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Car insurance in Florida is costliest in country. What’s driving the sky-high rates? 

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

The high price of things like rent and home insurance are making things tough for people here in South Florida. And now, many are taking another financial hit.The cost of car insurance in our state is sky high. But what’s “driving” the rise in rates?7’s Karen Hensel investigates.At home and on the road, it’s not only expensive to live in South Florida but also expensive to drive here.Mark Friedlander/insurance information institute: “While we’re seeing spikes in auto insurance everywhere, Florida is unfortunately worse than many other states.”Actually the worst, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a research organization that represents the industry.Mark Friedlander says Florida drivers are now paying an average premium of $3,183 per year. That’s 58% higher than the national average of $2,014.Mark Friedlander: “Florida all of a sudden didn’t get bad. It’s always been bad. Now, it might be a little ...

Miami restaurant faces 2nd vandalization after surveillance captures man throwing stone

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

A vandal was caught on camera bashing a South Florida restaurant with a rock on Christmas morning, but it wasn’t the first time that the business was targeted. The man was seen using unconventional methods to vandalize Meson Ria De Vigo, a restaurant along Coral Way in Miami, including a rock and a bottle of hot sauce. “It seems he might’ve been on drugs,” said Fayez Tanous, owner of the restaurant. “Why he did it, I don’t know.”He threw the rock through the front door at approximately 12:30 a.m.But before that, at around 11:30 p.m., surveillance also captured the estranged man spreading hot sauce over a railing across the street from the restaurant. “This place has faced vandalism before, graffiti,” said Tanous. The owner has no speculations on why his restaurant could’ve been targeted. Miami Police were in the area on Tuesday night after receiving a call from someone claiming they saw the vandal but had no luck in finding...

Two in custody following brief car chase in Hollywood

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

Two people are in custody, accused of a carjacking crime. The incident occurred along Washington Street and 54th Avenue on Tuesday afternoon. Video shows police swarming a yellow Camaro after a brief car chase in Hollywood along Hillcrest Drive. Residents pulled out their cellphones to capture the suspects being taken into custody by police. Officials said they found a gun inside the car. It is unclear if anyone was hurt when the car was stolen.

Victims speak out after fighting back against home intruder in Miami Gardens; suspect arrested

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

The victims of a horrifying home invasion in Miami Gardens turned the tables on a man accused of breaking in and tying them up. Now, they’re sharing their story of how they escaped and helped police to arrest the intruder.7News cameras on Tuesday night captured the home’s fence damaged by a bullet, which was fired by the suspect’s gun after one of the victims fled the scene. The husband, who was inside the home the entire time, pinned the suspect down until police arrived. “I hope nobody lives that,” said Jose, one of the victim’s.The incident happened on Monday, which was the worst day for Jose and Gladys. “We’re so afraid, but thank God we’re alive,” Jose said. According to the victim’s, the suspect knocked at their door and was armed. “We opened the door, he said, ‘Don’t move,’ and said, ‘How many people in the house,'” Jose said. Detectives said the suspect, Hiram Tanco Crispin,...

How Westminster became Pestminster

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

LONDON — Is the seat of British democracy really such a pit?Given all the recent reports of bad behavior among its members, you might be forgiven for concluding that it is.Take the case of Geraint Davies, a long-serving Labour MP whose inappropriate conduct was well known in the halls of Westminster long before POLITICO reported last summer that the 63-year-old had been accused of sexually harassing junior female colleagues during his decades in parliament.Davies is currently suspended from the Labour Party while he is investigated over claims of sexual harassment, which he denies.“I vividly remember him galloping along the corridor as I went into my hotel room,” is how a former clerk recalled one of several alleged close encounters with Davies, whom she met when she was working in parliament in the early 2000s when she was in her early 20s. “I got in and shut the door behind me, but I knew he was lingering, hovering just outside,” she said.The former clerk is one of three wome...

