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By the time she was six years old, Mayah Chouloute was already used to teammates and family chanting her name at swimming pools across South Florida. But this summer, the 14-year-old from Boca Raton will be cheered from all over the world as she competes at the biggest meet of her life — the Paris Olympics. Mayah will represent Haiti in the Olympic Games' fastest pool event, the 50-meter freestyle sprint. She told WLRN she is ready to make her family and heritage proud and introduce her talents to the world stage. “I think doing that '50 free' will be an opportunity to show how fast I can go in such a short [distance],” she said. The confident teen, who was born in Palm Beach County to Haitian parents, credits her inspiration to celebrated U.S. athlete Simone Manuel, the first African-American to win a solo gold medal in swimming. But even she will admit her first Olympic slot came sooner than she expected. “Let me tell you, it was a big shocker for me. I didn’t think it was going to happen, especially since I’m only 14,” said Mayah, an 8th grader at Boca Raton Middle School. Her mother, Marjorie Hilaire Chouloute, told WLRN Mayah's quick development in the sport also came as a surprise to the family. Unbeknownst to Marjorie and her husband, when Mayah was six, she was already practicing her backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly swimming techniques during aftercare swimming classes. So they were shocked when she told them about an upcoming relay race where she would be taking the butterfly leg. "I'm like, 'You don't know how to do that! What?' And me and daddy were freaking out," Marjorie said. "And then the relay started and there comes her turn. And I saw her little back coming, flying out," she said. "I had a moment. That's one of the best moments of my life." Very quickly, a simple hobby turned into Olympic aspirations. “She wanted to be part of a team. She advocated for that at six-years-old," Marjorie said. “It's really her journey. She started it. She loves swimming. She kind of calls the shot and we're following along.” Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Wilkine Brutus. 📸 Marjorie Hilaire Chouloute

A video both depressing and dangerous came dripping out of Venezuela on social media last week. It shows the country's authoritarian and epically unpopular president, Nicolás Maduro, huddling despondently, as if in a dictator's bunker, with a handful of somber loyalists. He tells them that if the opposition defeats him in the July 28 presidential election, "There will be a civil war here. If the [pro-regime] military and police take to the streets," he adds, there will be a "bloodbath ... It will be inevitable." That message, which Maduro has gone on to repeat in stump speeches, was the ominous warning of a desperate despot who's trying to scare Venezuelan voters away from turning out on Sunday. That's because he's staring at polls that show him some 40 points behind opposition challenger Edmundo González. In fact, every campaign rally for González and opposition leader María Corina Machado in recent weeks has been spilling over with caravans of thousands of Venezuelans honking car horns, revving motorcycle engines and cheering full-throated. Those pro-opposition voters say they hope the election will free them from Maduro's socialist regime and the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history. But there’s been another, if quieter, Venezuelan election effort going on here in South Florida and around the world, involving Venezuelan expats, that may end up being just as important to ousting the regime. Maduro has effectively banned the pro-opposition diaspora from voting on Sunday. He's done so by making it next to impossible for that massive cohort — the 8 million Venezuelans who've fled their once oil-prosperous nation over the past decade — to register abroad. And he's done so out of raw political fear: eligible expat voters account for about a fifth of Venezuela’s total electorate. As a result, since they can’t cast ballots, many expats are working to make sure people inside Venezuela can and will — and to keep the regime from stealing the election through fraud or violence, something most Venezuelans expect will be, to use Maduro's words, inevitable. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Tim Padgett. 📸 Courtesy Edgar Simon Rodriguez

