It’s Tuesday, May 18th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Several Carnival Corporation brands will begin cruising this summer from ports in the Caribbean and Europe, as the company hopes to begin sailings from Miami in July.
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AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn and P&O Cruises will begin resuming sailings from global ports over the next several months, the Miami-based company announced Monday. The company said it's working with authorities to resume sailings in the U.S., and hopes to begin operations on three ships out of PortMiami and Galveston, Texas in July. Cruises operating out of Europe and the Caribbean will take place with adjusted passenger capacity and enhanced health protocols, the company said.
No. 2 - The first-ever playoff game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers could be tough to top.
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Or perhaps it's just a taste of what's to come in their opening-round Sunshine State series. The defending champion Lightning take a 1-0 lead into Game 2 Tuesday night in Sunrise, Florida. The intrastate foes — they've never really been rivals — have met 142 times in the regular season, including eight games this season. But they'd never faced off in the playoffs until Sunday, when the Lightning won a physical, dramatic thriller, 5-4.
No. 3 - Anti-gambling forces in Miami Beach have prevailed for decades, but Monday some city leaders say they fear the compact Gov. Ron DeSantis worked out with the Seminole Tribe of Florida could give casino interests a back door into the city.
Same for Doral, with the city's major developer noting the deal allows for possible future casinos in the county as long as they are more than 15 miles from the tribe's flagship casino in Hollywood. "What does 15 miles mean?" asked developer Armando Codina. "If you take a look at a map and you draw a 15-mile radius, it just so happens that the Fontainebleau and the Trump Doral are just outside the 15 miles."
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No. 4 - Good news for parents: Monthly payments through the new federal enhanced child tax credit will begin July 15.
The credit will go to roughly 39 million households with about 65 million children, or 88% of children in the U.S., according to the IRS. The expanded credit was established in the American Rescue Plan signed into law in March. In 2021, the maximum enhanced child tax credit is $3,600 for children younger than age 6 and $3,000 for those between 6 and 17. Those payments will be sent out as an advance on 2021 taxes in monthly installments that could be as much as $300 per month for younger children and $250 per month for older ones. The credit is per child in each household, meaning a family with three children ages 4, 8 and 12, for example, could receive up to $800 on a monthly basis (A $300 credit for the 4-year-old, and $250 each for the older kids.)
No. 5 - Leo Corradini and his wife did not want a big bash to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They wanted to go on a cruise with their immediate family.
“She said, ‘look, I’m going to squirrel away money to take the entire family on a cruise to Hawaii,’” Leo said his wife told him. They reserved five staterooms aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s Pride of America, paying over $40,000 in February 2020 for the seven-day cruise. “We did it about five years ago with some friends and it’s just a phenomenal cruise,” Leo said. Then, the pandemic picked up steam and the June 2020 sailing was canceled.
No. 6 - Across South Florida, NBC 6 was told organized gangs have been up to no good over the past year, taking advantage of teens who lost the structure of getting up and going to school every day and participating in sports and other activities. They’ve basically been recruited to do the dirty work for adults.
The Miami-Dade Mayor’s office released statistics showing how the situation has been having deadly results. One in four of the people killed in the county in 2020 was under 21 years old. “From what we saw in this last year, we think COVID was one of the main causes was that the number of shootings—contact shootings—homicides—they all increased," Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle said. "We also noticed that a lot of the shooters were young and younger and the victims are younger and younger.”
