Things To Do In SW Florida

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google went to appeals court Monday in an attempt to convince a three-judge panel to overturn a jury’s verdict declaring its app store for Android smartphones as an illegal monopoly and block the penalties imposed by a federal judge to stop the misbehavior. Video game maker Epic Games, which brought the case alleging Google’s Play Store has been abusing its stranglehold over the Android app market, countered with arguments outlining why both the verdict and punishment should be affirmed to foster more innovation and lower prices.

By René Bennett, Bankrate.com

When inflation is high, consumers can feel the impact everywhere, from the supermarket to the gas station. Inflation makes it more expensive to buy basic essentials on your grocery list, afford rent, pay utility bills and, well, live.

While we wait for inflation to reach the 2% rate targeted by the Federal Reserve, you can take steps to protect your savings — and your financial health overall.

How to protect savings from inflation

1. Budget for savings first

If you’re making a comfortable salary but notice that you run out of money for savings before you’ve even realized it, it might serve you to plan ahead. Figure out how much you can comfortably save from each paycheck — then put that amount into savings from the outset.

Walt Disney World has revealed the last day for visitors to see “It’s Tough to Be a Bug,”  the 3-D show tucked inside the iconic Tree of Life structure at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

The show, featuring characters from the 1998 film “A Bug’s Life,” will have its finale at the theme park March 16, according to a posting on the official Disney World website.

It will be replaced by “Zootopia: Better Zoogether,” a show expected to debut in late 2025.  The change was first announced in August. The new show “will take guests on an adventure through different biomes seen in the film,” Disney said then.  “Zootopia,” an animated Disney film released in 2016, has its own themed land that opened at Shanghai Disneyland in late 2023.

On Monday, Disney also released a short social-media video with actress Ginnifer Godwin, the voice of Judy Hopps in the film, recording for the Animal Kingdom production.  She’s also set to appear in “Zootopia 2,” which is scheduled to be in theaters in late November. read more

Visit Florida is again hoping a British television personality will help its efforts to return to pre-pandemic levels of tourism from overseas.

Last year, the state tourism-marketing agency worked with Ipswich farmer and television personality Jimmy Doherty on a five-part culinary tour of Florida.

This year, ITV presenter Alison Hammond and her son are showing more off-beat locations in Florida in a 10-part series on BBC 2.

“They are exploring Florida on a budget, which is something that’s really important for the U.K. right now,” Meagan Lowe, Visit Florida’s director of public relations, told members of the Visit Florida Marketing Committee last week.

The United Kingdom accounted for an estimated 1.143 million visitors to Florida in 2023. That was up from 1.106 million visitors from the United Kingdom in 2022.

But the count remained below the estimated 1.334 million visitors in 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, Florida estimated 6.38 million visitors came from overseas in the first three quarters of 2024. read more

Boeing executive Mark Nappi had been the face of the company’s Starliner program during its beleaguered Crew Flight Test to the International Space Station that ultimately left its crew of two NASA astronauts behind when the spacecraft returned to Earth last year.

After NASA made the call to keep its astronauts safe on the ISS because of concerns about Starliner’s thrusters, Nappi was noticeably missing from press conference updates as the spacecraft made what turned out to be a safe return in September, albeit minus crew.

Now 64, Nappi announced he was retiring from Boeing this year, but he talked about the challenges of public-private partnerships such as Boeing’s with NASA on the Starliner project during a panel session at last week’s commercial space conference SpaceCom at the Orange County Convention Center.

When asked about the hurdles of transparency, Nappi said., “It’s like your parents used to tell you, you know? If you tell a lie, you’re just going to have to tell more and more and more and more before it’s all said and done, and eventually the truth will come out.” read more