News & Public Affairs
Pinellas referendum would increase bus and rail service listen
04/23/09 Mitch E. PerryWMNF Drive-Time News Thursday Listen to this entire show:
Tomorrow in Tampa TBARTA, the local transit agency, will unveil its master plan for the Tampa Bay Area. The agency has been working on the plan for over a year.
There has been much discussion in recent months about Hillsborough County putting a 1 percent tax increase on the 2010 ballot to fund their portion of the plan, but now officials in Pinellas County are discussing a similar plan.
Ken Welch is a Pinellas County Commissioner, and a member of a panel that has been working through t...
1 commentsNew biography Of Everglades champion Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
04/23/09 Robert LoreiRadioactivity: Live Call-In (Thursday) Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Everglades, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, River of Grass
Good afternoon, welcome to Radioactivity, I’m Rob Lorei.
Our guest today has written the first comprehensive biography of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas.
Douglas was the long time Miami resident who championed Everglades protection and was Florida’s leading environmentalist for most of the 20th Century. Douglas was also a suffragist, a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and a champion of social justice.
Her book entitled The Everglades: River of Grass, published in 1947, served to ...
Be the first to commentFL Senate bill eases homes for developmentally-disabled listen
04/23/09 Mitch E. PerryWMNF Drive-Time News Thursday Listen to this entire show:
Today the Florida Senate passed legislation that would ease the deveopment of community residential homes.
The legislation would allow homes with six or fewer residents located within a planned community to be build without local government approval, regardless of their proximity to each other.
Melbourne Republican Thad Allman said the bill was designed for those are developmentally disabled.
Some activists have criticized the bill, and South Florida Democrat Ted Deutch asked that Al...
Be the first to comment'Generation Debt' author on current credit card issues listen
04/23/09 Mitch E. PerryWMNF Drive-Time News Thursday Listen to this entire show:
Anya Kamenetz is the author of the book, Generation Debt, and currently writes for Fast Company magazine. WMNF asked her today why it's taken so long for Congress to take action against predatory lending. She spoke to us today from her home in New York City.
Be the first to comment'For Their Own Good,' Part 2 listen
04/22/09 Arielle StevensonWMNF Drive-Time News Wednesday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Ben Montgomery, Edmund Fountain, The White House Boys, For their own good, Arielle Stevenson, Child Abuse, State Reform School
They now call themselves the White House Boys though they are men in their 60s and 70s. They were only boys when they entered into the state run reform school in the 1960s. Now they are coming forward with tales of harsh abuse by their instructors.
Some scars are still visible, others were buried deep beneath the skin. Reporters Ben Montgomery and Waveney Anne Moore and photographer Edmund Fountain spent six months investigating the story. Titled For Their Own Good, the story was printe...
Be the first to commentEnvironmentalists challenge proposed nuclear power plants
04/22/09 Robert LoreiRadioactivity: Live Call-In (Wednesday) Listen to this entire show:
Tags: nuclear power, nuclear waste, terror attack, solar power, conservation, Florida Progress
Mary Olson joined us for this segment. She is the southern director of NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Research Service (http://www.nirs.org).
She represented the Green Party and the Ecology Party this week at an NRC hearing. The groups want legal standing to challnge the proposed nuclear power plants in levy County. For more information, contact Michael Canney at (352) 226-6164.
Be the first to commentJudge could dismiss charges in Al Arian hearing Friday listen
04/22/09 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Wednesday Listen to this entire show:
This Friday in Alexandria, Virginia, a judge could decide to dismiss criminal contempt charges against former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian.
In December of 2005, following a lengthy trial, Sami Al-Arian was found not guilty of the most serious charges that had been leveled against him. The jury was deadlocked on less serious charges.
Al-Arian is currently charged with criminal contempt of court for refusing to testify in a Virginia case. His attorneys have filed a ...
Be the first to commentTampa unveils new recycling containers for pedestrians in downtown listen
04/22/09 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Wednesday Listen to this entire show:
The City of Tampa has unveiled new bins for recycling on pedestrian corridors throughout downtown and the Channel District.
This morning in downtown’s Lykes Gaslight Square Park, the Mayor and others used the backdrop of Earth Day to introduce the bins to the community.
Christine Burdick is president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership. “You might think that trash isn’t an exciting thing,” she said.
