Things To Do In SW Florida

By ADRIANA MORGA

NEW YORK (AP) — Tax season is underway and you have until April 15 to file your return with the IRS. If you want to avoid the stress of the looming deadline, start getting organized as soon as possible.

Related Articles

• 
  4 smart moves to cut your 2025 tax bill under new rules

• 
  Is ‘income stacking’ a good way to build wealth?

• 
  Millions of eligible filers didn’t use Free File

• 
  Fed minutes: Lower inflation needed before many officials will support rate cuts

• 
  What is money dysmorphia? When money never feels like enough

“Don’t wait until the last minute but also don’t rush,” said Tom O’Saben, director of tax content and government relations at the National Association of Tax Professionals,

Gathering all your documents, signing up for direct deposit and keeping copies of your tax returns are some of the best practices when it comes to preparing to fill out your taxes. This year, due to the Republican tax and spending bill that President Donald Trump signed over the summer, there are new deductions taxpayers should know about. read more

SpaceX padded the record for its most flown rocket booster late Saturday with its 33rd trip to space.

A Falcon 9 flying 28 Starlink satellites launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 10:47 p.m.

The first-stage booster first launched in June 2021 and has been the pace setter for SpaceX’s reusability efforts as it attempts to get it to 40 flights.

That would surpass the most flown orbiter of the Space Shuttle Program. Space Shuttle Discovery retired after completing 39 missions.

This particular SpaceX booster has notably flown two crewed missions to space, Crew-3 and Crew-4, along with a pair of cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station, the Galileo satellite for the European Commission, several commercial satellite missions and now 21 Starlink missions.

It made a successful landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

While turnaround on boosters can be as quick as nine days, SpaceX officials have said it takes much longer to refurbish one flown so many times to ensure it will be successful. This booster last flew about 2 1/2 months ago. read more

By JAMIE STENGLE and ALI SWENSON

DALLAS (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security said Sunday that the Global Entry program would be shut down as long as the partial government shutdown remains in effect.

The announcement comes after the department said Saturday night that it planned to shut down both Global Entry and the Transportation Security Administration’s PreCheck program as well, but DHS cancelled the PreCheck closure.

“ As staffing constraints arise, TSA will evaluate on a case-by-case basis and adjust operations accordingly,” the agency said.

The turmoil at security and customs lanes is tied to a partial government shutdown that began Feb. 14 after Democrats and the White House were unable to reach a deal on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats have been demanding changes to immigration operations that are core to President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign.

The security disruptions come at a time where a major winter storm will hit the East Coast from Sunday into Monday. Nine out of 10 flights going out of John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia Airport and Boston Logan Airport have been canceled for Monday. read more

By DIDI TANG

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court decision striking down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs has added a wrinkle to already complicated U.S.-China relations, with both countries navigating shifting ground to avoid an all-out trade war that would disrupt the global economy while still jostling for a position of strength in negotiations.

Friday’s court ruling would seem to strengthen China’s hand, but analysts predict that Beijing will be cautious in exploiting the advantage, knowing that Trump has other ways of levying taxes. Both sides also want to maintain a fragile trade truce and stabilize ties ahead of Trump’s highly anticipated trip to Beijing.

“It will give China a moral boost in their negotiations with Trump’s team ahead of the summit, but they are prepared for the scenario that nothing actually changes in reality,” said Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

Furious about the defeat, Trump said first he was imposing a temporary 10% global tariff before raising it to 15% as well as pursuing alternative paths for import duties. He made the case for tariffs by pointing to China, which poses the biggest challenge to U.S. economic, technological and military dominance. read more

Cutting-edge AI technology allowing boys and men to digitally undress girls and women without consent has put male-dominated Silicon Valley, long criticized as inhospitable to women, in a harsh new spotlight, after xAI’s Grok chatbot sparked worldwide outrage, and Google and Apple allowed dozens of “nudification” apps in their app stores.

Grok, a standalone app as well as a feature on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, generated 3 million sexualized images in the 11 days after its image-editing feature was released in December, the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate reported. Users digitally stripped real women in images — and more than 20,000 apparent children — manipulating many into sexual poses. Musk responded dismissively, reposting an AI-generated image of a toaster in a bikini, saying he “couldn’t stop laughing” about it.

California authorities weren’t laughing.

“This material, which depicts women and children in nude and sexually explicit situations, has been used to harass people across the internet,” Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said in a news release last month announcing an investigation into whether Grok’s generation of the imagery broke any laws. The investigation is still underway, and Bonta is “committed to moving on this issue quickly,” his office said Wednesday. read more