Free Republic

For the sixth annual installment of Miami Beach Gay Pride, the honor of Grand Marshal has been bestowed upon two extraordinary members of the entertainment industry. After selling 100 million albums worldwide, singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur Gloria Estefan will be joined by the acclaimed American film and television producer, director and choreographer Kenny Ortega, announced Joel Stedman, Chairman of the Pride Board. The Miami Beach Gay Pride parade and festival will take place Sunday, April 13, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. along Ocean Drive between 5th and 15th Streets.

Indian officials searched for Rolotti for six days after he jumped into the Ganges River to help a woman who fell over.The body of Hector Rolotti, co-founder of popular Brickell restaurant Novecento, has been found in the Ganges River after six days of searching, according to a press release from the Novecento Group. Rolotti's body was found at 2 a.m. EST in the Ganges by a group of locals who alerted authorities and a search team, the press release said. The 47-year-old had jumped into the river to save a woman who had fallen in. Rolotti was on a spiritual...

Indian officials are searching for Rolotti after he jumped into the Ganges River to save a woman who fell over.Indian officials are searching for Hector Rolotti, the Chief Executive of Novecento, after he jumped in the Ganges River to help save a person, but never came out. NBC 6's Jamie Guirola reports. The co-founder of one of South Florida's most popular restaurants is missing. Indian officials are searching for 47-year-old Hector Rolotti, the Chief Executive of Novecento, after he jumped in the Ganges River to help save a person, but never came out. Novcento is a staple in Brickell and...

Billionaire Warren Buffet’s iconic company Berkshire Hathaway will trade 1.6 million shares of Graham Holdings stock in exchange for WPLG, according to a report from Deadline It’s been known for a while that Buffett wants to exit Graham Holdings, formerly known as the Washington Post Co., who are left with only their TV stations and a business in the education sector. Buffett will allegedly get WPLG plus an unspecified amount of cash. The Washington Post company bought WPLG in 1969 and changed its call letters to WPLG in memory of Phillip L. Graham, the husband of Washington Post publisher Katherine...

Carlos Salamanca fled Venezuela's growing political turmoil in January with his wife, two teenage children and $7,000. Two months into their journey to the United States, he and his wife are sleeping most nights in an old, worn Nissan. Salamanca had no family or business contacts in the U.S. No property he'd purchased on a previous trip. No idea where the children might attend school. "Once we started getting threats, we couldn't take it anymore," he said of the family's last days in Venezuela. Early waves of Venezuelan immigrants who fled after the late President Hugo Chavez and his socialist...

MIAMI (AP) — With just weeks left to sign up for health care under the Affordable Care Act, Michelle Obama zeroed in on recruiting the crucial young adult demographic during a visit to a Miami community health center Wednesday. The first lady congratulated a handful of residents who had just enrolled during an intimate event, asking one woman whether she had gotten her son to enroll. "Tell him he could get hit by a car. It's crazy. They don't think about that kind of stuff," said Obama, who moments later applauded another mother for signing herself and adult son up...

Huber Matos, a top commander in Fidel Castro’s army who broke from the Cuban revolution in 1959 over its tilt toward Communism, endured a harsh imprisonment for 20 years and became a leader of anti-Castro exiles in Florida, died in Miami on Thursday. He was 95.

The report by independent investigator Ted Wells on the state of the Miami Dolphins organization was released on Friday morning after months of research, and the results are clear — offensive guard Richie Incognito did lead a systemic campaign of bullying and ridicule of not only offensive tackle Jonathan Martin, but also at least one of Incognito’s and Martin’s teammates, and at least one team employee. Wells, a partner in the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, was hired by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in early November to exhaustively investigate the Dolphins franchise from top to...

MIAMI (AP) — He remembers the moment so clearly, the last time he saw his mother on American soil. Jose Antonio Machado was merely 15, too young and powerless to stop what was happening. His mother, Melba, was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, wrists in handcuffs, being led away by an immigration officer.

NBC does it again, this time through a Miami affiliate that broadcast a graphic (see above) that read: "Reprehensible Party of Florida." You have to ask yourself what kind of culture there is at NBC News that makes staffers believe that dehumanizing Republicans in this way is okay. This isn´t a one-off. It is a troubling pattern that just never stops. The full segment is below: Lenny Curry, the Republican Party of Florida Chairman, fired off a letter to the station demanding an apology and floating the idea of legal action: President and General Manager Larry Olevitch WTVJ - NBC...

