Things To Do In SW Florida

The stream of haunted houses for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights continues to trickle out, and Friday’s announcement sounds like a cool relief for folks living through another Florida summer. The maze, the seventh announced for the 2025 event, is called Galkn: Monsters of the North, and it looks cool, in the literal way.

“In a remote northern village, a wicked being rises from the dead, bringing a horde of monsters and demons from the fjords to wreak havoc on the townspeople.,” reads a post on Universal Orlando‘s social media platforms. “You’ll face icy, horned, winged and wolfish fiends that gradually merge into one giant horror. Then you’ll try to escape the belly of the beast.”

It’s the fifth (and final) original house announced within a week for HHN, which begins at Universal Studios Florida theme park on Aug. 19.

Universal Horror Unleashed picks Chicago for 2nd site

Previously announced originals include Grave of the Flesh (featuring flesh-eaters); Dolls: Let’s Play Dead (created by twisted little girl); Hatchet and Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters (spawn of Sinister Sinema 2); and El Artista: A Spanish Haunting (spooky paintings). read more

By KEN SWEET, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Senate Republicans have moved to cut the funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by roughly half, as part of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which is likely to lead to hundreds of job cuts at the nation’s financial watchdog agency.

It would be a major blow to the CFPB, which was created after the 2008 financial crisis to police potential bad actors in the financial services industry, and it would be a win for the GOP, who have largely wanted to make the CFPB go away since its creation.

The CFPB is funded through the Federal Reserve, not the Congressional appropriations process. But in the latest version of the bill to come out of the Senate Banking Committee, the CFPB’s funding would be cut from 12% of the Federal Reserve’s profits to 6.5% of the central bank’s profits.

The CFPB requests its annual budget from the Fed every year, effectively as a line of credit from the central bank. It has never needed the entire 12% of the Fed’s profits, but it has come close in previous years to using much of what the Fed would allocate to it. For example, last year the CFPB requested $762.9 million from the Fed, which was close to the transfer cap of $785.4 million. read more

By CORA LEWIS

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of millions of ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ loans will soon affect credit scores for millions of Americans who use the loans to buy clothing, furniture, concert tickets, and takeout.

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Scoring company FICO said Monday that it is rolling out a new model that factors the short-term loans into their consumer scores. A majority of lenders use FICO scores to determine a borrower’s credit worthiness. Previously, the loans had been excluded, though Buy Now, Pay Later company Affirm began voluntarily reporting pay-in-four loans to Experian, a separate credit bureau, in April. read more

By ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The latest sign of trouble in the U.S. housing market: A pickup in home purchase agreements falling through before they’re finalized.

Some 6% of pending contracts to buy a home were canceled in May, down from 7% in April, but up from 5% in May last year, according to data from National Association of Realtors. May is the third consecutive month with an annual increase in pending home sales cancelations.

A separate analysis of housing data by Redfin found that 14.6% of all pending sales in May fell out of contract, up from 14% in May last year, and the highest cancelation percentage for the month of May going back to at least 2017.

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When builder Phil Kean got the call about remodeling one final home for the International Builders’ Show, he hesitated at first, then jumped at the chance.

“It’s fun to get to play and showcase our talents and show off a little bit,” he said with a laugh.

Kean is working on a 3,341-square-foot home on Palmer Avenue in Winter Park. It will be The New American Remodel show home at February’s NAHB International Builders’ Show, the last before the show moves to Las Vegas.

“This house was built in the 50s, had an addition done maybe 20 plus years later, and then another addition done another 20 plus years later,” Kean said. “It had a style from the 50s, from the 80s, from the 2000s, so it had a mishmash of styles.”

When the project is finished in October, the three-bedroom home will look very different, both inside and out.

“I think the big wow will be the exterior façade, to go from what it was to what it is going to be, I think is really going to be memorable.

“We took all these styles and we made it sort of a 1940s Miami Coconut Grove kind of cottage, and it has sort of that tropical flair to it,” he said. read more