ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — This new program seeks to encourage consistent quality standards in property care and customer service for vacation rental companies around the Walt Disney WorldZ Resort area, as well as defining requirements for property standards that guests expect and benefit from. With this logo, visitors to Central Florida can quickly identify companies that offer quality service and standards as well as consistently reliable accommodations, along with providing an authorized source for information about the Walt Disney WorldZ Theme Parks and Tickets.

Over the last year, Disney worked with key property management companies, including VillaDirect, to develop clear standards for vacation rental homes, and guidelines for promoting the Walt Disney WorldZ Theme Parks.

Steve Hardman, CEO of VillaDirect Vacation Homes said, “We’ve worked as an Authorized Disney Ticket Seller for some time, and the Vacation Rental Home Connection, part of the Disney Ticket Network has been carefully designed to help our guests, by giving them a quality standard that they can rely upon. Whenever guests book with a company which carries the Vacation Rental Home Connection logo – they can be confident in receiving great service and quality in a vacation rental home. We’re absolutely thrilled to be recognized through this program.”

To find out more about the Walt Disney WorldZ Vacation Rental Home Connection or to look at the homes offered by VillaDirect Vacation Homes under the program, visit www.villadirect.com.

About VillaDirect Vacation Homes

VillaDirect Vacation Homes is the most popular vacation home rental company in central Florida, welcoming over 50,000 guests each year and an affiliate of the Vacation Rental Home Connection, part of the Disney Ticket Network. The company was established in 1998 and offers the widest choice of quality accommodations to guests from more than 350 privately owned family pool homes, condos and townhouses – all within easy distance of Walt Disney WorldZ Resort and other area attractions. VillaDirect offers properties to fit every family’s needs and budget, from 2 bedroom condos to 7 bedroom estate homes on fabulous vacation rental resort locations in Orlando – as well as being an authorized Disney attraction ticket reseller, where you can buy Disney Theme Park Tickets for your visits to the theme parks of Orlando. For more information, visit the VillaDirect website or call 1-877-259-9908 (toll free USA & Canada).

Steve Hardman, 407-973-0575, steve@villadirect.com

SOURCE VillaDirect Vacation Homes

See the full story at NewsBlaze.com Current News – Florida

Florida small businesses, small ag coops, small aquaculture businesses and many private non-profits are eligible for federal economic injury disaster loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration, because of 2010 drought.

The declaration includes the following counties: Broward, Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, Indian River, Lee, Martin, Okeechobee, Osceola, Palm Beach, Polk and Saint Lucie.

“When the Secretary of Agriculture issues a disaster declaration to help farmers recover from damages and losses to crops, the Small Business Administration issues a declaration to eligible entities affected by the same disaster”

Frank Skaggs, director of SBA’s Field Operations Center East

The SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program is available to eligible farm-related and nonfarm-related entities that suffered financial losses as a direct result of that disaster. Up to $2 million is available, with a 4 percent interest rate for small businesses, 3 percent for non-profit organizations. Terms can be up to 30 years. To be used for working capital, the loans can pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable, and other bills that could have been paid had the disaster not occurred.

Loans can’t be used to replace lost sales or profits, and eligibility for the program is based on a range of things, including the size of the applicant, type of activity and its financial resources. The loan amounts and the terms are set by the SBA, based on the financial condition of the applicant.

For complete disaster loan information and application forms, you can call the SBA Customer Service Center at 800-659-2955 (800-877-8339 for speech or hearing disabilities) Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, send an e-mail to disastercustomerservice@sba.gov or download at www.sba.gov.

Note that loan applications close December 5th this year.

“Sometimes students have to make a decision to buy food for their family or stay in school, and we find that unacceptable,” says Virginia Underwood, a student at The University of South Florida Polytechnic. To address that problem, Underwood and classmates Yuri Aguilar and Erica Garza started Fed With Love to help stock the USF Poly Food Pantry. Together they collected more than 900 donated food items for students and their families.

“We worked to fill the needs of the USFP student food pantry, to spread the word around the community while seeking donations, and to raise awareness of the needs of college students who are facing tough economic times,” says Aguilar.

Fed With Love arose from the Human Relationship Skills class, which required students to plan and coordinate a community service project.

“The course requires that they find a need in their community and then find a way to meet that need,” says instructor Patricia Young.

Because each of the three students lives in a different community — Underwood in Lakeland, Aguilar in Frostproof and Garza in Hardee County — they decided the community they had in common was USF Polytechnic.  Recognizing a need on campus, they decided to support the Student Food Pantry, which was started in January 2010 by the faculty and staff of USFP in an effort to help students.

“We wanted to try to ease the burden for those individuals who are trying to better their education and still take care of a family or meet other needs and obligations,” says Garza.

She, Underwood and Aguilar say the Fed With Love project provided an excellent hands-on learning experience.

“We learned how to compromise, divide up work, respect one another and those who we collaborated with, and through the course of the project we began to develop citizenship, knowing we are helping our college community.   We also learned that there are other ways we can help the community and are excited to do so.”

The University of Florida’s Jake Gipson and Matthew Wercinski, both of Niceville, Fla., squeaked out a victory, for the second year in a row, at the National Guard FLW College Fishing Southeast Division Regional Championship on Saturday with three bass that weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces.

The Gator duo caught a total of nine bass weighing 38-11 to win a top prize of $50,000, which includes a Ranger boat and outboard wrapped in school colors for the winning club and $25,000 for the school they represent. They have now qualified for the National Guard FLW College Fishing National Championship where they will once again be defending their title.

The three day tournament which took place on Lake Monroe really challenged the top 20 college teams from around the southeast region. Only seven, six fish limits were caught during the tournament, including two on the final day.

