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Weather: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Sunny, with a high near 94. Thursday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 8pm. Mostly clear, with a low around 77.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Al Hadeed Send-Off: a retirement celebration for Al Hadeed, the Flagler County attorney ending 27 years of service for the county, is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
Palm Coast Concert Series, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Stage at Town Center, 1500 Central Avenue. This free community event brings everyone together to create lasting memories while showcasing local bands. Tonight: Landfall.
Notably: Sometimes I’m not sure what to make of André Gide and his journals. His writing is as limpid as it gets, but sometimes the pre-war self-absorption and self-consciousness is hard to take. I’m reading the pages a few years before 1914. It’s odd for us readers of the future to know his past, which is also ours, though ours from a safe remove. In 1910 he has no idea what’s hurtling toward France. Not a hint of the coming catastrophe. It’s the Belle Époque in France, and how belle it was too, oppressively conservative and rabidly anti-Semitic though it was. Gide, I am sorry to say, was among the anti-Semite, though his fans like to say that he was not rabidly so. As if there are gradations in bigotry. Strange though that he would be, this gay man who caroused the night shadows of Paris as he hunted young flesh, often underage flesh, and wrote some of the first liberating and never libertine works of gay literature, though he’d murder anyone who referred to it that way. Unlike his friend the insufferable Paul Valery, Gide was pro-Dreyfus, yet he maintained his hatred of Jews, at least in those early years. He lived through the two world wars. Maybe World War II changed his mind. I can’t imagine the Nobel committee awarding him the prize in 1947 without some sort of conversion. (It awarded him ” “for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight.”) I’ll report back when I get there. I may not be sure of what to make of Gide. But then he hits you with those sublime lines below, in the quote zone, and you think about his words for days on end. Note that the quote is from 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower rose above the Trocadero and the Champ de Mars, but its rise make no appearance in the journals, that I recall. Knowing him, he probably found it an unpardonable offense on the squat Parisian skyline.
—P.T.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
August 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Flagler Beach All Stars Beach Clean-Up
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Flagler’s Back to School Jam 2025
Sunshine and Sandals Social at Cornerstone
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
This evening, on the Pont-Royal, a great agitation: a child had fallen into the water. They’d dived in immediately, only grabbing his cap. Half an hour later I came back: night had fallen, darkness filled the space between the boats and the embankment. I went down to the very edge: opposite, a large, silent and dark washhouse, then a lot of water, water that you can hear but barely see because everything is already black: it laps on the boards, mysteriously. And it is sinister, the boat that prowls in this black hole, with two unseen silhouettes, inside, of bent men who are long, with a scab, the underside of the washhouse boat. Above, cars swooned, full of laughter.
——From André Gide’s Journal, July 20, 1889.
James says
Regarding the cartoon.
Although it does effectively convey the message that the “Obama papers” are a deflection, it’s also a reminder that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Just an opinion.
Laurel says
I think Trump is a sick psychopath, and he surrounds himself with like minded sycophants. What an awful situation for our great country to be in!
I am certain he knew exactly what his close friends, Epstein and Maxwell, were up to, and just didn’t give a damn. The “falling out” with Epstein wasn’t over the sex trafficking of children, it was about how Epstein “stole employees.” Right from the ass’s mouth.
How can any of y’all support this? I don’t think I will ever understand, or even want to anymore.
Pogo says
@Incessant indictments of the character of the dead
… even with due regard for context (and often not, even intentionally — neglected, omitted, etc.) — for what? Damning by faint praise? Claiming a superior rank? Signaling innate virtue belied by its own words? Aren’t all human beings imperfect — the best, and the worst? No rooster ever summoned the sun, nor caused its delay.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
— George Eliot
https://www.google.com/search?q=George+Eliot
P.S.
We speak because we care, even when we are careless. God bless us all.
don miller says
the obama led Dem backed russia hoax road to impeachment to overturn trump’s first election was the real distraction. Obama was still functioning out of office as the dems defacto prez when he had Joe booted. As usual, it is the other way around. Biden had years to complete the epstein matter. The same epstein matter pushed by the lib dem media is the distraction from the Obama russia hoax driver.
Ray W, says
It is 10:00 am and my weather app reflects a heat index of 102. If you have to work or exercise outdoors today, please take care!
For those who employ outdoor workers, please take care of them!
