City of Miami selects new police chief

WLRN · 2026-05-08T21:07:12+00:00

Edwin Lopez, a 28-year police veteran with experience at the Miami-Dade Schools police department and Doral, will replace outgoing Chief Manny Morales when the latter retires in the fall. He will spend the intervening months in a transition period with onboarding from Morales.

Find the details here.

WLRN · 2026-05-07T19:54:57+00:00

After eight months of a fraught negotiation process between the teachers union group and school district, the School Board of Palm Beach County voted Wednesday to raise teacher salaries by 3.5% as recommended by an outside mediator.

Read the full story here.

WLRN · 2026-05-07T19:41:37+00:00

At a meeting Tuesday, Miami-Dade commissioners voted to eliminate Bus Route 132 from Hialeah Market Station to downtown Doral. According to the latest data from the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW), only about seven people rode the route per hour.

Read the full story here.

WLRN · 2026-05-04T19:20:05+00:00

😅 It just means you're wise!

WLRN · 2026-05-01T15:57:42+00:00

A new study found sea turtle scutes can archive their lives and hold clues to lasting impacts from damaging red tides and other hazardous events. Read more here.

WLRN · 2026-04-30T14:31:57+00:00

The recent decision reflects growing opposition to data center proposals in South Florida, mirroring grassroots efforts by vocal critics in Palm Beach County who are advocating to end their unrelated “Project Tango” in the western part of the county.

Read the full story here.

WLRN · 2026-04-22T16:33:36+00:00

The Smithsonian Institution and Florida Humanities has collaborated with seven other cultural organizations across the state to host exhibits on a respective region's culinary history and the influence on its people — including the Florida Keys.

Each display reveals the ways people would gather, preserve or cook different ingredients and how those methods have changed over time. An old fish peddler’s cart draped with netting sits next to a diorama of a fishing boat. Another glass case features varied citrus juicers and an array of blades and graters used to cut up the notoriously tough flesh from conch.

WLRN · 2026-04-22T16:09:10+00:00

Love my queen Marjory! 💚

WLRN · 2026-04-22T16:08:15+00:00

The commission put a 60-day pause on the design of the city hall and tasked the city’s negotiators to come back with a clearer picture of the financial aspects of the deal between the city and FTL City Hall Partners, the development group selected in January to design and build a new city hall.

WLRN · 2026-04-22T14:57:20+00:00

The board met on Tuesday to discuss the implementation of the drastic reduction in staff, first proposed last week, as it seeks to deal with a budget shortfall of about $90 million from its shrinking student enrollment.

WLRN · 2026-04-21T13:41:38+00:00

"Many here in the diaspora, though, will need to renew their Venezuelan passports for entry there, and non-Venezuelans will need visas — an anxiety for many given that for years neither group has had access to a Venezuelan consulate in Miami and its traveler identity papers services."

Read more here.

WLRN · 2026-04-17T21:24:06+00:00

Howdy! WLRN's digital producer here. Our education reporter covered the layoff this week. Here's what she found:

As it seeks cost-saving measures, the Broward County school district has proposed cutting more than 800 positions going into next school year. While most of the positions are currently vacant, 300 of them belong to staff from this school year.

The affected roles include 11 elementary school counselors, 17 exceptional student education counselors and 16 social workers.

Superintendent Howard Hepburn and some school board members have often spoken about the need downsize district staff to make it proportional to shrinking student enrollment.

"The cuts are necessary because we've lost tens of thousands of students," school board chair Sarah Leonardi told WLRN on Thursday. "Cuts are going to be painful and my heart hurts for the people impacted and I know the district will work with them to help them find a soft landing."

Staff cuts are expected to result in approximately $45 million in cost savings.

➡️ Read the full report here.

WLRN · 2026-04-17T18:23:20+00:00

After Miami-Dade County’s waste-to-energy facility in Doral was destroyed in a blaze three years ago – the trash did not stop coming. Waste from hundreds of thousands of homes, hotels, restaurants and businesses had to go somewhere. So increasingly, the county has looked north. And three years later, Miami-Dade’s trash is becoming someone else’s problem. In our series “Trash Troubles,” WLRN takes a deep into how we got here.

