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Weather: A slight chance of showers before 8am, then a slight chance of showers after 2pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 78. Northwest wind 10 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. LIFE-THREATENING SURF: Dangerous surf conditions and a high risk of powerful, rip currents will persist at all beaches today and throughout most of the upcoming week. Swimming is not recommended. Sunday Night: A 10 percent chance of showers before 8pm. Mostly clear, with a low around 65.
- 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:
Gamble Jam: Musicians of all ages can bring instruments and chairs and join in the jam session, 2 to 4 p.m. Note that in a temporary change from the regular schedule, Gamble Jam will be the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month. The program is free with park admission! Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach, 3100 S. Oceanshore Blvd., Flagler Beach, FL. Call the Ranger Station at (386) 517-2086 for more information. The park hosts this acoustic jam session at one of the pavilions along the river to honor the memory of James Gamble Rogers IV, the Florida folk musician who lost his life in 1991 while trying to rescue a swimmer in the rough surf.
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
A Celebration of Life in memory of Jorge and Nancy Salinas is scheduled for 2 p.m. in the Sunshine Room of the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. Jorge Salinas had been the deputy county attorney since 2020 when he and his wife were killed in a car crash on I-4 on Oct. 4. The celebration is open to all.
‘Sweeney Todd’ at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand, Thursday, Friday and Saturday a 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets: Preferred $37 (Row A-F, Orchestra & CC-DD Center Balcony), Adult $32 – Senior $28, Student/Child $12. A $5.00 per ticket Processing charge is added to all purchases. Book here. Prepare for a dark journey through the sinister streets of Victorian London with Sweeney Todd. Follow the vengeful barber as he seeks justice, aided by the cunning Mrs. Lovett and her rather… unique meat-pie business. Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece weaves a twisted tale of love, revenge, and morality, brought to life by hauntingly beautiful music. Equal parts chilling and captivating, Sweeney Todd will leave you spellbound—and maybe a bit wary of your next shave…
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Notably: The Nobel organization’s press release announcing Maria Corina Machado’s Peace Prize notes that “Venezuela’s authoritarian regime makes political work extremely difficult. As a founder of Súmate, an organisation devoted to democratic development, Ms Machado stood up for free and fair elections more than 20 years ago. As she said: ‘It was a choice of ballots over bullets.’ In political office and in her service to organisations since then, Ms Machado has spoken out for judicial independence, human rights and popular representation. She has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people.” She should franchise her work in the United States. The justice of her prize was doubly sweet–first for the prize not going to Trump, which would have been absurd: the end of Gaza as a killing field is an improvement, but let’s see how far Israel’s mass killing machine will withdraw, and for how long its guns will stay silent. Even if the Israeli Army had withdrawn entirely to the pre-war border, the prize shouldn’t go to a blithe murderer of alleged drug criminals (or war criminal, if he thinks he’s at war) at a whim while he invades American cities and continues to unleash ice goons all over the land. The double sweetness was that the prize went to a Venezuelan. “Ms Machado has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government,” the release goes on. “This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground.” Again: please franchise. The Democrats could use their own Machado. The release was clearly written not just with Venezuelan repression in mind, but with Trump’s repression as well. See below. On the other hand, celebrating Machado may need a few caveats, especially since Marco Rubio nominated her for the prize last year (he wouldn’t have dared this year), as have other far-right Republicans, and her record of supporting thuggishly right-wing authoritarians shouldn’t be overlooked.
—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.
November 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
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
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
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence. The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world. We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair. In its long history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has honoured brave women and men who have stood up to repression, who have carried the hope of freedom in prison cells, on the streets and in public squares, and who have shown by their actions that peaceful resistance can change the world. In the past year, Ms Machado has been forced to live in hiding. Despite serious threats against her life she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions of people. When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist. Democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent, who dare to step forward despite grave risk, and who remind us that freedom must never be taken for granted, but must always be defended – with words, with courage and with determination.
–From the announcement of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded Maria Corina Machado.
Ray W. says
This from an opinion piece published by The Hill. The author is a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor and a former assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.
In 2022, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was the subject of a traffic stop. No arrest occurred that day and no criminal charges were filed for the following 903 days. But criminal charges of human trafficking eventually were filed.
Long after the date of the traffic stop but prior to the date of the filing of criminal charges, Mr. Abrego was detained by immigration authorities and sent to an El Salvadoran prison facility despite a court order prohibiting that action. A series of court orders eventually brought Mr. Abrego back to the U.S.
