TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida legislators passed 279 bills during this year’s session three months ago, and 161 of them take effect on Friday with the start of the state’s fiscal year, affecting school choice, rape kit testing, tax cuts and many more aspects of life in the Sunshine State.
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The Pentagon has ended one of the last bans on service in the armed forces. Transgender people will now be allowed to serve openly in U.S. military.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Planned Parenthood says it will work with its abortion-rights allies in eight states to repeal laws that may be vulnerable following the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down tough abortion restrictions in Texas. The repeal campaign will initially target laws in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as measures in Texas that were not addressed by the Supreme Court ruling.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge late Thursday blocked key portions of a new state law that places restrictions on abortions clinics in Florida. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued his ruling just hours before the law passed by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature was due to take effect.
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(Tallahassee, FL) — A new law that hopes to prevent a rape kit backlog from forming again goes into effect Friday. Jennifer Dritt from the Florida Coalition Against Sexual Violence calls the testing requirements the most progressive in the nation. The move to end the backlog comes as police are seeing a two to three percent increase in the number of sexual assaults being reported.
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Newly released emergency call logs show that victims of the Pulse shooting in Orlando pleaded with sheriff’s deputies and dispatchers to save them as they described losing their breath and feeling their bodies go numb from their wounds. Gunman Omar Mateen opened fire at the club on June 12, leaving 49 club-goers dead and 53 injured. He was fatally shot by police following a more-than-three-hour standoff.
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Several groups that have been working to help victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting in recent weeks are combining their fundraising efforts. Equality Florida, the LGBT Community Center of Central Florida and the National Compassion Fund announced Thursday that they will partner with OneOrlando to ensure all funds collected for victims are disbursed in a unified process that will expedite funds, ensure transparency and safeguard against fraud.
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal judge has barred a Virginia man from using Twitter after he was charged with tweeting threats to two U.S. senators. News media outlets cite a federal complaint as saying that 27-year-old Kyler Schmitz of Alexandria tweeted to one of the senators, “I’m going to shoot you in the head for allowing someone to murder my loved ones.” The tweets were sent in the days immediately following the June 12 shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 49 dead and 53 injured.
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STUART, Fla. (AP) — As a noxious algae bloom fouls beaches on Florida’s Atlantic coast, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to reduce the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee that many blame for fueling the problem. The Corps’ Jacksonville District planned to begin the reductions Friday, targeting the Caloosahatchee Estuary and the St. Lucie Estuary, a news release said.
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STUART, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s governor has added two more counties to the state of emergency declared over an algae bloom on the Atlantic coast. Gov. Rick Scott signed the amended executive order Thursday, adding Lee and Palm Beach counties to Wednesday’s emergency declaration for Martin and St. Lucie counties. Palm Beach County is located directly south of the existing emergency area, while Lee County is located on Florida’s Gulf coast.
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Governor Scott filed his annual financial disclosure forms Thursday. Scott reported that his net worth was more than $119 million by the end of 2015, a drop of nearly 19 percent from the previous year. Scott was a multi-millionaire businessman prior to running for governor in 2010. He used tens of millions of his own fortune to pay for his first campaign and his re-election campaign four years later.
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MIAMI (AP) — A South Florida man accused of trying to detonate a bomb at a synagogue and Jewish school during Passover observances is facing a new charge. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami reports in a news release that 40-year-old James Medina was indicted Thursday on a charge of attempting to damage religious property.
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A reminder from the U.S. Park Police. It might seem pretty cool to use your drone to snap of pics of the Fourth of July fireworks with the Capitol or the monuments in the background. But officials say leave your drones at home. It’s also illegal to fly drones in national parks around country.
