Thursday's Daily Pulse

› Orlando penthouse prices are soaring [Orlando Sentinel]
Five years after local real-estate professionals wrote off the downtown Orlando condominium market as a dark-windowed wasteland of half-empty towers, urban lifestyles and downtown views have sparked bidding wars on upscale units.

› USF heart institute gets $2 million from Hillsborough County [Tampa Bay Times]
Hoping to help make Tampa a hotbed for genomics research, Hillsborough County commissioners awarded up to $2 million for a new heart institute at the University of South Florida Wednesday. The vote came a day after Gov. Rick Scott approved giving USF $6.9 million in state tax money toward the initial design of the USF Health Heart Institute.

› Feds sue to shutdown five South Florida tax preparers [Orlando Sentinel]
Federal officials filed a lawsuit to shutdown five South Florida tax return preparers, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Among the accusations, the suspects increased tax refunds through false claims for the first-time-homebuyer tax credit, phony business expenses, false education expenses and earned income tax credits, officials said

› Major League Baseball's Hialeah youth hub still benched [Miami Today]
Major League Baseball still pledges its commitment to the long-stalled Urban Youth Baseball Academy in Hialeah, says a league executive. But big league baseball says it is currently awaiting a green light from the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Development and for the land to be transferred from a private developer to the city.