MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida has launched a criminal investigation into the state Republican party’s recently ousted chairman and a company he secretly hired to raise donations, state officials and local media said Wednesday.

The investigation targeted Jim Greer, who resigned as state party chairman in January amid accusations that he misspent party funds, a political source confirmed.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not identify Greer by name but said in a statement that it was investigating “possible criminal activity surrounding a former senior official of the Republican Party of Florida and Victory Strategies, LLC.”

The Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported that Greer was the majority owner of Victory Strategies and that the company benefited from a secret contract that paid it commissions on money raised for the party.

Greer could not immediately be reached for comment but previously denied misspending party funds. Considered a moderate, he said in January that he had been wrongly accused by party conservatives who were conducting an ideological purge that threatened to split the party ahead of crucial November elections.

The investigation comes at a time when the party is already dealing with embarrassing revelations about spending by the Republican National Committee, which spent thousands of dollars at lavish hotels and paid $1,946 for meals at a West Hollywood nightclub featuring topless dancers and bondage themes.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican candidate for governor, said the current Florida party chairman, John Thrasher, had given him information two weeks ago from the state party’s financial audit, which was filed on Wednesday with state election supervisors.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Relatives of passengers killed in an Air France crash off Brazil have filed nearly two dozen wrongful death lawsuits in Miami against Airbus, alleging that aircraft maker’s A330 crashed because of flaws in the plane and its U.S.-made components.

Airbus, a unit of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, called the lawsuits baseless.

“We don’t believe that they are well stated or well founded,” said Airbus Americas spokesman Clay McConnell. “We will be moving to have them dismissed.”

The lawsuits were filed in U.S. district court by the families of passengers aboard Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, some 3-1/2 hours after taking off from Rio de Janeiro.

The Paris-bound plane plunged into the sea 680 miles off Brazil during a storm, killing all 228 people aboard.

France’s aviation investigation agency, the BEA, is leading a probe of the crash but has not determined the cause.

Last week it resumed a search for the plane’s data recorders, which are believed to lie at a depth of 13,000 feet in the Atlantic off Brazil’s northeast coast.

MIAMI, March 24 (Reuters) – A Florida jury ordered R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris on Wednesday to pay $26.6 million to the widow of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer, the latest verdict against cigarette makers in the “Engle progeny” lawsuits.

The Broward County Circuit Court jury in Fort Lauderdale issued the verdict in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Robin Cohen, whose husband Nathan died of a smoking-related illness in 1994 at age 68.

The jury awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and divided the blame for Nathan Cohen’s death equally at one-third for Altria Group <MO.N> unit Philip Morris, one third for Reynolds American <RAI.N> unit R.J. Reynolds and one-third for Cohen himself.

The panel also awarded $20 million in punitive damages, or $10 million for each of the two cigarette companies. That puts the total at $26.6 million, or $13.3 million for each company, if the verdict is upheld on appeal.

Philip Morris said it would appeal on grounds that the trial court improperly eliminated most of the plaintiff’s burden of proof.

Maura Payne, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds, said it too intended to appeal. “We’re disappointed in the verdict,” said Payne.

The “Engle progeny” cases stem from Engle versus R.J. Reynolds, a landmark class-action lawsuit filed against cigarette makers in 1994. In 2000, a Florida jury found that cigarettes cause lung cancer and other illness, and ordered the tobacco companies to pay a record $145 billion in punitive damages to sick smokers.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Cruise companies are balking at a proposal to create a low-emissions buffer zone around the United States and Canada, saying it sets arbitrary boundaries based on faulty science that overstates the health benefits.

The proposed Emissions Control Area would extend 200 nautical miles, which is 230 statute miles, around the coast of the two nations and set stringent new limits on air pollution from ocean-going ships beginning in 2015.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. agency that sets regulations for ships operating internationally, is expected to adopt the proposal at its weeklong meeting that begins on Monday in London.

Cruise executives at an industry meeting in Miami said the plan would force them to switch to low-sulfur fuels that would dramatically drive up costs.

“Our estimate is that in today’s market it’s probably 40 percent more expensive,” said Michael Crye, executive vice president of technical and regulatory affairs for the Cruise Lines International Association, known as CLIA.

It “essentially means all the current fuel that we burn cannot be burned within 200 miles,” Stein Kruse, chief executive of Holland America Line, told the Cruise Shipping Miami conference.

Proponents, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, say the plan would clear the air around polluted port cities and save up to 8,300 lives a year in the United States and Canada. It would limit emissions of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, pollutants that are linked to asthma and cancer.

MIAMI (Reuters) – U.S. cruise companies are eager to add Cuba to their itineraries; but even if U.S. policy allowed that, Cuba’s ports would need years of rebuilding to accommodate the ships, industry officials said on Wednesday.

“Our business has grown so much that these ports in Cuba that were (established) in the time of the Spanish conquistadors, that size of ports, they’re going to need a lot of infrastructure improvement,” John Tercek, vice president of commercial development for Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, said at an industry conference in Miami.

The world’s three largest cruise companies — Carnival Corp & Plc, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, which is owned by U.S. private equity firms Apollo Management LP and TPG Capital LP and by Genting Hong Kong Ltd — are all headquartered in Miami.

