Miami-Dade considering support for Dolphins’ tax plan




















The issue of tax-funded sports stadiums will soon be back on the Miami-Dade County Commission’s agenda.

Commissioner Barbara Jordan is slated to introduce a resolution Wednesday backing the Miami Dolphins’ plan to use a state subsidy and local hotel taxes to fund about half of a $400 million renovation of Sun Life Stadium. The resolution urges Florida lawmakers to pass a bill allowing the funding, and cites the upgrades’ ability to attract Super Bowl and other major events to the stadium.

The discussion comes roughly three years after a divided Miami-Dade commission backed borrowing about $360 million to build the Marlins a new $640 million baseball park in Little Havana. (The Marlins contributed $155 million, and Miami paid $120 million toward the complex, including a garage.)





The vote is widely credited with helping fuel the 2011 recall of then-mayor Carlos Alvarez. Dolphins insiders cite Marlins backlash as a major obstacle to winning tax dollars for the Sun Life renovation.

“If you give everything a little time, hopefully it heals a little bit,’’ said Rep. Erik Fresen, the original sponsor of the Dolphins’ stadium bill during the 2011 bid for a tax-funded renovation. “Last time, it was literally on the heels of the recall and everything that was so specific to the Marlins’ stadium.”

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has pledged private dollars would fund the majority of the $400 million upgrade of the privately owned stadium. The bill would qualify Sun Life for $90 million in state tax dollars over 30 years, and allow Miami-Dade to increase mainland hotel taxes to 7 percent from 6 percent for the renovations. The tax increase would generate about $10 million a year under the current market conditions.

In recent days, the Dolphins have released endorsements from large hotels in the area, including the Fontainebleau, Intercontinental, Trump Doral and, most recently, a string of Marriotts owned by the MDM development firm.

The baseball debate continues to hover over local politics. Last fall, Jordan was targeted by an anti-Marlins group for defeat in a reelection campaign supported by the Dolphins. She was not immediately available for comment Friday evening.

Norman Braman, the auto magnate who tried to block the Marlins plan and targeted Jordan and other baseball supporters for defeat, said he expected the commission to back public dollars for the Dolphins, too.

“I think they’ve got all the chutzpah you can imagine,’’ he said of incumbent commissioners. “I would be shocked if the commission didn’t do this.”

Fresen, a Miami Republican and co-sponsor in the House of the new Dolphins bill, said he needs the commission to endorse the legislation before he pushes it will fellow lawmakers. Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, a Republican from Hialeah and co-sponsor of the bill, said he gives the Dolphins plan a 50 percent chance of passing the House.

“The entire delegation is not on board. We need a product everyone can live with,’’ he said.

The bill would create a special $3 million yearly stadium subsidy designed for Sun Life. The Dolphins currently receive $2 million a year from Florida under the current stadium subsidy program, tied to retrofitting the Miami Gardens facility to house the Marlins in the 1990s. The team moved out in 2011, and the Dolphins $2 million payments end in 2023.

While the bill opens up the subsidy to any renovation project where public dollars make up a minority of the funding, the language also restricts Florida from paying it to more than one stadium. Ron Book, the Dolphins’ lobbyist, said limiting the bill to one $3 million payout a year should make the proposal more palatable amid Florida’s continuing budget squeeze.

“You have to manage the economic impact to the state,’’ he said.





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Google CEO Page on Apple’s ‘thermonuclear’ Android war: ‘How well is that working?’







Google (GOOG) CEO Larry Page seems unimpressed by Apple’s (AAPL) “thermonuclear war” against his company’s operating system. In an interview with Wired posted Thursday, Page was asked to respond to reports about the late Steve Jobs being “competitive enough to claim that he was willing to ‘go to thermonuclear war’ on Android.” Page responded with one sentence: “How well is that working?” Wired followed up by asking Page whether he though that “Android’s huge lead in market share is decisive” in the battle between the companies and Page only responded that “Android has been very successful, and we’re very excited about it.”


[More from BGR: Cable companies called ‘monopolies that stifle competition and innovation’]






While Apple’s strategy of suing Android vendors has had some notable successes for the company — particularly this past summer when it won a $ 1 billion patent verdict against rival Samsung (005930) — it still hasn’t stopped Android’s rise in both the smartphone and tablet markets, and devices such as the Galaxy S III and the Nexus 7 have proven to be among the most popular released over the past year. So when Page dismisses the significance of Apple’s legal war against Android, he’s got a good point: Some high-profile Apple victories have done very little to hurt consumer interest in Google’s open-source mobile OS so far.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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Michelle Obama on Inauguration President Barack Obama

ET's Rocsi Diaz sat down first with First Lady Michelle Obama at the Kids' Inaugural Concert to discuss a variety of topics from her new hairstyle and birthday celebration to Lance Armstrong.


RELATED: Actors Who've Played Presidents

Mrs. Obama debuted her shoulder-length bob with eye-level bangs via Twitter on her birthday, Thursday, January 17, and she told Rocsi that Dr. Jill Biden may have had an influence on her.

"I've been coveting [Dr. Biden's] bangs for four years," joked Mrs. Obama, quipping that they're "the bang sisters." She also revealed that husband President Barack Obama gave her a "beautiful necklace" as a recent birthday gift.

On the topic of Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah in which he admits to doping, Mrs. Obama said, "I didn't even get a chance to see it. It's a sad situation for everyone who's watching ... I think we have to remember all the people that have been helped and who will continue to need the help of [The Livestrong Foundation]. We should focus on making sure that cancer survivors and people dealing with the disease have the kind of support, medical and research, that they need to deal with the situation. We can't lose sight of that accomplishment."

Rocsi will present at tonight's Kids' Inaugural, which marks the latest efforts by the First Lady and Dr. Jill Biden's Joining Forces initiative to urge Americans to support our troops, and our Gold Star and Blue Star families.

The First Lady described the event in a video message, explaining that it's about "celebrating who we are as Americans and the people who make our country great -- our men and women in uniform, our military spouses, and our amazing military kids. So it's no surprise that when Jill and I decided to host this event, everyone wanted to join us -- from Katy Perry to Glee, from Nick Cannon to Usher. They know that military kids serve this country right alongside their moms and dads, and we’re really looking forward to celebrating our military families this weekend."

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Guns Across America: Thousands rally against stricter restrictions on firearms








AP


Lance Gentry of Chouteau, Okla., holds a sign at a rally in Oklahoma City.



AUSTIN, Texas — Thousands of gun advocates gathered peacefully Saturday at state capitals around the U.S. to rally against stricter limits on firearms, with demonstrators carrying rifles and pistols in some places while those elsewhere settled for waving hand-scrawled signs or screaming themselves hoarse.

The size of crowds at each location varied — from dozens of people in South Dakota to 2,000 in New York. Large crowds also turned out in Connecticut, Tennessee and Texas. Some demonstrators in Phoenix and Salem, Ore., came with holstered handguns or rifles on their backs. At the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, attendees gave a special round of applause for "the ladies that are packin'."





REUTERS



This sign makes the feelings clear of the crowd in Albany, who protested New York's strict new assault weapons restriction passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.





Activists promoted the "Guns Across America" rallies primarily through social media. They were being held just after President Barack Obama unveiled a sweeping package of federal gun-control proposals.

The crowd swelled to more than 800 amid balmy temperatures on the steps of the pink-hued Capitol in Austin, where speakers took the microphone under a giant Texas flag with "Independent" stamped across it. Homemade placards read "An Armed Society is a Polite Society," ''The Second Amendment Comes from God" and "Hey King O., I'm keeping my guns and my religion."

"The thing that so angers me, and I think so angers you, is that this president is using children as a human shield to advance a very liberal agenda that will do nothing to protect them," said state Rep. Steve Toth, referencing last month's elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Toth, a first-term Republican lawmaker from The Woodlands outside Houston, has introduced legislation banning within Texas any future federal limits on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, though such a measure would violate the U.S. Constitution.

Rallies at statehouses nationwide were organized by Eric Reed, an airline captain from the Houston area who in November started a group called "More Gun Control (equals) More Crime." Its Facebook page has been "liked" by more than 17,000 people.

Texas law allows concealed handgun license-holders to carry firearms anywhere, but Reed said rally-goers shouldn't expose their weapons: "I don't want anyone to get arrested."

A man who identified himself only as "Texas Mob Father" carried a camouflaged assault rifle strapped to his back during the Austin rally, but he was believed to be the only one to display a gun. Radio personality Alan LaFrance told the crowd he brought a Glock 19, but he kept it out of sight.

