The Cooler

Not a whole lot going on this morning in the news. Here's what I found somewhat interesting.

A- Herald: Making your MIA experience better.

The final phase of a long-awaited, multi-billion dollar Miami International Airport improvement project wraps up Tuesday.

Almost.

The new $180 million international arrivals center, a 400,000-square-foot facility on three levels, starts processing an average of 22,000 people a day after nearly three years of construction.

Tuesday’s opening essentially completes a $3 billion project to expand, beautify and modernize the airport’s north terminal that has been in the works since the mid-1990s.

B- Herald: This is what you get with Republicans.

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott said he was championing transparency in May when he gave the public access to his emails by posting them online for anyone to see.

But what he failed to say at his May 3 news conference launching Project Sunburst was that the emails he made public were not the emails of his official state account. The emails the public read online were from a different account used almost exclusively by conservative supporters.

[...]

“It was always my understanding that all of the governor’s email accounts were going to be listed,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. “I find it very odd and misleading that we’re only getting the [positive] stuff.”

C- Herald: I'm disliking this guy more and more.

Rene Betancourt, the 22-year-old skateboarder originally thought to have been the victim of a savage beating in downtown Miami, is trying to set the record straight.

He wasn’t attacked by four to five black males, which was the lead police and news media followed for almost two weeks earlier this month. A surveillance video released more than a week ago showed him on his skateboard, without a helmet, slamming face-first into a concrete wall in a parking garage the night of July 6.

Betancourt, who spoke to The Miami Herald Sunday night, said he does not remember what happened, nor does he remember blaming his injuries on anyone.

“I have no recollection,” Betancourt said of his initial questioning by detectives while he was waiting to be taken into surgery for skull fractures and a blood clot on his brain the day after the accident.

D- Herald: Protecting their assets.

Cuban bank assets deposited in an international group of financial institutions showed a second stunning plunge in a row, with the total nose diving from $5.65 billion on Sept. 30 to $2.8 billion at the end of March.

“Two consecutive quarters of massive bank withdrawals signal a drastic policy change in Cuba that is not the result of temporary factors,” wrote Luis F. Luis, a former chief economist at the Organization of American States who has been monitoring the deposits.

[...]

“A more powerful reason may be concerns regarding the legal vulnerability of having financial assets in Western banks which may be subject to forfeiture by the courts,” Luis added in a report emailed Monday to El Nuevo Herald and others.

Several Cuban exiles have won multi-million dollar judgments against Havana in U.S. courts and are now trying to collect the money.

E- Palm Beach Post: Life in Florida.

Statewide, the waiting list for home-delivered meals has more than doubled in the past nine years, from 2,976 in 2003 to 7,854 last month, reflecting a national problem of hunger among the elderly.
Those in charge of programs to deliver meals to seniors say they face many challenges, including a budget from the federal government that has failed to keep up with inflation, food and transportation costs that have increased the cost of each meal, and an elderly population that is booming in a time of economic hardship.

F- WPLG: Life in South Florida.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - A hit-and-run driver destroyed Local 10's Roger Lohse's 2012 Dodge Ram and his wife's Chrysler Pacifica parked in front of their Hollywood home early Sunday morning.

The incident happened just before 4 a.m.

"All of a sudden I heard what sounded like an explosion 30 feet from my bedroom window," Lohse told Local 10's Jeff Weinsier.

.