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Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 73. Tuesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 49.
- 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:
The Palm Coast City Council meets in workshop at 9 a.m. at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Community Traffic Safety Team led by Flagler County Commissioner Andy Dance meets at 9 a.m. in the third-floor Commissioner Conference Room at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. You may also join virtually by computer, mobile app or room device. Click here to join the meeting. Meeting ID: 276 236 998 121 Passcode: CyEKoW [Download Teams | Join on the web]
The Flagler County School Board meets at 3 p.m. in workshop to go over the items on its upcoming school board meeting two weeks hence. The board meets in the training room on the third floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here.
The Flagler County Planning Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. See board documents, including agendas and background materials, here. Watch the meeting or past meetings here.
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County: The AARP Foundation’s Tax Aide provides free tax preparation services at six locations in Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Flagler County through April 15, but you must make an appointment first and fill out paperwork. To do both, go here.
The St. Johns River Water Management District Governing Board holds its regular monthly meeting at its Palatka headquarters. The public is invited to attend and to offer in-person comment on Board agenda items. Note: meeting start times vary from month to month. Check here to verify the time. A livestream will also be available for members of the public to observe the meeting online. Governing Board Room, 4049 Reid St., Palatka. Click this link to access the streaming broadcast. The live video feed begins approximately five minutes before the scheduled meeting time. Meeting agendas are available online here.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Tuesday from 4:30 to 6 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry: Flagler Beach United Methodist Church‘s food pantry is open today from 9:30 a.m. to noon at 1500 S. Daytona Ave, Flagler Beach. The church’s mission is to provide nourishment and support in a welcoming, respectful environment. To find us, please turn at the corner of 15 Street and S. Daytona Ave, pull into the grass parking area and enter the green door.
The Flagler Beach Library Book Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Notably: From Statista: The Trump administration is planning to detain some 80,000 immigrants in warehouses across the United States. Data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reveals how the number of its detention facilities has been expanding in recent years, with at least 103 additional facilities opening since fiscal year 2024. According to ICE data, there were 212 such detention centers nationwide in December, holding an average daily population (ADP) of over 65,500 people – among these, children. The chart shows where detention centers are concentrated. Texas has by far the highest number of facilities of any state at 27, followed by Florida with 17 and Louisiana with 11. The detention centers with the highest average daily populations are ERO El Paso Camp East Montana in Texas (2,902 detainees), Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi (2,184) and Stewart Detention Center in Georgia (2,001). Between October 1 and December 26, data shows that 20 detention facilities each held average daily populations exceeding 1,000 people.
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.
April 2026
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
In Court: Anne Mae Demegillo Arraignment
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review Board
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board
Hammock Community Association Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
Public Safety Coordinating Council Meeting
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting
Conversations in Democracy
For the full calendar, go here.
I had the hunch, as I contrited my way from class to cafeteria and back, that my day would be filled by these black glances. I was wrong. With frightened eyes, I looked everywhere, at everyone. And in the homerooms and corridors, there quickly grew around me a zone of silence and inviolability. Except when my friends would suddenly mount brief, haphazard campaigns of everything’s normal, quoting lines from Fletch and slapping my book bag or calling me a dick. All the same, the inescapability of what had happened—what was happening now as I showed my face in the clogged thoroughfare between classes—threw who I really was into shadow, even to myself. It felt somehow like living at the last limits of objective reality. I seemed less real than the plain, plump truth did. Because I’d driven a certain road, someone who had been alive was dead. I had killed someone. And yet, that wasn’t the end of it. Because now the daily me was back: the residue of that accident returned to school. The shambling or smiling or lurking person who’d run down the girl. I remember the first time after the accident my name was called in class, the feel of pause and hush in the room, like deer scenting something strange. Everyone’s ears and tails flicked. Speaking aloud here meant, all at once, that I was a student again. I’d have to work to be as present, as definable, as real as the accident was. Darin Strauss, Half a Life (Random House 2010), GB790/43
–From Darin Strauss’s Half a Life (2010).
Eleanor Coyne says
How much taxpayers money is spent on his weekend golf. We pay not only for his entourage but also his own stay at his resorts.
Corruption as I have never seen and I’m 75 years old.
This cartoon is so real!
Average Joe says
Just me over here waiting for all the bad things you say will happen to materialize. Thankfully not holding my breath.
Laurel says
Average Joe: So tell me, who’s getting rich, you or Trump and his family? Invited to the Trump Ballroom, are you? Keep waiting.
Average Joe says
*Checks stock portfolio*
Looks like just about everyone who is invested is doing pretty well. That probably includes yourself.
