Today In The News: Ariel Castro Victim Speaks Out

By FU TING and DAVID COHEN WASHINGTON (AP) — As the fate of TikTok hangs in the balance, U. S. TikTok users are flocking to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, also called RedNote – making it the top downloaded app in the U. S. Some of the “TikTok refugees,” as they call themselves, say the TikTok alternative, a Chinese app, is being chosen in protest of the TikTok ban.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis wants the power to suspend or criminally charge local officials who don’t train at least 10% of their law enforcement staff to detain and deport undocumented immigrants or follow other tough new immigration rules he’s proposed. In a 4-page memo to legislative leaders, DeSantis said he wants to make it mandatory for all law enforcement agencies and local governments to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security to help enforce federal immigration law.

Scenes from the Humana APP Fort Lauderdale Open pickleball tournament on Friday, January 17, 2025.

A federal probe has found that drones meant to dazzle holiday season viewers on the shores of Orlando’s Lake Eola didn’t have the most updated flight path programming installed, triggering a chain of mishaps in which some of the aircraft collided with each other, fell from the sky and in one case, darted into a crowd of people and severely injured a child. In its preliminary report investigating the mishap, the National Transportation Safety Board states that the formation of about 500 drones ended up misaligned by about seven degrees, and the drones’ geofence — a virtual firewall meant to contain the devices to a safe zone — moved much closer to the audience than expected. The agency put the blame on Sky Elements LLC, a Texas company that was under contract with the city for two shows on Dec.

MIAMI – Friday, the Miami Heat celebrated the 43rd birthday of franchise icon Dwyane Wade with a series of posts on social media. That came in the wake of Wade earlier this week celebrating the legacy of Heat President Pat Riley. Amid widespread chatter from former NBA players on their own platforms about how Riley’s NBA impact has been minimized, Wade utilized his podcast, The Why with Dwyane Wade, to counter such talk. “I don’t like the fact that people feel like they can comment and talk about the whole notion that people say that because of this Jimmy Butler situation and how Pat Riley has handled things that guys are not going to come to Miami,” Wade said on his podcast, referencing the Heat’s contretemps with Butler and a potential trade of the forward. “There isn’t going to be a day that a basketball player isn’t going to want to make $300 million to play in Miami.

FBI agents raided the homes of two prominent South Florida dog fighters on Tuesday, finding over 40 caged dogs, many of them wounded, according to federal complaints. Alex Eugene Benefield, of Deerfield Beach, is now facing charges of conspiracy and running an animal fighting venture, while Tramaine Marvin Randall, of Pompano Beach, is charged with running an animal fighting venture, court records show. To investigate the two men and the dog fighting underworld, the FBI used an anonymous source who has known them both for many years and was previously a dog fighter who worked with Randall beginning more than a decade ago, the complaints said. The FBI source secretly recorded conversations with both Benefield and Randall as early as February 2023, according to the complaints.