In the heart of Little Haiti lies three acres of green space, a garden where members of the community can enjoy native wildlife, educational workshops and much more. Miami Tropical Botanic Garden has been an oasis within this highly urbanized area since around 2020 and it is one of the last few green spaces left in the city. But, as land values sky-rocket in the area, it’s in danger of being sold off — unless the team that manages the garden can raise $4 million by the fall. Located on a residential street at the heart of the historic neighborhood, the garden is hidden from view by surrounding houses and accessible just through a side gate. One could easily walk by without realizing it is there. In fact, it doesn’t even show up on Google Maps. When you walk in, however, you are met by a vast freshwater pond, its fountain sending ripples over the herd of turtles that live there. Behind that, there’s a huge greenhouse full of plants, right by to a smattering of palm trees. “I fell in love with it,” recalled Surzelle Bertrand, describing her first time at the garden. “I was in awe when I saw the backyard.” Bertrand, one of the team that looks after the garden, started a beekeeping school in Haiti, where she’s originally from. She hopes to one day host beekeeping classes there with her brother. “It's important for us because this is the last green space we have in … Little Haiti,” said Bertrand. “Between Little Haiti and North Miami, there's no natural parks where the kids can come and enjoy nature, watch the butterflies, watch the birds.” A private owner has been leasing the land to Casey Zap, who lives in a house on the site. He leads a team of community members, academics and folks with experience in the nonprofit world who volunteer to take care of the garden and oversee its programming. He started working on the property at the end of 2019, and he and other volunteers got the greenhouse up in fall of 2020. “Our dream is to have more of this open to the community and have the community come here and enjoy nature,” Bertrand said. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Elise Catrion Gregg.

“There’ve been a lot of nasty if not racist remarks and memes made about Colombians since Sunday night. That’s when a legion of mostly Colombian (but also Argentine) soccer fans riotously gate-crashed Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, before the Copa America championship match. Some even crawled through stadium air vents — an image I half-expected Republican conventioneers to brandish this week when they chanted, “Build that wall!” Twenty-seven people were arrested at Hard Rock, and several folks were injured, including a 9-year-old boy whose arm was broken in the mayhem. But while this particular crowd of Colombia’s hinchas, or supporters, do have to answer for their dangerous scofflaw behavior, it’s pretty bigoted to paint the whole Cafetero nation as hooligan brutos, as social media’s been doing. Which is why — if we’re trying to figure out how this Copa chaos happened and how we can prevent a repeat two summers from now, when Miami hosts seven soccer World Cup games — I’d focus instead on just one of the Colombian hooligans who was handcuffed Sunday night. And that’s none other than Ramón Jesurún — president of the Federación Colombiana de Fútbol (FCF), Colombia’s governing soccer body. The 71-year-old Jesurún and his son, Ramón Jamil Jesurún, were arrested after the Copa final. Per the police report and video of the incident, a Hard Rock security officer blocked them from entering a restricted area of the stadium — even though, they insist, their badges clearly indicated they were muy, muy VIP. When the officer pushed them back, they allegedly assaulted him. Ramón Jamil even knocked him to the ground, punching and kicking him. Jesurún 1 and Jesurún 2 were then tossed into a Miami-Dade County pokey for the night — and when they were let out the next morning, Jesurún 1 insisted he and his offspring were the real victims. Of course he did — because he’s an international soccer honcho, and this is simply NOT how international soccer honchos expect to be treated, ¡por Dios!” Editor's note: The above is an excerpt of a weekly commentary by WLRN's Americas editor Tim Padgett. Tap the link below to continue reading. 📸 Miami-Dade County Police Department

