Things To Do In SW Florida

By Shannon Bradley | NerdWallet

Car incentives nearly vanished during the past several years, thanks to pandemic-driven supply chain issues for auto manufacturers. As vehicle inventories dwindled and consumer demand outweighed supply, automakers had no reason to offer incentives like rebates or low-rate financing. The good news is that auto incentives, while still below prepandemic levels, are starting to return.

According to Kelley Blue Book, a Cox Automotive company, auto incentives — as a percentage of the average new-vehicle price buyers paid — reached 5.9% in February 2024. That’s compared with a general range of 10% to 11% before COVID-19 hit and 2% in fall 2022. In February, auto manufacturers spent an average of $2,808 per vehicle in incentives, up 88% from a year ago.

With inventories returning to normal and some auto manufacturers again sweetening deals to move vehicles, here’s how you can find and possibly save with car incentives.

Tips for saving with auto incentives

Although new car prices have declined since peaking in late 2022, the average price a buyer pays remains around $47,000. Incentives are one way to whittle down that price tag, and certain strategies can help maximize savings. read more

Attorneys for the Walt Disney World governing district taken over last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis don’t want the governor’s appointees answering questions under oath as part of its state lawsuit against Disney.

Lawyers this week filed a motion that would stop the DeSantis-appointed board members of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District from having to give videotaped depositions to Disney attorneys.
Disney and the DeSantis appointees are fighting in state court over who controls the governing district for Disney World.

District attorneys cite the “apex doctrine,” which generally provides that high-level government officers shouldn’t be subject to depositions unless opposing parties have exhausted all other means of obtaining information. The doctrine is used in just a handful of U.S. states, including Florida.

“Disney cannot demonstrate that the individual board members have unique, personal knowledge that would be relevant to any of the claims, counterclaims or defenses in this action to overcome the apex doctrine,” district attorneys said in their motion. “Disney’s assault-style effort to depose all the board members is simply an improper form of harassment of these high-level government officials.” read more

By BRIAN MELLEY (Associated Press)

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry alleged Thursday that the publisher of The Sun tabloid unlawfully intercepted phone calls of his late mother, Princess Diana, and father, now King Charles III, as he sought to expand his privacy invasion lawsuit against News Group Newspapers.

The Duke of Sussex is seeking permission during a three-day hearing in the High Court to allow the new claims to be added to his ongoing litigation after evidence surfaced largely through materials turned over by NGN, a subsidiary of the media empire built by Rupert Murdoch, his lawyer said.

Attorney David Sherborne said that the eavesdropping on Diana, her then-estranged husband, Charles, Prince of Wales at the time, and his then paramour, Camilla Parker Bowles, who is now Queen Camilla, inevitably revealed private information about Harry as early as age 9.

Diana was suspicious she was being followed and her calls were being listened to, the amended complaint said. Articles in The Sun and now-defunct News of the World referred to conversations Diana had with close confidants and show that journalists and paparazzi had inside knowledge where she was going to be, including her therapy sessions. read more

SpaceX recently completed work on its new crew access arm at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that doubles its capacity to launch astronauts from the Space Coast, but its first use was not for humans. Instead, it flew up another cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station on Thursday.

Dragon lifts off from pad 40 for the first time in four years! pic.twitter.com/b3FJiydyvJ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 21, 2024

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 4:55 p.m. on the CRS-30 mission.

The first-stage booster for the flight made its sixth trip to space and another landing back at nearby Landing Zone 1, bringing sonic booms to parts of Central Florida.

SpaceX has not used Canaveral for a Dragon launch in more than four years and that was for a previous design of its spacecraft. All launches since have come from nearby Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A, where all 13 of its Crew Dragon spaceflights have had to fly, until now.

SpaceX’s Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management, has worked on the cargo Dragon missions since they began in 2012. read more

In 2023, Florida’s domestic insurers turned a net profit for the first time in seven years, a new report by marketing intelligence company S&P Global said.

The study of “around 50” Florida-based insurers credited the turnaround to investment income, a mild hurricane year, and tort reforms that took effect in March 2023.

The group reported $147.3 million in net income for 2023, according to the analysis by Jason Woleben of S&P Global Market Intelligence that was released on Wednesday. That compares to net losses of more than $1 billion in each of the previous two years.

The results are likely to renew hopes that insurers might soon begin to reduce property insurer rates for Florida’s homeowners.

The report quoted Universal Insurance Holdings CEO Stephen Donaghy as telling investors during the company’s third-quarter earnings report last year that future rate reductions in Florida might be possible.

Yet Universal Property & Casualty, the flagship company of Universal Insurance Holdings, was among just four of Florida’s top 22 private-market insurers, as ranked by direct premiums written, to post a net loss in 2023. read more