At the New York state Capitol in Albany, about 2,000 people turned out for a chilly rally, where they chanted "We the People," ''USA," and "Freedom." Many carried American flags and "Don't Tread On Me" banners. The event took place four days after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the nation's toughest assault weapon and magazine restrictions.

Republican Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin said the new law was "abuse of power" by the governor. Some in the crowd carried "Impeach Cuomo" signs. Protester Robert Candea called the restrictions "an outrage against humanity."

In Connecticut, where task forces created by the Legislature and Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy are considering changes to gun laws, police said about 1,000 people showed up on the Capitol grounds. One demonstrator at the rally in Maine, Joe Getchell of Pittsfield, said every law-abiding citizen has a right to bear arms.

Capitol rallies also took place in Michigan, Montana, Wisconsin, Missouri and North Carolina, among other states.

Back in Texas, Houston resident Robert Thompson attended the rally with his wife and children, ages 12, 5 and 4. Many in the family wore T-shirts reading: "The Second Amendment Protects the First."

"What we are facing now is an assault weapons ban, but if they do this, what will do they do next?" Thompson asked.

William Lawson drove more than four hours from Wichita Falls and held up a sign reading "Modern Musket" over the image of an assault rifle and the words, "An American Tradition since 1776."

"I'm not some wild-eyed person who wants to fight in the streets," Lawson said. "This is a country of laws. But I want to protect our Constitution."

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson conceded that the Second Amendment sometimes leads to killings, but he told the crowd that the First Amendment can be just as dangerous. Patterson said news coverage of those responsible for mass shootings can spark copy-cat shootings.

"All of us here, together, are right about our liberty," Patterson said. "And we will not back down."










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Norwegian Cruise Line launches strong IPO




















Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line joined its larger local competitors on Wall Street Friday in a strong debut.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. raised nearly $447 million in an initial public offering of about 23.5 million shares and saw stocks sail 30 percent in trading.

Shares closed Friday afternoon at $24.79, up $5.79 from the $19 offering price set late Thursday night. That was above the range of $16-$18 that the company had expected.





“I think this was a classically beautiful IPO, albeit relatively small in terms of total dollars,” said Roderick McLeod, partner in the management consulting practice McLeod.Applebaum & Partners and a former cruise executive.

In regulatory filings, the company has said it plans to use proceeds from the IPO to reduce debt and pay expenses related to the offering. Norwegian is giving the underwriters a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 3.5 million shares.

Previously, the company was privately held in a partnership of Genting Hong Kong, with 50 percent of the cruise line, and private equity firms Apollo Management and TPG. Genting Hong Kong is a subsidiary of gambling and resort conglomerate Genting Group, which purchased the land currently occupied by The Miami Herald in 2011 for $236 million.

After the IPO, the three groups own a total of about 88 percent of the company’s ordinary shares.

Norwegian, with a fleet of 11 ships and three more on the way by the fall of 2015, has made its name by emphasizing a “freestyle” type of cruising that allows guests to choose from a variety of dining, entertainment and rooming options.

In an interview Friday morning, Norwegian Cruise Line President and CEO Kevin Sheehan said that the timing was right for the offering.

“It just seemed like a very logical time: We’re into 2013, we’ve got these beautiful new ships coming out soon and the marketplace is very excited about them,” he said. “The locomotive is moving and we’re at the tipping point with the brand.”

As the industry grows by just about 2.5 percent over the next five years, Sheehan said, Norwegian will grow capacity by more than 10 percent.

“It’s the double whammy,” he said. “Lower growth in the future with a phenomenal set of assets.”

He said the benefits of going public include raising capital, allowing the company to strengthen its balance sheet and putting it in the same playing field as its competitors. Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise ship company, and rival Royal Caribbean Cruises are both publicly traded. Carnival closed up about a percent at $38.58 Friday, while Royal Caribbean dropped just over a percent to $36.90.

“Now we’re out there and people can look at our results and the analysts can talk about us freely,” he said.

The launch capped years of attempts by Norwegian to go public, all abandoned for economic reasons.

Miami cruise expert Stewart Chiron, CEO of CruiseGuy.com, said the timing was good, with an industry performing well and a vastly improved company.

“I’m glad they finally got it done,” he said. “This was by far one of the important milestones that they wanted to cross.”

McLeod remembers an effort when he was president and chief operating officer at Norwegian that coincided with the stock market crash in October of 1987. He has also worked in senior positions at Royal Caribbean Cruises and Carnival Corp.

“I think we’ve all kind of known this was coming eventually and some of us have known it’s coming for 25 years,” McLeod said. “It’s never too late to do the right thing; this is the right thing for them to do.”

The move is smart, McLeod said, for several reasons.

“In addition to improving their leverage, reducing their debt, this expands their strategic options,” he said. “This is a currency, and that can work for them in lots of different ways.”

This report was supplemented with information from the Associated Press.





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King’s son brings message to South Florida




















The past few days have kept the eldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. busy. He’s been to at least three states to carry on his father’s message: ending violence and learning from historical wrongs.

In a Fort Lauderdale Baptist church early Friday, he delivered another directive:

“A nation is judged on how we treat our most prized possession,” Martin Luther King III said. “And our most precious resource, I think, is our children.”





King served as the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. inspirational breakfast hosted by the YMCA of Broward County.

More than 500 gathered inside the First Baptist Church on Broward Boulevard, selling out the $2,500 per table event, to honor King’s legacy.

“My concern was that it would not be reduced to a day of relaxation,” said King III. “We have to look at this as a day on — not a day off.”

The Rev. King, a prominent civil rights leader, was born this week 84 years ago. He lead peaceful protests and bus strikes working for racial equality until his 1968 assassination.

The younger King told the South Florida audience about spending his youth at the local YMCA in Birmingham, learning to swim and working out with his dad.

“Those were wonderful experiences, experiences that I will never forget,” he said.

Like his father, King III has been a fighter for human rights, justice and non-violence in the United States and abroad. He also served as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s president, a position his father once held.

During his 2009 inauguration, President Barack Obama declared the holiday honoring King should be spent as a national day of service.

At Friday’s event, 15 youngsters from the Lauderhill YMCA were honored for their service to the community. The young friends managed to clean up a popular overpass and get rid of gangs who were harassing children.

They called their project “Own the Overpath.” The idea started when 14-year-old Kervens Jean-Louis was attacked by a gang on a fenced in walkway that spans the Florida Turnpike while coming from the YMCA, based at Boyd Anderson High School. But Jean-Louis didn’t back down.

He and other students mobilized and launched a campaign to clean-up the area surrounding the “overpath.” The youngsters made a formal presentation to the Lauderhill City Commission and Florida Department of Transportation officials.

Now, there is a $400,000 project in the works to install more lights on the bridge to increase visibility. The city broke ground in November.

“I learned that when you speak out loud it makes a difference,” said Jean-Louis.

For Jean-Louis, speaking loud meant going back to the bridge to warn others of the dangers of traveling across it at night.

He will spend this upcoming Saturday as a volunteer, painting and cleaning up a garden.

“Now I tell others what’s going on and how they can help out,” he said, much like the man they had all come to honor.

After the youngsters were honored, King III left the crowd to ponder a final thought: “We can either be a thermometer or a thermostat.”

A thermometer, he explained, takes the temperature while a thermostat regulates the temperature.

Despite the progress his father saw in his lifetime, and the decades since his death, there is still much work to be done, King III said.

“I always come with a heavy heart in January,” he said. “Because we have not fully realized the dream.”





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RIM offers Android developers up to $2,000 to port apps to BlackBerry 10 this weekend







RIM (RIMM) really wants Android developers to bring their apps over to BlackBerry 10, and it’s got the cash to prove it. Via AndroidGuys, it seems that RIM will hold a “BlackBerry 10 Last Chance Port-A-Thon” that will pay Android developers $ 100 for every approved app they port over to BlackBerry 10, with a limite of 20 different paid apps per developer. RIM says that the “port-a-thon” will start at noon Friday and run for the following 36 hours. App developers have shown some strong interest in BlackBerry 10 so far as RIM announced this week that it had received 15,000 app submission over just two days during the last port-a-thon, although the company didn’t mention how much influence its “really cool” SDK had in convincing companies to develop for its new platform.


[More from BGR: Samsung’s latest monster smartphone will reportedly have a 5.8-inch screen]






This article was originally published on BGR.com


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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Was LeAnn Rimes Drunk on 'The X Factor'?

Was LeAnn Rimes drunk when she performed live on The X Factor? If she wasn't, why did so many lash out at her online? Tonight, the controversial country crooner answers to her critics in an exclusive interview with Nancy O'Dell.