In shallow water not far from the Florida Keys’ famed Seven Mile Bridge, a herd of the state’s flamboyantly pink queen conchs is struggling to survive. Warming seas and wild swings in temperature have shut down their reproductive impulses in the waist-deep water, leaving them to creep along the ocean floor, searching for food but not love. Meanwhile, just a few miles away in deeper, cooler waters, the iconic mollusks mate freely. So scientists have a rescue plan: load the inshore conchs into milk crates, ferry them to colonies in deep water, and let nature run its course. As climate change fast tracks ocean warming, the researchers hope their plan hatches enough baby conchs to help boost the flagging population. “Once you put them in a more appropriate temperature regime, snails have a remarkable capability to heal themselves,” says Dr. Gabriel Delgado, a conch scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who is leading the pilot project. “Now you have a contributing member to future populations.” Last month, Delgado and a team of scientists set out to collect some potential members from a grassy patch of ocean floor just off Molasses Key, near Marathon. Except for a brisk wind and choppy waters, the day was perfect: The Keys’ stunning turquoise waters glowed. “If we get 50, I’ll be happy,” Delgado yelled over the boat engine as the Seven Mile Bridge loomed. Scientists have been working for decades to understand what’s ailing the conchs and revive their populations, which were once so plentiful that the Keys declared itself the Conch Republic. At the turn of the century, queen conchs littered the ocean floor, ambling across flats and hard bottom, tidying up by grazing on algae. “If you let them put their mouth on your finger, you can feel them licking you,” Delgado says. “It's like a cat's tongue.” They were part of a population that once stretched across the Caribbean and seeded a powerful “larval train”—tiny conch hatchlings carried to Florida and the Bahamas by the fast-moving Gulf Stream and other currents. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Jenny Staletovich in collaboration with Science Friday. 📸 Patrick Farrell (@epatrickfarrell)

Florida's Venice Beach is known as the “Shark Tooth Capital of the World,” but residents in Broward and Palm Beach counties are scouring the shore line and finding a fair share of shark teeth. Deerfield Beach resident Kristin Mellon has found over a dozen shark teeth in the last four months. She walks along Deerfield Beach a few times a week, where she’s found coral, sea glass andeven a baby turtle. “You come in the morning and the water is real flat. And you see the beach dotted with all the shells,” Mellon said. “It's like Christmas morning all the time because you have new little treasures.” South Florida isn’t ideal for shark teeth hunting for two reasons: there’s not a lot of teeth, and many of the shark teeth aren’t fossils. Shark teeth fossils are typically thousands to millions of years old. They’re darker in color because the organic material has been replaced with minerals. However, modern shark teeth are white or light brown. Mellon says the ultimate goal for shark teeth collectors is to find a Megalodon shark tooth fossil. The shark existed over 3 million years ago and could grow to up to 58 feet long. The animals were so big their teeth fossils can be up to 7 inches long. However, Mellon said that searching for shark teeth in South Florida has been anything but discouraging. “It makes it more special when you do find [shark teeth] because they're not just all over the place. It's like a treasure hunt,” she said. “You can't get more real than if it was in a shark's mouth this morning.” Shark teeth are fairly prevalent in South Florida because up to a few million years ago, the entire area was submerged in shallow water, which is the ideal habitat for sharks. This means that shark teeth can also be found far away from beaches as well, buried under the soil. “We replace our teeth once. If we need to replace our teeth a second time, we have to pay really expensive dental bills. A shark can go through, depending on the species, 25,000 to 45,000 teeth in their lifetime,” said Ken Marks, a volunteer at the Florida Museum of Natural History and an amateur fossil hunter. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Anita Li.

Nearly half the households in Florida are struggling to make financial ends meet, according to a closely watched report by the United Way. The nonprofit charity fundraiser organization produces the annual ALICE report — which stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” — to track the number of households that fall above the federal poverty level but make less than what it takes to live comfortably in a local community’s economy. The 2024 report shows that 46% of Florida households — more than 4 million households — are straining to pay for necessities like food, rent and transportation. That number includes the 1.1 million households in poverty and 2.9 million households that meet the ALICE criteria. Miami-Dade County households fared worse, with 53% facing financial hardship, followed by Broward County (48%) and Palm Beach County (47%). The Florida Keys fared slightly better at 43%. The report pulls data from more than 20 state and federal bodies of research including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the American Community Survey from the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The ALICE report is a way to talk about things that are hidden in plain sight in the community,” said Leah Stockton, the Keys area president for United Way of Collier and the Keys. The findings from this year’s update are consistent with a more than decade-long trend. From 2010 to 2022, households in poverty in Florida grew by 8% and ALICE households grew by 27%. While wages for low-paying jobs have grown in Florida, so too have costs. “The largest increases were food and transportation,” Stockton said. “The price of cars has gone up, interest rates have gone up, insurance costs have gone up, etc.” The other big change, Stockton said, was that families have fewer tax credits. “If you remember, during COVID, anyone that had young children, there were tax credits that you were getting due to having dependents,” she said. “Those have largely gone away now.” Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Julia Cooper. 📸 Lynne Sladky / AP

