Things To Do In SW Florida

The tale of Spanish artist Sergio Navarro, who lives in a haunted manor where paintings come alive, will be the basis for a haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights 2025 at Universal Studios, HHN creators shared.

The maze — named El Artista: A Spanish Haunting — is the third of 10 HHN houses to be revealed and the first of the year featuring original content. The reveal came during a panel discussion at a Spooky Empire event Friday. Also discussed — sometimes coyly — was an overall event theme — the use of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” — and the possibility of a stage show.

In the El Artista storyline, Navarro is having a career dip so he moves into a country manor for inspiration. It’s set in the 1880s.

“Unbeknownst to him, the manor’s grounds are infested by the spirits of artists that came before him and also moved to the manor, and there’s a deeper sense of evil rooted deep within the manor grounds that exists mostly inside the conservatory,” show director Ramon Paradoa explained. “This deep sense of evil overtakes Sergio’s mind, influencing his art, forcing him to paint these horrifying things that come to life.” read more

A federal bankruptcy judge has finally signed off on the sale of Silver Airways, which ceased operations in early June.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Peter Russin entered a signed order Thursday after conducting an emergency status hearing requested by lawyers for the buyer, an affiliate of Wexford Capital of West Palm Beach and Greenwich, Conn. Previously, one of its affiliates provided the troubled airline with debtor-in-possession financing while another — Argentum Acquisitions LLC — became a stalking horse bidder whose $5.775 million offer prevailed after Silver did not attract any qualified rival bids.

Originally, Silver management was to operate the airline while the buyer secured Federal Aviation Administration regulatory approvals. But the company retreated from the operations portion of the deal after it learned Silver had lost $1 million in revenue in late May due to a brief FAA-mandated shutdown of the airline. The issue was over a failure to update battery kits across Silver’s fleet of turbo-prop planes. read more

TALLAHASSEE — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled against a firefighter who retired early because of Parkinson’s disease and alleged the city of Sanford violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by limiting a health-insurance subsidy.

Justices upheld a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the lawsuit filed by Karyn Stanley, a fire-department lieutenant who retired in 2018 at age 47 because of the effects of the disease.

The dispute stemmed from Stanley losing a health-insurance subsidy two years after she retired and involved questions about whether the city violated part of the Americans with Disabilities Act aimed at preventing discrimination in employment.

Friday’s main opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, focused heavily on wording in the law that bars discrimination against a “qualified individual on the basis of disability.” The opinion said the definition of a “qualified individual” in what is known as Title I of the law applied only to current employees or people seeking jobs. read more