The newly built manse is located in Palm Beach on land once owned by former President Donald Trump.

A mystery Russian buyer has swooped up the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, with a source telling Page Six they paid nearly $140 million in cash.

The newly built manse is located in Palm Beach on land once owned by former President Donald Trump. In 2008 Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev — who made headlines when he sold Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” for $450 million — bought it for $95 million. He razed the house and sold three adjacent lots for the combined price of $108.2 million, according to reports.

The newly constructed, 21,000 square feet “spec” house sits on one of the lots and was designed by architect William M. Boyle of Boyle Architecture and features a pool and guesthouse. It went under contract less than 24 hours after the mystery buyer toured the home, a source tells us.

TAMPA — The Buccaneers will celebrate their Super Bowl 55 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on the water with a boat parade Wednesday on the Hillsborough River in Tampa.

The parade will begin at 1 p.m. near Armature Works. Fans will be able to watch along the Riverwalk, Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park, Curtis Hixon Park and other waterside spots. Those who can’t attend in person can watch a live stream from the Buccaneers, city of Tampa and Hillsborough County social media accounts, said an official involved in the planning.

Unlike the Lightning celebration in September, boaters won’t be allowed to take part in the procession, which will include Mayor Jane Castor and city and county leadership, along with an unspecified number of Buccaneers players and personnel.

Bucs fans with boats can still attend the parade, however. The city is just requiring that their vessels stay 50 feet from the official boats. Those who wander too close could face criminal charges, according to the release.

Laura Rodriguez, a junior at the University of South Florida and member of Students for a Democratic Society, was on her way from class to attend a protest Tuesday when she saw someone being arrested.

Five people, students and former students, were detained outside the Marshall Student Center on charges of trespassing and served notices to appear after being told to disperse, according to the University Police Department.

They were there for a rally calling attention to the climate for free speech on college campuses in Florida. Participants were protesting state legislation that proposes increased penalties for protesters who block traffic or participate in “disorderly assemblies.”

Meanwhile, she said, the university allowed campus demonstrations from Kaitlin Bennett, a controversial online figure and gun rights activist who roused a crowd on campus last fall, and a group of extremist preachers a few weeks ago.
“It’s clear hypocrisy,” Cook said.

Florida retailers are getting 65,300 additional doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine this week as part of a new federal program to send vials directly to major pharmacies.

Nearly 500 Walmart, Winn-Dixie and Publix pharmacies across 52 counties are participating in the federal program and will be able to offer vaccines to people 65 and older by later this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday. The program marks a significant expansion in retail locations offering the vaccines to Florida’s residents, providing more access to people in different parts of the state. That includes Hillsborough County, which until now had been the only Tampa Bay county that didn’t have Publix locations offering vaccines from the state.

On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced 119 Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in 34 counties across the state will get a total of about 25,000 doses beginning this week. The chains will begin administering doses Friday.

The Publix stores already offering the vaccine before this expansion are in ZIP codes that are home to some 5.9 million Floridians. Those areas are much whiter than the state overall. About 71 percent of residents there are non-Hispanic white people, compared to 54 percent of all Floridians or 55 percent of those in ZIP codes with a licensed Publix pharmacy.

The Lightning won’t be in Tampa for Super Bowl 55, but they’re traveling in style as they cheer on the Bucs from afar during their trip to Nashville for Monday’s game against the Predators.

Just over four months after the Lightning won the Stanley Cup, the Bucs seek their second Lombardi Trophy in the franchise’s 45-season history tonight against the Chiefs in Super Bowl 55 at Raymond James Stadium.

Including the Rays, who advanced to the World Series in October, the Bucs are the third major pro sports team from Tampa Bay to play for a league championship since September. In addition, the Rowdies reached the USL Championship final but were unable to play due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

TALLAHASSEE — On the same day former President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued that his words to the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol were protected by his First Amendment right to free speech, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a hastily-called news conference to announce a proposal to penalize social media companies for blocking politicians, even if they incite violence.

“We’ve seen the power of their censorship over individuals and organizations, including what I believe is clear viewpoint discrimination,’' said DeSantis as Florida’s Senate president and House speaker stood at his side. “Under our proposal, if a technology company de-platforms a candidate for elected office in Florida during the election, a company will face a daily fine of $100,000 until the candidate’s access to the platform is restored again.”

The proposed bill, which is still being drafted, asks the Florida Legislature to impose penalties for social media companies whose algorithms are perceived to favor one candidate over another. It builds on SB 520, filed by state Sen. Danny Burgess, that would require the platforms to give a 30-day notice to a user whose account has been disabled or suspended and explain why the user was punished.

Although the governor never mentioned the former president, who was banned by Facebook and Twitter after they said he used his accounts to incite violence and disseminate conspiracy theories about the election, the timing of the announcement coincided with the filing by Trump’s lawyers in the pending impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.

The University of Oxford research is the first to document a vaccine substantially reducing the virus’s spread. British officials said the results underscored how mass inoculations were key to ending the pandemic.

The vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca not only protects people from serious illness and death but also substantially slows the transmission of the virus, according to a new study — a finding that underscores the importance of mass vaccination as a path out of the pandemic.

The study by researchers at the University of Oxford is the first to document evidence that any coronavirus vaccine can reduce transmission of the virus.

Researchers measured the impact on transmission by swabbing participants every week seeking to detect signs of the virus. If there is no virus present, even if someone is infected, it cannot be spread. And they found a 67 percent reduction in positive swabs among those vaccinated.

Hillsborough County’s vaccination phone line was receiving an estimated 2,000 phone calls per minute at midday, a spokeswoman said. Websites and phone lines were down for hours.

Similar issues have been reported across the state as Gov. Ron DeSantis pressures hospitals — already tasked with administering shots to health care workers and caring for a surging number of coronavirus patients — to play a bigger role in vaccinating the general public.

Experts have called instead for more coordination from the state and local health departments. “There’s just too many people that have to be vaccinated,” Mary Jo Trepka, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at Florida International University told the Miami Herald.

Monday’s chaos built on the confusion that’s surrounded Florida’s vaccine rollout over the last month. DeSantis’ executive order on Dec. 23 said people 65 and older would be the first among the general public to receive vaccines, after health care workers and long-term care residents. But many are still unsure how to access them and can’t seem to find answers.

TAMPA— Packed New Year’s Eve celebrations raged across the Tampa Bay area on the same day that Florida broke its coronavirus caseload record with more than 17,000 cases added in one day.

Administrations and agencies on both sides of the bay had encouraged residents to celebrate safely. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor tweeted advice to stay home from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The City of St. Petersburg told residents on Twitter: “Celebrating NYE virtually or with members of your own household (who are consistently taking measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19) poses the lowest risk for spread.”

But crowds gathered in Ybor City, Channelside, St. Petersburg and at other local bars for partying that looked almost pre-coronavirus — with few masks and little social distancing in sight.

Crowds danced shoulder to shoulder to pounding music outside the Coyote Ugly Saloon in Tampa. Party-goers poured onto the street as Ybor City clubs closed at 2:30 a.m.