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Religious tracts target Catholic church in St. Petersburg

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - Sep. 14 (News) - Parishioners leaving Mass at St. Raphael's Catholic Church in St. Petersburg one recent Sunday evening weren't prepared for the sermon plastered to their windshields. "Am I going to Heaven?'' asked the religious tracts, protected in sandwich bags

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Effects from gulf oil spill far from over, experts say

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Craig Pittman - Aug. 05 (News) - The federal government — which has had to repeatedly revise its estimate about how much oil has gushed into the gulf from the Deepwater Horizon disaster — announced Wednesday that "the vast majority" of the oil appears to be gone.

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U.S. attorney, IRS and FBI investigating Florida GOP credit card use

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Jay Weaver, Beth Reinhard, Lucy Morgan - Apr. 21 (News Report) - Federal law enforcement agencies have launched a criminal investigation into the use of American Express cards issued by the Republican Party of Florida to elected officials and staff, according to sources familiar with the probe. The U.S. attorney's

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Marine reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Alexandra Zayas, Demorris A. Lee - Nov. 11 (News Report) - Bruce ended up in jail, accused of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He was released Tuesday on $7,500 bail. Marakis ended up at the hospital with stitches. He told the police he didn't want to press charges, espousing biblical forgiveness.

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In Cuba, the economy is so bad the shantytowns are looking good

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By David Adams - Aug. 09 (News Report) - A dead rat lies in the middle of the dirt track leading to a cluster of wooden shacks. Young boys — barefoot and shirtless — play a lively game of marbles in the dried mud. It could be a scene from any of the notorious shantytowns that pervade Latin America. But this is Cuba, the self-proclaimed socialist paradise where a revolution 50 years ago promised to eradicate the social inequalities rampant in the Third World. "Life here isn't easy, and we do what we have to do to survive," said Jorge Balmaseda, 52, a local barber who attends his clients under the eaves of a tin-roofed shack in Las Piedras, a squatter community of several hundred people east of Havana.

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Project Lifesaver's radio tracking devices can find wanderers with dementia, autism and Alzheimer's

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Saundra Amrhein - Aug. 02 (News Report) - Carol Solomon stood in the street, squinting over a long walkway toward the front door of a vacant house. That can't be him, the Sarasota police volunteer thought as she tried to decipher what looked like a pile of towels propped on the stoop. That can't be the 90-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease reported missing from his home on Father's Day, a scorching Sunday in June.

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How bay area governments blew the housing bubble

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Bill Varian - Jul. 12 (Special Report) - All across America, local governments are dealing with budgets that are wildly out of balance. It's even worse in Florida. Under spending proposals now being floated in the Tampa Bay area, employees would be laid off, library hours trimmed, parks closed for part of the week, and stray dogs and cats left to roam the streets together. It's all in response to sharply falling property tax revenues. But what is seldom talked about is this: The problems didn't start when the economy turned sour. Spending went up too far, too fast in real estate boom times, and government created programs and policies that are no longer sustainable. In other words, our current woes have their roots as much in the good times of the housing bubble as in the current bad ones.

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A key to health care: same cost everywhere

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Letitia Stein - Jun. 21 (Special Report) - During the final two years of his life, the typical senior in Miami sees doctors 106 times. He receives an astonishing array of lab tests, MRIs and medical procedures, and spends a month in hospital beds. The bill for all that care adds up. Medicare, the federal health program for seniors, spends a staggering $16,351 a year per Miami patient, more than anywhere else in the nation, and roughly double the 2006 national average.

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Scientology: The truth rundown

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Joe Childs, Thomas C. Tobin - Jun. 21 (Special Report) - Scientology leader David Miscavige is the focus of this special report from the St. Petersburg Times. Former executives of the Church of Scientology, including two of the former top lieutenants to Miscavige, have come forward to describe a culture of intimidation and violence under David Miscavige. These former Scientology leaders served for years with Miscavige.

