Courtrooms can be such staid places — so we love it when people treat judicial proceedings as interactive theater events. This January, an environmental activist named Stevie Lowe went to the site of the Barley Barber Swamp, an ancient cypress forest, and locked herself to a tree. The reason? Florida…
26-year-old Miami wunderkind Lee Cipolla called The Juice from Los Angeles, where he recently sold two of his independently made films to Grindstone Entertainment, with DVD distribution by Lionsgate Home Entertainment. One of the films, Know thy Enemy, has been a hit in Blockbusters and Best Buys from coast to…
It’s possible that you bought a house from Cezar Mancao, who from the outside seemed a nice, normal Filipino immigrant making a living in real estate in Broward County. Turns out that despite Mancao’s quiet life here — living in a half-million-dollar house in Pembroke Pines with his wife and…
Last year, I wrote a feature story about three little boys who had been horribly abused in the state foster care system. They were eventually placed with an adoptive family — but the Department of Children and Families hid the boys’ case files and backgrounds from the adoptive parents. As…
Initially, we called new Lake Worth city manager Susan Stanton to ask about rumors — reported on LakeWorthMedia.com — that a city engineer named Andres Reyes was forced to resign for insubordination after he tried to save the city $50,000 by doing work in-house rather than pay a contractor. Stanton…
You know those coin-operated claw games, where a bunch of stuffed animals are piled up behind a glass window and you try to fish one out with the mechanical claw that you operate with a joystick? Imagine that, except behind the glass window is a fish tank full of water,…
Between February and April, a rather remarkable legal drama unfolded in U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch’s courtroom in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Federal prosecutors had spent two years building their argument against doctors, pharmacists, and businessmen who were operating an internet pharmacy network. But midway through the trial, their…
We didn’t set out to make this Pick on Adam Hasner Week here at the Juice, but after Monday’s heads-up that the Jewish state representative from Delray Beach was supporting a controversial anti-Islam conference, we stumbled across this item from the St. Pete Times showing that Hasner introduced an amendment…
Around 9 p.m. on Wednesday, December 17, life hummed along normally for residents of the Waverly Las Olas condominium at the corner of Broward Boulevard and U.S. 1 in Fort Lauderdale. For the holiday season, some residents of the luxury high rise had decorated their balconies with twinkling lights. A…
Today, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) pointed out that State Rep. Adam Hasner — the House Republican leader — is listed as a “coalition partner” for an upcoming coming “free speech summit” that could be seen as an anti-Muslim event. The featured speaker will be Geert Wilders, a controversial…
While we spent the week cubicle-dwelling and and driving up and down I-95, some young people from Fort Lauderdale’s Honey Project were meeting with the president — of Ghana. The Honey Project is an international program that teaches entrepreneurial skills. Honey farmers in Ghana sell their product to urban kids…
If you’ve got somethin’ to say about the fragrant prickly-apple or the pygmy fringe-tree, now is your time. The Fish and Wildlife Service is doing a five-year status review of these endangered species, as well as the Brooksville bellflower, snakeroot, Cooley’s water-willow, scrub blazingstar, Britton’s beargrass, Key tree-cactus, Lewton’s polygala,…
In March 1998, months before he was supposed to graduate high school and head off to Florida State University, then-18-year-old Eric Brody was driving home from his job at Sports Authority in the Sawgrass Mills Mall. Around the same time, a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy named Christopher Thieman left his…
Often, it’s gays who are doing the protesting: Let us marry! Let us have civil rights! Let us have public toilets on the beach without the mayor characterizing us as sexual deviants! But Saturday, cowboys and cowgirls found themselves on the receiving side of the bullhorns and posterboard signs when…
In a classic case of what-will-they-think-of next? a South Florida company called Aira Cosmetics has launched a line of fake eyelashes made out of mink. They are for sale at www.myminklashes.com and through high-end boutiques like Fred Segal in Beverly Hills. Previously, a company press release states, only celebrities could…
Last night, angry parents faced off with school officials at Sunrise Middle School. The meeting was spurred by the case of Paula Johnson, an embattled teacher who was removed from her classroom after allegations of misconduct. A close friend of Johnson’s, Wendy Frank, claims the teacher has not been told…
We all know how well it worked out when MoveOn.org took out an ad in the New York Times in 2007 calling General Petraeus “General Betray Us.” (President Bush called the ad “disgusting,” polls indicated a majority of America found it distasteful, and the Senate even passed a resolution to…
This February, 47-year-old Cezar Mancao went to the Philippine consulate in Fort Lauderdale to give a sworn affidavit. When the contents of his testimony were leaked this month to a Philippine news outlet, no one here seemed to notice, and nothing about it was reported in the U.S. press. His…
Once upon a time, Sunrise Middle School had such a good reputation that some parents considered it better than private school. It is the only middle school around with a Montessori program. It has a gifted program. There’s an accelerated group called the “Golden Hammers” (like other school groups, it’s…
A source close to the Porsche hit-and-run investigation suggests that a Sun-Sentinel story may have hindered police efforts to make an arrest in the case.Locals were shocked when two British businessmen were killed in the early-morning hours of February 13. Craig Elford, 39, and Kenneth Watkinson, 48, were hit by…
Besides gnashing one’s teeth or making fun of Timothy Geithner’s dweebiness, there is little frustrated taxpayers can do about the spiraling-out-of-control federal deficit. To channel their rage, fed-up conservatives have been organizing “tea parties” around the country, mimicking the Boston Tea Party cry of “no taxation without representation.” Event organizers…
On October 19, 2005, Donald George Lewis was found stumbling into traffic in Riviera Beach, seemingly under the influence of narcotics. Court papers say he was “breathing heavily and grunting incoherently” and ran into traffic rather than obey officers’ orders to sit down. He was described as “an agitated and…
