Florida: 5 Things To Know For Mar 6

IIFA Kevin Spacey 2014

Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today.

DCF PROMOTES SUICIDE PREVENTION EDUCATION

State agencies across Florida are working together to decrease the number of suicides. According to state officials, more than 2,900 suicides were recorded in Florida in 2012. Suicide was the eighth largest cause of death among Floridians. Florida has two times more suicides than homicides each year.

NEW MIAMI FBI CHIEF QUESTIONED SADDAM HUSSEIN

The new chief of the FBI office in Miami once interrogated Saddam Hussein after the Iraqi leader’s 2003 capture during the U.S.-led war that toppled his regime. George Piro has taken over the 400-agent office that conducts investigations from Fort Pierce to Key West along Florida’s southeast coast.

KEVIN SPACEY TO LEAD CLASS AT ‘BOLLYWOOD OSCARS’

Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is coming to Tampa to lead an acting workshop when the “Bollywood Oscars” — the International Indian Film Academy’s weekend and awards — arrives in April. The IIFA announced Thursday that Spacey will be joined in the master class with Bollywood actress Vidya Balan, who won India’s prestigious National Award for her thriller Kahaani.

JURY RECOMMENDS LIFE SENTENCE FOR DEATH ROW INMATE

A Tampa Bay area jury has recommended a life sentence for a convicted killer who has spent the last three decades on death row. A Pinellas County jury on Tuesday voted 6-6 between death for 50-year-old Richard Michael Cooper and life in prison. Ties go to the defendant. A judge will make the final decision but must give the jury’s recommendation great weight. The previous sentence was thrown out in 2011, after an appeals court found that evidence of the abuse Cooper suffered as a child should have been heard by a jury.

FAMILY RESCUED FROM VAN SUBMERGED IN OCEAN

A mother behind the wheel of a minivan that was driven with her three children into the surf off Daytona Beach, Fla., is undergoing a mental evaluation. The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office also said Wednesday that the children were turned over to the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families. Bystanders and officers helped pull the woman and her children — ages 3, 9 and 10 — from their minivan after it became nearly submerged in the Atlantic surf Tuesday afternoon.

Source: Associated Press