*Checks emails from 2001 – 2006*
Looks like I’ve never been invited to the White House, privately-funded ballroom or anything there. I’d wager you haven’t either.
Try again, Laurel.
Laurel says
Actually, I did well under Biden, too.
The East Wing of the White House has belonged, historically, to the First Ladies. So, am I surprised that Trump wiped it out, without consent of We the People, and without any respect for the building’s history? No. Women are objects to ignore, and sexually grab without permission, too. The top leader of our country protects the pedophiles while exposing the survivors. He continues to disappoint.
I suppose you think that a “privately funded ballroom” costing $400 million, as of December 2025, has no favors to collect for the donors?
Must everything we once cherished, and was proud of, be transactional?
Don’t bother to answer, your statements are average.
Pogo says
@Today’s cartoon:
… explanation, note in a bottle launched into space to warn the galaxy and beyond — and epitaph.
Fini
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
— T.S. Eliot
Ray W. says
Per a recent Taipei Times story, the amount of unpurchased crude oil floating at sea on tankers, anchored or under power, has reached a historic level of some 100 million barrels. Other sources have the figure at as high as some 125 million barrels. Some 60 million barrels of the figure is either Russian or Iranian sanctioned oil. Each of the filled tankers awaits a buyer. Each filled tanker cannot dock and offload without a buyer.
So much crude oil shipping capacity has become immobilized that daily rates for what shipping capacity that remains available has skyrocketed to about $125,000 per day.
The discounted selling rate for Russian crude oil has dropped to about $38 per barrel, some $25 per barrel below the market price commanded for unsanctioned crude oil.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
No one person can see all ends, neither the wise nor the gullibly stupid.
The four-year anniversary of Russia’s second invasion of the Ukraine nears. The first Russian invasion in 2014 netted some 14% of the Ukraine’s sovereign territory, including Crimea.
Within weeks of the second invasion, Russia forces took another 12% of Ukrainian land. A subsequent Ukrainian military counterattack retook about 10% of its recently lost sovereign soil. Since then, grinding battle has netted Russia less than 2% of the land it had previously promised to protect.
Academia recognizes three forms of empire: Conquer, Destruction, or Trust.
Looking back, Russia’s President Putin’s premised his invasion of a country which sovereignty his predecessors had promised to defend on the idea of conquering Ukraine’s government, people and soil in order to absorb all into a greater Russia. A Russian Empire of Conquer was to arise.
When the Ukrainian resistance to that premise unmasked it as defective thinking, Putin shifted the premise from conquer to destruction. A Russian Empire of Destruction was to descend. Do not think that nations also bordering Russia did not painfully see the transition of premise. They know what portends should Russian ambition be appeased.
The new Russian premise of destruction, too, has been proved defective thinking, yet Putin persists. If he can’t have the Ukraine, no one can.
Both Putin and the collective leaders of the West once thought the tiny underfunded Ukrainian military could not outlast the military onslaught for two weeks. The once perceived mighty Russian army, navy, and air force has since been unmasked for what they truly were: paper tigers.
Well over a million Russians are dead, wounded or missing. The Russian economy is in shambles, despite Putin amassing prior to the second invasion a financial reserve of some $350 billion, a reserve that has since been depleted or nearly so.
Russian courts have been upholding the taking of foreign corporate assets as a means to bring money into the government treasury. Does anyone reasonably believe foreign companies will invest large sums of money in Russia after the war?
Nearly all European dependence on Russian oil and gas has come to an end, with the lost Russian market share slowly shifting to other energy exporting countries, largely the United States.
Many European leaders have come to coalesce around the premise that Russia will not see peace until all Russian forces have withdrawn from all Ukrainian soil, including Crimea. Should these European leaders achieve this historic end, can it be argued that a collective Nobel peace prize ought follow?
I remain unconvinced that a mere cease fire and concession to Russian war demands will suffice. Appeasement to naked aggression leaves such an ugly hue to the human eye, after all.
Yes, not even the wisest among us can see all ends. As for the gullibly stupid, should any FlaglerLive reader form credulity for anything offered by the several inveterate lie launderers who wander among us?
Dennis C Rathsam says
SORRY CHARLIE….. TRUMP ain’t going anywhere. Hows your 401K? How bout the DOW? Im GOOD
Skibum says
My God, you sound just like that idiot Pam Bondi! Do you have that angry, post-menopausal face of hers too?
Ray W. says
A paper published by researchers affiliated with the University of Tokyo and Ritsumeikan University revealed a new solar panel material comprised of selenium and titanium oxide. Other materials are used in constructing the panel.