Pics: Stars Without Makeup

LeAnn's X Factor performance back in December with 13-year-old contestant Carly Rose Sonenclar was trashed on the Internet, with people claiming that the Grammy winner sang too loud and leaned on Sonenclar because she was intoxicated.

"I know what I take seriously," says LeAnn, denying the claims that she was drunk. "I would never ever do anything to hurt a 13-year-old little girl. … I know how it feels."

Video: The Real Reason LeAnn Rimes Went to Rehab

Is LeAnn ready to rise above the criticism? Watch the video to find out.

LeAnn's new album Spitfire, featuring the new single Borrowed, drops April 9.

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Exec in child-custody fight after girlfriend's suicide — because anonymous sperm donor is the 'biological father'








A wealthy Pfizer exec is waging an “unbearable” battle to get custody of his girlfriend’s 6-month-old son, after the child was taken into state custody in the wake of her suicide on New Years Day, according to court documents.

Child welfare officials took little Lincoln, from Jonathan Sporn — even though he and the mom were raising the boy as his own — because he is not the tot’s biological father.

Yesterday he edged a step closer to a reunion, as a Manhattan judge ruled he must undergo home visits before getting custody.

“I respectfully submit that the heartbreak and searing pain that I feel as a result of this loss is nearly unbearable,” the dad said in an affidavit, citing both his partner’s death and the separation from his son.




Sporn lived with his son Lincoln’s mom, corporate attorney Leann Leutner, 40, at his Riverside Drive apartment for over two years.

They couldn’t conceive naturally and Leutner had in-vitro fertilization with an anonymous sperm donor, the documents explain. The two never married but Sporn submitted to the court a document appointing Sporn the guardian of their child as evidence. Leutner killed herself in late December at an apartment in New Jersey.

The devastated dad’s next court date is Jan. 29.

“I am begging this Court to assist me in piecing together the shattered pieces of my heart,” he pleaded.










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Prices for Miami Beach luxury condos soar to records




















Ultra-luxury condominiums on South Beach are fetching nosebleed prices.

On Tuesday, a penthouse at the Setai Resort at 2001 Collins Avenue closed for $27 million — the highest price ever for a South Florida condominium, according to real estate agents.

“We’re definitely seeing the market turning upward,” said Jeff Miller, of Zilbert International Realty in Miami, who represented the buyer in the sale of the palatial 7,100-square-foot condominium. “We’re seeing buyers come in from all over the globe.”





Just a few weeks ago, Ohio coal mining businessman Wayne Boich Jr. completed the sale of his Icon South Beach penthouse at 450 Alton Road in the uber-trendy South of Fifth neighborhood for just under $21 million.

The 6-bedroom, 7 1/2-bath Icon condo sparked a bidding war that drove the sale $2 million above the listing price — a level that is three times the $7 million Boich paid in July 2007 in the depths of the bust. It was a record price for a Miami Beach bayside condo.

“The luxury market is on fire in South Beach — especially the South of Fifth neighborhood,” said Dora Puig, principal of PuigWerner Real Estate Services, who was the listing broker for the Icon unit. “It’s moving Miami to totally different pricing points.”

The Setai’s record may not reign for long.

Penthouse 2 in the decade-old Continuum South tower at 100 South Pointe Drive in the South of Fifth neighborhood is on the market for $39 million.

That is a record listing price for a Miami-Dade condominium, according to Puig, who also snagged that listing.

Amid the market sizzle, Puig bumped up the asking price late last summer from $35 million.

The penthouse, which has 11,000 square feet of interior space, belongs to Manhattan real estate developer Ian Bruce Eichner, who built the Continuum project at the tip of South Beach and kept the trophy for himself.

The Continuum penthouse, which has 6,000 square feet of deck and a rooftop heated pool, boasts sweeping 13 1/2-foot ceilings that give the feel of a single-family home. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls offer a 360-degree view of the Atlantic Ocean, Biscayne Bay, downtown Miami and Miami Beach from 40 stories up.

“It looks down on Fisher Island, way down,” Puig said with a smile.

The unit has a private interior elevator, of course, and stretches over two indoor levels and two largely exterior levels.

One big plus: It has a gated entrance and sits on an expansive enclave of rolling lawns and gardens adjacent to a city park at the tip of the island.

The unit comes with an additional 874-square-foot guest quarters that would delight most mortals. “The guest unit is intended for professional quarters: the maid, the nanny, the chef, the pilot,” Puig explained.

Also included is a snazzy cabana on the beach.

Eichner has used it as a vacation home and once rented it to Tom Cruise for a couple of months while he was in Miami to film Rock of Ages.

On Thursday, Puig hosted Miami’s power brokers for a look at the Continuum penthouse over champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Next week, she plans to spend three days in New York touting the property to high-end brokers.

Such palatial properties typically are paid for in cash. But what would a monthly payment be?

With a 20 percent down payment of $7.8 million, the buyer would have to finance $31.2 million.

“I don’t know that I’d be able to find anybody willing to go that high on one unit,” warned Steve Schneider, a mortgage broker who is owner and president of Abacus Lending Group in South Miami.

If a buyer could line up a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at 3.5 percent, the monthly payment for principal and interest would be $223,043.35.

“I’d hate to see the tax bill,” said Schneider.

According to Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser records, the 2012 property tax bill on the Continuum penthouse was $264,896.17. That was based on an assessed value of just $9.5 million, less than half what the Property Appraiser listed as the market value of $19.3 million. The tax break came as a result of the state law that caps increases in assessed values on non-homesteaded property at 10 percent a year.

The condo maintenance fee for Eichner’s unit runs $7,624 a month. “I think that’s low for what you get,” said Puig.





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Senate starts over in quest to build a transparency website




















Determined to prove that legislators are committed to government transparency, a Senate committee convened Thursday to explore ways to give the public more details about the state’s $70 billion dollar budget.

They made little progress.

The Senate Government Operations and Accountability Committee took up the issue after rejecting a $5 million budget transparency program — known as Transparency 2.0 — that was negotiated in secret.





The committee heard a staff report that nine state-run web sites portend to offer a level of transparency, but require the public to go to several of them to get a complete budget picture.

Dan Krassner, executive director of Integrity Florida, an independent ethics watchdog group, told the committee that even with numerous web sites there are elements of the budget that remain off limits to the public. Among them: the Legislature’s contracts, budget planning documents of state agencies and legislative salary data.

The solution, Krassner said, is for the state to move to open data, allowing the public access to many of its information databases.

“Let’s free the data,’’ Krassner said. “That doesn’t involve significant cost. In fact, it probably involves cost savings…You have all these web sites powered by the same types of databases, but the databases are not public.”

Rather than have the state maintain multiple sites, the state could “unlock the power of these sites to the private sector – mobile app developers, IT professionals in the Florida ...,’’ he said. “That would be a job creation strategy.’’

But some on the committee bristled at that idea.

“Yeah, it’d create jobs, but the return on that job creation is negligible,’’ said Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla who is also chairman of the general government appropriations subcommittee. “It’s a gross expense and a waste of taxpayer dollars and I’m not willing to do it.”

He said he was “not in favor for one moment” of making the Legislature’s working documents available for the public to see. “I’m sorry, if the public doesn’t have any greater faith and confidence in my judgment than that, then they don’t have to re-elect me,’’ he said.

Sen. Jeremy Ring, a Margate Democrat and committee chairman, asked Krassner what would be the elements of a good transparency web site. Krassner urged the Senate to include budget planning documents, all details of the budget process, all expenditures, all contracts data and all personnel information, including salaries, travel and other expenses

Each of those items is now available on the Transparency 2.0 web site, which the Senate paid $5 million to license and develop but never made available to the public because of what Senate leaders now consider a flawed contract. The web site also provided access to every line item in the budget that linked to a contract and allowed users to drill down into the contract details. No existing web site shows that level of budget detail.

Ring said that no senator on the committee had seen the web site because of problems with the contract, including a failure to give the state ownership of the IP address.

“The product is powerful. It’s much more user friendly than any of the sites available today,’’ Krassner said.

But other members of the committee called the contract, signed between former Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, and Spider Data Services “a debacle.”

Reached at the Capitol Thursday, Haridopolos defended the contract but would not explain why he refused to make it available to senators when it was ready to launch in December 2011. Instead, the web site sat idle until the contract with the Senate ran out in December 2012.

“I thought it was a really good idea and it’s out there and they are going to make the judgment,’’ said Haridopolos, who was in Tallahassee teaching a University of Florida class. “I think we had the most transparent budget process ever.”

