Citizens Property Insurance Corp. will explore charging new customers potentially much higher rates but backed away from final approval Thursday following pushback from consumers, lawmakers and state officials.

Following debate and public testimony, Citizens' board of governors, meeting in Tampa, directed staff to work up a package of proposed rates for 2013 that includes allowing the state-backed insurer to charge new customers premiums that more closely meet actuarially sound rates.

The governor says he will appeal a federal ruling that declared it is unconstitutional to randomly test people on the state payroll for drug use.

Gov. Rick Scott, whose executive order was under question, noted the ruling does not include new hires and he will contest the decision by U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro in Miami.

Ungaro, in a 37-page order signed Wednesday, declared Scotts executive order from March 2011 calling for the random drug testing of state workers a violation of employees' Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Foreign policy took center stage in the presidential race on Thursday, as former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination, took aim at the policies of President Barack Obama -- leading Vice President Joe Biden to fire back for the administration.

Environmentalists who had blocked the dredging of the Port of Miami channel down to 52 feet making it one of the deepest ports on the East Coast -- have withdrawn their opposition to the two-year project.

An agreement, which still needs approval from the Miami-Dade County Commission, means the Port of Miami may move forward with the $220 million state and county project -- the state is putting up $122 million -- aimed at making the port more attractive to the growing marine trade, as well as the massive Panamax ships using the expanded Panama Canal.

Move over, Florida -- theres another Sun Belt state popular with retirees that is looming as one of the chief battlegrounds between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Florida's long-running fight about water-quality standards for rivers, lakes and springs could be headed toward a federal appeals court in Atlanta.

Groups on both sides of the fight have given formal notice they could appeal a federal judge's ruling about what are known as "numeric-nutrient criteria" -- an issue that has drawn widespread attention from state policymakers, local governments, business lobbies and environmentalists.

The illegal immigration problem is going away.

That's the conclusion I draw from the latest report of the Pew Hispanic Center on Mexican immigration to the United States.

Gov. Rick Scott has conjured up a 12th university that Florida cant afford and nobody but outgoing Polk County Sen. J.D. Alexanderthinks Florida needs.

A federal Health Insurance Tax scheduled to kick in by 2014 will cost small businesses $87 billion and "kill jobs," the National Federation of Independent Business says.

In Congress, an effort to repeal the tax is gaining bipartisan steam.

The "HIT" will have "irreversible consequences" on the national economy, according to the NFIB Research Foundation, which predicted the loss of nearly 250,000 U.S. jobs and $30 billion in sales by 2021 due to the tax.