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Fort Lauderdale airport concourse evacuated

FORT LAUDERDALE - An airport concourse was briefly evacuated Tuesday after a passenger walked through a security checkpoint while apparently carrying a knife, officials said.

A security screener at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport noticed what appeared to be a knife in a passenger's carryon bag around 11:35 a.m., Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Lauren Stover said in a statement.

The passenger ignored the screener's order to open the bag and continued through the checkpoint, Stover said.

Stover said the traveler was later found and questioned, but a weapon was not found. The passenger was not arrested, she said.

One of the airport's six concourses was cleared out for slightly more than an hour, with hundreds of passengers moved outside the building or to other concourses, airport spokesman Jim Reynolds said.

MIAMI - A man accused of trying to sell two stolen French paintings worth an estimated $6.7-million pleaded innocent Tuesday and was set to go to trial July 28.

Prosecutors allege Fernando Alfaro, 46, led an operation in which he and two other men stole the Impressionist-era paintings from a Naples beachfront home in December, then tried to sell the paintings to undercover police in Miami for $1-million.

Rigoberto Gonzalez, Carlos Somuano and Alfaro were arrested Feb. 11.

TALLAHASSEE - At least 32 people died on Florida highways during the three-day Memorial Day holiday weekend, slightly more than the number killed in 2002, according to preliminary figures from the Florida Highway Patrol.

The FHP expects the number to increase because some reports may still come in and there are some people with serious injuries who may die, spokesman Lt. Bill Leeper said Tuesday.

Of those killed, one was a pedestrian and four were motorcyclists, two of whom were not wearing a helmet.

AVENTURA - Part of South Florida got as much as 10 inches of rain Tuesday, flooding streets and uprooting trees.

The National Weather Service says there will be daily deluges Wednesday and through much of the rest of the week, enough to required flood watches or flood warnings.

There were isolated areas in southern Broward and northeastern Miami-Dade counties with as much as 10 inches of rain, the weather service said.

There were widespread areas with 4 to 6 inches of rain in a little more than an hour early Tuesday night.

ORLANDO - Florida leads the nation in ecstasy trafficking arrests, with much of the party drug passing through Central Florida in recent years, investigators said.

This chemical known as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, comes mostly from illegal laboratories in Belgium and the Netherlands. Since 1998, Florida has had more ecstasy-trafficking arrests than any other state with 1,113 arrests, followed by California with 579, according to federal Drug Enforcement Administration records.

TALLAHASSEE - Joseph Sole, a retired Marine colonel in two wars who served as chief of staff to former Gov. Claude Kirk, has died. He was 69.

Sole served with the Marines in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

He had been working as a lobbying consultant with the Tallahassee firm Poole, McKinley and Blosser. He died Sunday after a bout with cancer, said Van Poole, a partner in the firm.

Sole was the top staff official for Kirk, who was governor from 1967 to 1971.

Sole also served as secretary of the Department of Business Regulation.