Day Two of the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami was packed full of speakers and panels. The two halls at the Miami Beach Convention Center kept attendees on the move. In the promenade areas, a number of bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related businesses were showing off their product and services. In turn, the Miami Beach area served as a vacation-like backdrop for the event, with parties held on the rooftop of the Clevelander Hotel on both Friday and Saturday night. Even so, the conference schedule of the second day seemed to move at a frenetic pace, with few breaks in between....

Father Jose Antonio Fortea, author of a famous treaty on demonology, spent about an hour with the press at Miami's Archdiocese on Friday. He framed the conversation around the idea that people are turning toward secular solutions or other faiths to overcome spiritual obstacles. Fortea, who is from Spain, said that although exorcisms are uncommon last-ditch resorts, the Vatican has emphasized the rite in recent years out of necessity. The Catholic Church does not advertise the number of exorcisms it approves annually, but some statistics do exist: Between 1991 and 2001, the number of Catholic demon-expellers in the United States...

Michelle Obama and the Miami Heat recently filmed a promotional video for the first lady’s Let’s Move! campaign to combat childhood obesity. Let’s Move! released the PSA Tuesday, explaining that the video was filmed in the Diplomatic Room last week when the team was at the White House to celebrate their 2013 championship win. “Rumor had it, during their visit, they teamed up with the first lady in support of Let’s Move! to highlight the importance of eating healthy and drinking water to perform like a champion,” Elyse Cohen, the deputy director of Let’s Move!, wrote in a blog post....

HOLLYWOOD (CBS4) — CBS4 News has obtained a series of new and disturbing cell phone videos that show a vicious, unrelenting beating of a Hollywood teenager last November outside a home on McKinley Street.

A 5.1 earthquake rattled Cuba and Florida yesterday afternoon. No damage, It was a rare event. There are earthquakes in Cuba, but they're mostly in the south. There were reports from Florida of swinging lamps and rattling objects. I felt it as a slight vibration under my forearms as I leaned on my desk. My husband and son, working downstairs, did not feel it at all.

HOLLYWOOD— After pulling the equivalent of a sexual dine and dash Monday afternoon, a 19-year-old Miami man was shot in the stomach, authorities said. David Darnell Roberts had sex with Dwaynesha White, 22, at her home in the 2500 block of Pierce Street, but left without making the agreed upon payment, according to Officer Mark Hazel, a spokesman for the Hollywood Police Department.

DEERFIELD (CBSMiami) — Investigators say bad blood over an employee of the month award at a South Florida Wal-Mart store led to gunfire and criminal charges. According to a Broward Sheriff’s Office arrest report last month’s employee of the month at a Deerfield Beach Wal-Mart store on South Military Trail had her car shot up by a co-worker who was angry after she won the award. Willie Mitchell is charged with discharging a firearm from a vehicle. The Broward Sheriff’s Office said surveillance video from a Wal-Mart parking lot shows Mitchell parking next to a co-worker’s earlier in December. A...

Elian Gonzalez, the object of a 1999-2000 custody squabble involving Washington, Havana and family members on both sides of the Florida Strait, holds a piece of U.S. legislation directly responsible for what he endured then, Cuban official media said Monday. "They were very sad times for me, which marked me for my whole life. I was never given the chance to have a moment to think about my mother, who as a result of that (U.S.) Cuban Adjustment Act died at sea," the now-19-year-old Gonzalez said last weekend during a Union of Young Communists event. ~snip~ The 1966 Cuban Adjustment...

I like to surf around the web sort of checking out many topics of interest. As we approached the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, I remembered that he visited Miami just 4 days earlier. I knew this because my father had actually been in the Miami crowd that saw Kennedy and he commented later that it was hard to believe he was dead because he looked so young and alive just days earlier. Well, I got curious about this and when the Miami Herald had an article with photos of Kennedy's visit to Miami, I checked them out. What...

Mass incarceration has turned segments of Black America so upside down that a tatted-up, N-word-tossing white goon is more respected and accepted than a soft-spoken, highly intelligent black Stanford graduate. According to a story in the Miami Herald, black Dolphins players granted Richie Incognito "honorary" status as a black man while feeling little connection to Jonathan Martin.