Nearly half the households in Florida are struggling to make financial ends meet, according to a closely watched report by the United Way. The nonprofit charity fundraiser organization produces the annual ALICE report — which stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” — to track the number of households that fall above the federal poverty level but make less than what it takes to live comfortably in a local community’s economy. The 2024 report shows that 46% of Florida households — more than 4 million households — are straining to pay for necessities like food, rent and transportation. That number includes the 1.1 million households in poverty and 2.9 million households that meet the ALICE criteria. Miami-Dade County households fared worse, with 53% facing financial hardship, followed by Broward County (48%) and Palm Beach County (47%). The Florida Keys fared slightly better at 43%. The report pulls data from more than 20 state and federal bodies of research including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the American Community Survey from the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The ALICE report is a way to talk about things that are hidden in plain sight in the community,” said Leah Stockton, the Keys area president for United Way of Collier and the Keys. The findings from this year’s update are consistent with a more than decade-long trend. From 2010 to 2022, households in poverty in Florida grew by 8% and ALICE households grew by 27%. While wages for low-paying jobs have grown in Florida, so too have costs. “The largest increases were food and transportation,” Stockton said. “The price of cars has gone up, interest rates have gone up, insurance costs have gone up, etc.” The other big change, Stockton said, was that families have fewer tax credits. “If you remember, during COVID, anyone that had young children, there were tax credits that you were getting due to having dependents,” she said. “Those have largely gone away now.” Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Julia Cooper. 📸 Lynne Sladky / AP

The Florida Roundup will be live from Key West on August 9. We may be leaving the mainland, but we will still be talking about politics. We will talk with the leading Democrat running for the U-S Senate - Debbie Mucarsel-Powell - about her race against Senator Rick Scott, the economy and the race for the White House. If you’re around, we would love to see you live in Key West on August 9. You can register here: https://buff.ly/4cENuPw

"Now that 81-year-old Joe Biden has petulantly stormed out of his party’s intervention and refused to give up the presidential candidate car keys, I see a greater likelihood of two things. First, Donald Trump will be the next president, unless he does something like stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody. (Oh, wait, I forgot, he could do that and still win.) Second, Florida Senator Marco Rubio will be Trump’s vice-presidential pick at next week’s Republican convention in Milwaukee. Why will “Little Marco,” as Trump gets a sneering kick out of calling him, be the MAGA Mate? Because, to ensure that he scores battleground states like Arizona and Nevada, former President Trump needs to keep poaching Latino voters from President Biden and the Democrats. Tapping the Cuban-American Rubio helps ensure more Latino voters morph into what more pundits like strategist Mike Madrid call them today: the new Reagan Democrats. What, the Millennials and Gen-Zers will ask, are Reagan Democrats? Those were traditional blue-collar Democrats who, in the 1980s, voted for Republican President Ronald Reagan — because his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had presided over wage-ravaging double-digit inflation in the 1970s. They help explain why, in the 2020s, so many traditional Latino Democrats are abandoning Biden for Trump. Any economist will remind you that inflation hits people of color in this country, Blacks and Latinos, harder than it punches whites. That’s particularly true today because rental housing, or the lack of it, is such a haunting facet of this decade’s nagging inflation equation: more than half of Blacks and Latinos rent, compared to just a quarter of whites." Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Tim Padgett. 📸 Rebecca Blackwell / AP