For those FlaglerLive commenters among us who believe that inmates deserve to be exposed to a chance of organ failure or death due to extreme indoor heat with little or no air circulation, shame on you! You know not what you are!
James says
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/official-trump/
Personally, I’d wait for the Sylvester Stallone “Commemorative Rocky” meme coin. Hey, who cares it’s a possible sign of our regression to a primative barter economy, as long as you can buy a pizza with it, right?
Just an observation.
Pogo says
@Come on in
… the water is fine.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/scientists-raise-red-flags-after-satellite-images-reveal-concerning-arctic-phenomenon-very-high-resolution-images/ar-AA1JsXfE?ocid=nl_article_link
What is the terminal velocity of extinction?
https://www.google.com/search?q=terminal+velocity
Skibum says
I’m not even of the mind any longer that the so-called fall out between drumph and Epstein had anything to do with the fact that more than one young, teenage employee at Mar-A-Pedo left (was “stolen”) after being recruited by Maxwell to work for Epstein. This is because two years after teenage Virginia Giuffre left to follow Epstein, drumph made a public statement about how Epstein was “a great guy and liked beautiful women just like I do, some of whom are on the young side”. This statement is public record.
Why would a man make such a complementary statement about Epstein two years after Guiffre left after being recruited into Epstein’s employment if that was the reason drumph supposedly kicked Epstein out of his golden club? As Judge Judy likes to say, if it doesn’t make sense, it’s not likely to be true.
There is other more recent information that the more likely reason for their falling out had something to do with a real estate transaction that fell through, which sounds a lot more probable to me. Did drumph really dis-associate himself from Epstein, or did Epstein dis-associate himself from drumph after the orange-faced lover of beautiful young girls try to set up his own young harem, maybe taking some of Epstein’s young followers?
We know the despciable occupier of the WH has previously bragged about his own daughter’s sexy legs when she was very young, saying he didn’t yet know if she would have great looking boobs… who in their right mind would EVER say such a thing about their own young daughter?!?!?! And he also stated publicly that Evanka was just the type of girl he was attracted to, and if she weren’t his daughter he would probably date her. Yuk… yet another bombshell disgusting comment from the sexually consumed pedo loving president who seems to have adored Epstein even while knowing his penchant for sexual escapades with underage youngsters.
The horrible reality is that while the maga mob overwhelmingly wants the Epstein files to be publicly released, they STILL also overwhelmingly approve of, and support, the pedo-in-chief… showing their immorality as well. Congrats, maga mush brains, you probably wouldn’t even blink an eye if this despicable old curmudgeon who leers after underage girls took YOUR OWN young daughter into his bedroom to “adore” her in private, would you?
No matter how you try to spin this, no matter how many other fantastical distractions drumph or his sycophants dream up to try to alter the reality of his own unthinkable and immoral behavior, YOU all are no better than him if you continue to follow along like sheeple, believing in his lies and conspiracy theories, and thinking that he is some kind of saint when the evidence over his entire lifetime shows the exact opposite.
Ray W, says
Heat index on my weather app at 2:30 pm? 110 degrees. We’re getting into extreme heat conditions.
Ray W, says
AUTOPOST reports that Bestune, a Chinese EV manufacturer, has released for the Chinese market an upgrade of a previously released “minimalist” microcar, named the Pony, with a price of $4,900. The top-level model sells for $6,300. Since the original release date this past May, the company has sold over 100,000 units of the “Kei” class city car in less than three months.
Only roughly 120 inches in length and some 60 inches wide, the 750 kg (1650 pound) car has a rear-mounted electric motor producing 42 HP. Its tiny lithium-ferrous-phosphate (LFP) CATL-developed battery, with a capacity of 18.11 kWh, allows for some 138 miles of range.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I argue that a narrowly tailored car, designed for a particular audience, can find a place in an expanding marketplace. With 1.4 billion people and expanding cities, these Kei-class city cars might complement a bigger car in the stable of a growing young Chinese family of urban professionals, plus their children.
Whatever the reasons, a $4,900 four-set, three-door microcar seems to be finding its own market. 100,000 cars sold in three months means that there is an appetite for such a vehicle.
Again and again, I argue that with more than 100 Chinese EV carmakers fighting it out in a rapidly growing marketplace, some are going to thrive, and others will wither. Many of these Chinese companies will fail in the next few years, bankrupt into oblivion or bought up by larger automakers. When the intense competition for market-share lessens, price increases across the board are likely.
