For as long as humans have endeavored to build upwards toward the sky, they have also been forced to contend with inexorable laws of nature — ones that are not always so accommodating to our species’ vertical endeavors. In the modern era, that tension is perhaps best exemplified in Florida, where coastal erosion, sinkholes, and other environmental factors have become a constant challenge in the march toward upward construction.

Nearly three dozen structures along Florida’s southern coast sank an “unexpected” amount between 2016 and 2023, according to a report released this month by researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. All told, “35 buildings along the Miami Beach to Sunny Isles Beach coastline are experiencing subsidence, a process where the ground sinks or settles,” the school said in a press release announcing the results of its research. Although it’s generally understood that buildings can experience subsidence “up to several tens of centimeters during and immediately after construction,” this latest study shows that the process can “persist for many years.” What do these new findings mean for Miami-area residents, and our understanding of how to build bigger, safer buildings in general?

‘Not so much about the safety of the occupants’

Layers of limestone and sand “shift under the weight of high-rises and as a result of vibrations from foundation construction,” said The Associated Press, with “tidal flows and construction projects as far away as 1,050 feet” contributing to the observed settling. The territory surveyed for the project also “included Surfside, where the Champlain Towers South building collapsed in June 2021, killing 98 people” although that collapse is widely believed to have been the result of design flaws and material failures. Nevertheless, the study’s authors concluded the 2021 disaster “highlighted the need for monitoring of building stability, especially in coastal areas with corrosive environmental conditions.”

The study is “not so much about the safety of the occupants” of the affected buildings, co-author Esber Andiroglu said to NBC Miami. Instead, the research is meant to highlight the “preservation of resources and containing costly repairs to more manageable maintenance expenses.” Still, the fact that many of the buildings surveyed were completed years before the satellite imagery used for the study was first deployed has raised questions. “All the settlement that was going to occur should have occurred by that time. So they should not have additional settlements,” John Pistorino, a member of the state engineering board, said to the Miami Herald, which highlighted different potential explanations including building weight, climate change, and the location of the structures vis-a-vis underground wells.

‘To be 100% clear, no buildings in Sunny Isles Beach are sinking!’

For now, elected officials and experts are urging patience and caution in the wake of the report’s findings. “Subsidence happens slowly; these buildings are not just going to tip over tomorrow,” said the Miami New Times. However, “left unchecked, uneven sinking can cause cracks, misaligned doors, and other structural problems.”

“To be 100% clear, no buildings in Sunny Isles Beach are sinking!” Sunny Isles Beach Mayor Larisa Svechin said to Newsweek. “All occupied buildings in our city are inspected and receive certificates of occupancy in compliance with the Florida Building Code; consistently rated the safest in the country.”

Even the study’s authors are working to tamp down any panic their research may have caused. “We didn’t want to alarm anybody,” study co-author Professor Gregor Eberli said to NBC Miami. “We just wanted to put out the fact that yes, there is a bit of subsidence going on and we wanted to quantify that.” Still, this latest report comes shortly after a separate study this year found structures along the East Coast were “sinking more than the rate of seawater rise,” said the AP.

As Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, lead author for the University of Miami’s research said: “The study underscores the need for ongoing monitoring and a deeper understanding of the long-term implications for these structures.”

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, including two Florida men, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office.

The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings, including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities.

It means just three federal inmates are still facing execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

“I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Of the 37 people who received commuted sentences, two are from Florida. Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya were sentenced to death in 2009 for killing two children, ages 3 and 4. The men were also convicted of killing the children’s parents in a 2006 shooting along the Florida Turnpike, which prosecutors said was related to a drug debt.

Sanchez and Troya were the only men from Florida on federal death row.

The Biden administration in 2021 announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study the protocols used, which suspended executions during Biden’s term. But Biden actually had promised to go further on the issue in the past, pledging to end federal executions without the caveats for terrorism and hate-motivated, mass killings.

While running for president in 2020, Biden’s campaign website said he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”

Similar language didn’t appear on Biden’s reelection website before he left the presidential race in July.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden’s statement said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

He took a political jab at Trump, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has spoken frequently of expanding executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and even praised China’s harsher treatment of drug peddlers. During his first term as president, Trump also advocated for the death penalty for drug dealers.

There were 13 federal executions during Trump’s first term, more than under any president in modern history, and some may have happened fast enough to have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus at the federal death row facility in Indiana.

Those were the first federal executions since 2003. The final three occurred after Election Day in November 2020 but before Trump left office the following January, the first time federal prisoners were put to death by a lame-duck president since Grover Cleveland in 1889.

Biden faced recent pressure from advocacy groups urging him to act to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The president’s announcement also comes less than two weeks after he commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, and of 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

The announcement also followed the post-election pardon that Biden granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges after long saying he would not issue one, sparking an uproar in Washington. The pardon also raised questions about whether he would issue sweeping preemptive pardons for administration officials and other allies who the White House worries could be unjustly targeted by Trump’s second administration.

Speculation that Biden could commute federal death sentences intensified last week after the White House announced he plans to visit Italy on the final foreign trip of his presidency next month. Biden, a practicing Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayers for U.S. death row inmates in hopes their sentences will be commuted.

Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged Biden to change the death sentences, said in a statement issued by the White House that the president “has done what no president before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”

Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by one of the men whose death sentence was converted, said the execution of “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace.”

“The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also issued by the White House, “and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”

By WILL WEISSERT and DARLENE SUPERVILLE Associated Press

Tampa Bay Times staff writer Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report.

Weissert reported from West Palm Beach, Florida.

SpaceX launched 21 Starlink internet satellites from Florida’s Space Coast early Monday morning (Dec. 23) and landed the returning rocket on a ship at sea.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft — 13 of which can beam service directly to cellphones — lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today at 12:35 a.m. EDT (0535 GMT).

The Falcon 9’s first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean about eight minutes after launch on the SpaceX droneship “Just Read the Instructions.”

It was the 15th liftoff and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Eight of those flights have been Starlink missions.

The Falcon 9’s upper stage continued hauling the 21 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, where they will be deployed about 65 minutes after launch.

Starlink satellite train: how to see and track it in the night sky

Monday morning’s Starlink launch was the 129th Falcon 9 mission of 2024. About two-thirds of those flights have been devoted to building out the Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which current consists of more than 6,800 active satellites.