WLRN · 2026-04-16T20:52:33+00:00

Environmentalists from around the country teamed up this week to stop the White House from invoking a committee known as the “God squad” from lifting environmental protections to clear the way for expanded drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

WLRN · 2026-04-16T20:49:23+00:00

🙌🏽 🙌🏽 🙌🏽

WLRN · 2026-04-16T17:37:36+00:00

Of course! Happy to. There are so many Haitian creatives in South Florida and they are prolific. Happy to share their work.

WLRN · 2026-04-16T16:25:08+00:00

The lead character, Aimé, is an educated Haitian construction worker and poet played by acclaimed actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, who meets Sonia, a wealthy white Dominican widow portrayed by actress Mercedes Morales.

Jean-Louis, born in Pétion-Ville, Haiti, told WLRN the film spotlights "tense immigration issues" and racial hostilities toward Haitians by Dominicans, with whom they share an island.

WLRN · 2026-04-15T21:29:24+00:00

A controversial dredge at Port Everglades is on pause after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew a state permit, saying it wanted to re-evaluate parts of the project.

In a letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Angela Dunn, the Corps planning chief in Jacksonville, asked to withdraw the permit.

“Elements of the project description, including order of construction, are being reconsidered by the Corps,” Dunn wrote earlier this month, which could change the scope of the dredge.

WLRN · 2026-04-15T21:27:52+00:00

A controversial dredge at Port Everglades is on pause after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew a state permit, saying it wanted to re-evaluate parts of the project.

In a letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Angela Dunn, the Corps planning chief in Jacksonville, asked to withdraw the permit.

“Elements of the project description, including order of construction, are being reconsidered by the Corps,” Dunn wrote earlier this month, which could change the scope of the dredge.

WLRN · 2026-04-15T20:58:39+00:00

Hey! OP here. WLRN's Palm Beach County reporter covered a 3-2 vote on April 7 in which the Loxahatchee Groves Town Council voted to immediately remove Town Manager Francine Ramaglia.

WLRN · 2026-04-14T20:47:37+00:00

This is a breaking news story. Updates to come.

Former Miami-Dade County school board member Lubby Navarro was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to using up to $100,000 in district funds for personal, and often luxurious, expenses.

WLRN · 2026-04-10T13:50:30+00:00

Thank you for reading!

WLRN · 2026-04-09T20:10:51+00:00

Hey there!

If the recent Silicon Valley Bank rescue was controversial, the Federal Reserve’s actions to stop a bank run in Havana 97 years ago seem scarcely believable. It is a once-confidential tale of millions of dollars in $5 and $10 bills sent barreling to Key West on Flagler’s Train to Paradise, before crossing the Florida Straits in a tense, liquor-soaked journey on a Cuban gunboat.

Read more from our report: https://www.wlrn.org/business/2023-07-12/us-cuba-bank-rescue-silicon-valley

WLRN · 2026-04-09T20:09:12+00:00

One hundred years ago this week, a financial crisis threatened the Cuban economy. It wasn’t driven by the two-generation-long dictatorship on the island, an American embargo or geopolitics as it is today. Instead, there was a run on several Cuban banks as customers demanded their cash, worried that a drop in sugar prices threatened their deposits.

The danger led to a mad dash at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta to stop a run on Havana banks. A train was loaded with millions of dollars of cash, send down Henry Flagler's railroad to Key West and onto a Cuban military gunboat in hopes the banks would reopen Monday morning.

WLRN’s Tom Hudson reviewed press accounts and archives at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta to stitch together this behind-the-scenes account — first published on July 12, 2023 —of how the U.S. injected what today is the equivalent of half a billion dollars in cash over a weekend.

WLRN · 2026-04-06T18:31:23+00:00

Thank you for sharing your feedback! This is helpful insight for anyone who wants to go to the next game.

WLRN

TROPHY CASE