Ring said his goal is to get the state from nine to one transparent web site. He said he’s not given up hope that the system the state paid for could be used if the contract is renegotiated.

“We haven’t lost it. I’m hopeful we’ve just suspended it,’’ Ring told the Herald/Times. “Clearly, they built a site that people think is a good site but they did an agreement that’s not good for Florida or for the taxpayers and we have to resolve that.”





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The aggressively priced Lumia 620 is Nokia’s make or break model






Nokia (NOK) has started pricing the Lumia 620 in Asia nearly 20% below the rival Windows mid-market model, the HTC (2498) 8S. This is remarkably aggressive considering the 620 has a higher pixel density and twice as much internal memory. The 620 is the keystone phone for Nokia. It is launching before RIM (RIMM) gets its new budget BlackBerry phones out and before Samsung (005930) or LG (066570) enter the mid-priced Windows phone market. This is the phone that will make or break Nokia’s summer.


[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]






Nokia has started rolling out the Lumia 620 in several key Asian markets by the third week of January. It now looks like its European debut could happen a few weeks earlier than expected, perhaps by the end of January. In one of the earliest launch markets, Thailand, the launch price of the Lumia 620 is set at 8,250 baht, or $ 275. The only direct Windows mid-range model, HTC’s 8S, is priced at 9,990 baht. The Lumia 620 is priced at 800 RM ($ 266) in Malaysia, one of Asia’s key mobile markets. HTC’s 8S launched in Malaysia at 999 RM.


[More from BGR: Clash of the bantams: The bloody smartphone battle that will take shape in 2013]


Nokia is the stronger brand in South-East Asia and HTC’s budget Windows model was expected to be at rough price parity during the 620 launch, not 20% above. Nokia’s Lumia 620 features display pixel density of 246 pixels per inch, a touch above the 233 pixels per inch that HTC’s 8S offers. The 620 also packs 8 GB of internal memory, twice as much as the 8S. Camera and video quality are roughly similar.


This is the golden opportunity for Nokia. It will probably take at least until June before RIM rolls out new BlackBerries priced under $ 300 in Asia; possibly late summer or autumn. Samsung and LG are a step behind Nokia in rolling out their Windows Phone 8 ranges. HTC’s first mid-range model doesn’t quite measure up to the 620 in value for money comparison. Apple’s (AAPL) rumored cheap iPhone is unlikely to arrive before September.


Nokia now has a shot at recapturing some of the power it used to have in the mid-range smartphone market. Back in 2006 through 2008 Nokia dominated the smartphone markets of Asia and Europe with absolute sovereignty, capturing market shares as high as 70% from India to Germany. Those days won’t return, but if the 620 clicks, Nokia just might have a shot at pumping the Lumia volume to 10 million units per quarter by autumn.


The relative market softness in the sub-$ 300 category due to the current weakness of RIM, LG, Sony (SNE) and HTC has opened the door. This February is going to be an absolutely crucial month for Nokia as it ramps up its most important Lumia phone during the traditionally dead period in Asia and Europe. If consumers don’t connect with this model at this price, the entire Windows Phone camp will face some very tough decisions.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


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Title Post: The aggressively priced Lumia 620 is Nokia’s make or break model
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Carpet Countdown Oscars Quvenzhane Wallis

This year, Beasts of the Southern Wild's Quvenzhane Wallis, 9, became the youngest actress in the history of the Academy Awards to be nominated for Best Actress. So in today's Carpet Countdown we're taking a look back at the youngest and oldest Oscar nominees.

PICS: Who's in the Hunt for Oscar Gold?

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Firebug who set SoHo blaze indicted








A Manhattan grand jury has indicted the Manhattan man who allegedly set a deadly SoHo fire out of jealousy last week.

Wei Chu Hu, 45, remains jailed on the murderous blaze, and despite what cops described as his initial confession, has now stopped talking, even to his attorney.

"He seems mentally exhausted, that's the only way I can describe it," said Hu's court appointed lawyer, Kenneth Walsh, after an emotionless-looking Hu was brought to Manhattan Criminal Court to be informed of the indictment.

"I can't speak to him, and his wife is one of his alleged intended victims, so she hasn't been speaking with me," the lawyer said.





Kristy Leibowitz



Wei Chu Hu, accused of setting fatal SoHo fire.





"He's been through a lot, and he hasn't been very receptive to conversation," he said.

All of Hu's medical and identification records were destroyed in the blaze at 41 Spring Street, the lawyer added.

Hu, who worked in a Chinatown fish market, speaks only Cantonese, and immigrated from China only within the past year, the lawyer said. He declined to comment on whether Hu is in the country legally.

Hu had told authorities he ignited two mattresses -- sparking a fire which killed an innocent, newlywed resident, who died on a third floor fire escape -- because he believed his wife was sleeping with another man, authorities said.

Cops said Hu worsened the situation by attacking a cop and a firefighter outside the building in an attempt to stop them from going inside to help victims.

He is due back in court Feb. 13.










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Commissioner raises specter of bid-rigging in Miami Beach convention center project




















In the latest odd twist in the saga of Miami Beach’s oft-delayed convention center redevelopment, a city commissioner on Wednesday alleged that a project bidder may have had improper “contact’’ for possible bid-rigging with the city’s former procurement director, who is facing unrelated public-corruption charges.

Commissioner Deede Weithorn, who raised the allegation in a commission meeting and in a subsequent public statement, did not name the bidder or specify the nature of the alleged contact. She later acknowledged in a brief interview she has “no proof,’’ but said the allegation came from a trusted, unnamed “source.’’

Weithorn made the claim as she asked fellow commissioners to “reconsider’’ a December vote that narrowed down the field of development teams competing for the massive project to the two groups that scored highest in a city evaluation. Though Weithorn voted with the majority, 6-1, she later said the decision was made with insufficient analysis and wanted consideration of adding a third team.





Though she could not get another commissioner to go along with reopening the decision, Weithorn won agreement to require all five bidders to submit affidavits attesting they had no improper contact with former procurement director Gus Lopez or his “agent.’’ A false affidavit could lead to perjury charges, she noted.

Representatives of the two top-ranked teams, Portman-CMC and South Beach ACE, said they were willing to sign. The city attorney’s office will draft the affidavit.

But Weithorn’s latest sally cast a new shadow over the troubled, years-long effort by the city to renovate its aging convention center, add a hotel and redevelop 26 acres of city land around it with a combination of housing and commercial buildings to be financed mostly privately. The 52-acre project in the middle of South Beach, which the city says could cost anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion, is considered to be among the most significant in the country.

The bidding for the project, launched a year ago after an earlier effort ground to a halt, was suspended again while state investigators looked into the allegations against Lopez and a business associate, Pierre Landrin Jr. The bidding process resumed last fall after prosecutors assured the city that their investigation had yielded no evidence that the convention center bids were tainted “at this time.’’

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the state attorney’s office said he had nothing new to add to that previous statement.

Some bidders and observers raised concerns that Weithorn’s allegations could derail the complex project by giving the deep-pocketed investors necessary for its success cold feet.

Anthony Alfieri, director of the Center for Ethics and Public Service at the University of Miami’s law school, said Weithorn’s vague allegation and the commission’s demand for affidavits also raise some potential issues related to fairness and the integrity of the city’s bidding process. He said the bidders are put in a difficult position by being asked to “prove a negative’’ in denying an allegation whose details they are not privy to.

“The commission has essentially created a cloud over the bidding process and the bidders. They have to prove they did not engage in unethical or unlawful conduct, but without a clear-cut method of doing so. They are at a significant disadvantage in proving their own innocence when they haven’t been accused of clear-cut misconduct,’’ Alfieri said.





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Miami Dolphins bill would bring state money to aging stadiums




















A bill drafted by the Miami Dolphins would give Florida sports teams $3 million a year in state money to improve older stadiums, provided the owner pays for at least half the cost of a major renovation.

Under the law, the stadium would need to be 20 years old and the team willing to put in at least $125 million for a $250 million renovation. That’s less than the $400 million redo of Sun Life Stadium that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross proposed this week, which he hopes will win state approval thanks to his offer to fund at least $200 million of the effort to modernize the 1987 facility.

Miami-Dade and Florida would fund the rest through a mix of county hotel taxes and state general funds set aside for stadiums. Sun Life currently receives $2 million a year through the program, and the Dolphins want to create a new category that would give them an additional $3 million.





