Things To Do In SW Florida

By Spencer Tierney | NerdWallet

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Rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit remain higher than they’ve been for most of the past decade. But what exactly impacts the interest rate of your bank account?

Let’s break down a few factors.

A high Fed rate keeps savings rates up

From March 2022 to July 2023, the Federal Reserve steadily increased its federal funds rate, or Fed rate, from nearly zero to around 5%. The 11 rate increases were the Fed’s attempt at curbing high inflation, which has dropped significantly since that March. The Fed rate itself is the one U.S. banks use to borrow money overnight between each other, and a higher rate also means higher borrowing costs.

Banks and credit unions, in turn, take their cue from Fed rate increases to raise their rates on certain loans, savings accounts and certificates of deposit. Banks often fund new loans and investments using deposits, or the money in customers’ bank accounts. Higher savings rates help attract more customers. From March 2022 to May 2024, national average rates rose from 0.06% to 0.45% for savings accounts and 0.15% to 1.80% for one-year CDs, based on a NerdWallet analysis. read more

A look at the proportion of Americans in the lower, middle and upper-income tiers and how numbers have changed.

Based on a Pew Research Center study. People are assigned to income tiers based on their household incomes in the calendar year before the survey year, after incomes have been adjusted for the number of people living in each household. Shares may not total 100% due to rounding.

The middle class has fallen behind on two key counts. The growth in income since 1970 has not kept pace with that of the upper-income tier. And the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged.

Who is middle class?

Households in all tiers had much higher incomes in 2022 than in 1970, after adjusting for inflation. But the gains for middle- and lower-income households were less than the gains for upper-income households.

Sources: Pew Research Center, Congressional Budget Office, American Community Survey

Nearly a decade after the popular but kitschy Flea World attraction closed, a developer has presented new plans to build a sprawling complex of hundreds of apartments, a hotel, offices and shops on the vacant land near Sanford.

It’s the third time someone has tried to develop the weed-filled property off U.S. Highway 17-92, across from Seminole’s expanding Five Points government center. Seminole officials have long considered the area “blighted” and tried to attract high-end development.

On Tuesday, Seminole commissioners are scheduled to vote on plans for the Reagan Center development that call for up to 1,003 apartments, a 200-room hotel and roughly 1.3 million square feet of retail and office space spread across 75 acres northwest of Ronald Reagan Boulevard.

But residents and nearby property owners say the plans do not do enough to address the increasing traffic congestion and flood risk for nearby homes.

“That area is already flooding, and they want to develop it even more? That’s absurd,” said Tally Sinclair, who along with her husband owns 16 wooded acres tucked between the Flea World site and dozens of older homes near Lake Dot and Sunland Park. read more

BOSTON (AP) — Big record companies are suing artificial intelligence song-generators Suno and Udio for copyright infringement, alleging that the AI music startups are exploiting the recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey.

The Recording Industry Association of America announced the lawsuits Monday brought by labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records.

One case was filed in federal court in Boston against Suno AI, and the other in New York against Uncharted Labs, the developer of Udio AI.

Suno AI CEO Mikey Shulman said in an emailed statement that the technology is “designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content” and doesn’t allow users to reference specific artists.

Shulman said his Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup tried to explain this to labels “but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook.”

Udio didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. read more

SpaceX is locked and loaded for what would be only the 10th launch ever for its powerhouse Falcon Heavy rocket Tuesday taking a powerful weather satellite to space if weather on the ground cooperates.

The payload is the 11,000-pound GOES-U satellite for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headed to geostationary orbit where next year it will take on the duties of scanning the Atlantic ocean for tropical threats as well as other dangerous weather affecting the United States.

“GOES-U … will be the sentinel in the sky to keep an eye on hurricanes,” said Dan Lindsey, the chief scientist of NOAA’s GOES program during a press conference Monday. It will also continue to scan Central America, the Caribbean and South America as well as add to the lightning and wildfire observation capability in the U.S.

Liftoff is targeted at 5:16 p.m. from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A at the opening of a two-hour window with a backup during the same window on Wednesday. NASA plans launch broadcast coverage on NASA TV and its social media channels beginning at 4:15 p.m. read more