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Monday's Daily Pulse
What you need to know about Florida today
› Backed by music vet Ted Lucas, Florida Memorial University debuts tech innovation center
To prepare Black students and entrepreneurs for their place in the growing Miami tech scene, Florida Memorial University opened its innovation laboratory Thursday in Miami Gardens. Accomplished music business veteran Ted Lucas and collaborator Chandler Malone are working closely with the lab to support Black tech education and investment through the Technolij Innovation Center on campus. Technolij is a nonprofit Lucas started to help close the racial wealth gap through tech education.
› Season of Sharing helps Sarasota teacher and family displaced by storm
For years, Chris Rhodes, a special education teacher in Chicago, felt stunted and overworked. With teaching prospects in Florida, Chris and his wife jumped at the chance to move. Before long, the couple and their kids left behind the flat prairies of the Midwest, gambling on paradise – not yet seeing another side to the land of the sun.
› St. Petersburg, Hillsborough net extra US aid for housing
The federal government is sending an additional $6.5 million to the Tampa Bay area for affordable housing units and to aid tenants facing evictions. The U.S. Department of Treasury announced this week it was allocating almost $2.55 million each to Hillsborough County and to the city of St. Petersburg, and nearly $1.4 million to Pinellas County. The money can be used to assist households with rent and utility payments or to develop affordable housing units..
› Jacksonville restaurant named to Yelp's Top 100 list
Seven months after cracking the Top 10 in Yelp’s first-ever guide to the Top 100 restaurants in Florida, a Jacksonville Italian restaurant has made Yelp’s Top 100 U.S. Restaurants for 2023. Catullo’s Italian, located at 1650-2 San Pablo Road S. in the city’s Intracoastal West neighborhood, is the only Northeast Florida restaurant to make Yelp’s annual list – and it’s one of just 13 from Florida on the list for 2023. The restaurant comes in at No. 64 on the list.
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