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Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman Munilla Construction Management, also known as MCM, has built schools, airports and highways all around the United States. Its projects have included terminals at PortMiami, various city halls and police stations, and the bridges connecting Las Olas Boulevard to the finger islands in Fort Lauderdale. Now the Miami-based firm, owned by six brothers, is playing a bit part in a national saga: the investigation of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Manafort managed Trump's presidential campaign from June to August2016. He quit amid allegations that he had been paid millions of dollars...

Aerial footage shows the aftermath of the FIU pedestrian bridge collapsing on Southwest Eighth Street in Miami on March 15, 2018. Pedro Portal Miami Herald In the hours after a 950-ton pedestrian bridge over Tamiami Trail collapsed Thursday afternoon, killing at least four people, civil engineers began to speculate about potential causes. Was it a design error? Did something go wrong during construction? The answer may be buried deep in the calculations made by workers who were conducting a stress test on the unfinished and vulnerable bridge. Any such test, experts told the Miami Herald, requires extreme care and precision...

FULL TITLE: 'Up to 10' people crushed to death as 950-ton pedestrian bridge collapses on top of cars and pedestrians on Florida college campus - just five days after it was installed Up to 10 people have been killed when a newly installed pedestrian bridge spanning several lanes of traffic collapsed at Florida International University on Thursday. US Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told local TV station CBS Miami that between six to 10 people died. The 174-foot 'instant bridge' hailed as a feat of engineering and safety, was installed Saturday morning but was not due to open to the...

MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Florida International University’s massive new pedestrian bridge collapsed Thursday afternoon in West Miami-Dade. The bridge, located at 109th Ave and 8th Street, collapsed on a number of cars. There are reports of numerous people injured in the collapse. At least one person was taken as a trauma alert to the hospital, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. The 950-ton bridge went up on Saturday. It was then lowered into its final position, just west of 109th Avenue that day. The main span was built next to Southwest 8th Street.

Comparing immigration enforcement to “fugitive slave laws,” professors at a taxpayer-funded university in south Florida are demanding that the school protect illegal aliens by creating a “sanctuary campus.” Students at colleges around the nation have made similar requests to protect undocumented classmates after president-elect Donald Trump vowed to increase deportations and reverse an Obama administration measure that shields those brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But the Florida professors are blazing the trail as the first faculty members to officially call for campus-wide sanctuary in the aftermath of the presidential election. They work at Florida International University (FIU), a...

Florida International senior tight end Jonnu Smith will miss the remainder of the season after his girlfriend poured boiling water on him, causing burns to multiple parts of his body. According to the arrest affidavit, Smith, an NFL draft prospect, suffered severe burns on his head, neck, back, a shoulder and an arm. Mary Gaspar has been charged with felony aggravated battery. She is five months pregnant with their child.

They may be the big men and women on campus but off campus they are just men and women. “The claim of legal status depends on the prior claim that academics are special, even exceptional, and, because exceptional, exempt from the rules and regulations that apply to others,” Stanley Fish writes in his book, Visions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism To Revolution, published last year. “This thesis—I call it academic exceptionalism—has been put forward in the courts, but, more often than not, it has been rejected.” Fish is a professor of law at Florida International University. “The logic of execeptionalism...

During the 1990s, Welsh professor Tudor Parfitt, known around the world as the “British Indiana Jones,” discovered evidence that the Lemba tribe in central Zimbabwe and northern South Africa has Jewish roots. He identified a genetic element in the male chromosomes of the tribe that comes from the Kohanim, the Jewish priestly line. This year, Dr. Parfitt published his latest of 25 books, Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. He also joined the faculty of Florida International University (FIU) and led an expedition to Papua New Guinea to visit the Gogodala tribe, which like the Lemba claims to be...

The most recent move in the broadcast career of former Channel 7 and CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez looks like an open field zig-zag: radio color analyst on Florida International’s 12 college football games this season. It looks that way if you didn’t know that Sanchez lettered three years at Hialeah High and, according to him, received a partial scholarship to play at Moorehead State. Or, if you didn’t know that after his firing from CNN, he spent last fall hopping around to FIU road games from his Atlanta home with his FIU student son, Ricky. “I played college football. I...

As the scrum unfolded outside the Florida International University recreation center, accused killer Quentin Wyche broke away, hustling back to the building, witnesses told police. ``Then he kind of stopped in front of where I was and took out like -- took his backpack off and took out a pair of scissors from the backpack,'' witness Chidinma Orj told Miami-Dade police in newly released court documents. Wyche, she told police, tried frantically to break apart the eight-inch scissors. ``He was just saying stuff like, I'm a get him'' she recalled.

The arrest of Walter Kendall Myers and his wife demonstrates the extent to which the Cuban Intelligence Service has penetrated and manipulated American academic institutions. Myers...worked as instructor and chairman for West European Studies at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute. Myers received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. The same institution in 1988 awarded a master's degree to Ana Belen Montes, the key Pentagon intelligence analyst on Cuba pleaded guilty to working for Cuban intelligence...Cuban intelligence has targeted American colleges and universities for nearly half a century. The FBI debriefed DGI Capt....

It's Friday at Florida International University, which means a few things for Sky Choi: physics lab, Calculus II -- and a trip to the game room. For this 12-year-old, the youngest student ever to attend FIU, college is a long-awaited challenge and a daily adventure. ''We have fun here,'' he said as he prepared to start a work sheet on pistons, gases, and pressure with his lab partners. Welcome to the world of Sky, who is taking a full course load of physics, calculus, and Chinese language classes at the university -- and still finds time to play pool and...

A Florida professor admitted Tuesday he had been a Cuban spy for nearly 30 years, and his wife -- also a professor -- admitted she knew of his conduct, authorities said. Both Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa pleaded guilty to lesser charges in federal court in Miami. The couple entered their pleas as part of a deal to avoid a jury trial on previous charges of being Cuban agents who failed to register with the U.S. government, the Miami Herald reported Tuesday. The more serious offense could have put the couple in prison for a decade, the paper said....

A college professor and his wife, a college administrator, have been charged with being longtime illegal agents of Cuban President Fidel Castro, according to documents filed Monday. Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University, and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, were charged with acting as agents of Cuba without registering with the U.S. government as required, said the documents filed in U.S. District Court. The two were scheduled to make an initial court appearance Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrea Simonton, according to the documents. An indictment further describing the charges was expected to be unsealed after that appearance,...

FIU'S BIGGEST DONOR WAS A BOY WITH HOLEY SHOES The man who pledged FIU's single largest donation is filled with ideas and energy, yet he hasn't forgotten the tattered shoes of his boyhood. BY GEORGIA TASKER Herbert Wertheim is an inventor, pilot, philosopher, philanthropist and university trustee. He also is a charming storyteller. ''Telling stories produces endorphins in me,'' he said. ``I love my life.'' As the self-made multimillionaire optometrist/entrepreneur who has pledged $20 million to Florida International University for its proposed medical school, his fast-paced stories reflect a many-faceted man. He has worked his way up from poverty to...