A substrate consists in part of glass and an indium tin oxide. Next is a zinc magnesium oxide buffer layer. Then comes a 5 nano-meter thick selenium light-absorbing layer. Then a molybdenum trioxide layer, plus a gold contact.
The research breakthrough involves the use of yttrium to extract and purify titanium oxide so as to provide “advanced adhesion” between layers of titanium oxide and selenium, a process the researchers call “heterojunction.”
In initial laboratory conditions, the new panel structure converts 4.9% of light into power, a low conversion rate compared to today’s utility-grade solar panels. But the theoretical potential, if fully achieved, is far greater than the theoretical potential of current panels.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
It may be that solar panel technology has already had its Model T moment, but much remains unexplored or undeveloped. Even with solar power already being less costly than any form of fossil fuel generation, there may remain significant reductions in the cost of manufacturing solar power plants.
The issue is straightforward.
20 years ago, silicon-based solar panels converted sunlight to electricity at a roughly 8% rate. Now, the rate is above 20%, with some panels approaching 24%. Today’s homeowners do not need to buy nearly as many panels to power their homes, all other things being equal.
If the selenium panels in the fullness of development achieve a conversion power rate significantly higher than that for today’s silicon panels, even fewer solar panels will be needed per home. Utility-scale solar farms will produce more electricity per acre.
Once again, researchers argue that fossil fuel power plants are nearing the end of their theoretical development capacity. Solar panels are comparatively much further away from their theoretical development potential.
Ray W. says
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new Frontier supercomputer, capable of one quintillion calculations per second, is being used to search for imperfections on leading edges of jet engine turbofan blades in pursuit of designs that may improve airflow. Greater airflow through an engine? Potentially greater efficiencies and power.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
A news outlet named Fortune recently published both a story and an opinion article about the federal debt, the federal deficit and interest payments on the federal debt.
In the story, the writer asserted that during the first third of the 2026 fiscal year, our government borrowed $696 billion. The lending rate on a 30-year T-bill was at 4.8%. The lending rate on a 10-year T-bill was 4.2%. Interest repayment on the $38.5 trillion federal debt had for the first time surpassed both our military budget and the $1 trillion threshold.
Bridgewater Associates co-founder, Ray Dalio, was quoted by the reporter as saying last year:
“We’re spending 40% more than we are taking in. What you’re seeing is the debt service payments … well into squeezing away, so it’s like plaque in the arteries, squeezing away buying power.”
The reporter then opined that one possible policy among several would be to allow long-term inflation to run hotter than the debt rise caused by the deficit, a policy that could so devalue the federal debt that it could become more manageable.
For homeowners with low fixed-rate mortgages, I argue, housing inflation running higher than their fixed mortgage rates would benefit them. For consumers, the reverse would happen unless wages kept up with or outpaced inflation.
In the Fortune opinion column, the author took a different approach to priming GDP growth sufficient to outpace the interest payments now place a drain on the economy.
Her solution is easy to understand. If productivity growth per worker is one facet of the two-facet measure of GDP, then empowering women, who today earn 58.5% of all awarded undergraduate degrees, 62.6% of all awarded masters degrees and 57% of all awarded doctoral degrees, would so boost GDP growth, if only today’s business climate would recognize women for what they are actually worth. Closing the payment gap between men and women, promoting more well-qualified women into decision-making positions, and lowering the rate of highly-educated women opting out of the workforce, would significantly boost the productivity that is so necessary to GDP growth.
Wrote the author:
“We are now a distressed borrower. The Federal Reserve is handcuffed, unable to cut rates without reigniting inflation, yet unable to cut rates without strangling growth. …
“In this environment, the United States has only one non-austerity lever left to pull: Growth. We must expand the GDP denominator fast enough to keep the debt numerator from crushing us. With fertility rates below replacement levels, the economy can’t birth its way out. It cannot borrow its way out. It must earn its way out.”
Make of these points what you will.
Me?
For quite some time now, Fed Chair Powell has spoken about a narrowing path available to our economy; he argues that only sustained long-term strong GDP growth, coupled with sustained long-term inflation set at or below 2%, can bring the federal debt under control.
Numerous economists point out that our birth rate being substantially below replacement rate as being a drag on GDP growth. I agree with the author that we can no longer grow our way out of our economic problems by using the native-born. If we can no longer birth our work force enough to aid GDP growth, we have remaining to us only the other side left to the two-sided issue driving GDP growth: Productivity growth per worker!
Again, if consumer spending constitutes 70% of our economy, only a gullibility stupid person would believe that reducing the number of wage earners would aid spending. Yet, here we are.