According to a factual finding by the Memphis federal trial judge who is handling the criminal charges, within days of the Supreme Court’s decision to issue an injunction in the deportation proceedings, the case derived from traffic stop was reopened. 10 days later, federal criminal charges were filed against Mr. Abrego.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s defense counsel then filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charges, based on an allegation of vindictive and/or selective prosecution by the government.
The Memphis federal judge held a preliminary hearing on the merits of the claim and issued a ruling earlier this month, in which ruling the judge found “that the totality of events … creates a sufficient evidentiary basis to conclude that there is a ‘realistic likelihood of vindictiveness.'”
More importantly, the trial judge ruled that the executive branch “may have induced” a federal prosecutor “to criminally charge Abrego in retaliation both for his Maryland lawsuit” and because the Supreme Court issued injunctive relief that directed the government to bring him back from El Salvador.
The evidence submitted to the district judge established that, over a 15 year period, not one other case derived from a traffic stop in the Sixth Circuit had taken so long to result in the filing of criminal charges.
What this means, according to the author, is that Mr. Abrego is now entitled by court order to engage in discovery processes for purposes of his motion, including depositions under oath, prior to a full hearing on the issue, and the right to subpoena documents and to call and examine at the full hearing witnesses in order to explore whatever the reasons may be why the prosecution against him was initiated.
These witnesses may, perhaps, include Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Assistant U.S. Attorney, Ben Schrader, who resigned from his position the day the federal grand jury indicted Mr. Abrego.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Checks and balances.
In our liberal democratic Constitutional republic, no one political figure was ever to be able to obtain unlimited political power for an indeterminate period of time.
It didn’t take me long as a baby prosecutor in the mid-80s to internalize the idea that no prosecutor possessed anything more than the limited political power to allege that a person had committed a crime. In other words, my political power did not rise to the level of determining guilt. I knew that I had to ask judges and juries to convict. It very well may be that federal prosecutors at the highest levels of our government do not understand that simple limitation on their powers.
The author of the opinion piece suggests that there may soon be a time when federal prosecutors are exposed to another form of check and balance on their political powers, i.e., that federal prosecutors may be disbarred from the practice of law for their actions, should a judge determine that any one of their prosecutions is vindictive or selective.
Ray W. says
According to a Grist story (a news outlet with which I am unfamiliar), New England’s last operational coal-fired electricity plant has shut down three years prior to its scheduled retirement date. According to the reporter, the owner intends to transform the site into a clean energy plant with solar panels and a battery storage system.
On the same date as the announcement of closure, the Trump administration announced a plan to invest $625 million into extending the lifespan of coal-fired plants, plus the opening of additional federal lands to coal mining operations. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that it was a goal of the administration to keep coal plants open to lower electricity prices and ensure grid reliability. The Trump administration has published a blueprint for rolling back “coal-related environmental regulations.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I repeatedly comment on many sectors that comprise the electricity grid.
Recently, I commented on a lease sale of rights to mine coal on federal land. The last time before this that coal rights went up for lease, the winning bid was $1.10 per ton of coal to be mined, but that was more than a decade ago.
On October 6th, just a few days ago, the coal lease that was put up for bid drew from the only bidder one-tenth of one cent per ton of coal, a figure that was announced by the Bureau of Land Management.
Two days later, a second lease for coal was put up for bid. The same company was the only bidder. I can’t yet find the actual bid, but that might be because the government is no longer fully operational. Reports by news outlets have the bid at less than a penny per ton.
Remember, a bid of less than one-thousandth of a bid from more than a decade ago just might reflect just how expensive is the state of coal-fired electricity generation in this country.
Yes, coal remains of political importance, but the economic importance of coal has long since been greatly discounted. Remember, the winning bidder has the option to mine the coal but not the obligation.
Let’s face facts.
So long as there are people gullible enough to think that coal-fired electricity generation is price competitive, we will have a political effort to satisfy them. But coal-fired electricity is far more expensive than the alternatives. That is an economic reality that no political effort can change.
Ray W. says
The Washington Post just published a story titled: “The real winners of Trump’s attack on clean energy aren’t American”
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– For the American electricity sector, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently “nearly halved its forecast of renewable energy growth, citing the end of tax incentives and other recent policy shifts.”
– On the other side of the world, half of India’s existing stock of natural gas-fired electricity plants, many with decades of useful life ahead of them, now sit idle, even though demand for electricity in India is rising rapidly.
– The reason that the plants sit idle? Renewable energy is a less expensive and more reliable alternative.
– China recently announced that it would add enough wind and solar power annually through 2035 to power an additional 200 million homes each year.