The Gators had a 12 pound, one ounce lead going into the final day of competition and managed to hold on to their lead to win by only 3 pounds, 7 ounces over second place Kennesaw State University – Jake Akin, Powder Springs, Ga., and Thomas Frink, Kennesaw, Ga. who had a three day total of 15 bass weighing 35-3 to take home $25,000.

“It’s great to be back! There was a little bit of pressure having that big lead going into today,” said Jake Gipson, a senior in Industrial and Systems Engineering. “We were fortunate to come out on top and you can see we really struggled today.

“The meat of our fish came flipping walls of grass in the river. Most of them came off a Gambler Flappin’ Tail. We covered a lot of water and fished fast,” added Gipson.

We came back to defend our title and that’s what we fished for,” said Matthew Wercinski, a senior in Business. “We don’t fish for limits, we fish for big fish and that’s how you win tournaments. I was really nervous coming to the stage today without any fish, but fortunately Jake caught his limit and brought it home for us.

“This is just unbelievable!”

Rounding out the top five teams and also qualifying for the national championship are:

3rd: Auburn University-Shaye Baker, Reeltown, Ala., and Jordan Lee, Vinemont, Ala., 18 bass, 31-8, $11,000

4th: University of Florida-Dennis Croyle, Sarasota, Fla., and Travis Gates, Gainesville, Fla., 12 bass, 27-6, $8,000

5th: University of Central Florida-Len Gordon, Baker, Fla., and Miles Burghoff, Orlando, Fla., 11 bass, 18-12, $6,000

A complete list of results can be found at http://www.collegefishing.com.

Each school team represented in the televised regional championship have team shirts and boats provided by Ranger. The purse for each regional championship includes a Ranger 177TR with a 90-horsepower Evinrude or Yamaha outboard wrapped in school colors for the winning club and $25,000 for the school they represent.

The top five teams from each regional championship, 25 teams total, will advance to the 2011 National Guard FLW College Fishing National Championship that will be hosted by Murray State University on Kentucky Lake, April 7-9. The National Championship is a three-day televised event. Teams will be provided jerseys and wrapped Ranger boats towed by Chevy trucks for this competition. The first-place team will win $100,000 with $50,000 of that for their school and $25,000 cash and a Ranger 177TR bass boat for their fishing club along with a berth in the 2011 Forrest Wood Cup.

FLW Outdoors provides boats and drivers for each competing team along with travel allowances. All participants must be registered, full-time undergraduate students at a four-year college or university and members of a fishing club recognized by their college or university.

Coverage of the National Guard FLW College Fishing Southeast Division Regional Championship tournament on Lake Monroe will be broadcast in high-definition (HD) on VERSUS. “FLW Outdoors,” and will air Nov. 21 from 12:30 to 1:30 ET. “FLW Outdoors,” is hosted by Jason Harper, and is broadcast to approximately 500 million households worldwide.

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Boca Raton, Florida Embroidered Hat

Florida has a bad reputation for bugs. In a national survey, homeowners ranked Florida as the state with the worst bug infestation problems – including ants, termites and cockroaches. Louisiana and Texas were runners-up.

Bugs clearly are widespread across America: 90 percent of homeowners surveyed said they have experienced an insect infestation, according to a recent telephone survey, by Infogroup ORC, sponsored by BASF Pest Control.

For bed bugs, respondents agreed New York has the worst problem, with California and Florida runners-up for bed bugs.

Ant infestation was rated the most common insect annoyance by homeowners interviewed. Nearly 60 percent of those questioned said ants were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to infest their homes. In contrast, about a quarter (27 percent) of respondents said they were “likely” to suffer from a termite infestation.

“The survey findings mirror what we see in real life.”

Dr. Bob Davis, Chief Entomologist at BASF

The survey also provided insight on the debate over “doing it yourself” versus calling a professional. Among the 90 percent of homeowners who had a bug infestation, 63 percent tried to treat it  themselves and only 23 percent called a professional right away. Forty-percent of those who tried to treat it themselves had to call in a professional anyway and 86 percent of those who called a professional reported success.

The survey was conducted among a national probability sample of 675 adults – 321 men and 354 women 18 years of age and older, living in private households in the continental US. All respondents were homeowners. Interviews for this telephone survey were conducted by Infogroup | ORC during the period June 10-13, 2010.

The margin of error for this survey is plus or minus 4 percent. For purposes of the survey, when ranking “overall buggiest” states, respondents were asked to consider ALL of the following bugs: spiders, ants, bees/wasps, termites, cockroaches, bed bugs.

See the full story at NewsBlaze.com Current News – Florida

On July 25, 2009 South Florida Tea Party held a demonstration against the forced health care bill. Despite the heavy rain for most of the day these Patriots were not detered from coming to voice their displeasure and outrage. The politicians in power are so arrogant they think they can just shove this legislation down our throats without an all out fight from the American citizens. They are wrong! This coming 2010 election will be when all those in Washington who vote for this bill will be looking for new jobs. This means both Democrats and Republicans.

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In a poll released Thursday by Rasmussen Reports, pollster Scott Rasmussen once again left Snitker’s name off the survey, their sixth poll in the last two months to exclude him.

See the full story at NewsBlaze.com Current News – Florida

Product Description
Sunshine State trivia buff Serge A. Storms loves eliminating jerks and pests. His drug-addled partner Coleman loves cartoons. Hot stripper Sharon Rhodes loves cocaine, especially when purchased with rich dead men’s money. On the other hand, there’s Sean and David, who love fishing and are kind to animals — and who are about to cross paths with a suitcase filled with $5 million in stolen insurance money. Serge wants the suitcase. Sharon wants the suitcase. Colema… More >>

Florida Roadkill: A Novel