While the Miami Marlins and Miami Heat both play in stadiums subsidized by county hotel taxes, the Dolphins receive no local dollars. The bill would change that by allowing Miami-Dade to increase the tax charged at mainland hotels to 7 percent from 6 percent, and eliminate the current rule that limits the money to publicly owned stadiums. Sun Life Stadium, in Miami Gardens, is privately owned but sits on county land.

The bill pits enthusiasm for one of Florida’s most popular sports teams against a lean budget climate and lingering backlash against the 2009 deal that had Miami and Miami-Dade borrow about $485 million to build a new ballpark for the Marlins. Ross also must navigate a Republican-led Legislature that has twice rebuffed his requests for public dollars.

“I would be surprised if that bill even got a hearing in committee,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican representative from the Tampa area and a critic of tax-funded sports deals. “I’m a big Dolphin fan, and have been for years. But with all due respect, we’ve got people who are struggling throughout this state right now . .. The last thing we should be doing is giving a professional sports team or facility additional tax dollars.”

While the bill would open up the $3 million subsidy to other the teams, the Dolphins see it as unlikely that another owner would be willing to put up as much money for renovations as Ross, a billionaire real estate developer.

If the bill were enacted today, any stadium opened before 1993 would be eligible for the money, provided it could show the proposed renovation would generate an additional $3 million in sales taxes.

Ross and his backers are pitching the renovation as a boon to tourism, with Sun Life a magnet for the Super Bowl, national college football games and other major events. The National Football League is considering South Florida and San Francisco for the 2016 Super Bowl, and the Dolphins say approval of renovation funding is crucial to winning the bid.

Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, who sponsored the Senate bill, said the funding makes sense because when Sun Life hosts a Super Bowl, the entire state benefits from both tourism dollars and publicity.

“It’s a small price to pay for economic development, and for all the shine we get from major sporting events,” said Braynon, whose district includes Sun Life. Rep. Eduardo “Eddy” Gonzalez, R-Hialeah, is the sponsor on the House side.





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NVIDIA’s ‘Project SHIELD’ Console Faces Three Challenges






Despite being announced at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD isn’t the first game-console-in-a-controller to be announced this year. That honor goes to the GameStick, an indie project being funded on Kickstarter. As relative newcomers to the gaming scene, GameStick‘s creators face an uphill battle for acceptance, from both potential buyers and game developers.


But despite NVIDIA‘s established position as a gaming hardware company, it may have a struggle ahead of it, too. Here are three problems which may hinder Project SHIELD‘s adoption.






The size


Unlike GameStick, which is sort of like a classic NES gamepad with a detachable memory stick that plugs into the TV, Project SHIELD is a completely self-contained console. It’s thick and bulky, enormous compared to any of today’s controllers, or even Nintendo’s 3DS XL game console. The closest thing it compares to is an original Xbox controller, before the redesign, but with a flip-up multitouch screen that’s five inches across and has 720p resolution.


You’re not going to be able to just toss Project SHIELD in your pocket, like a smartphone or iPod or very small tablet. It’ll be portable in roughly the same sense that an iPad or netbook is portable, in that you’ll need a handbag or carrying case to put it in. This puts it in a separate size category from most of its competitors, and makes it less convenient to carry around.


The cost


Project SHIELD’s Tegra 4 processor will let it play Tegra-enhanced HD Android games straight from the Google Play store, as well as stream PC games from gaming PCs running Steam and equipped with certain types of NVIDIA graphics cards. Besides that, it’s a full-fledged Android device running Jelly Bean.


But at what cost? Google’s $ 199 Nexus 7 tablet lacks a built-in game controller, doesn’t have a much bigger screen, and uses a less powerful Tegra 3 processor. Dedicated game consoles like the 3DS XL and PlayStation Vita are priced in the same ballpark as the Nexus 7. NVIDIA has yet to announce how much Project SHIELD will cost, or even when it will be on store shelves.


The Tegra-enhanced HD graphics


For many, this will be a plus. There are a lot of Tegra HD (or “THD”) games on the Google Play store right now which boast improved graphics over the versions that run on other graphics processors.


It complicates things for game developers, though, who have to write a separate version just for Tegra processors. Unlike normal ARM processors and Android itself, Tegra is owned solely by NVIDIA, which means there are a lot of tablets and smartphones out there which can’t run those versions of these games. It also means gamers may have to repurchase certain games for Project SHIELD, in order to get the enhanced versions.


Looking towards the future


Things aren’t all gloomy. So far, NVIDIA’s managed to keep developer interest in the Tegra platform, and has gotten a lot of people excited about Project SHIELD. Its partnership with Valve also puts it in position to take advantage of the excitement surrounding Big Picture mode, and the upcoming gaming PCs (like Piston) designed to work with it and connect to a television.


Finally, a wireless game controller can cost upward of $ 50 by itself, so seen in that light Project SHIELD may not turn out to be so expensive — assuming gamers buy Tegra HD titles and NVIDIA graphics cards to use it with.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.


Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Khloe Kardashian Slams Divorce Rumors

Given their immense popularity, The Kardashian family constantly finds themselves at the center of countless rumors -- and while Khloe Kardashian-Odom typically chooses to ignore the lies, this time she can not hold her tongue!

VIDEO - Khloe Shares Childhood Singing Video

In a new blog post, titled Enough is Enough, Kardashian-Odom takes aim at two new tabloid covers: InTouch's, that claims the "devastated" star has learned new information confirming Robert Kardashian was not her biological father and Life & Style's, that asserts she's kicked Lamar Odom out of the house after discovering he's been cheating.

"It is disgusting that Life & Style and InTouch magazines continue to print these false stories about my life," she writes. "The status of my marriage, false reports about a miscarriage, the horrible lie that my dad is not my biological father, jealousy over my sisters’ lives, etc. It is a complete waste of time to address these reports every time they print these ridiculous and absurd tabloid stories, but not only are these stories untrue, they’re also unfair to the people who buy the magazines expecting to read accurate reports."

RELATED - Kris Jenner Slams Divorce Rumors

"Anyone who pays attention to these things can easily see the incredible bond that everyone in my family shares. I'm happily married to a wonderful man and fall in love with him more and more each day, and we’ll have a baby when god wants us to and when the time is right. These blatant lies are distasteful and shameless."

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Gay-bashing B'klyn cops attacked me: lawsuit








A Brooklyn man says a gang of gay-bashing cops savagely beat him and hurled nasty slurs after responding to a noise complaint at a gay pride party at his home early Sunday.

“They were yelling ‘you f---ing fag!’ and ‘homo!’”, Jabbar Cambell, told The Post, recounting how a group of nine NYPD officers allegedly joined in the beatdown. “I couldn’t block the blows. I was fighting to stay conscious [but] I was blacking out because of the hits I was taking.”

Cambell recounted the alleged attack in his lawyer’s office today, shortly after filing legal papers indicating he intends to sue the city and nine NYPD officers.




The alleged beating occured after cops responded to a call about excessive noise at Cambell’s apartment on Sterling Place in Crown Heights.

Cambell saw the police arrive through the surveillance camera at the building.

A short time later, police disabled the camera, according to Cambell, who provided a timestamped videotape that appears to show three officers looking at the camera for about two minutes before one of them reaches up and tampers with it.

“I noticed them turning the security camera and I got scared,” Cambell, a soft-spoken six-footer, said.

When he went to answer the door, he says, two or three officers were banging with batons and flashlights and trying to force their way into the building. Campbell’s 8-room apartment takes up the entire second floor of the two-story building; there is no tenant on the ground floor.

“I opened the door and one officer used his foot and arm to hold the door open,” Cambell said. “There was a sergeant, he yelled ‘get him!’ and that’s when I got attacked.”

“They kept saying, ‘stop resisting’ but I wasn’t resisting. I didn’t have any time to respond,” the soft-spoke, 6-foot-tall Campbell said.

According to a criminal complaint, police claim Campbell ignored their demands to “discontinue a party” and then pushed Sgt. Juan Morero, attempted to flee and flailed his arms at cops and behaved “belligerently’ as he tried to fight with them.

Campbell was charged with resisting arrest, attempted assault, and pot possession.

He said two officers held back his arms while another pushed Campbell’s head forward, and a fourth cop delivered a steady stream of upward blows to Campbell’s face.

“One particular officer had a gloved fist and was hitting me in the face,” he said.

Campbell said he got a black eye, split lip and bloodied mouth in the attack, and was still bleeding when he was taken to the precinct.

Cops later took him to Kings County Hospital for treatment, he said, before holding him in custody for 24 hours.

Campbell, who works as a computer forensics investigator, said he had been paid $300 by a party planner to host the gay pride bash at his house.

About 80 people, mostly gay men and transsexuals, showed up, paying $5 apiece to get in.