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Scientology: The truth rundown

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Joe Childs, Thomas C. Tobin - Jun. 20 (News Report) - Scientology leader David Miscavige is the focus of this special report from the St. Petersburg Times. Former executives of the Church of Scientology, including two of the former top lieutenants to Miscavige, have come forward to describe a culture of intimidation and violence under David Miscavige. These former Scientology leaders served for years with Miscavige.

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A closer look at the case that has Sonia Sotomayor under fire

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Wes Allison - May. 31 (News Analysis) - In 2003, New Haven, Conn., offered a test to determine firefighter promotions. When no black firefighters scored high enough to make lieutenant or captain, the city scrapped the results. And the white firefighters who scored highest didn't get promoted either. Those are the facts behind the federal court case known as Ricci vs. DeStefano, and you're going to be hearing a lot more about it in the coming months.

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Four reforms for a better Legislature

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Howard Troxler - May. 10 (Opinion) - "I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it." — Alexander Woollcott How bad is the Florida Legislature these days? It's historically bad — the worst since the infamous "Pork Chop Gang" that was in charge of our state during the 1950s and 1960s. The Legislature of recent years is simply incapable of governing Florida wisely. It lacks the intellectual horsepower, the will, even the desire. It's a machine for collecting laundered campaign money, paying back that money with favorably written laws, and getting itself re-elected.

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100 Days into his presidency has won over voters who once distrusted him

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Wes Allison - Apr. 26 (News Report) - Pat McMullen is sipping a cocktail in a cozy booth inside Pat McMullen's Irish pub just east of downtown, an easy stop after work to talk politics. "I didn't think he'd be good," McMullen is saying. "No, you didn't," his wife, Margaret, affirms. "I wasn't on the bandwagon," McMullen says. "He came from nowhere. A lot of people told me, This guy's going to be the one. I said, I dunno."

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Iraq War presented opportunity and danger for Largo doctor

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Susan Taylor Martin - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - Before he left his Largo home that day, Said Hakki gave his wife a sealed envelope. She put it on top of the bookcase, next to his Florida medical license. "To be opened if captured or kidnapped," read the tidy handwriting. "Said Ismail Hakky, December 22, 2004." Hakki, a urologist on leave from the Bay Pines VA Medical Center, had already spent 18 months in his native Iraq helping rebuild the country's ravaged health care system. After a brief visit home to Florida, he was returning to a far more dangerous assignment: heading the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization.

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The Obama White House vs. the Truth-O-Meter

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Apr. 23 (Special Report) - President Barack Obama and his top administration officials have faced the Truth-O-Meter 21 times since they took office, and they can claim a small victory: They haven't earned any Pants on Fire ratings. But their record for their first 100 days is far from perfect. We've given the Obama White House four False and two Barely True ratings. The Barely True ratings, along with a couple of the Half Trues, illustrate that the Obama White House has quickly learned the art of cherry-picking, selectively choosing the best scenarios and most favorable numbers for their claims.

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For their own good

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Ben Montgomery, Waveney Ann Moore - Apr. 19 (Special Report) - They were screwed-up kids, sent to the reform school in Marianna for smoking, fighting, stealing cars or worse. The Florida School for Boys -- that'd straighten them out. Fifty years later they are, by their own account, screwed-up men -- afraid of the dark, unable to love or be loved, twisted by anger, scarred by the whippings they endured in a cinder block hell called the White House.

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Foreclosures pounding court clerks with paperwork

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

tampabay.com - By Michael Van Sickler, Colleen Jenkins - Apr. 19 (News Report) - From his cubicle on the fifth floor of the Tampa courthouse, Brian Krummerich gets an intimate look at the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Case files overwhelm his desk. He stamps each with a number. Three other court clerks process cases alongside him, and still the tsunami of paperwork doesn't cease. At 9:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, he stamps the latest lawsuit: Case No. 9,141. In 2006, the 9,141th civil case wasn't filed until October.

