Senate Republicans formally and unanimously elected Sen. Jeff Atwater as the chamber's president-designate if the GOP maintains its majority after the 2008 election. Republicans now have a 26-14 advantage. ...more

December 12, 2007

Nine people from Florida moved into a home in Portage, Wis., in February. Four months later, police found a "house of horrors." The body of a woman who had been beaten and strangled was buried in the back yard, and her tortured 11-year-old son was locked in a closet. ...more

December 2, 2007

PORTAGE, WIS. - Candice Clark rages like an angry child as she leans into a video monitor in the Columbia County Jail. "I'm not a murderer," the inmate in orange snarls into the telephone. ...more

December 1, 2007

Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp and Bob Butterworth, secretary of the state's Department of Children & Families, were on hand Thursday to recognize Eleanor Hall of Bartow as an official "Point of Light." ...more

November 29, 2007

A Cuban farmer would get sole custody of his 5-year-old daughter under a settlement reached Wednesday after a lengthy court battle involving the girl's U.S. foster parents and state officials, according to a person familiar with the deal. ...more

November 29, 2007

Tale Of 2 Counties Not long after the problems at the Sarasota YMCA, the privatized "lead agency" for five of the six counties in the Florida Department of Children & Families' Suncoast Region, started getting long-overdue attention - the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform first pointed out this agency was having problems in 2002 - there's been a mystery: ...more

November 23, 2007

It took the better part of a year for Chante Douglass to understand the Children's Village was different. ...more

November 21, 2007

When Jeff Rainey took over Hillsborough Kids Inc. in 2005, the private agency was responsible for more than 5,000 abused and neglected children in Hillsborough County. ...more

November 10, 2007