Campbell’s lawyer, Herb Subin, said the cops “were screaming anti-gay epithets” and are guilty of a “hate crime.”

“I was an innocent person in my home that night,” Cambell insisted. “What scares me most is that the NYPD are the people you call on to help you. I’m scared now. “










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Coral Gables culinary students learn the art of sushi making




















Christian Rivas is still years away from becoming a professional sushi chef, but his hand-crafted California roll looks good enough to serve professionally.

“The hard part was getting the roll to be in good shape,” Christian, a 16-year-old junior at Coral Gables Senior High, said of his first attempt.

The Gables student was one of about 30 who stood in rapt attention inside the school’s kitchen classroom. He is a member of the school’s culinary arts program.





On Tuesday morning, chefs and executives from Sushi Maki, including CEO Abe Ng, volunteered to teach these students about the restaurant business. The main part of the presentation was Kingston-bred director of sushi education Steve Ho Sang’s instruction on how to make sushi rolls and hand rolls.

Sushi Maki goes through three tons of fresh salmon every week, Ng said. The succulent Norwegian fish in front of the class, expertly filleted via Ho Sang’s knives, looked like half a week’s supply.

The executives were there as part of the Education Fund’s Teach-a-Thon program which brings business professionals into Miami-Dade County Public School classrooms. These pros volunteer to teach a class at the elementary, middle or high school level to help raise money for school activities such as Coral Gables’ culinary program and to promote the value of public school teachers.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that teaching is really brain surgery,” said Linda Lecht, president of The Education Fund. “We want to call attention to the fact that teaching is a hard job and we, as a community, have to rally around our teachers if we are going to improve education. We want to get out the message of how important teaching is to our whole economy.”

Mercy Vera, Coral Gables’ culinary teacher, sought a partnership with The Education Fund — a North Miami-based non-profit that helps fund programs at Miami-Dade public schools from Homestead to Miami Gardens — to help prepare her students for careers in the profession.

The Education Fund’s latest fundraising campaign currently has $23,202 to split among 26 participating schools.

But having pros come into the classroom is also invaluable, Vera said, because it is impractical, if not near impossible, to cram 30 or more teenagers into a professional restaurant kitchen. And, of course, they would not be allowed to use the knives and other utensils. Here, in the school’s carefully stocked kitchen classroom, the guests give the kids a taste of reality.

“This brings a totally different dynamic to the classroom. This is an experience they normally wouldn’t have and this is the only way to show the children industry,” Vera said.

“I love the energy of public schools,” said Ng, 39. “I’m excited to do a restaurant 101, and to ignite a spark in them would be a big thing to me.”

The experience met with much enthusiasm from senior Jorge Castro, 19, who says he hopes to follow in the footsteps of Food Network star chef Bobby Flay, one of his inspirations in the culinary world.

“This is one of those jobs where you meet a lot of people and you make people smile when you make them good food and that counts — to see them smile,” Castro said.

Ng, a Palmetto High and Cornell grad, is part of a family that opened the Canton chain of Chinese food restaurants locally in 1975. His mom and dad still work at the South Miami and Coral Gables locations and the family also operates the spin-off Sushi Maki chain, which opened in 2000.

Ng enjoyed stepping out of the boardroom and into the classroom for his two-hour teaching experience.

“These students seem to have a good foundation,” he said as the students hustled to clean the kitchen. “The future generation of culinary, I’m optimistic about it.”

Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.





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Senator vows revive ALF reform efforts




















The head of the Senate committee in charge of elder affairs vowed Tuesday to revive efforts to toughen the rules for assisted living facilities — and close the most dangerous ALFs.

As the state Legislature met Tuesday for the first time in 2013, Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, chair of the Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs, said she plans to bring back legislation that sank at the end of last year’s session.

At the hearing, resident advocates and ALF operators tried to sway lawmakers through passionate testimony. Elder advocates called for more oversight and tougher punishment for rogue facilities while industry leaders warned that more regulations could put the homes out of business.





Many people in the packed committee room held copies of The Miami Herald’s 2011 Neglected to Death series, distributed by Senate staff before the meeting. The Herald’s two-year series revealed that at least one ALF resident is killed per month from starvation, beatings or neglect at little-regulated homes in Florida.

“There’s so much information out there and so much that needs to be done, and we can’t drop the ball on this,” Sobel said. “This is a very very important issue, and this committee is going to get it done.”

The Agency for Healthcare Administration, which oversees ALFs, recommended proposals similar to those scrapped by the Legislature last year, from increased education requirements for administrators to a state website that would allow potential residents to shop facilities and rate them.

Several witnesses asked for more unannounced visits to facilities. Under current law, inspectors visit the state’s 6,000 facilities only once every two years, said Jim Crochet, Florida’s long-term care ombudsman.

“The more active we are in the facilities monitoring them up front, the less they will fester,” he said. “We’re hoping we can improve with time to meet that goal of four visits per year.”

Although Sobel says “now is the time” to address ALF reform, she could face a daunting task in 2013, with momentum waning.

Change seemed inevitable at this time in 2012, with Gov. Rick Scott promising to clean up the industry and his ALF task force rolling out some of the most forceful reform proposals in decades.

Former Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, a vocal elder-advocate, got behind the issue. And a Miami-Dade County grand jury called for reforms. But Storms couldn’t convince the House to take up the bill as the clock ticked down the final day of session.

This year, Storms has left the Legislature and Scott’s task force has unveiled a second, more business-friendly round of proposals.

Meanwhile, industry leaders and their lobbyists seem to have made headway with lawmakers, some of whom expressed concern during the meeting that ALFs have a hard enough time staying afloat under existing regulations.

“Many of these facilities are already strapped; they’re trying to balance quality care with their staffing needs and that sort of thing,” said Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla. “I don’t want to do anything to take away from their ability to care for their residents.”

Brian Lee, director of Families for Better Care, said industry leaders want lawmakers to believe that problems are being adequately addressed by relatively modest adjustments to existing rules. A panel of ALF operators, policy makers, agency heads and resident advocates are in the final stages of hammering out those changes, which can be made within existing law.

“This is simply rearranging deck chairs, this piecemeal approach won’t work,” Lee told senators. “Residents need comprehensive, resident-focused new laws.”





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Why the Atlantic removed the Scientology advertorial






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The Atlantic apologized on Tuesday for posting a sponsored advertorial from the Church of Scientology, celebrating its leader David Miscavige.


The sponsored post, which went live Monday at 9:25 a.m. PT, touted 2012 as “milestone year” for the secretive church, which has been steeped in controversy throughout the years.






It was taken down about 8:30 p.m. and replaced by a message saying the magazine had “temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads.”


“We screwed up,” Natalie Raabe, an Atlantic spokeswoman told TheWrap after the firestorm of criticism and mockery the advertisement generated on the web. “It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism – but it has – to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes.”


The Atlantic issued the following statement:


We screwed up. It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism – but it has – to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It’s safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge – sheepishly – that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we’re working very hard to put things right.


The timing of the ad was no surprise. New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright’s book-length exposé on Scientology – based on his 2011 profile of former Scientologist Paul Haggis – is due out Thursday.


Sponsored content, otherwise known as native ads or advertorials, have become a popular source of revenue for online publications, including Forbes and Business Insider.


But, normally, advertisers do not want comment threads under their paid-for content, and while this has never been a problem for previous Atlantic clients, the heated feelings surrounding Scientology erupted in the comment section below the article.


The Atlantic’s marketing team was moderating the comments – about 20 in all before the post was pulled – as they were posted, Raabe said.


“In this case, where a mistake was made, where we are taking a hard look at these things, is there were comments allowed on this post,” an Atlantic official with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap. “For a subject like this where people very strong feelings, we realized there’s not a clear policy in place for things like commenting.”


The Church of Scientology told TheWrap no one was available to speak on the controversy, and its media relations team did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.


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Washington Heights Exclusive Sneak Peek

Emotions are running high in The Heights this week as Ludwin struggles to keep it together in the face of family drama while his needy girlfriend Diana demands attention he can no longer give. 

Video: Is 'Buckwild' the New 'Jersey Shore'?

Check out an exclusive sneak peek of the drama-filled episode in the player above!

Washington Heights airs Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. on MTV.

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LI drunk driver who crashed through elderly woman's house gets 1 1/2 years








A Long Island drunk driver was sentenced today for blasting his parents’ Mercedes into an elderly woman’s house — but his lawyer claimed that he only plead guilty to the crime to protect his ex-girlfriend, who was really behind the wheel.

