Things To Do In SW Florida

Walt Disney World has updated its lineup for the upcoming Garden Rocks concert series, which is staged during the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival.  Recent additions include returning favorites such as Sugar Ray, Taylor Dayne, 98 Degrees, Jon Secada and a four-night gig featuring Plain White T’s.

Making their Garden Rocks debuts will be Maverick City Music, the Outlaws, the Cat Empire and We the Kingdom.

Last month, Disney announced the bulk of its Garden Rocks performances set for March, including Rick Springfield and 38 Special. Concerts for March 30 and 31 remain to be announced.  Festival dates are March 5 through June 2.

The full concert schedule, subject to change, is now:

• March 7-8: Tommy DeCarlo (former lead singer of Boston).

• March 9-10: Air Supply — 50th Anniversary Celebration.

• March 14-15: Blue October.

• March 16-17: Rick Springfield.

• March 21-22: Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone.

• March 23-24: 38 Special.

• March 28-29: Jason Scheff, longtime Chicago singer/bassist. read more

A building that has housed a waterfront Orlando restaurant for more than 50 years caught fire early Sunday morning, and the place that touted “Food, Brews & Views” is now closed indefinitely.

Owner Ryan Davis said he was told by fire officials that electrical problems might have started the fire in the kitchen area at The Waterfront, located on Lake Jennie Jewel in South Orlando. There were no injuries.

“I don’t think there was foul play or anything, but having it happen it the middle of the night caught me a little bit by surprise,” he said. “There’s not much power being used in the middle of the night.”

Davis said his wife woke him up about 5 a.m. Sunday after she saw a TV news report about the fire.When he got to the restaurant, crews were working to put out the blaze.

About 10% of the building was burned by Davis’ estimation.

Flames from the fire reached as high as 20 feet in the air, he said, but most of the inside of the building, including the seating areas, were saved by the firefighters. read more

Another new property insurer has been approved by Florida regulators to offer coverage in the state — the 11th since the Legislature enacted reforms to shore up insurers’ bottom lines.

Mangrove Property Insurance, based in St. Petersburg, was approved on Jan. 15 by the Office of Insurance Regulation for a certificate of authority to operate within the state, the company announced Monday.

In a news release, the office said the company will offer coverage through licensed independent agents across all of Florida’s 67 counties.

On the same date, the office approved Mangrove’s application to assume up to 81,040 personal residential insurance policies in April from state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state’s so-called “insurer of last resort.”

Thanks to its depopulation program, Citizens’ policy count has declined by more than 400,000 policies since peaking at 1.4 million in September 2023. Customers who are selected for takeout are ineligible to stay with Citizens if any company pledges to renew their policy for a premium that’s within 20% over the projected cost of the Citizens policy. read more

By Holden Lewis, NerdWallet

You plan to keep your house for a long time. But it needs some work. Renovations are expensive, and you want to avoid getting in over your head when you borrow against equity. With that in mind, take an old-timer’s advice on using a variable-rate home equity line of credit: “Don’t borrow a lot, and don’t borrow for long.”

That guidance comes from Lou Barnes, who retired in 2023 after working for 40 years in real estate and mortgage banking. Barnes saw his share of dramatic swings in interest rates. That experience informs his advice for using a home equity line of credit, or HELOC:

Borrow an amount that you can pay off reasonably quickly, then follow through with your rapid repayment plan.

Barnes’s advice has an implication: If you need to get your hands on a chunk of change that will take many years to pay off, consider a fixed-rate home equity loan.

Equity lending described

Let’s step back to explain home equity products, in case you haven’t pondered them lately.

Your equity equals your home’s current value minus the amount you owe on it. You can borrow against this equity, preferably to pay for home repairs, renovations and additions. You have three ways to tap equity: a HELOC, a home equity loan, or a cash-out refinance. read more

By MATT O’BRIEN, Associated Press

A frenzy over an artificial intelligence chatbot made by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek was upending stock markets Monday and fueling debates over the economic and geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China in developing AI technology.

DeepSeek’s AI assistant became the No. 1 downloaded free app on Apple’s iPhone store Monday, propelled by curiosity about the ChatGPT competitor. Part of what’s worrying some U.S. tech industry observers is the idea that the Chinese startup has caught up with the American companies at the forefront of generative AI at a fraction of the cost.

That, if true, calls into question the huge amounts of money U.S. tech companies say they plan to spend on the data centers and computer chips needed to power further AI advancements.

But hype and misconceptions about DeepSeek’s technological advancements also sowed confusion.

“The models they built are fantastic, but they aren’t miracles either,” said Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, who follows the semiconductor industry and was one of several stock analysts describing Wall Street’s reaction as overblown. read more