Things To Do In SW Florida

At one polling place after another in Broward and Palm Beach counties last week, a consistent theme resonated among voters: They were there to express their anger at a Biden administration that failed to keep prices under control and presided over inflation levels that at one point two years ago reached 9%, the highest level in roughly four decades.

A return to former President Donald Trump, they said, would help make their cost-burdened households become more manageable.

It didn’t matter that the stock market boomed and that unemployment had fallen to a manageable 4.1% nationally after the labor market nearly suffocated under double-digit numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rate is even better in South Florida, where joblessness has hovered around the 3% range and job creation consistently has risen statewide for multiple months. Inflation, meanwhile, is back to within a range that has prompted renewed interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

But voter memories are focused on Trump’s first term, when inflation was nowhere near the 9% high reached in 2022 under President Joe Biden. read more

Tucked within congested areas of central Seminole County — near the strip malls, parking lots, high-rise apartments and bumper-to-bumper traffic — sit quiet rural enclaves of large oaks, dirt roads and homes on expansive lots.

But now residents of these rural havens worry that as development pressures grow, they could lose their neighborhoods’ rustic charms to dense clusters of houses, residential multiplexes and traffic.

Seminole officials have started taking note of their concerns.

The county recently kicked off a yearlong study of how to protect these rural pockets from new developments with densities of more than the current one house per acre or per 3 acres. The study could lead to county commissioners enacting tougher land-development regulations within rural enclaves by next fall.

Rebecca Hammock, Seminole’s development services director, said many residents of these rural areas have increasingly voiced concerns as developers ask to build more homes on less acreage.

Residents fear, for example, a 3-acre parcel could be subdivided to allow four homes per acre — for a total of 12 — if a developer were to ask the commission for a zoning change — as they currently can. Residents would like the county to make it more difficult to allow such zoning changes — perhaps by requiring four votes from the five-member county commission instead of the current three. read more

Lawsuits against insurers in Florida have continued to decline in 2024 following reforms enacted two years ago.

Insurers say the declines have reduced costs and helped them to reduce or stabilize rates charged to policyholders.

Attorneys who represent insurance customers counter that the reforms made it more costly for policyholders to challenge insurers and left many with no recourse when their insurer denies or underpays claims.

For the second straight year, the number of lawsuits filed against insurers during the first three quarters declined by 23.8% — from 36,639 to 27,923 — compared to the same period last year, according to data compiled from public records by Guy Carpenter & Company, a global reinsurance brokerage, and released to insurers in late October.

That followed a 23.9% decline between the first three quarters of 2022 and 2023 and a 23.4% decline over the same time span in 2021 and 2022, the data shows. Since 2021, the number of lawsuits filed over the first three quarters declined from 67,788 to 27,923 — a 58.8% decline. read more

Details were not revealed about who and why one of the three NASA astronauts of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission had to be hospitalized after their return to Earth last month, but all three discussed Friday the slow recovery each faces after spending more than 235 days in space.

“I know there may be some interest in our post-flight medical event, where we diverted to a hospital,” said Michael Barratt, a veteran now of three spaceflights who also served as the crew’s medical officer. “You know, spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand. We’re finding things that we don’t expect, sometimes. This was one of those times, and we’re still piecing things together on this and so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we’re going to say about that event at this time.”

Barratt along with with Crew-8 commander Matthew Dominick and mission specialist Jeanette Epps took questions at a press conference from Johnson Space Center in Houston about the mission. Fellow crew member Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin was not present having returned to Russa. The four launched from Kennedy Space Center back on March 4 for what was supposed to be less than a six-month stay on board the International Space Station and a return in August. read more

By TOM KRISHER

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government’s highway safety agency says Tesla is telling drivers in public statements that its vehicles can drive themselves, conflicting with owners manuals and briefings with the agency saying the electric vehicles need human supervision.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is asking the company to “revisit its communications” to make sure messages are consistent with user instructions.

The request came in a May email to the company from Gregory Magno, a division chief with the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation. It was attached to a letter seeking information on a probe into crashes involving Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system in low-visibility conditions. The letter was posted Friday on the agency’s website.

The agency began the investigation in October after getting reports of four crashes involving “Full Self-Driving” when Teslas encountered sun glare, fog and airborne dust. An Arizona pedestrian was killed in one of the crashes. read more