The fighting between Israeli forces and the Palestinian terror group Hamas is having a polarizing effect in Florida, bringing out supporters on both sides.
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Monday night, several attended a vigil and memorial in Ormond Beach including Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood.
“I can tell you that we stand with our Jewish community here - law enforcement will do whatever it needs to do to help the nation of Israel survive this and hunt down those responsible,” Chitwood told the group.
There is Palestinian support in Florida as well. A few were seen rallying for Palestine at the Granada Bridge.
“Any people who are occupied or oppressed and have no army that are up against the most powerful military in the middle east, like Israel, deserves our support,” one supporter told News 6.
People in South Florida gathered at the Holocaust Museum in Miami Beach in a display of solidarity for Israel.
It came two days after Hamas launched an attack that caught Israel’s military off guard, leading to fierce battles in its streets for the first time in decades.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens insurance policy holders in Florida face a critical deadline today to decide whether to accept offers to move to private insurance.
“If you get a takeout offer within 20% of what you’re currently paying for Citizens, you have to leave Citizens,” says Mark Friedlander with the Insurance Information Institute.
The so-called “takeout” offers are the result of state regulators approving some companies to take over Citizen’s policies.
It’s part of effort to reduce the policy count for the state-backed insurer of last resort — a process known as depopulation.
Private insurance companies have been leaving Florida in recent years and premiums for nearly all homeowners have shot up.
Citizens customers are urged to make a choice today, because ignoring the letter defaults to the private insurance company, which could be at a much higher premium.
A newly-discovered, yellow sea snail in the Florida Keys is being named in honor of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.
According to the Field Museum, the Cayo margarita snail is super small and well-hidden despite its bright yellow coloring.
The Cayo margarita was discovered in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and researchers at the Field Museum say they’re distant relatives to the slimy creatures found in your garden.
The snails have a tendency to cement themselves for life on pieces of dead coral, and as more coral is killed off, the little margarita snails might spread.
“I find them particularly cool because they are related to regular free-living snails, but when the juveniles find a suitable spot to live, they hunker down, cement their shell to the substrate, and never move again,” says Rüdiger Bieler, curator of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author.
Random Florida Fact
The Miami Marine Stadium once served as the perfect venue for watching speedboat racing and other water sports, but is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland of vandalized cement.
It opened in 1963 and thrived for decades as the world’s first and only stadium custom built to view motor boat races.
Despite the death of one of the speedboat racers on opening day of the park, thousands of spectators would pack the wooden seats.
The stadium was declared unsafe in 1992 and the site was left to rot, eventually becoming completely covered in thick layers of graffiti.