Things To Do In SW Florida

By JAN M. OLSEN (Associated Press)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s Lego said on Monday that it remains committed to its quest to find sustainable materials to reduce carbon emissions, even after an experiment by the world’s largest toymaker to use recycled bottles did not work.

Lego said it has “decided not to progress” with making its trademark colorful bricks from recycled plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate, known as PET, and after more than two years of testing “found the material didn’t reduce carbon emissions.”

Still, the toymaker remains “fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032,” it added

Two years ago, the privately-held group which makes its bricks out of oil-based plastic, started researching a potential transition to recycled plastic bottles made of PET plastic, which doesn’t degrade in quality when recycled.

It had invested “more than $1.2 billion in sustainability initiatives” as part of efforts to transition to more sustainable materials and reduce our carbon emissions by 37% by 2032, Lego said. read more

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER (AP Economics Writer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year’s spike in inflation, to the highest level in four decades, was painful enough for American households. Yet the cure — much higher interest rates, to cool spending and hiring — was expected to bring even more pain.

Grim forecasts from economists had predicted that as the Federal Reserve jacked up its benchmark rate ever higher, consumers and businesses would curb spending, companies would slash jobs and unemployment would spike as high as 7% or more — twice its level when the Fed began tightening credit.

Yet so far, to widespread relief, the reality has been anything but: As interest rates have surged, inflation has tumbled from its peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.7%. Yet the unemployment rate, at a still-low 3.8%, has scarcely budged since March 2022, when the Fed began imposing a series of 11 rate hikes at the fastest pace in decades.

If such trends continue, the central bank may achieve a rare and difficult “soft landing” — the taming of inflation without triggering a deep recession. Such an outcome would be far different from the last time inflation spiked, in the 1970s and early 1980s. The Fed chair at the time, Paul Volcker, attacked inflation by escalating the central bank’s key short-term rate above 19%. The result? Unemployment shot to 10.8%, which at the time marked its highest level since World War II. read more

Tens of thousands of customers of state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp. are getting a stunning surprise in their mailboxes.

It’s a letter from Citizens’ “Depopulation Unit” stating their policies have been assumed by a private-market company.

Cause for celebration? Not if the private company’s estimated annual premium is higher than what the policyholder is paying Citizens.

Delores Smerkers, a Davie retiree, said her Citizens policy renewed in July for $5,523 — $650 more that what she paid last year. Less than two months later, in late August, she received a letter saying her coverage was being assumed by Safepoint Insurance Co.

The letter stated that her estimated cost to renew her Safepoint policy will be $6,650 — an increase of $1,127.

That’s a substantial price hike, but because it’s less than 20% above her Citizens premium, she is ineligible to reject the offer and stay with Citizens.

Smerkers says she doesn’t know how many more insurance price hikes she and her disabled husband can endure as they try to live out the remainder of their lives in the modest 1,750-square-foot villa they bought new in 1978. read more