Wall Street slips and heads for a fifth straight weekly loss
By DAMIAN J. TROISE, AP Business Wirter
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks fell in morning trading Friday and Wall Street is veering toward its fifth straight weekly loss.
New Sea Life aquarium builds underwater theme-park scene
WINTER HAVEN – A new underwater habitat is taking form at Legoland Florida Resort. Work continues on Sea Life Florida Aquarium, the latest piece of the attraction’s expansion plan.
For now, there’s no sea life — or enough water — to see inside Sea Life. Curved rebar shows how faux rock work will frame views into giant tanks that will house more than 3,000 animals representing 150 species.
Sea Life Florida is wedged between two theme parks — Legoland and Peppa Pig parks — but it will have its own submerged park as decor in its large ocean tank. The concept was what fish want to do when they come to Florida, said Blake Boyter, senior project manager with Merlin Magic Making, the creative arm of Legoland’s parent company.
“Of course, being the theme park capital of the world, they want to come to a theme park,” Boyter said during a recent hard-hat tour of the aquarium building.
“We’ve got the castle with all the different roller coaster features around it,” he said. “We’ve got a Ferris wheel in the back corner that’s got clams.”
Amazon ends privacy feature that let Echo users opt out of sending recordings to company
Amazon is ending a little-used privacy feature that let some users of its Echo smart speaker prevent their voice commands from going to the company’s cloud.
Homeowner insurance costs fell by 0.7% in fourth quarter of 2024
Homeowner insurance costs fell by 0.7% between the third and fourth quarters of 2024, a result of declining rates that insurance officials in Florida have been touting for the past several months as signs that the market is returning to health.
The decline in costs of multiperil insurance for owners of single-family houses — from an average premium of $3,668 to $3,644 — marks the first time that costs have dropped since the Office of Insurance Regulation began releasing quarterly Residential Market Share Reports in mid-2022.
Average premium costs are revealed by dividing the total premiums by the number of policyholders reported by companies.
Stacey Giulianti, chief legal officer for Florida Peninsula Insurance, which saw a 3.9% decline in average homeowner premiums, said the result reflects recent reforms that the Florida Legislature enacted to reduce costs resulting from runaway litigation.
“As experts have been predicting for the last few years, the strong actions of the Florida Legislature and governor to decrease frivolous litigation are starting to show solid reductions in personal residential insurance rates,” Giulianti said. “This pro-consumer trend will continue, unless the Legislature makes the big mistake of reversing it in the current session.”
How will federal workforce cuts affect the economy?
By Anna Helhoski, NerdWallet
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired or left since President Donald Trump’s administration began and there are more cuts on the way.