Pictures: First look at Epic Universe food offerings — from Harry Potter to Nintendo menus
Roses are red, violets are blue, 940 million flowers are traveling (through Miami) to you
MIAMI — If any husbands or boyfriends mess up Valentine’s Day this week, it’s not because of a shortage of flowers.
In the run up to Feb. 14, agricultural specialists at Miami International Airport have processed about 940 million stems of cut flowers, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Around 90% of the fresh cut flowers being sold for Valentine’s Day in the United States come through Miami, while the other 10% pass through Los Angeles.
Roses, carnations, pompons, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums and gypsophila arrive on hundreds of flights, mostly from Colombia and Ecuador, to Miami on their journey to florists and supermarkets across the U.S. and Canada.
Miami’s largest flower importer is Avianca Cargo, based in Medellín, Colombia. In the past three weeks, the company has transported about 18,000 tons of flowers on 300 full cargo flights, senior vice president Diogo Elias said during a news conference last week in Miami.
5 ways to protect your bank account from identity theft
By Karen Bennett, Bankrate.com
Vivian Thornton received quite a shock when she logged onto her bank account and noticed an unfamiliar debit charge for concert tickets totaling more than $2,000. In fact, the hefty charge had brought her account to a negative balance, says Thornton, who is a small business-owner and Charlotte, North Carolina, resident.
On the day this happened, in 2023, Thornton had used her debit card just once — to fill up her gas tank, she recounted to Bankrate. “I later went to deposit some checks online and noticed that unfamiliar charge. It was a really huge shock because I’ve never even purchased tickets through Ticketmaster, so it was kind of like, ‘Wow, where did this come from?’ ”
Thornton, who also had told her story in a TikTok video, was the victim of identity theft, which, among many other problems, could result in one’s checking or savings account being drained by fraudsters. Identity theft is one of the most common types of financial fraud reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In fact, the agency received more than 1 million reports of identity theft in 2023.
SpaceX keeps pace with 14th Space Coast launch of the year
SpaceX lined up and knocked out the 14th launch from the Space Coast on Tuesday afternoon.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:53 p.m.
The first-stage booster flew for the 18th time and made a recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship Just Read the Instructions.
Watch Falcon 9 launch 21 @Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities https://t.co/ZXunmg5QPl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 11, 2025
SpaceX has flown all but one of the launches from either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral this year.
That includes all five Falcon 9 launches from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A and eight Falcon 9 launches from SLC-40. The other launch was the debut flight from Blue Origin’s New Glenn last month from Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36.
Ready for 156 Space Coast launches this year, Space Force targets bottlenecks
The company has also launched six times from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, including a Starlink mission earlier Tuesday for a total of 19 across all of its launch pads on both coasts in just 42 days so far this year.
White House fires USAID inspector general after warning about funding oversight, official says
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House fired the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development on Tuesday, several U.S. officials said. The dismissal comes a day after his office warned that the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID had made it all but impossible to monitor $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian funds.
The White House gave no reason for the firing of Inspector General Paul Martin, one of the officials said. The dismissal was first reported by CNN. The officials were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Inspectors general are typically independently funded watchdogs attached to U.S. agencies, who are tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at government agencies. The Trump administration earlier purged more than a dozen inspectors general.
On Monday, Martin’s office issued a flash report warning that the Trump administration’s funding freeze and staff actions within USAID had left oversight of the humanitarian aid “largely nonoperational.”