Tesla’s energy division has deployed a new Powerpack project in Florida, apparently the first of its size in the state, to protect the University of South Florida against blackouts. Catherine Stempien, head of Duke Energy in Florida, said that they installed a 100 kW solar array and a “350 kW Tesla Powerpack and inverter system” – pictured above – at a parking garage on the University of South Florida campus.

An attacker severely beat two Miami-Dade County high school students with a tree branch early Monday, family members said. Bela Perdomo, 15, and James Critz, 16, who are students at the Marine Academy of Science and Technology at Florida International University Biscayne Bay Campus, were collecting samples for a science project near the school when the man approached them.

When police found Carlos Cruz-Echevarria dead near his home last Veterans Day, he was lying face down in a ditch, shot multiple times in the head. Beside him was a truck stuck in the mud. Later, the 60-year-old army veteran’s car was found several miles away, torched. It seemed like a random, senseless killing: authorities thought Cruz-Echevarria had been robbed and left for dead after stopping to help a stranger on a Daytona Beach roadside. But a year long investigation has revealed that it was anything but random.

The Jacksonville, Florida, Sheriff's Office said there was a mass shooting with multiple fatalities at a downtown shopping-dining complex on Sunday and urged people to stay far away from the area.

A major eSports tournament has been suspended by games publisher Electronic Arts (EA) after a shooting that saw two competitors killed on Sunday. Three events have been cancelled while the firm conducts a "comprehensive review of safety protocols”. EA’s chief executive Andrew Wilson said he was “filled with shock and grief” over the killings in Florida.

“There will always be drinking water here. It’s just a question of how much you want to pay for it.”

In Broward County, Florida, the site of February's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa Alhadeff was among the victims, won a seat on the county’s school board in a landslide Tuesday night. Alhadeff captured 65 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results from Broward County's supervisor of elections, significantly outpacing two other contenders in the race. The second-place finisher, Tennille Doe-Decoste, received just 18 percent of the vote.

The Republican nominee for governor in Florida drew condemnation from Democrats for a comment about his opponent, Andrew Gillum.

A Florida Uber driver shot and killed a man who was chasing his car with a pickup truck and threatened him, authorities said Wednesday. Jason Boek, 34, was fatally shot at around 2:20 a.m. Tuesday morning after leaving a bar in Dundee, Florida, and chasing Uber driver Robert Westlake, 38, in his pickup truck, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference Wednesday. Boek apparently saw his girlfriend and a bartender help another woman into an Uber and mistakenly thought his girlfriend had gotten into the car, Judd said.

An 8-year-old Florida boy wanted to raise money for a family friend who is battling an aggressive form of childhood cancer. So he and his mother went to a Home Depot for supplies to build a lemonade stand, except they received a lot more than that. Dawn Redmon and her son, Christian, called the Home Depot store in Apopka with the hope that they'd considering making some sort of donation or giving a discount on the items to build the lemonade stand.

It started out as a civil rights battle in a Tampa courtroom, and now a cell phone password might be a defendant’s key to freedom. A judge threw William Montanez behind bars for failing to unlock his phones Thursday, which wasn’t how Montanez or his attorney expected their day in court to end. "Basically, my client has been denied his liberty today without due process," said attorney Patrick Leduc. To understand how Montanez got here, we go back to June 21. Montanez was on the road when suddenly he got pulled over for not properly yielding.

An internal report found that Miami-area police commanders in Biscayne Park, Florida, pressured officers to make false arrests to look good for leaders. Former brass deny the allegations, which resulted in the indictment of the former chief. By Charles Rabin, Jay Weaver, David Ovalle.

CLEARWATER Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced Friday that his agency will not arrest a man deputies say shot and killed another man during an argument over a handicap parking space.

When a man had a heart attack while laying sod in his front yard, first responders not only saved him, but they also finished the job for him. By Christina Zdanowicz. (July 9, 2018)

Police say a Florida man will face no charges for shooting another man dead in a parking lot after an argument last week. Protesters gathered Sunday at the scene of the shooting in response. Last Thursday, Markeis McGlockton parked in a handicap spot with his girlfriend and three young kids before going inside a convenience store with his five-year-old son to buy snacks.

