Word: florida
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...city of 110,000 people just north of Miami is staring at another figure today: a 13% home-foreclosure rate. That's the second highest in Florida, a state that now has the nation's highest rate of homes - 23% - either in foreclosure or delinquent on mortgage payments. Many of the mortgages that have collapsed in Miami Gardens were subprime; city leaders like Williams say they were ethically questionable deals pushed by banks that too often knew their clients were in over their heads. (Read "Four Steps to Ending the Foreclosure Crisis...
...After its probe of the situation this month, Florida's Department of Children and Family Services took Rifqa from the Lorenzes and placed her in foster care. At a hearing in Orlando on Aug. 21, a judge ruled that she could remain in Florida until he decides, probably at a later hearing slated for Sept. 3, where she should ultimately go. (McCarthy says the Barys were willing to let Rifqa be placed in Ohio foster care while the case is adjudicated...
...Columbus police tell TIME they're watching the case closely and are in contact with the courts and social-services agencies in Ohio and Florida; so far they have found no evidence or other information to support Rifqa's accusation. Craig McCarthy, one of two Orlando attorneys appointed to represent the Barys in Florida, says that while they may have been dismayed at first by Rifqa's conversion, as devout parents of any faith would be, they are hardly the kind of fundamentalist Muslims who would declare a medieval fatwa, or death sentence, on their daughter. "There is a vast...
...result, says McCarthy, "you wonder if people have been stoking this fear in her head, telling her, 'This is what the Koran says will happen to you.' " The Orlando lawyer who claims to represent Rifqa, conservative activist John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council (which fought in 2005 to keep Terri Schiavo on life support), last week wrote in a petition to keep the girl in Florida that she "is in imminent threat of harm from the extreme radical Muslim community in her hometown of Columbus." He warned that one of the world's largest "cells...
...Conservative websites often accused of anti-Muslim agendas, such as the Jawa Report, Atlas Shrugs and WorldNetDaily, have been lighting up over the Rifqa fight. No doubt conservative and anti-U.S. Muslims will eventually step into the media frenzy. And politicians have already started weighing in. Florida's moderate Republican governor and U.S. Senate candidate, Charlie Crist, who needs conservative voters to win his state's closed GOP primary next year, issued a statement on Aug. 21 saying he's "grateful to Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson for his decision to grant [Rifqa] the right to remain in Florida...