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Friday's Daily Pulse
What you need to know about Florida today
› New AT&T TV streaming service available in only one Florida city — for now
West Palm Beach consumers can be the first in Florida — and among the first in the country — to subscribe to the new AT&T TV streaming video service. AT&T is unveiling the service this week in 10 markets while promising to add more as the year goes on. Why West Palm Beach was chosen for as one of the first available markets wasn’t immediately clear.
› Universal to get state money to build road to new Epic Universe park
A few days before Christmas last year, after he was elected to the U.S. Senate but before he’d left Tallahassee for Washington, former Florida Gov. Rick Scott gave a $16 million gift to Orange County. It was a grant to help pay for an extension of Kirkman Road in the county’s International Drive tourism corridor, and it had been pulled from a pot of economic development money known as the “Florida Job Growth Grant Fund.”
› Jacksonville’s port achieves record July
The Jacksonville Port Authority announced it has achieved its best July for container volume and is on pace to set a record for the fourth consecutive year. About 116,000 20-foot equivalent units (or TEUs, the industry standard for measuring containers) moved through JaxPort for the month, an increase of 19 percent from the previous July, the port said.
› Cities are stymied in banning plastics — and the state is doing nothing about it, they say
Single-use plastic bans in Florida are being rolled back as quickly as they are rolled out. The town of Surfside voted to repeal its plastic ban — passed only six weeks ago — at its Aug. 13 commission meeting. The next day, the town of Palm Beach, which passed a ban in June, moved to rescind it. Gainesville followed suit on Thursday. And Alachua County moved to repeal their ban the week prior. The municipalities aren’t changing their minds on the need to reduce plastic waste; they’re walking back policy to avoid a legal battle.
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