Things To Do In SW Florida

By Ana Staples, Bankrate.com

Here’s something credit card experts know but you might not: it’s getting much tougher for the average person to find a great travel credit card that unlocks luxury experiences without the price tag.

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Major credit card issuers have steadily made premium credit cards more exclusive in recent years. Before, they might have tried to woo you with the promise of the kind of vacations you couldn’t otherwise afford. Now, they seem to be more interested in cardholders who can.

Take The Platinum Card from American Express, for example. It just announced a new annual fee of $895 — an increase from $695. The card expanded existing statement credit benefits and added new ones, to a potential added value of over $1,400. Redeeming them, however, requires quite a bit of spending and mental work (and sometimes, purchases you wouldn’t have made otherwise). Yet that barely soothes the sting of facing an annual fee bill barely shy of $900. For many Americans, that’s simply a no-go. read more

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are climbing on Wall Street Monday and pulling near their records following last week’s roller-coaster ride.

The S&P 500 rose 1% and got back within 0.4% of its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 358 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% higher just before noon Eastern time.

Cleveland-Cliffs helped lead the way with a jump of 24% after the steel company’s CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, said it would provide details soon about a potential deal with a major global steel producer that could mean bigger profits. He also said Cleveland-Cliffs has potentially found rare earths at sites in Michigan and Minnesota.

Such materials have thrust into the global spotlight after China put curbs on the export of its own rare earths, a move that President Donald Trump earlier this month characterized as hostile. Trump’s ensuing threat of higher tariffs on China triggered big swings for Wall Street, but the concerns eased a bit after Trump said such high tax rates are unsustainable. read more

By KELVIN CHAN and BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Amazon says a massive outage of its cloud computing service has been resolved as of Monday evening, after a problem disrupted internet use around the world, taking down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.

The all-day disruption and the ensuing exasperation it caused served as the latest reminder that 21st century society is increasingly dependent on just a handful of companies for much of its internet technology, which seems to work reliably until it suddenly breaks down.

About three hours after the outage began early Monday morning, Amazon Web Services said it was starting to recover, but it wasn’t until 6 p.m. Eastern that “services returned to normal operations,” Amazon said on its AWS health website, where it tracks outages.

AWS provides behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to some of the world’s biggest organizations. Its customers include government departments, universities and businesses, including The Associated Press. read more

After a 35-year run of dishing out murder along with dinner, Sleuths Mystery Dinner Shows announced this weekend it will close its International Drive theater for good on Nov. 4

“We loved providing Orlando with laughs for over three decades and are grateful for all of our guests who came to play with us to help solve tens of thousands of murder mysteries,” the company posted on its social-media sites.

Manager Donna Ernbro said every effort had been made to keep the business — thought to be the longest-running mystery dinner theater in the country — going, and the decision to close was “heart-wrenching.”

“I think, really, it’s the economics of the world, the cost to keep things running,” she said. “If there was any way we could have carried on, we would have carried on.”

Members of Orlando’s arts community, many of whom have worked at the theater over the years, reacted with dismay.

“Very sorry to learn of the loss of yet another Central Florida theatrical organization that provided entertainment for many thousands of audience members and employment for many hundreds of artists,” wrote producer DJ Salisbury on Facebook. read more

SpaceX plowed ahead with a record 31st launch of one of its Falcon 9 boosters with another Starlink mission from the Space Coast on Sunday.

Watch Falcon 9 launch 28 @Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida https://t.co/EKWpwXAPP8

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 19, 2025

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-17 mission carrying 28 satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:39 p.m.

The first-stage booster made its fleet-leading 31st flight with a recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

Falcon 9’s fleet leader booster completes its 31st launch and landing pic.twitter.com/KVtZKi79nu

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 19, 2025

This was the 86th orbital launch from the Space Coast in 2025 with all but five coming from SpaceX.

The company touts reuse to bring down cost and last week landed a Falcon 9 booster for the 500th time. The first booster recovery came in 2015.

It has several more boosters approaching 30 launches, and has intentions to fly them as many as 40 times. read more