It’s Wednesday, August 11th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Tropical Storm Fred is moving closer toward the Dominican Republic with the latest track giving some positive news to South Florida.
The latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center has the storm with winds of 40 miles per hour while it sits 115 miles east-southeast of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Fred is moving to the west-northwest at 16 miles per hour. On the forecast track, Fred is expected be near or over Hispaniola on Wednesday. All of South Florida and the Florida Keys remained in the system's cone of concern. South Florida should continue to monitor the forecast for any anticipated impacts Friday night through Sunday.
No. 2 - The Broward County School Board has decided to require masks for students and teachers for the beginning of the upcoming school year, amid an increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations and cases in the county and throughout the state.
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The board voted 8 to 1 to require masks at a meeting Tuesday, where they said parents who want to opt out can do so with a medical waiver. The decision was made in defiance of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' attempts to block schools from imposing mandates. The Republican governor has insisted that the decision about wearing masks should be made by parents. DeSantis’ office said Monday that the state’s Board of Education could move to withhold salaries from superintendents or school board members. who impose mask mandates.
No. 3 - Nursing homes house some of the state’s most vulnerable people. COVID-19 continues to be an ongoing threat.
Nationally, only a little more than half of nursing home workers are vaccinated. Florida is the second worst state for that metric, according to the AARP. Florida does not require workers in long-term care facilities to be vaccinated. The state government rolled back some of the information it previously published beginning in June when COVID numbers were decreasing. To find out why numbers at each facility are differing so much, click here for the story from NBC 6 investigator Phil Prazan.
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No. 4 - Officials from the city of Surfside will be in court Wednesday in attempt to get a forensic engineer access to the site of the June 24th condo collapse that killed 98 people.
Mayor Charles Burkett said the city will ask a judge to allow Allyn Kilsheimer onto the site of Champlain Towers South. Some city commissioners say he needs to be able to investigate not only diagnose what happened but gain knowledge about the safety of other buildings in the area. The city says they’re not being given access because the site has been deemed a crime scene, and Miami-Dade County has become the lead investigative agency. Kilsheimer says he’s looked at nine buildings in the area since the collapse and two buildings took immediate action.
No. 5 - Attorneys for the suspect in the 2018 Parkland high school massacre told a judge Tuesday that the news media and public should be barred from all pretrial hearings, saying Nikolas Cruz’s right to an impartial jury will be irrevocably harmed if certain evidence is revealed before jurors are seated.
Chief assistant public defender David Wheeler told Circuit Judge Elizabeth Schrerer that discussing during open pretrial hearings evidence that might be excluded or barred would “let the cat out of the bag” and create news coverage that would prejudice the potential juror pool. Wheeler said the public’s view of Cruz, 22, has already been tainted by news coverage. Cruz is charged with killing 17 and wounding 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018.
No. 6 - Most people know of Captain Barrington Irving as the first Black man to fly around the world.
Captain Irving is also inspiring children, teaching them about aviation through science with the Flying Classroom, a STEM+ curriculum that introduces kids to the world of science and so much more. The Flying Classroom is a STEM+ program for kids from Pre-K to 12th grade, virtually teaching lessons based on the global expeditions of Captain Irving. Click here for more on the lessons learned in a report from NBC 6’s Marcine Joseph.