GM came into being when American carmaker after American carmaker was absorbed into an ever-bigger company. Some write that as few as seven Chinese EV carmakers will be around in 2030. Others think as many as 20 will pull through.
Ray W, says
Per Daily Galaxy, ElevenEs, a European battery maker, claims its latest iteration of its LFP “blade” battery design, the “edge574”, has a “life cycle” of at least 500,000 kilometers (roughly 310,000 miles), and the battery can charge at a rate of 1.1 kilometers of range added each second; it can charge from 10% to 80% in twelve minutes. More importantly, the company claims that its battery reduces internal resistance by 15%, which means less generated heat during charging and discharging, thereby boosting safety.
A new electrolyte chemistry promises “better ion transfer and reduced degradation.”
An improved battery housing design and an upgraded electrode allows for “higher current flow.”
A “tall and thin” blade design more efficiently uses space within the battery, allowing for higher energy density by either weight or volume measurements (up to 190 Wh/kg gravimetric and up to 420 Wh/l volumetric).
If the life cycle battery claim is true, then this battery design will last longer than most internal combustion engines will last before needing a rebuild.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Who knows how many companies are in the race to design the most energy dense and lightest weight EV batteries that discharge and recharge faster and last longer?
Right now, graphene-aluminum ion batteries are theoretically the longest lasting (as many as more than 100,000 charging cycles) and the most energy dense, but they are expensive to make. Not because of the ingredients (aluminum and graphite) but because graphene was first made in roughly 2004 in a British laboratory and no one has been able to scale up commercial production, at least not yet.
Current literature on graphene prices holds that the original cost of producing graphene was in the tens of thousands of dollars to make a postage stamp-sized slice of graphene, but today, depending on the method of manufacture, costs range between $100 per kilogram to $1000 per kilogram.
Ray W, says
Fortune published an in-depth article about the current state of tariffs.
Here are a few bullet points from the article.
– China’s tariff rate started at 10%, then it jumped to 34%. Then it jumped to 104%. Then it jumped to 125%. Then it jumped to 145%. Then it dropped to 30%. All over a span of five months. Negotiations continue. Changes may be coming.
– Shortly after President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, he paused them for 90 days.
– The tariff rate for copper products is to be 50% on August 1st. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, the U.S. imported $14.7 billion of copper products in 2024, with 27% of that figure coming in from Canada.
– Brazil is to see a blanket 50% tariff rate on August 1st because President Trump opposes the prosecution of Brazil’s former leader. Of all of Brazil’s beef exports, the U.S. imported 12% of the total last year, making us Brazil’s 2nd largest beef buyer.
– Spain exported $82.9 million worth of olive oil to the U.S. last year. The product will have a 15% tariff on August 1st, the same as the level of tariff on most EU products.
– Indonesian footwear products, worth $1.36 billion in exports to the U.S. last year, was to see a 32% tariff, but it has been adjusted to 19%, beginning on August 1st.
– Portugal exported $213.5 million in cork products to the U.S. in 2024. On August 1st, the tariff on cork is expected to be 15%.
– Brazil, thought to be responsible for 35% to 40% of U.S. coffee needs, will see a 50% tariff on coffee products on August 1st.
– Brazil, producer of 80% of the world’s orange juice. The U.S. imported 42% of that total, worth $1.31 billion in 2024. The 50% tariff dating from August 1st will affect that product. Many Brazilian grove owners are considering letting the fruit rot on the trees.
– The U.S. imported $395 million in rice last year from India. President Trump is threatening to impose an additional tariff on Indian good starting on August 1st, because India buys crude oil from Russia. Without that tariff increase, Indian export goods will have a 25% tariff, also beginning on August 1st.
– German carmakers, currently having a 27.5% tariff rate on vehicles, will see a drop in tariffs to 15% on August 1st, despite prior threats by President Trump to impose a 30% tariff on top of the 27.5% tariff.
– Vietnam, which exported $16.6 billion in goods to the U.S. last year, was to see a 46% tariff, but the rate was recently reduced to 20%.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Since the beginning of the tariff drama, I have been urging caution, in part because no one seems to know where, when and how it will end.
Literature on the subject of tariffs had the overall tariff level prior to the Trump administration at an average of barely less than 3%. Right now, apparently, the worldwide average level of tariff on goods imported into the U.S. is around 10%. On August 1st, the average rate is expected to double, but today it is being reported that Mexican tariff impositions are to be delayed another 90 days. On July 14th, President Trump imposed a 17% tariff on fresh Mexican tomatoes. We import some 70% of our tomato needs from Mexico. Tomato prices have jumped in the few area grocery stores I frequent, so it does not look to me as if grocers are eating tariff costs.
