Orlando Sentinel

Children shouldn’t be exploited as cheap labor

The history of this nation is regrettably rife with stories of children being exploited, exhausted, injured and robbed of their educational potential by employers who saw them as little more than commodities.

For all too brief a time, Florida leaders viewed that as a bad thing.

They voted, often overwhelmingly, for laws that were even stronger than federal protections.

Now, however, this state’s lawmakers appear eager to join other states that are abandoning those safeguards one by one.

Private lunar lander achieves successful orbit ahead of Thursday touchdown attempt

ORLANDO, Fla. — A commercial company’s lunar lander launched from Kennedy Space Center last week successfully made it into the moon’s orbit on Wednesday ahead of its Thursday attempt to stick the landing.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines posted on social media that its Nova-C lander named Odysseus, which blasted off from KSC on Feb. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9, had performed a 408-second main engine burn that put it into a successful lunar orbit of an altitude of about 57 miles.

Woman in ‘shock’ over $6,000 bill for lifesaving rabies treatment

A suspected bat bite turned into a $6,000 hospital bill for a Seminole County, Florida, woman.

Worried she may have been exposed to rabies, Caroline Ford sought treatment from AdventHealth Altamonte Springs.

She called her insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, and expected she’d need to pay about $600 based on her conversation over the phone.

Rabies is fatal if left untreated. A regimen of immune globulin and four vaccination shots over two weeks is lifesaving if administered quickly after exposure to the deadly disease.

“With rabies, there are no second chances,” she said.

Daytona 500 postponed until Monday due to rain

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The Daytona 500 was postponed until 4 p.m. Monday due to inclement weather for just the third time in the illustrious 66-year history of NASCAR’s showcase event.

Sunday morning’s decision signaled that NASCAR officials wanted to avoid fans having to play the waiting game on Florida’s Surf Coast. Previously, bad weather — including heavy rains or even tornado warnings — had created multiple-hour delays, forced crowds of more than 100,000 to seek shelter, wait out storms and return for the race.

NASA vows to battle ‘organizational silence’ as problems arise amid Artemis delays

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA was riding a high after the overall success of Artemis I when the uncrewed rocket made a test run to the moon and back in 2022, so the message remained full steam ahead to push for a crewed Artemis II flight in 2024 and the return of humans to the moon in 2025.

But under the surface were issues, and the sheen of success hit reality, prompting NASA to delay Artemis’ first human spaceflight until no earlier than September 2025, and then pushing the moon landing until at least one year later.

Military hopes one day to move supplies, maybe troops, on SpaceX’s Starship

ORLANDO, Fla. — While NASA is rooting for SpaceX to achieve Starship success so it can land humans on the moon, the U.S. military has plans of their own for the massive rocket that could include launches from Florida’s Space Coast. Elon Musk’s next-generation rocket currently in development at SpaceX’s southeast Texas facilities is gearing up for its third suborbital test flight as soon as this month after its first two ended in explosions last year. It’s part of the company’s long-term plans for a completely reusable spacecraft with more payload capacity into space than any other rocket ever....

Axiom Space astronauts depart space station for 2-day ride home to Florida

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — The first human spaceflight of the year is headed home as the four crew of the Axiom Space Ax-3 mission climbed aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom and departed the International Space Station on Wednesday heading for a planned Friday morning splashdown offFlorida’s coast. The astronauts spent nearly 18 days docked to the ISS after launching from KSC on Jan. 18 and arriving two days later. On board are Axiom chief astronaut and mission commander Michael López-Alegría along with Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey and European Space Agency ...

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to lay off hundreds amid Mars mission budget cuts

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced it was laying off 530 on staff or about 8% of its workforce on Tuesday after expected congressional budget cuts kneecapped one of its biggest endeavors, the Mars Sample Return mission.

The Pasadena, California, institution is one of NASA’s major science mission hubs, the home to the majority of Mars missions, including the Perseverance rover currently collecting soil and rock samples as part of that mission.

SpaceX launch set for NASA science probe once targeted by Trump

A NASA satellite that will look at the tiniest parts of the air and ocean is set for an overnight launch from the Space Coast after a years-long path to the launch pad that staved off repeated attempts by the Trump administration to cancel the mission.

The Plankton, Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite was on the chopping block of Trump’s annual proposed NASA budgets several times as he sought to steer funds away from some climate-focused missions and shift money to deep-space efforts.

Treading on difficult ground, Florida lawmakers want to define ‘anti-Semitism’

A bipartisan bill seeking to define what speech is considered anti-Semitic is moving through the Florida Senate after easily passing the House. Rep. Mike Gottlieb, D-Plantation, sponsor of the House bill, said the goal is to curb hate speech toward Jews and Israel that has been on the rise across the nation for years. Though his bill was introduced in the days following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that left more than 1,000 dead, he said he was working on the bill long before the war erupted. But the bill’s definitions and examples are provoking concern among pro-Palestinian activists and...

Space Coast’s new general spearheads more cooperation with private space companies

ORLANDO, Fla. — Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen wants commercial companies to solve Space Force problems, but if the U.S. Space Force can help them, that’s OK with her, too.

That’s part of the message she delivered at the Space Mobility Conference at the Orange County Convention Center on Tuesday, bringing together a combination of military, civil and commercial players in the space game.

“We’re really trying to focus in on what the warfighters need and take it one step farther,” said Panzenhagen.

SpaceX lines up launch Sunday, pushes Canaveral cargo launch to Tuesday

SpaceX is set to send up another Starlink launch from Kennedy Space Center on Sunday night while prepping for a unique cargo launch from Cape Canaveral now targeting Tuesday.

A Falcon 9 rocket is set to lift off at 6:15 p.m. Eastern from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A on a southerly trajectory carrying another 23 satellites for the growing internet constellation.

Backup launch options run through 9:55 p.m. and on Monday beginning at 5:39 p.m.

As war rages in Gaza, Central Florida Palestinians, Jews live through the fallout

As war broke out in Israel and the Gaza Strip last fall, Central Floridians connected to the land and the people at the center of the violent conflict have felt the impact from a world away. Paige Fennessey, a Jewish child advocate in Winter Garden, quickly started to plan support group gatherings at her synagogue for congregants also reeling from the news of the deadly surprise attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians that left more than 1,000 dead. “In the beginning, I found myself needing to talk about it and finding people to talk with about it, finding the Jews in the area that I’m in and fin...

Florida man gets 6 years in federal prison for lying about support for ISIS

ORLANDO, Fla. — A federal judge sentenced Moad Mohamed Benkabbou to six years in prison for lying to federal agents about his past support for the Islamic State, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.

Mohamed Benkabbou, a 23-year-old from Kissimmee, was indicted by a federal grand jury last year on three counts of false statements to a federal agency related to a terrorism investigation.

SpaceX launches 1st human spaceflight of the year on Axiom Space mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX carved its way through cloudy skies on the Space Coast, sending up a four-man crew on a private mission to the International Space Station.

The quartet rode on the Crew Dragon Freedom, making its third trip to space atop a Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 4:49 p.m. Eastern time on the Ax-3 mission for Houston-based Axiom Space.

The first-stage booster made its fifth flight, coming back for a landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Landing Zone 1, sending a sonic boom across parts of Central Florida.