Boy finds forgotten gun, accidentally shoots self in head

A Florida boy remains in stable condition just days after he found his parents’ long-forgotten handgun in a closet and accidentally shot himself in the head. Sheriff’s detectives in Pinellas County, Florida, near St.

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Dad who killed family, self was $460K in debt, sheriff says

A man who shot his wife and three children to death before committing suicide in Middletown, Maryland, last weekend had about $460,000 in mortgage and credit card debt, the local sheriff said Tuesday. Deputies who examined a computer taken from Christopher Wood’s home found information that showed “severe financial difficulties,” including money owed on a home in Florida that the family had been unable to sell, Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins said at a news conference. Wood was a salesman for CSX Railroad, where he earned about $97,000 a year, the sheriff said.

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Polo ponies are pampered, beloved, hard-trained athletes

The mysterious deaths of 21 prized polo horses Sunday at a club in Florida provides a peek inside the private world of a sport that generally is off limits to all but the very wealthy. The University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine in Gainesville and the state-run Kissimmee Diagnostic Laboratories near Orlando are conducting necropsies on the dead animals.

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Inside a Florida Mortgage Scam

The FBI and the Department of Justice unveiled Operation Malicious Mortgage last week, a nationwide bust that produced more than 400 arrests over the past three months for fraudulent home-loan schemes. In South Florida alone, more than 100 people have been arrested since last September, including 19 just last week

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Spotting Distant Worlds from the Backyard

It was arguably the biggest news in science this month: A graduate student in Australia discovered the continent of Africa. What makes Sally Langford’s discovery so remarkable — and worthy of reporting in the journal Astrobiology on April 6 — is not what she saw, but how she saw it. Once a month over the course of three years, Langford stood huddled against the evening chill in lonely Australian farmland and watched as the east coast of Africa shone in the midday sun

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Southeastern States Are Hit Hard By Recession

The South, long synonymous with hyper economic growth, is going through a harrowing recession. Currently, 8 of the 15 states with the highest unemployment rates are in the South: North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida are all reporting the highest rate in their state’s history. South Carolina posted the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate for March — 11.4%, after Michigan and Oregon

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Mortgage Fraud Crackdown Is Gathering Steam in Florida

Florida’s Gulf Coast was crawling with shady real estate investors like Neil Husani during this decade’s housing boom. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tampa, Husani and three co-conspirators working with his Sarasota-based Capital Force, Inc., bilked seven area banks out of $83 million in a mortgage fraud scheme.

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Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan

President Obama unveiled his administration’s blueprint for a new national network of high-speed passenger rail lines Thursday, saying such an investment is necessary to reduce traffic congestion, cut dependence on foreign oil and improve the environment. The president’s plan identifies 10 potential high-speed intercity corridors for federal funding, including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England. It also highlights potential improvements in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor running from Washington to Boston, Massachusetts

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Passenger landed plane with ‘focused fear’

A man who landed a plane with the assistance of air traffic controllers after the pilot fell unconscious and died said Monday he was "still in a daze of adrenaline." “I’m grateful, thankful to be alive,” Doug White of Archibald, Louisiana, told CNN affiliate WINK. “I’m glad my family is safe, but let’s don’t lose sight of the fact that a man died, and I don’t want people to forget that.” White, his wife and two daughters were flying from Marco Island, Florida, to Jackson, Mississippi, on Sunday after attending a funeral for White’s brother

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