They are prohibited by the United States from doing business with nearby communist Cuba, under a policy aimed at depriving Cuba of U.S. dollars until it adopts democracy.

The Caribbean region is the top destination for cruise lines because of its year-round mild weather and its proximity to North America, which is the source of more than 70 percent of all cruise passengers globally.

The cruise industry in turn pumped $2.27 billion into the economies of 29 Caribbean destinations last year, according to the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association.

When industry officials gather each year at the Cruise Shipping Miami conference, the conversation inevitably turns to when U.S.-Cuba relations might thaw enough for U.S.-operated ships to call on Cuban ports.

MIAMI, March 16 (Reuters) – The world’s biggest cruise lines have seen strong advance bookings so far this year and are paring away discounts that lured passengers aboard during the global economic crisis, their chief executives said on Tuesday.

But none expected an immediate return to the revenue yields they enjoyed before the crash.

And while new ship orders have resumed after a record 20-month drought, the CEOs expected the pace of new shipbuilding to remain slow for the next couple of years.

The mood at the annual Cruise Shipping Miami conference was decidedly brighter than it was in 2009, a year Norwegian Cruise Line Chief Executive Keven Sheehan described as “scary.”

“We’re seeing solid signs of recovery, albeit one that will play out over the next couple of years,” said Sheehan, whose line is jointly owned by two U.S. private equity firms, Apollo Management and TPG, and by Genting Hong Kong Ltd <GENH.SI>, which was formerly known as Star Cruises Limited.

Major lines cut ticket prices by 10 percent to 20 percent in 2009 as consumers kept purse strings tight.

That lured vacationers aboard and filled the ships with 13.4 million passengers, up by 430,000 passengers from 2008, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.

MIAMI (Reuters) – The orca that killed its trainer at the Florida SeaWorld will continue to perform but no one will be allowed in the water with him or any of the company’s other killer whales until an investigation is finished, SeaWorld’s chief executive said on Friday.

Trainer Dawn Brancheau was on a platform at the side of the pool, rubbing the 12,000-pound (5,400-kg) killer whale after a performance on Wednesday when the animal grabbed her ponytail in his mouth, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Chief Executive Jim Atchison told a news conference at the park.

The orca, a bull called Tilikum, thrashed Brancheau around and pulled her underwater. Sheriff’s investigators said she died of multiple trauma and drowning.

A spectator had previously said the whale grabbed Brancheau by the waist and a sheriff’s spokesman said she had slipped into the pool, but Atchison said the park’s analysis showed the whale had pulled her in by her hair.

SeaWorld halted its whale shows at the park in Orlando and at its parks in San Diego, California, and San Antonio, Texas, after the accident but will restart them on Saturday, Atchinson told a televised news conference.

However, he said, trainers will not be allowed in the water with the orcas at any of the parks while SeaWorld conducts an investigation into the death and reviews its rules and procedures, he said. Whale experts from other marine mammal facilities and from the U.S. Navy will join the investigation, he said.

The shows previously featured trainers riding on the whales and performing other stunts with them.

MIAMI, Feb 24 (Reuters) – A killer whale at the SeaWorld amusement park in central Florida killed a trainer on Wednesday, police and company executives said.

“She was rubbing the killer whale’s head, and (it) grabbed her and pulled her in” to the pool, said Chuck Tompkins, Corporate Curator of Zoological Operations at SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment.

Forty-year-old Dawn Brancheau, a trainer with 16 years experience at SeaWorld, was dead when rescue officials arrived, said Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Solomons.

Media reports said the orca at the park’s Shamu Stadium grabbed the woman by the waist, thrashed her about and took her underwater.

The trainer was killed just before the start of a public performance and the stadium was immediately evacuated.

Dan Brown, president of SeaWorld Orlando, said the victim was one of the park’s most experienced animal trainers, and that she drowned.

There were initially conflicting reports about how the incident occurred. The Orlando Sentinel quoted a spectator as saying the whale came up from the water and grabbed the trainer by her waist. The sheriff’s official said preliminary accounts indicated she slipped and fell in, but that was still under investigation.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, one of Congress’ staunchest supporters of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, said on Thursday he would not seek re-election to his Florida congressional district.

Havana-born Diaz-Balart, 55, has represented a predominantly Hispanic district in the Miami area since 1993.

“Today, I am announcing that I will not seek a 10th term in the United States Congress this November,” he told reporters in Miami. He said he planned to return to practicing law.

His brother, Republican U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, also holds a Florida congressional seat. He said on Thursday he would run in November for Lincoln’s District 21 seat, which is considered more reliably Republican than the District 25 seat Mario currently holds.

All 435 seats in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives will be up for grabs in November. There are now 18 House Republicans and 12 Democrats who have said they will not run for re-election.

The Diaz-Balart brothers and Cuban-born U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida have been a powerful force in support of a hard-line U.S. policy against the communist government in Cuba established by Fidel Castro after his 1959 nationalist revolution on the island.

Analysts of U.S.-Cuban relations said that because of Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s seniority in the House, his absence from November would be felt among supporters of the embargo.