“I’m telling you that my client wasn’t the one driving that night,” said William Keahon, the lawyer for Dan Sajewski, 23, who was sentenced to one and a half years in prison.

Instead, he said, Sajewski’s Brooklyn hipster girlfriend, Sophia Anderson — who has since moved back to Connecticut with her parents to recover from her hard-partying days — drive the car into the Huntington house.





Victor Alcorn






“He pleaded guilty because he cares for Sophia and didn’t want her to face this,” Keahon said, adding Anderson wrote Sajewski a tender letter in prison thanking him for agreeing to plead guilty.

Initially, Anderson almost took the rap for the May 23, 2012 accident because Sajewski was already on probation for a drug charge, said her lawyer, John LoTurco.

"Sophia didn't need to be protected by Daniel," LoTurco said.

"She needed to be protected from Daniel. Sophia was protected by the truth and the overwhelming evidence establishing Daniel as the driver."

LoTurco blasted Keahon's claim -- and portrayed Sajewski was trying to take advantage of a vulnerable young girl to save his own hide. Anderson was 21 years old at the time of the crash.

Sajewski, who has theft and drug charges on his rap sheet, appeared stoic yesterday during his brief sentencing in Riverhead.

He had lived with Anderson in Bushwick before the accident split them up.

Anderson is slated for sentencing Thursday and will likely avoid jail time by pleading to violations related to the crash, sources said.










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.CO sets sights on changing ‘the fabric of the Internet’




















For the millions of people who equate the Web with .com, . CO Internet is out to change that mindset.

The Miami company that manages and markets the .co domain is already making impressive gains — more than 1.4 million in 200 countries have hung their businesses, blogs, personal projects or dreams on a .co virtual shingle. Still, that’s just a tiny fraction of industry titan VeriSign’s 105 million .com registrants.

“We want to change the fabric of the Internet,” Juan Diego Calle, founder and CEO of .CO Internet, said during an interview in .CO’s Brickell office. “We can only make that happen not by changing what happened in the last 25 years of the Web, which is owned by .com. We want to change the next 25.”





About 2½ years after the launch of .CO Internet, .co — the country code of Colombia — continues to be one of the fastest-growing Internet domains in the world and grew by 24 percent in 2012. .CO Internet is profitable and is projecting to bring in more than $25 million in revenues this year, the company said. The early success of .CO Internet, with operations in Miami and Colombia, is powered by passion and perseverance.

Calle moved to Miami from Colombia at age 15 with his family. He started several businesses, including one he sold in 2005 providing seed capital for what would come next. “I can’t say I ever sat still.” When he learned Colombia would be commercializing the country's .co domain extension in late 2006, he said it hit him like a lightning bolt.

With the right strategy and by “marketing the hell out of it,” the entrepreneur believed .co could solve a huge problem in the market — vanishing Internet domain names. If you’ve tried to nab a new .com address lately, you can relate — it’s difficult to find one that hasn’t been snatched up.

Calle thought that by appealing to the hearts and minds of the entrepreneur, .co could go where .info, .biz, .net or .me had never gone before. But first he needed the right team.

One of this first stops: The Big Apple, to visit Nicolai Bezsonoff, who had been an advisor and shareholder in Calle’s TeRespondo.com, a sort of Ask Jeeves for the Latin American market that was sold to Yahoo in 2005. At the time, Bezsonoff was the director of technology and operations at Citigroup.

“We went out for coffee, he started pitching me on a napkin. I said ‘really dude you want me to leave a big job at Citigroup for this?’ ” said Bezsonoff. “But he kept showing me the numbers … Later, that napkin was on my desk and it was one of those boring days and I kept looking at it and thought maybe I should.” He would become .CO’s chief operating officer.

Lori Anne Wardi, a lawyer and serial entrepreneur who was working at a venture capital firm at the time, became vice president in charge of brand strategy, business development and global communications. “She’s the heart and soul of the company,” said Calle. Eduardo Santoyo, based in Bogota, would become corporate vice president over policy and be the liaison with the Colombian government. “Some would say it was overkill talent but I needed the best. ... When you have a big dream, you have to think big and hire the right people,” Calle said.





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Children living in home of missing baby taken into DCF custody




















The four young siblings of Brittney Sierra, the mother of a Hallandale Beach baby whose remains may have been found behind their former rental home last week, have been taken into custody by the Department of Children & Families.

The children, 8-year-old twins, a 10-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, are the children of Renee Menendez, Sierra’s mother.

Sierra’s other two children had already been taken into DCF custody.





DCF picked up the children late Friday due to a “prior history” with the family, said spokeswoman Paige Patterson-Hughes. The were put into a state shelter over the weekend.

On Monday, a Broward County judge ordered there be no contact between the children and their parents.

Meanwhile, Sierra, 21, and Calvin Melvin, 27, are being held in Broward County jails on child neglect charges. The each are being held on $100,000 bond. Sierra is being represented by public defender Don Williams.

Tiny skeletal remains were unearthed behind the home at 106 NW First Ave., in Hallandale Beach Friday and Saturday. They are presumed to be those of 5-month-old Dontrell Melvin, who has not been seen in 18 months.

“The medical examiner will be examining the remains found on Friday and Saturday,” said Hallandale Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy. “DNA testing will be conducted for a positive ID. Until then, this is still an investigation of a missing persons case and a homicide case.”

He said that how soon the information becomes available depends on “the scientists and the protocols they use.”

Melvin and Sierra and two of Sierra’s children moved into another Hallandale Beach home just five blocks west of where they had been living when Dontrell disappeared about a year ago. They moved in with Sierra’s mother and her own four children.

The search for Dontrell began last week when authorities responded to a Department of Children & Families hotline call of alleged child neglect. When police arrived at the home, they found only two of Sierra’s children where there when there were supposed to be three.

Melvin had an explanation: He had taken Dontrell to live with his parents — the boy’s grandparents — because he and Sierra were experiencing financial difficulties. Officers went to the grandparents’ Pompano Beach home to check out the story, but the grandparents said it wasn’t true.

Police went back to talk to Melvin, but he was gone. He later turned himself in.

Melvin later offered police a variety of stories about his son’s disappearance. One was that he had left the boy at a North Miami-Dade fire station — which is legal under the state’s Safe Haven law, though only for about a week after a child’s birth.

Police didn’t believe him.

Sierra initially told police that Melvin walked out of their Hallandale Beach home with Dontrell in July 2011 — and came back without him. When she pressed Melvin about what he had done with the boy, he said he had given the child to his parents. She said she believed him, and life went on in the Hallandale Beach house, minus Dontrell.

Melvin and Sierra would have another child. There was also a third child — one by a different father — in the household.

Throughout the coming months, no one — not Sierra, not Melvin, not the boy’s grandparents nor other family members — reported to authorities that Dontrell had vanished.





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Smartphone data consumption tops tablets for the first time ever









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REPORT: Lance Armstrong Tells Oprah Winfrey He Doped

After more than a decade of denials, Lance Armstrong has reportedly come clean to Oprah Winfrey.

RELATED: Armstrong Agrees to Oprah Interview

According to The Associated Press, a person close to the situation spoke on a condition of anonymity, claiming that Armstrong confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France during an interview with Oprah for OWN's Oprah's Next Chapter.

ABC News reports that Armstrong spoke to about 100 Livestrong Foundation staffers in Austin, Texas prior to his interview. Spokeswoman Katherine McLane described Armstrong's speech to ABC News, calling it a "sincere and heartfelt apology" in which he "took responsibility" for any trouble that he may have brought on the foundation.

A report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency led to Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour titles last year, but Armstrong has maintained his innocence until now.

USADA chief executive Travis Tygart has accused Armstrong of taking part in "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

RELATED: Armstrong To Be Stripped of Tour De France Titles

Oprah is scheduled to appear live on CBS This Morning tomorrow, January 15. Armstrong's episode of Oprah's Next Chapter airs Thursday, January 17 at 9 p.m. on OWN.

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Lance Armstrong confesses to Oprah Winfrey: report








AUSTIN, Texas -- A person familiar with the situation says Lance Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey during an interview Monday that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the interview is to be broadcast Thursday on Winfrey's network.

Armstrong was stripped of all seven Tour titles last year in the wake of a voluminous U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that portrayed him as a ruthless competitor, willing to go to any lengths to win the prestigious race. USADA chief executive Travis Tygart labeled the doping regimen allegedly carried out by the U.S. Postal Service team that Armstrong once led, "The most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."