Who knows how it will all turn out? While the threats include high tariff rates, if one keeps suspending imposition of the tariffs, there can be no way of accurately knowing how the tariffs will affect the overall economy. There seems to be little argument among economists that tariffs are driving up prices, but I still think the time frame is still too short to really know just by how much.
America grows almost no coffee. I remain perplexed as to why we need a tariff on coffee. The climate and soil are not conducive to growing coffee here. What is the purpose for a tariff on coffee?
Ray W, says
Earlier today, Bloomberg published an article about President Trump, after numerous visits by Brazilian private business interests, backing away from his threatened 50% blanket tariff, at least on “a long list” of certain Brazilian products. In part, the Brazilians argued that there existed a trade surplus in favor of the U.S., not the other way around. But Brazil said it would not negotiate its sovereignty. The Brazilian courts will prosecute Brazilian issues, no matter the size of the tariff.
Orange juice will be tariffed on the previously imposed 10% rate, as will aircraft parts and components. Coffee and beef are on the new 10% list, too.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
After negotiating for some time, Union Pacific announced plans to spend $85 billion to merge with Norfolk Southern, a deal that if approved would make the company the first coast-to-coast freight carrier, per Reuters.
By law such a merger must be submitted to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) for review, a process that takes at least 16 months. Union Pacific is expected to submit the merger proposal to the STB within the next six months.
On the subject of anti-trust considerations, the executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, Mike Stoenhoek, told Reuters:
“What I infer from the timing on this is they believe that the current administration is going to be more favorable than it has been in recent history.”
The merger would give the new company a 43% share of the national freight-carrying industry.
The last major freight carrier merger, between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, was approved in 2023, forming the only continuous Canada to Mexico rail line.
BNSF and CSX have since entered into negotiations. A merger of the two would create a second coast-to-coast freight company.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
A New Voice of Ukraine reporter writes that Russian forces are massing in an attempt to take Pokrovsk before the winter rains begin.
The Russians have begun advancing in small squads. A source told the reporter that “… Russian soldiers are moving forward — on motorcycles, carts, even horses and donkeys. Hundreds and thousands try to seep through Ukrainian defenses. At best, a few dozen make it alive, and only a handful manage to hold new positions. But they do hold, and more waves come to reinforce them.”
Apparently, as Russia is focusing on the Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces have been driving Russians back in the Sumy region.
Once the rains come, muddy roads will make Russian advances more difficult.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
Newsweek reports that a Saudi port project, named Neom, is well underway. When the project, part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 effort, is complete, it will be a “global logistics hub” between Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, one that will reduce transit times and logistics costs.
The port’s first terminal should be operational by 2026.
Make of this what you will.
Ed P says
On the subject of tariffs.
It would be disingenuous not to admit that Trumps actions are not just about “slapping”
Tariffs on trading partners. It’s much more complex and complicated. Global trade is being redefined and reset. It’s not our father’s protectionist tariffs.
The tariff threats have calmed conflicts amongst counties, are opening new markets for American businesses, attempting to stem the flow of illegal drugs, bring down the cost of prescription drugs, reduce the theft of proprietary and intellectual properties, and overall level the global trading field for America.
Tariffs are not, nor ever will be a $1 to $1 burden upon consumers. Trump is flexible in negotiating and has been listening to sage advice while making adjustments.
Of course there will be some price increases. Much of the tariff costs will never reach the consumer. The tariff amounts collected will be many multiple times more than consumer price increases. Real savings will be positive. Tariffs will assist with Federal budgeting/deficit.
Also, not every retail price increase can be attributed to tariffs. There are the normal increases that occur as well as increases that will be “slipped” in under the guise of tariffs. There is and will be some gouging.
The insurgence of foreign investments back into our country will continue as multinationals accept the reset and realize that it’s vital for their profitability to invest in America. These long term investments take time to build facilities and hire employees.
Thus far, experts have been wrong. Is it possible that the social science and accepted principles of economics have been wrong? Time will tell.
Sherry says
@don miller. . . either post “credentialed FACTS” for your ridiculous claims, or we will all continue to know that you are only capable of laundering the lies of Fox BS propaganda.