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The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama's Campaign Promises

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Apr. 15 (Special Report) - PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

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Special interests funnel $6 million to Florida lawmakers

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

St. Petersburg Times - By Steve Bousquet, Breanne Gilpatrick, Alex Leary, Marc Caputo, Mary Ellen Klas - Mar. 15 (Special Report) - In the latest election cycle, dozens of Florida legislators raked in $6 million in special-interest campaign money and spent a good deal of it on themselves for meals, rental cars, plane trips and hotels. Some lawmakers are feeding at the trough of contributors, enjoying expensive dinners at upscale restaurants with donors' money at a time when one of every 10 Floridians is on food stamps. Others are churning cash from one political committee to another, using it to finance direct contributions and attack ads for other candidates, thereby strengthening their own clout in a virtually untraceable shell game.

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Four years after Israeli pullout from Gaza, hope turns to misery

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Susan Taylor Martin - Feb. 22 (Special Report) - When Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, ending 38 years of occupation, Israelis and Palestinians agreed it was one of the most significant events of the modern Middle East. That's about all they agreed on. For Basil Eleiwa, owner of Gaza City's trendiest restaurant, the pullout meant he and other Palestinians were finally free to begin building a vibrant nation of their own. He envisioned Gaza as a tourist mecca, drawing wealthy Arabs to its fine Mediterranean beaches. For Rachel and Moshe Saperstein, displaced Gaza settlers, the pullout meant Palestinians were free to ramp up their attacks on Jews. They envisioned Gaza as a terrorist haven smack on Israel's border.

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Dangerous patients can walk out of some hospitals

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Kris Hundley - Feb. 08 (Special Report) - The suspicion that a few hospitals in the Tampa Bay area leak Baker Act patients like a sieve has bothered law enforcement officers and mental health advocates for years. Turns out they had reason to worry. Most of the 32 acute-care hospitals in the Tampa Bay area appropriately restrain and treat troubled patients who are considered a danger to themselves or others. But four local hospitals, all owned by HCA, have repeatedly failed to meet this obligation.

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Young entrepreneurs still flourishing after 25 years

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Susan Taylor Martin - Feb. 01 (Special Report) - In the past 25 years, the economy has tossed around Caliber Yacht Corp. like a buoy in choppy waters. There have been good times, especially in the mid 1990s when jobs were plentiful, the stock market was strong and 40-foot sailboats were an affordable luxury. And there have been bad times, especially now. Yet through it all, company founders Michael and George McCreary have built and sold 400 boats — 398 more than they had when the St. Petersburg Times tapped them a quarter-century ago as two of the area’s “young entrepreneurs” to watch.

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Out of options, single mom turns to food stamps

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Lane DeGregory - Jan. 11 (Special Report) - She sat alone in the stuffy waiting room, her thin hands folded in her lap. "I shouldn't be here," she said, mostly to herself. "I shouldn't have to be here." Lizvette Perez surveyed the dingy interior of the state office building. She saw a young mother with two toddlers dangling off her arms, a broken-looking man dragging a sleeping bag, a man in a starched shirt carrying a leather briefcase.

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When work evaporates and bills multiply, a father goes back to the basics: basic training

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Shary Lyssy Marshall - Jan. 04 (Special Report) - Five years ago, there's a good chance neither the Army nor Russ Wilson would have wanted much to do with each other. But add two unpopular wars and a bad economy, and suddenly it was a good match. The Army had struggled to meet increased recruiting goals — at least another 80,000 each year. To hit that number they were willing to overlook an age nearly twice the ideal recruit's and a waistline enhanced by a weakness for Big Macs.

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Some think Bush was too liberal

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Wes Allison - Dec. 21 (News Analysis) - One of the most remarkable things about the end of George W. Bush's presidency is how many of his old pals can't wait to see him go. Although Bush has compiled a conservative record on taxes, national security and social issues, many thinkers and leaders within the conservative movement have come to view him as a champion of big, inefficient government, and something of a liability.

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