– “Brazil is now generating more power from solar than Germany.”
– “Pakistan, over six years, has imported solar panels at such volume that their capacity equals that of the national electricity grid.”
– “Oil-rich Nigeria is even installing a solar mini-grid at its presidential villa — a way to work around persistent power outages.”
– “[T]he cost of solar has dropped 90 percent since 2015.”
– “The price of wind power has dropped 70 percent.”
– The billionaire executive chairman of Australian mining conglomerate Fortescue, Andrew Forrest, responded to claims made by Trump about renewable energy:
“Renewable energy isn’t being done by countries because they are woke. … That is a stupid statement. It is being done because it is economic.”
– Since the Trump administration took office, Fortescue has cancelled $760 million in investments in green energy in the United States. Added Mr. Forrest:
“We are going where we feel welcome.”
– Fortescue’s mining operations consume as much energy as a medium-sized U.S. city. It’s internal energy grid needed to run its operations 24/7 is being converted to renewable energy, based on projections that renewables will save the company billions of dollars. Added Mr. Forrest:
“You can keep your disbelief in global warming all you like, … but don’t deny your people the advantages of the lowest-cost energy on earth.”
– “Experts and analysts say America risks a loss of geopolitical clout and economic opportunity by opposing technologies that it once helped innovate.”
– By 2035, China is “on track to earn more from exporting clean energy technologies … than all of the oil revenue generated by the gulf states combined last year.”
– An energy strategist for a pro-clean energy think tank, Embers, told the Post reporter:
“You might pay lip service to Trump, but meantime you’ll be working day and night to get cheaper energy. This is a battle [clean energy] is going to win.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
25 years ago, American researchers were at the forefront of many of the technologies that could have brought trillions into our economy each year. Battery technology, solar technology, wind technology. We led the world. Our universities pumped out patent after patent. The Chinese weren’t even trying to compete in making electric vehicles, except for a few niche sectors such as city buses.
We, as a country, stupidly threw away our advantages. Others have left us behind.
Take EVs, for example.
In about 15 years, China has gone from almost zero EV production to perhaps as many as 16 million “new energy vehicles” sold in 2025. The math is simple. The average car in the United States sells for just under $50,000. Sixteen million EVs at that price would bring in $800 billion. Even if the average price of an EV in China was $40,000, that would mean that EVs, not counting Chinese gas-powered vehicles, are bringing in $640 billion into the Chinese car industry each year, and the amount is growing fast. Much of that money could have been ours.
Ford’s CEO repeatedly states that the American car industry looked the wrong way for years. He estimates that our domestic vehicle manufacturing base is 10 years behind that of the Chinese EV car companies. Ford, he says, will cease to exist if it cannot catch up to Chinese EV manufacturing technologies. Indeed, he says the entire American car industry will fall if it can’t catch up.
Reports have it that China exported over a million EVs in the first half of 2025, up almost 75% over the first-half of 2024. Those exports could have been ours.
Former President Biden imposed a 100% tariff on imported Chinese EVs. President Trump has increased the tariff. What does that say about the American car industry if it needs that type of tariff to keep Chinese EVs away from our shores?
The same can be said for solar and wind power. We simply put our technological lead down onto a table and walked away, allowing other countries, primarily China, to walk in and scoop up our advantages.
Ray W. says
According to Interesting Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) researchers just announced that they had developed a “refractory” chromium, molybdenum, and silicon alloy that has a melting point of roughly 3,632 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while ensuring stability at high temperatures just below the melting point.
An ideal alloy for use in jet engines and natural gas turbines in electricity plants is “ductile at room temperature, stable at high temperatures, and resistant to oxidation.”
The new alloy is ductile (not brittle) at ambient temperatures and it “oxidizes very slowly.”
Jet engines and natural gas-fired turbines currently rely on nickel-based alloys in their turbine blades, alloys that are stable at high temperatures. Current nickel-based alloys operate at temperatures of up to 2012 degrees Fahrenheit.
According to one of the KIT researchers, every increase of 180 degrees Fahrenheit in operating temperature increases gas turbine performance by 5%.
But the path to commercial viability is long at this stage of the research.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
According to what I have read and listened to, the current maximum conversion of energy contained in a unit of natural gas into usable power by a combined cycle natural gas turbine is just over 66%. Anything that reliably raises that figure by 5% for every increase of 180 degrees Fahrenheit in stable operating temperatures would make gas turbines less uncompetitive with solar and wind power. But the bar set by solar and wind power keeps rising, too.