After a Florida police officer helped a homeless man shave and clean himself in a parking lot ahead of a job interview on the weekend, the man was offered the job. Tallahassee police officer Tony Carlson noticed a man having trouble with his razor outside of a gas station on Sunday and went over to help. "When I met him in the parking lot, he was having problems with his razor and asked me if I can help.

"This isn't your place to write about. It's barely mine." By Kristen Arnet. (June 28, 2017)

Nicole Black claims she rushed her daughter to a Tampa hospital after medics told her she couldn't afford an ambulance ride. According to WFTS, Crystle Galloway had a C-section and gave birth to a son, Jacob Aden, days before suffering a medical emergency and dying. “She passed away before her baby's umbilical cord dropped off,” said Black.

Florida has an algae problem, and it’s big. This year, an overgrowth in the waters off the state’s southwestern coast is killing wildlife and making some beaches noxious. The toxic algal bloom, known as a red tide, is not unusual. They appear off the state’s coast almost every year. But this one, still going strong after roughly nine months, is the longest since 2006, when blooms that originated in 2004 finally abated after 17 months.

"Anything that can leave has, and anything that couldn't leave has died." By Maya Wei-Haas, photographs by Ben Depp.

When Florida teacher John Goodman ran out of sick leave during chemotherapy, colleagues came to his aid.

Residents are battling illness, plummeting tourist numbers and piles and piles of dead fish. By Katherine Hignett.

An inappropriate game of titty twister has lead to tragedy in New Port Richie, Florida. 28-year-old Thomas Matheson was arrested Tuesday night after twisting a two-year-old boy's nipples so hard they actually came off. According to Bay News 9, Matheson was charged with watching the boy while his mother was off at work. Matheson admitted to playing rough with the shirtless boy, but after he squeezed and pulled on the boy's nipples he apparently didn't realize that he had literally pulled the skin off. Or so he told police.

After feeding the hungry in a Daytona Beach park every weekend for more than a year, it’s just as easy to imagine Chico and Debbie Jimenez given a ticker-tape parade as what they actually got: a slew of citations and a permanent ban from the park. Chico and Debbie Jimenez, a husband and wife team, aren’t handing out food in the Florida heat every Wednesday because of a court order or for a paycheck. They do it because they believe helping the poor is their religious duty.

Even if you don’t think society has a moral obligation to care for the least among us, a new study underscores that we have a financial obligation to do so. Late last week, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets.

Florida health officials are warning beachgoers about a seawater bacterium that can invade cuts and scrapes and cause flesh-eating disease.

Doctors in Florida cannot legally protect children from guns.

A dream beach house in Florida has turned into a nightmare for a Missouri couple. Six months after the custom house was built along the Atlantic Ocean near Palm Coast, Mark and Brenda Voss learned it's on the wrong lot in the gated Ocean Hammock community.

Oficials in the City of South Miami have passed a resolution in favor of splitting the state in half so South Florida would become the 51st state. Vice Mayor Walter Harris proposed the resolution and it passed with a 3-2 vote at the city commission meeting on Oct. 7.

Latandra Ellington had weathered some of Lowell Correctional Institution’s harshest and most primitive realities, and was just seven months shy of freedom — and being reunited with her four young children. But on Sept. 21, Ellington wrote a chilling letter to her aunt telling her she feared she wouldn’t make it out alive. One of the officers at the prison — she identified him as “Sgt. Q” — had threatened to beat and kill her, she wrote.

Grayton Redneck Rye-viera, a fresh hopped ale with rye malt, hits shelves. "We’re excited to collaborate with these artists and announce our Artist Series, an initiative where we feature designs from local artists on our 22-oz. seasonal beers."

  Jon Stewart has called Florida “America’s Wang,” and it does seem like the state’s strong peninsular properties somehow attract people who are on the end of their rope. In Florida Man, Sean Dunne’s endlessly quotable and surprisingly poignant documentary about worn-out and inebriated layabouts in the Sunshine State, the viewer meets a wide variety of beercan philosophers in the course of 50 minutes, many of whom have tales to tell...

Florida Gov. Rick Scott vetoed a record $461.4 million from the new state budget Tuesday, quickly wiping out many spending priorities of his fellow Republicans in the Legislature.

A case study in electoral failure.

The din created by thousands of nesting birds is usually the first thing you notice about Seahorse Key, a 150-acre mangrove-covered dune off Florida's Gulf Coast.