Europe is spending millions to trap carbon. Where will it go?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

Tomaž Vuk has the carbon. Now he just needs somewhere to send it. Since 2020, Vuk, who sits on the board of the Salonit cement factory in Slovenia, has been plotting to get in on the ground floor of an industry poised to boom in the coming years: carbon capture. It’s one of the ways carbon-spewing factories like the one Vuk helps run are supposed to keep operating in a greener future. There’s just one problem: Vuk has nowhere to store any carbon he traps at the plant.Salonit sits roughly 50 kilometers off the Gulf of Trieste, an Italian port nestled near the Adriatic Sea’s highest point. From there, Salonit can technically ship the carbon anywhere. But for now, it seems the only options are way up in the North Sea — a protracted (and, most notably, expensive) trip around the Continent. Vuk said he’s willing to send the carbon wherever, but would of course prefer spots along the nearby Mediterranean and the Black Seas. For now, that’s not likely. So the North Sea ...

Poland’s media revolution turns into a political battle

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

WARSAW — Poland’s new pro-EU government has taken sweeping steps to free state media from the political stranglehold imposed by eight years of Law and Justice (PiS) rule — but that’s set off a political war with the old ruling party.The fight over who controls the media has drawn in President Andrzej Duda against Prime Minister Donald Tusk. There are also duelling chiefs of public television; one, Tomasz Sygut, was appointed last week after Culture Minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz sacked his PiS-loyalist predecessor, while the sidelined media board appointed former PiS MP Maciej Łopiński to the same post. On Tuesday, a third boss, Michał Adamczyk, was also nominated by yet another body.Sygut’s people are actually putting out broadcasts, but the other chiefs are claiming that’s invalid.The clash, and the way the new government has rammed home the changes at lightning speed, are also raising concerns that, like its predecessor, it may be overstepping the law to ...

Russia uses POWs as a political weapon against Kyiv

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

KYIV — The last time Valentyna Tkachenko, a 35-year-old mother of two from Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, saw her husband Serhii was just before Russia invaded her country.Serhii, a National Guard soldier, was captured on February 24 of last year, the day Moscow launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine. His unit was guarding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant when it was attacked by the Russians. When the Russian military retreated from Chernobyl and the rest of the Kyiv region at the end of March, they took Serhii and 167 other POWs with them.Since then, the wives of the captured soldiers have only heard from them once — a short handwritten note: “I am alive, everything is OK,” sent more than six months after they were taken prisoner.Like thousands of other relatives of Ukrainian POWs, Tkachenko has contacted Ukrainian authorities and the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) and had written four letters, but heard nothing back until November 29. That’s the day she got a...

POLITICO’s most-read stories of 2023

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

Well, here we are folks, at the end of another turbulent year.When we put this list together at the end of 2022, its contents largely covered something many of us thought we would not see again in our lifetime: a major war in Europe. Now, we are grappling with two wars in our immediate neighborhood, as the slaughter drags on in Ukraine, and conflict rages between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In Ukraine, the long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia, which began in June, has not been as swift and successful as the West hoped. While across the Mediterranean, Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7 marked the beginning of a highly divisive war that is threatening to turn into a regional conflict and has fueled antisemitism and Islamophobia the world over. Neither of these conflicts have an end in sight.Beyond the battlefields, 2023 saw many other surprise twists and turns.A submarine that went missing on its way to visit the Titanic shipwreck captivated people across the globe, Eng...

Germany and EU face a new trilemma

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:50 GMT

Miguel Otero-Iglesias a senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid.Faced with a choice between successfully completing the green transition, effectively achieving economic security and aiming for fiscal discipline, the European Union is confronted with a new trilemma — and it cannot accomplish all three.But while Germany — with its debt brake, designed to limit budget deficits, and the November ruling from its Constitutional Court, jeopardizing its green transition funding — appears to be tightly embracing the latter option of fiscal discipline, this is a strategic mistake.The green transition and economic security are complimentary phenomena that can create a positive feedback loop. And Europe needs to realize this.The green transition is an absolute necessity — both at the European and global level. And given available scientific evidence, the acceleration of its pace is totally justified. It is absolutely imperative we reach 2050 with net-zero carbon emissions if we w...