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

TALLAHASSEE --
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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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.

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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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