
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| December 17, 2002 | -
A police
dog in St. Petersburg, Florida, bit off a robbery suspect's penis.
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| October 22, 2002 | -
It was confirmed that a 22-year-old Florida woman has mad cow disease, but officials claimed she was infected in England.
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| October 1, 2002 | -
Four large African lions were killed near Quitman, Arkansas, and an alligator bit off a man's arm in Florida.
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| September 17, 2002 | -
The men, who were detained in Florida for 17 hours, turned out to be medical students on their way back to school.
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| September 17, 2002 | -
General Tommy Franks was busy moving the U.S. Central Command from Tampa, Florida, to Qatar, in the Persian Gulf.
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