Things To Do In SW Florida

After months of waiting, a Hindu congregation will likely find out soon if it can move its spiritual home from Orlando to a new temple in Gotha, a rural settlement in west Orange County, where residents are bothered by the building’s proposed size.

If granted permission, followers of the Hindu denomination known as BAPS, short for Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, would build a 33,000-square-foot worship center with a 43-foot-tall spire. It’s been called the “Temple on Hempel,” after the avenue in Gotha on which it would sit.

After 30 years, they’ve outgrown their current home on Oak Ridge Road, congregants said.

Orange County’s zoning board rejected the sect’s request last year for an exception to county rules limiting development in rural settlements, a designation intended to preserve the character of small historic areas.

The board concluded the proposed temple would be not only the tallest structure in Gotha but also a “detrimental intrusion” in a community best known as the home of historic Nehrling Gardens, a botanical wonderland. read more

Miles below Big Cypress National Preserve, land of elegant cypress trees festooned with air plants, there is oil.

Not a ton of it, but enough to spark a small domestic drilling industry that continues today, decades after the land became the nation’s first national preserve and the federal government bought it all up.

The environmental effects of the drilling, ranging from thousands of gallons of spilled oil to threats to the local water supply, have long prompted buyout offers from the state and federal government.

But a new plan, hatched by the Miccosukee tribe and a nonprofit, might mean the end of future prospecting and drilling on hundreds of thousands of acres of land within Big Cypress, a crucial part of Florida’s Everglades.

The deal, which has been quietly in the works for nearly two years, includes an inked agreement with the politically powerful family that holds all the rights to hunt for oil and gas within the preserve’s boundaries. And this time, the Miccosukee feel like success is in sight. read more

Henry Savage | The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)

Remember the fuss about student loan payments starting back up, with new repayment programs rolling out to offset the challenges? Well, a new benefit rolling out in February promises some relief: full debt cancellation.

In October 2023, 43 million federal student loan borrowers were required to start repaying their monthly loan bills. It marked over three years since the federal government paused student loan payments as part of economic coronavirus protections. At one point in 2022, the Biden-Harris administration proposed a one-time debt cancellation to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for eligible borrowers, but the Supreme Court blocked it in June 2023.

Since then, a federal repayment plan (formerly called REPAYE) was revamped with even stronger protections, like avoiding ballooning interest rates. But, perhaps even more important, it also included a provision that could still cancel student loan debt over time, even immediate cancellation for some. read more

By Melissa Lambarena | NerdWallet

Credit card debt is an unfortunate reality for many today. Americans owe over $1 trillion in credit card debt, according to recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And with steep interest rates and a high cost of living, the end of the road with debt can seem far away.

If you’ve been attacking debt with little progress, some small strategic steps can potentially shorten the journey.

Here’s what you can do to start digging your way out.

Understand your goals — and get motivated

Get clear on why you want to tackle debt and the opportunities that open up without it, says Gabbi Cerezo, a certified financial planner and accredited financial counselor.

Write down the reason and post it somewhere visible as a daily reminder, she says. It can also help to tape a note to your credit card, too.

Before diving right into the numbers — what you owe, and to whom — Cerezo also recommends looking to social media for inspiration.

“By getting familiar with how other people have overcome the burden of credit card debt and seeing all the methods that there are out there, it starts to become more of a possibility in your mind,” she says. read more

TALLAHASSEE — With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to hear arguments next month, Florida is disputing that a 2021 state law placing restrictions on large social media platforms such as Facebook or X violates First Amendment rights.

In a brief filed last week, attorneys for the state contended the platforms should be considered like telephone companies and said the First Amendment does not give them “constitutional license to selectively silence the speech of those they may host.”

The law would prevent large platforms from banning political candidates from their sites and require companies to publish and apply consistent standards on issues such as banning users or blocking their content.

“In hosting billions of speakers and petabytes of content, the platforms are engaged in business activity — conduct — that may be regulated in the public interest,” the state’s brief said. “The First Amendment does not afford those who host third-party speech a right to silence the hosted speakers or to treat them arbitrarily. The telephone company, internet service provider, and delivery company can all be prevented from squelching or discriminating against the speech they carry. And so can the platforms.” read more