REUTERS



Lance Armstrong





After a federal investigation of the cyclist was dropped without charges being brought last year, USADA stepped in with an investigation of its own. The agency deposed 11 former teammates and accused Armstrong of masterminding a complex and brazen drug program that included steroids, blood boosters and a range of other performance-enhancers.










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Miami Dolphins worry Marlins stand between them and a tax-funded roof for Sun Life Stadium




















The Miami Dolphins are reviving their failed bid to win tax dollars for a football stadium. But team executives want no comparisons to a successful bid to win tax dollars for a baseball stadium.

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has called a press conference for Monday to unveil a plan for an improved Sun Life Stadium. Sources say the plan will include asking state and local governments to help pay for a $400 million renovation of the 1987 facility.

State lawmakers in recent years rebuffed the Dolphins when the team asked for help on a less expensive renovation. And while the economy and state finances are more favorable this time around, Dolphin executives see a bigger challenge now from lingering backlash against the $639 million ballpark taxpayers built for the Miami Marlins.





“It can’t be anything close to what the Marlins did,’’ said state Sen. Oscar Braynon, a Democrat whose Miami Gardens district includes Sun Life Stadium and who sponsored a 2011 bill to raise hotel taxes to fund the Dolphins renovation plan. “Unless you do something totally counter to what the Marlins did, nobody is going to vote for it.”

Polls showed Miami and Miami-Dade’s 2009 votes to build the baseball stadium with 75 percent public money were never popular. But the Marlins’ recent stripping of star players from their payroll has made the new Little Havana park Topic A when it comes to plotting a Dolphins’ victory for winning tax dollars themselves.

Both the Marlins and the Dolphins declined to comment for this story. The Dolphins have not released details of how they want to pay for the renovation.

Dolphins executives plan to pursue two funding sources from state and local government, according to several people familiar with the team’s plans. For the first funding stream, the Dolphins plan to ask Miami-Dade to raise taxes charged mainland hotels from 6 percent to 7 percent and earmark the extra money for the stadium. The Dolphins also plan to ask Florida for an additional $2 million rebate on sales taxes on top of the $2 million the stadium already receives from the state each year under a special subsidy for professional sports teams.

Ross is expected to pledge a significant amount of the renovation money himself. Sources who have been briefed on the Dolphins’ proposal say the total pricetag for the project is $400 million. That’s almost double the renovation budget the Dolphins proposed when the team last went to the Legislature for money in 2011.

At the time, the Dolphins unveiled a $225 million redo of Sun Life with expanded sideline seating, high-definition lighting and a partial roof that would both shade seats during hot games and shield spectators from the kind of downpour that drenched the stands during the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami Gardens. The Dolphins, top executives at the NFL and some community leaders have warned that without upgrades to Sun Life, South Florida risks losing its standing as one of the nation’s top venues for the Super Bowl and college football championships.

“We need to keep up with the times,’’ said Phillis Oeters, the chair of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. “Sports is big, big business here.”

Backlash against the 2009 Marlins deal was an obstacle when the Dolphins asked for tax money in 2010 and 2011, but the baseball team’s unloading of ace Josh Johnson, star shortstop Jose Reyes and other stand-out players in November revived public anger against the financing arrangement.





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Investigators to determine cause of fatal MacArthur Causeway boating accident




















Investigators on Sunday were looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of a woman killed after the boat she was passenger in slammed into concrete pilings underneath the MacArthur Causeway bridge.

Janette Africano, 35, of Hialeah, suffered severe blunt trauma to the head or body and died Saturday afternoon after being rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.

An autopsy will determine the exact cause death.





Africano and her boyfriend had been pleasure boating minutes before the 5 p.m. accident on the Intercostal Waterway near PortMiami, authorities said.

The accident occurred as the couple, traveling in an 18-foot white and red boat, were heading south. As they approached the MacArthur bridge, there was a cruise ship making a turn ahead of them. At that point, the couple decided to turn back north, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino on Sunday.

But the currents near the bridge were rough and the couple began drifting toward the pilings. Africano may have stood up and tried to stop the boat from colliding. Somehow the boat violently slammed into the piling, fatally injuring her.

Why the boat roared out of control is under investigation, Pino said. He said the accident is considered “unusual“ because it involves a single boat and neither excessive speed or alcohol appear to be a factor.

No charges have been filed as of Sunday as investigators piece together what occurred.

“We’re looking at every possible cause, including mechanical failure and the experience of the driver,” Pino said.





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Facebook search leads to Iowa man, sister reunion






DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man has been reunited with his sister 65 years after the siblings were separated in foster care thanks to a 7-year-old friend who searched Facebook.


Sixty-six-year-old Clifford Boyson of Davenport met his 70-year-old sister, Betty Billadeau, in person on Saturday. Billadeau drove up from her home in Florissant, Mo., with her daughter and granddaughter for the reunion.






Boyson and Billadeau both tried to find each other for years without success.


Then 7-year-old Eddie Hanzelin, who is the son of Boyson‘s landlord, got involved.


Eddie managed to find Billadeau by searching Facebook with her maiden name. He recognized the family resemblance when he saw her picture.


Near the end of their tearful reunion Boyson and Billadeau presented Eddie with a $ 125 check in appreciation of his detective work.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Lindsay Lohan The Canyons Clip

Much ado has been made of Lindsay Lohan's performance in, and behavior while making, The Canyons. Seriously, if you haven't read The New York Times' set report, take a pause and click here before reading on.


RELATED - Lindsay Lohan Hits Reality TV

While the world waits to see what kind of movie resulted from The Canyons' hellish shoot, you can get a first look at the film thanks to a brand new clip.


VIDEO - Meet Lindsay Lohan's Guardian Angel

The scene takes a moment to get going (yes, let's watch a negligee-clad Lohan tip-toe around an apartment for longer), once James Deen's character wakes up, and the fireworks begin, you're given the distinct impression the Bret Easton Ellis scripted, Paul Schrader directed drama could have some serious bite to it.

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NRA says Congress will not pass assault weapons ban








WASHINGTON — The powerful gun lobby is gauging enough support in Congress to block a law that would ban assault weapons, despite promises from the White House and senior lawmakers to make such a measure a reality.

Senators plan to introduce a bill that would ban assault weapons and limit the size of ammunition magazines, like the one used in the December shooting massacre that killed 27 people, most of them children, in Newtown, Conn. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has promised to push for a renewal of expired legislation.

The National Rifle Association has so far prevented passage of another assault weapons ban like the one that expired in 2004. But some lawmakers say the Newtown tragedy has transformed the country, and Americans are ready for stricter gun laws. President Barack Obama has made gun control a top priority. And on Tuesday Vice President Joe Biden is expected to give Obama a comprehensive package of recommendations for curbing gun violence.





Bloomberg



The NRA is confident Congress won't ban semi-automatic assault rifles, like these made by Bushmaster, in the wake of the Newtown school shooting.





Still, the NRA has faith that Congress would prevent a new weapons ban.

"When a president takes all the power of his office, if he's willing to expend political capital, you don't want to make predictions. You don't want to bet your house on the outcome. But I would say that the likelihood is that they are not going to be able to get an assault weapons ban through this Congress," NRA president David Keene told CNN's "State of the Union."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., responded with a flat out "no" when asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" whether Congress would pass a ban on assault weapons.

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a lifelong member of the NRA has said everything should be on the table to prevent another tragedy like Newtown. But he assured gun owners he would fight for gun rights at the same time. "I would tell all of my friends in NRA, I will work extremely hard and I will guarantee you there will not be an encroachment on your Second Amendment rights," Manchin said on ABC's "This Week."

The NRA's deep pockets help bolster allies and punish lawmakers who buck them. The group spent at least $24 million in the 2012 elections — $16.8 million through its political action committee and nearly $7.5 million through its affiliated Institute for Legislative Action. Separately, the NRA spent some $4.4 million through July 1 to lobby Congress. Keene insists the group represents its members and not just the gun manufacturers, though he said the NRA would like industry to contribute more money to the association.

"We know what works and what doesn't work. And we're not willing to compromise on people's rights when there is no evidence that doing so is going to accomplish the purpose," Keene said.

The NRA, instead, is pushing for measures that would keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, until a person gets better. "If they are cured, there ought to be a way out of it," Keene said.

Currently, a person is banned from buying a gun from a licensed dealer if the person is a fugitive, a felon, convicted of substance abuse, convicted of domestic violence, living in the U.S. illegally or someone who "has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution."

States, however, are inconsistent in providing information about mentally ill residents to the federal government for background checks. And, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said some 40 percent of gun sales happen with no background checks, such as at gun shows and by private sellers over the Internet or through classified ads.










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