Things To Do In SW Florida

Toy-making giant Mattel Inc. is developing plans that could bring the first retractable-roof water park to Orlando, along with Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engine and Hot Wheels theming.

Creative and operational work is underway, led by Orlando-based Martin Aquatic.

“It is an opportunity to play with one of the cornerstone brands in Americana,” said Josh Martin, president and creative director. “For the Mattel Wonder projects, we are the creative lead for all the design and layout of storytelling, as well as the aquatic engineer of record, where we do mechanical, electrical, structural.”

Mattel announced this week its intention to create five water parks — dubbed Mattel Wonder Indoor Waterparks — with Orlando targeted as the first location. Where exactly they will go has not been revealed.

“We’re not fully ready to announce what those locations are,” Martin said. That information may be shared as early as next month, he said.

Some vendors have been selected, he said, including Canada-based OpenAire, which makes an aluminum-glass building with a retractable roof. read more

By THOMAS ADAMSON, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — France’s government is taking action against billionaire Elon Musk ‘s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok after it generated French-language posts that questioned the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz, officials said.

Grok, built by Musk’s company xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.

The Auschwitz Memorial highlighted the exchange on X, saying that the response distorted historical fact and violated the platform’s rules.

In later posts on its X account, the chatbot acknowledged that its earlier reply to an X user was wrong, said it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Auschwitz’s gas chambers using Zyklon B were used to murder more than 1 million people. The follow-ups were not accompanied by any clarification from X. read more

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is adding a live stage show featuring Jim Henson characters. “Fraggle Rock: A Space-y Adventure” is set to debut Dec. 22 at the attraction.

The show will have full-body costumed “walkaround” versions of the Fraggles and puppet versions of the Doozers crafted by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. It will be a “musical, comedic quest,” the Brevard County attraction says.

The storyline will follow Gobo, Red and Uncle Travelling Matt arriving at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to meet a member of the Exploration Ground Systems crew. They will learn about NASA’s Artemis missions and the next visit to the Moon, and they’ll talk with a real astronaut from the International Space Station.

“’Fraggle Rock’ has always embraced the idea that anything is possible when we work together and celebrate our interconnected world, and NASA is such an incredible example of that idea,” John Tartaglia, the stage show’s director, writer, and choreographer, said in a news release. Tartaglia is the Jim Henson Company’s creative supervisor for “Fraggle Rock.” read more

A series of proposals aimed at eliminating or reducing non-school homestead property taxes advanced out of a House committee on Thursday, as local-government officials warned about having to decrease services because of potentially billions of dollars in lost revenue.

The Republican-dominated House Select Committee on Property Taxes voted along party lines to back seven proposed constitutional amendments that, if approved during the upcoming legislative session, would go before voters in November 2026. The committee also approved a bill (HB 215) that would require two-thirds votes by local governments to increase tax rates and allow newly married couples to combine accumulated Save Our Homes benefits. That bill would not have to go before voters.

The committee took up proposals that House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, released last month. The proposals came as Gov. Ron DeSantis has made a priority of asking voters in 2026 to slash property taxes — though DeSantis has been critical of the House proposals. read more

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — More swings hit Wall Street on Friday, except the U.S. stock market finished higher this time.

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After bobbing up and down through the morning, the S&P 500 took off and rallied nearly 2% before finishing with a gain of 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 493 points, or 1.1%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.9%.

It was a fitting finish for a week that left the S&P 500 just 4.2% below its record but also forced investors to stomach the sharpest hour-to-hour swings since a sell-off in April. The jarring moves are testing investors following a monthslong and remarkably smooth surge for stocks, and they come down to two basic questions, neither of which has been answered yet. read more