There will initially be 20 bins placed throughout t...
Be the first to commentTBARTA to release transportation master plan on Friday listen
04/22/09 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Wednesday Listen to this entire show:
The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, or TBARTA, will release their master plan to the public during their monthly board meeting on Friday.
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio is a TBARTA board member and a leading advocate for mass transit in the city and the region.
This morning WMNF asked Mayor Iorio about TBARTA’s regional transportation master plan and how it might dovetail with a possible high-speed rail corridor in the state.
TBARTA's board will meet Fr...
Be the first to comment"For Their Own Good," Part 1 listen
04/21/09 Arielle StevensonWMNF Drive-Time News Tuesday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: The White House Boys, Ben Montgomery, Edmund Fountain, Waveney Anne Moore, Arielle Stevenson, Artful Dodgings, Child Abuse, Law Suit, Bill Haynes
They now call themselves the White House Boys though they are men in their 60s and 70s. They were only boys when they entered into the state-run reform school in the 1960s, now they are coming forward with tales of harsh abuse by their instructors.
Some scars are still visible, others were buried deep beneath the skin. Their story, titled For Their Own Good, was printed Sunday in the St. Petersburg Times. A six-month investigation by reporters Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore, and...
Be the first to commentNelson decries Legislature considering offshore oil drilling listen
04/21/09 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Tuesday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Politics, offshore oil drilling, Bill Nelson, politics
A panel in the Florida House has approved a bill that would allow oil and natural gas drilling in areas off the coast of Florida.
The bill would allow drilling to 10 miles into the Gulf of Mexico, where federal waters begin and drilling is now banned.
A Republican state legislator from Winter Park, Dean Cannon sponsored the bill that was approved on a nearly party line vote of 17-7.
But U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, opposes such an expansion of oil drilling off the coast of Flor...
Be the first to commentInterfaith group makes annual requests listen
04/21/09 Amy BeemanWMNF Drive-Time News Tuesday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: FAST, crime, discipline, repeat offenders
Nearly 2,000 people from 35 interfaith congregations met in Largo on Monday night at the Indian Rocks Baptist Church. The annual meeting of Faith and Action for Strength Together (FAST), was called to address problems in Pinellas County and commit to working on solutions.
Clergy members from Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish houses of worship led the discussion on issues affecting Pinellas County. They called on school board and county and city officials to commit to working toward solution...
Be the first to commentObama administration works to create green jobs listen
04/21/09 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Tuesday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Environment, Earth Day, green jobs, Barack Obama, Van Jones
Earlier this year, President Barack Obama appointed Van Jones as special advisor for green jobs, enterprise and innovation with the Council on Environmental Quality. Jones spoke to reporters by teleconference today about how the Obama administration plans to create jobs in renewable technologies.
Jones says President Obama will be in a closed Maytag factory in Iowa tomorrow – Earth Day. The plant is being retrofitted to produce parts of wind turbines. The federal stimulus package will help...
Be the first to commentMeasure to restrict voting gains momentum
04/21/09 Robert LoreiRadioactivity: Live Call-In (Tuesday) Listen to this entire show:
Tags: voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression, voter fraud, Ion Sancho
New legislation in Tallahassee would require voters to use provisional ballots if they have moved within 30 days prior to an election, prevent anyone from getting within 100 feet of a voter line, limit the existing list of acceptable identification for voting, prohibit voters from receiving legal advice while in line and requires initiative petition signature forms be submitted to supervisors of elections within 45 days of signing.
Last week, the bill passed the Senate's Ethics and Electio...
Be the first to commentCoastal oil drilling moves closer to reality
04/21/09 Robert LoreiRadioactivity: Live Call-In (Tuesday) Listen to this entire show:
Tags: oil drilling, Florida's Coast, oil and gas lobby, Audobon Society of Florida
Good afternoon, welcome to Radioactivity. I'm Rob Lorei. Coming up, we'll take a look at a proposal to allow oil drilling closer to Florida's coastline. And later there's a proposal to make it harder to vote here in Florida.
But first, some listener comments about last Thursday's program. We had two interviews: with Norm Allen of African Americans for Humanism, and also with two religious leaders with a group called FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy.
The *St. Petersburg Tim...
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