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For the second time in five days – and also the second time in Walmart’s five decades – workers at multiple U.S. Walmart stores are on strike. This morning, workers walked off the job at stores in Dallas, Texas; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Laurel, Maryland; and Northern, Central, and Southern California. No end date has been announced; some plan to remain on strike at least through tomorrow, when they’ll join other Walmart workers for a demonstration outside the company’s annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Today’s is the latest in a wave of Walmart supply chain strikes without precedent in the United States: From shrimp workers in Louisiana, to warehouse workers in California and Illinois, to Walmart store employees in five states.

Word that a giant eyeball washed up on a South Florida has created a buzz on the Internet and in the marine biology community. The huge, blue eyeball may have come from a deep sea squid or a large sword fish, said Heather Bracken-Grissom, an assistant professor in the marine science program at Florida International University in Miami.

Florida is setting different goals for reading improvements among its students -- based on race and ethnicity. By 2018, 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanic students, and 74 percent of black students are to be reading on grade level.

A 32-year-old Florida man has died after eating "dozens of roaches and worms" in a roach-eating contest, the Broward County Sheriff's Office says, according to the Miami Herald.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, topped by a Dragon cargo capsule, rises from its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during preparations for Sunday's scheduled launch to the International Space Station.

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a challenge to Florida's recent voter purge efforts, clearing the way for the removal of about 200 suspected non-U.S. citizens from state voter rolls before the November 6 presidential election.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is conducting an investigating of alleged fraud involving a company hired to register voters by the state's Republican Party.

President Obama retains a lead in Ohio, but his race with Republican Mitt Romney has tightened in the key states of Florida and Virginia, says a new poll. Obama leads Romney 51%-43% in Ohio, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College Poll. The two candidate are locked in a statistical tie in Florida, where Obama leads 47%-46%, and in Virginia, where the president is ahead 48%-46%.

...Mary Blackwell said the league's Okaloosa County chapter held a voter registration drive at a college campus in Niceville and that a person who was registering voters told her he was "lucky" he only had applications from Republicans or independents -- Blackwell said she was "distressed" by the comments and became worried that he may be discarding voter registration forms filled out by Democrats.

A new poll shows President Barack Obama opening a double-digit lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in two of the nation's three largest swing states.