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A Miami-Dade police officer made an early morning discovery Monday when he pulled over a white pick-up truck on the Florida Turnpike: an undisclosed -- but enormous -- amount of marijuana plants. Witnesses said the amount taken by police was estimated at half a million dollars. Police said the truck's driver escaped before police could arrest him. - rakontur

Between September and November last year, an anomaly occurred in Miami. For 38 days straight, no one was murdered within city limits. It was one of those rare occurrences that had newspapers around the state buzzing. But while the Magic City enjoyed a small respite from people getting killed, the rest of Miami-Dade was as deadly as ever. - rakontur

Police seized 22 rifles and handguns this month from the home of a South Beach waiter after co-workers alleged he planned to gun down beachgoers from atop a condo tower, then trigger car bombs - rakontur

Severed heads rolled into a packed nightclub. A headless body found hanging from a bridge. An army general tortured and killed. An anti-kidnapping expert kidnapped. Banners on highway overpasses threatening assassination of police officers. Dissolved bodies discovered in vats of acid. Women and children killed in shootouts. This is not exactly the best way to capture the hearts and minds of a nation that is making international headlines because of its gruesome drug violence. - rakontur

at least one Hurricanes player has been selected in the first round in 14 consecutive N.F.L. drafts. But Miami’s fortunes on the recruiting trail and the football field have suffered in recent years — no national championships since the 2001 season, and a losing season in 2007. Even if Miami’s absence from college football’s loftiest ranks is just temporary, as most recruiting experts and N.F.L. personnel executives believe, it will take its toll this month. The streak — and one of the Hurricanes’ favorite trash-talk fodder — will almost surely end. - rakontur

In 1987, hit man Robert ''Bobby'' Young blew away speedboat mogul Don Aronow in his Mercedes sports car. Young, paid $60,000 for the contract murder, achieved such notoriety for the gangland-style killing that it secured him a place in the pantheon of South Florida assassins. - rakontur

In the 1970s and early 1980s, almost all the cocaine consumed in the United States was grown in Colombia and shipped to South Florida along a variety of sea and air routes. Colombian traffickers fighting for market share turned Miami into a city where shootouts, contract killings and kidnappings became part of daily life. Then President Ronald Reagan established a special force to cut the cocaine pipelines and end the violence. “The Mexicans must rue the day the South Florida Task Force was set up,” said Peter Reuter, a scholar at the University of Maryland. “That was the beginning of the problems it faces today.” - rakontur

What Katrina and Wilma started, wrecking crews finally finished in Everglades National Park. Flamingo Lodge, for a half century a landmark overlooking Florida Bay, has been reduced to rubble. - rakontur

when we interviewed director Michael Bay back in February, he sounded genuinely tired of [Transformers] — and he was still working feverishly in post on [Transformers 2]. He was, he said, working on the “Cocaine Cowboys” series that he and Jerry Bruckheimer are making for HBO, and that once he emerged from postproduction madness, he wanted to concentrate on that. - rakontur

At federal prisons across the country, guards are preying on inmates. FDC Miami is no different. - rakontur

Sometimes it's not easy to admit that you live in Florida. Last week, our state Senate boldly took the first step toward making it illegal for a person to have intimate relations with an animal. Although such a law might thin the dating pool in certain counties, it should ultimately serve to protect household pets and domestic livestock, which evidently are at far greater risk than most of us had imagined. - rakontur

You see, we have a saying about the women in South Beach: Some of the best looking one’s aren’t. - rakontur

That great quote above is from Joe DeMaria, weighing in on the black market peso exchange and the government's case against Ben Kuehne - rakontur

Defense attorneys claimed that Escobedo owed $187,000 to someone in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville, a major cocaine corridor for Mexican drug cartels. They said the family was likely killed by Mexican drug dealers over that debt. The victims and defendants are all U.S. citizens. Three of the defendants are Mexican-American; Troya's family is Puerto Rican and Cuban. - rakontur

Flamboyant Miami real estate broker Carlos Justo lists some $20 million in debts in a bankruptcy filing. - rakontur

One of the strangest rampages in South Beach history -- which is saying something -- ended last Wednesday with police shooting and killing the suspect in North Miami-Dade. - rakontur

go get em Markus! ''Dr. Shaygan respectfully submits that the government's conduct in this case is so outrageous and was undertaken with such flagrant disregard for Dr. Shaygan's constitutional rights that dismissal is the appropriate remedy,'' David Markus and his partner, Marc Seitles, wrote in a motion filed Monday. - rakontur

The Miami Herald's federal courts maven Jay Weaver penned a short item for today's paper on the selection of former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey to a "statewide commission in charge of recommending candidates for top federal prosecutor jobs and judgeships." But nowhere in the story does Weaver mention Coffey's resignation in 1996 as U.S. attorney after a run-in with a stripper named "Tiffany." - rakontur

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber denied the request by Medellín cartel leader Fabio Ochoa, whose lawyer argued that convicted codefendant Alejandro Bernal was not a truthful witness in the 2003 trial. - rakontur

A coating of dust covers the chandelier in the lobby. The sofa cushions are tearing, and guests say bedbugs are lurking in the sheets. It's Miami's Continental Bayside Hotel, the second-dirtiest in the country, according to a travel website. - rakontur

Federal investigators charged a Miami Beach man with running an escort service that took advantage of immigrant women by forcing them to work as prostitutes. - rakontur

New York rapper N.O.R.E. was arrested on Miami Beach on Sunday afternoon after punching a man in the face and throwing a cup of yellow liquid on him, according to police. - rakontur

The seven young models never used to have this much time for the beach. They'd hop from cellphones to cabs to casting calls, posing and pouting for the catalogs during the height of Miami's modeling season. - rakontur

A Justice Department case against prominent Miami attorney Ben Kuehne continues to unravel. On Friday, a U.S. magistrate judge recommended throwing out a key charge that accuses him of defrauding the Colombian government in the money-laundering indictment -- the latest dismissal of offenses in the closely watched case. - rakontur

Two leaders of an organized crime enterprise known as "the Corporation" or "Cuban Mafia" have failed in bids to overturn lengthy prison terms and forfeiture of more than $2 billion. Jose Miguel Battle Jr. was sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $642 million, and Julio Acuna got life and a $1.4 billion judgment after they were convicted of racketeering July 20, 2006 in Miami. - rakontur

The owner of a top modeling agency in South Beach that closed its doors last week due to a downturn in advertising was in her office on Thursday. - rakontur

The number of homicides in unincorporated Miami-Dade County rose significantly in 2008, but robberies and burglaries were down, county officials said Wednesday. - rakontur

Jerry Powers, who founded Ocean Drive Magazine in 1991, and stayed on after selling the business in late 2007, has resigned, with plans to launch a new venture. - rakontur

Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower -- the city's first Cuban-American mayor -- has been called out by Miami Republican State Rep. Juan Zapata for a comment she made at a city commission meeting last month referring to Colombians as drug dealers. - rakontur

People in Florida are fearful of the economic future, and one way they are coping is by buying guns. The state office that issues concealed weapons permits is buried under a backlog of 95,000 applications, and doesn't have enough money in its budget to do the job - rakontur