Things To Do In SW Florida

More changes are coming to Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park, including the replacement of Star Wars: Launch Bay in favor of a new attraction dubbed The Magic of Disney Animation.

There’s also a giant sorcerer’s hat in the works again. And company-supplied renderings indicate the removal of the archway that currently is the entrance to the area.

The park’s Animation Courtyard will be reimagined into a version of the real-life Walt Disney Studios.

In the main building, “You will interact with and explore silly takes on the iconic Disney Animation headquarters, including the many different studio departments. Only this time, some of our favorite pals have taken over to create the fun adventures,” reads a post on the official Disney Parks Blog.

Inspiration for the area comes from the short film “Once Upon a Studio,” in which characters came to life after the animators stepped away.

Also included will be a “Drawn to Wonderland” indoor playground inspired by Disney Legend Mary Blair’s “Alice in Wonderland” concept, character sketching lessons and meet-and-greets. read more

There’s still more than a year’s worth of work to do on NASA’s future Artemis launch tower at Kennedy Space Center, but all of the big pieces have been put in place.

The last of seven modular steel blocks that make up the bulk of the tower’s height was put into place on July 2 by the tower’s contractor Bechtel.

The block called Mod 10 brings it to 377 feet tall from the base structure.

“This achievement underscores our ongoing partnership with NASA and local unions, and the team’s steady progress toward safe delivery of this critical infrastructure,” the company said in an emailed statement.

Progress has been tracked on the company’s website with the latest addition dubbed “Reaching the Top.”

Mod 4 was the first of the seven blocks put in place on Jan. 3, growing the structure 272 feet in less than six months. Mod 10 will support the Crew Access Arm for ML-2, which is among the parts that have yet to be assembled before the company’s deadline of November 2026 for delivery to NASA. read more

By BERNARD CONDON and DAVID FISCHER

MIAMI (AP) — Elon Musk fought court cases on opposite coasts Monday, raising a question about the billionaire that could either speed his plan to put self-driving Teslas on U.S. roads or throw up a major roadblock: Can this wildly successful man who tends to exaggerate really be trusted?

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In Miami, a Tesla driver who has admitted he was wrong to reach for a dropped cell phone moments before a deadly accident, spoke of the danger of putting too much faith in Musk’s technology — in this case his Autopilot program.

“I trusted the technology too much,” said George McGee, who ran off the road and killed a woman out stargazing with her boyfriend. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.” read more

By ALAN SUDERMAN, Associated Press

As cryptocurrencies become more intertwined with the traditional financial system, industry heavyweights are racing for a long-sought goal of turning real-world assets into digital tokens.

“Tokenization is going to open the door to a massive trading revolution,” said Vlad Tenev, the CEO of the trading platform Robinhood at a recent James Bond-themed tokenization launch event in the south of France.

Advocates say tokenization is the next leap forward in crypto and can help break down walls that have advantaged the wealthy and make trading cheaper, more transparent and more accessible for everyday investors.

But critics say tokenization threatens to undermine a century’s worth of securities law and investor protections that have made the U.S. financial system the envy of the world. And Robinhood’s push into tokenizing shares of private companies quickly faced pushback from one of the world’s most popular startups.

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Looming over two cases threatening Musk’s car company is a single question: Can he be trusted? read more

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO and MAE ANDERSON, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — With summer in full swing in the United States, retail executives are sweating a different season. It’s less than 22 weeks before Christmas, a time when businesses that make and sell consumer goods usually nail down their holiday orders and prices.

But President Donald Trump’s vacillating trade policies, part of his effort to revive the nation’s diminished manufacturing base and to reduce the U.S. deficit in exported goods, have complicated those end-of-year plans. Balsam Hill, which sells artificial trees and other decorations online, expects to publish fewer and thinner holiday catalogs because the featured products keep changing with the tariff — import tax — rates the president sets, postpones and revises.

“The uncertainty has led us to spend all our time trying to rejigger what we’re ordering, where we’re bringing it in, when it’s going to get here,” Mac Harman, CEO of Balsam Hill parent company Balsam Brands, said. “We don’t know which items we’re going to have to put in the catalog or not.” read more