President Obama visited the nation's largest solar photovoltaic facility in Florida last week -- but Dr. Stephen A. Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says that doesn't necessarily signal that the state is on its way to a clean energy future. More...

As Florida gears up for a major debate over offshore oil drilling in 2010, energy interests are pouring big money into party coffers -- foreshadowing a battle poised to consume many Southern coastal states. More...

After two years of delay, farmworkers in Florida will finally start getting a penny more per pound for tomatoes they pick. More...

Disability activists who have pushed for equal access to community services have scored a big victory in Florida. More...

In the first full year of the recession, the nation's poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Census Bureau. More...

Florida has become the 19th state to borrow funds to keep unemployment benefits flowing after its unemployment trust fund ran dry. More...

Four years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, efforts to restore Louisiana's coastal wetlands are stalled, leaving communities vulnerable to storm damage. So why is the state's senior U.S. senator pushing to allow oil and gas companies -- who are responsible for much of the coast's destruction -- to drill off Florida's Panhandle? More...

Sixteen bank failures -- one-quarter of all bank failures in the United States so far this year -- have been reported in Georgia. Why are the state's banks so vulnerable? More...

A new report by the Sentencing Project finds that an unprecedented number of prisoners are serving life sentences. More...

As the recession deepened across the country in 2008, the nation saw a shift in its homeless populations to include more families and more rural and suburban areas. More...

A Florida community group is staging a hunger strike in protest of Bank of America's lack of transparency in its lending practices toward low-income minorities. More...

A coalition of health care groups advocating for public health insurance have launched a 10-day television ad campaign targeting senators in 10 states, including Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina. More...

As the hurricane season opens, officials on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts are concerned about the record number of foreclosed homes -- which when left unsecured could become sources of dangerous wind-blown debris and damage neighboring homes in already-struggling communities. More...

Advocates from Florida and beyond call on Washington to stop deporting Haitian immigrants as the small island nation recovers from devastating hurricanes and years of social turmoil. More...

More than 2,000 juvenile offenders in the U.S. are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. This week the Supreme Court agreed to hear two Florida cases that will decide whether life sentences for juveniles in non-homicides are unconstitutional. More...

The Florida press is rallying against a last-minute push by state Republicans to legislate a massive re-write of the election code and restrict voting. And GOP Gov. Charlie Crist -- looking to a future Senate run -- isn't happy. More...

The 2010 Census will determine who gets new Congressional seats and billions in federal dollars. But tight budgets and major social dislocations have states worried they won't be able to get an accurate count. More...

After limiting debate to six minutes, Florida Republicans pushed an 81-page bill proposing a host of new voting restrictions out of a House committee last week. A similar bill is coming to the Senate floor -- and with big majorities in both chambers, will the GOP succeed in changing Florida elections? More...

Renewable energy projects are booming in one Florida city after leaders borrowed a simple policy innovation from Europe. Could the feed-in tariff cure America's dirty energy addiction? More...

Across the country, 23 Republicans running for Congress in 2008 fared worse than John McCain did in their districts -- and the majority were in the South. More...