Things To Do In SW Florida

Tourism in Orange County rode a wave of marquee sporting events and high-attendance conventions in January to generate more than $30 million in hotel tax revenue, a record for the traditionally slow post-holiday month.

The tax brought in $30.4 million, about $1.4 million more than in January 2023, the previous best, according to figures released this morning by Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond, whose office tracks receipts of the 6% lodging surcharge.

“January 2024 was an especially busy month for metro Orlando tourism,” he said.

Diamond cited several sporting events of “significant regional impact,” including the 2024 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and the return to City Beautiful of NFL Pro Bowl festivities, which helped fill hotels with athletes and spectators.

Both events brought visitors for the last week of January and the first weekend of February.

Visit Orlando officials noted the Orange County Convention Center hosted several large events such as VMX, a gathering of veterinarian; the PGA Show, a golf equipment extravaganza; and the All Out Nationals  cheerleading and dance competition. read more

COCOA — If SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy finds a home on the Space Coast, what would be the most powerful orbital rocket ever to launch is certain to have a significant environmental impact.

For a pair of potential sites within Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the process to figure out exactly what that will be has begun, starting with a set of in-person and virtual meetings for the public to comment on concerns of frequent launches of a rocket twice as powerful as the Saturn V rockets from the Apollo program.

The first of those meetings brought out a few hundred curious residents to the Catherine Schweinsberg Rood Central Cocoa Library on Tuesday night.

“The point of these meetings today and this week, is to get as many members of the public — it can be any members of the public: residents, researchers, teachers, it really doesn’t matter, everyone — to come here, in person or online or emailed their comments, concerns, questions, pretty much anything about this process,” said Emre Kelly, media operations chief for Space Launch Delta 45, the Space Force group that oversees the launch sites. read more

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER (AP Economics Writer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chair Jerome Powell reinforced his belief Wednesday that the Federal Reserve will cut its key interest rate this year but that it first wants to see more evidence that inflation is falling sustainably back to the Fed’s 2% target.

Powell noted that inflation is slowing for both goods and services and did not express concern about the government’s latest inflation data, which showed some pickup in price increases in January. Instead, he said that, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge, inflation “has eased notably over the past year” even though it remains above the Fed’s target.

The Fed chair’s remarks, in prepared testimony to a House committee, echoed the message he expressed at his most recent news conference on Jan. 31. At that time, he said the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee needed “greater confidence” that inflation was nearly in check before it would reduce its benchmark rate.

On the first of his two days of semi-annual testimony to Congress, Powell also suggested that the Fed faces two roughly equal risks: Cutting rates too soon — which could “result in a reversal of progress” in reducing inflation — or cutting them “too late or too little,” which could weaken the economy and hiring. read more

Let’s not go so far as to call it March Madness, but there’s certainly momentum this month as Orlando’s theme parks and attractions move toward spring break, Easter and the traditionally busy summer vacation season.

Here is a sampling of the opportunities out there between now and when things get April foolish.

New crew

It’s not exactly like spotting the first robin, but new attractions are a signal of spring in these parts.

Legoland Florida is introducing its Ferrari Build & Race experience on Friday. It will feature the ability to create Lego cars, have them scanned and then (digitally) race them. This exercise is fronted by a full-scale Ferrari 296 GTS made of Lego bricks. (Bonus: Visitors can sit inside it.)

Aquatica, SeaWorld’s water park, is introducing a slide named Tassie’s Underwater Twist. It is themed to be a journey through Australia’s Shark Bay seagrass meadow, a synchronized video display and an orchestral score. An official opening date is slated to be announced next week. read more

By KELVIN CHAN (AP Business Writer)

Elon Musk supported making OpenAI a for-profit company, the ChatGPT maker said, attacking a lawsuit from the wealthy investor who has accused the artificial intelligence business of betraying its founding goal to benefit humanity as it pursued profits instead.

In its first response since the Tesla CEO sued last week, OpenAI vowed to get the claim thrown out and released emails from Musk, escalating the feud between the San Francisco-based company and the billionaire that bankrolled its creation years ago.

“The mission of OpenAI is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means both building safe and beneficial AGI and helping create broadly distributed benefits,” OpenAI said in a blog post late Tuesday from five company executives and computer scientists, including CEO Sam Altman. “We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims.”

AGI refers to artificial general intelligence, which are general purpose AI systems that can perform just as well as — or even better than — humans in a wide variety of tasks. read more