Things To Do In SW Florida

LAKE WALES — As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides.

“At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales. “You look around here, and it’s all houses, and that’s going to happen here.”

Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. And in 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country.

Population growth, hurricanes and a vicious citrus greening disease have left the Florida orange industry reeling. Consumers are drinking less orange juice, citrus growers are folding up their operations in the state and the major juice company Tropicana is struggling to stay afloat. With huge numbers of people moving into Florida’s orange growing areas, developers are increasingly building homes on what were once orange groves. read more

A bill that would curb Florida utility companies’ profits and force them to disclose their executives’ pay passed its first committee in Tallahassee this week.

Even the bill sponsor, Republican Sen. Don Gaetz, was a little surprised.

“As recently as 15 minutes before I presented the bill, I was told I did not have the votes,” Gaetz said, adding that a legislative staffer had delivered the message.

Utility companies are some of the most powerful special interests in Florida. And they have been lobbying hard behind-the-scenes to kill Senate Bill 354, Gaetz said.

“Other senators have told me that they have faced some pretty significant lobbying,” he said, calling the industry effort “fierce and well funded.” He previously told the Tampa Bay Times that executives with Florida Power & Light met with him days after he filed the proposal to voice their opposition.

Gaetz’s bill initially faced even longer odds because it did not have a House companion. Proposals need to pass both chambers of the Legislature to become law. read more

DENVER — An American Airlines plane caught fire on the tarmac after landing at Denver International Airport with engine issues Thursday evening, forcing passengers to evacuate the burning aircraft authorities said.

Twelve people were transported to area hospitals with minor injuries after evacuating the Boeing 737-800, airport spokesperson Michael Konopasek said.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the incident, the agency said in a social media post Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating, according to a statement on the FAA’s website.

Konopasek said Friday morning that Gate C38 near where the fire took place was still closed while the airport waited on a contractor to confirm the gate had necessary equipment. The airport expects the gate will reopen later in the day Friday and airport operations have otherwise returned to normal, he said.

Flight 1006 departed from Colorado Springs and was headed to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport when it was diverted to Denver after the crew reported “engine vibrations,” according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. The crew told air traffic controllers shortly before landing that the plane was experiencing “high engine vibrations” and was “cruising slower than normal” in a recording published on LiveATC.net. read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — SpaceX will try again Friday evening to launch the replacement crew to the International Space Station where the pair of NASA astronauts who flew up last summer on Boeing’s Starliner have been waiting for a ride home.

A Falcon 9 rocket on the Crew-10 mission is set to lift off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 7:03 p.m. topped with the Crew Dragon Endurance.

Flying up are four crew including NASA astronauts Anne McClain commanding the mission, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

If the launch goes up, the quartet are slated to arrive to the ISS at 11:30 p.m. Saturday, which would start the countdown for the Crew-9 mission to return home.

On board Crew-9 will be the two Starliner astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived to the station on June 6, 2024 for what was supposed to be as short as an eight-day stay. Instead, they have been on board more than nine months.

The Starliner suffered thruster failures and helium leaks on its test flight so NASA ultimately opted to send it home without crew leaving its two astronauts on board until they could fly home with the Crew-9 mission that didn’t arrive to the station until September. read more

By David Hilzenrath, Jodie Fleischer, Cox Media Group, KFF Health News

A year ago, a new head of Social Security set out to stop the agency from financially devastating many of the people it was meant to help.

The agency had long made it a practice to reduce or halt benefit checks to recoup billions of dollars in payments it sent recipients but later said they never should have received.

Martin O’Malley, then the Social Security Administration commissioner, announced in March 2024 the agency would no longer cut off people’s monthly old-age, survivors, and disability checks to recoup money they had allegedly been overpaid — a pattern he called “clawback cruelty.” Instead, it would default to withholding 10% of monthly benefits. The new policy allowed people who already live on little to pay their rent and keep food on the table.

Last Friday, the Trump administration reversed that policy.

Beginning March 27, to recover new overpayments, the Social Security Administration will automatically withhold 100% of recipients’ monthly benefits, the agency announced. read more