Designer rapist Anand Jon has 48 sex-attack counts dropped, still faces 54 years

Manhattan prosecutors have dropped almost their entire case against a notorious California fashion designer-turned-serial rapist, allowing him to plead guilty to just a single sex-attack count in what was once a twelve-victim, 49-count indictment.

Under a plea taken in Manhattan Supreme Court today, Anand Jon -- whose designs have been worn by Paris Hilton, Oprah Winfrey and Janet Jackson -- admitted only to forcing oral sex on one adult, aspiring female model.

On April 2, Jon will be sentenced to the five years he has already served in California; he still has 54 years-to-life remaining on that sentence, which covers his convictions on casting-couch sex assaults involving 16 women and girls.

AP

Fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander in LA court in 2008.

He still faces additional similar charges in Texas, prosecutors said.

ADA Maxine Rosenthal told a judge that the deal was accepted, "to spare the victims from having to testify at multiple proceedings" and in consideration of his lengthy sentence in California.

Jon lawyers called the deal a victory, and said that some of the materials turned over by Manhattan prosecutors as part of the pre-trial process here will be extremely valuable as he continues work on his California appeal.

"We've accomplished what we wanted, which was to obtain records," said Jon lawyer Kimberly Summers.

Jon's appeal argues that he had ineffective counsel in California; the Manhattan documents indicate that the CA lawyers never obtained vital police documents and correspondence showing his accusers were squaring their stories among themselves and with civil lawyers, Summers said.

The designer - who has appeared on America's Next Top Model - didn't let prison hurt his style. He appeared in court in a dapper Mandarin collared grey suit and freshly cut hair.

"Considering that the initial 49 charges included allegations of rape, drugging and mafia death threats, the settlement of one conviction involving Mr. Alexander's giving oral sex to an adult female is acceptable," defense lawyer Angelyn Gates said in a written statement.

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Was that Che in Beach hotel? Not any longer

Gus Exposito, 51, of Davie, couldn’t believe what he saw in the marble walls of South Beach’s W Hotel: a larger-than-life framed photograph of what looked like communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

“He was a mass murderer, killed thousands of Cubans execution-style,” Exposito wrote in an email, comparing the long-dead Fidel Castro pal to Adolf Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan. “I spoke to the manager and he referred to it as art!”

A hotel employee said complaints started almost as soon as the photo, about seven feet tall, went up last week. It came down Tuesday.

“We did it as a matter of respect and sensitivity toward the local community,” hotel manager Damien O’Connor said. “We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused.”

The man in the photo looks a little different from the iconic image of Che Guevara taken by Alberto Díaz “Korda” Gutiérrez in 1959. Is this a younger Che or someone dressed like Che? Or perhaps a post-modern self-portrait of artist Gavin Turk?

In The Guardian, a London newspaper, Turk said he made a photo of himself posed as Che to advertise an exhibition: “It was quite a degraded, grainy image, so I could photograph myself in such a way that you wouldn’t recognize that it was me and not, in fact, Che. You only need key elements of the photo — the beret, the long hair, the position of the eyes (as with classical icons, looking up and to the right), a bit of beard — to make it function as a symbol.”

But it sure looks like Che.

The image is common enough, and enough time has passed since the 1959 revolution, that not every Cuban-American is outraged. Asked about the idea of hanging a Che poster in a South Florida hotel, a regular Miami Herald reader named Mario Iglesias said it’s time to grow up.

“I think the Cuban-American community has to mature and learn that the right to put up a picture of Che is the very reason we find Castro and Che so repugnant — because they would act to quash opposing speech,” he wrote in an email. “It is the very result of being in favor of a free society that there will be holocaust survivors who have to tolerate Nazi marches and Cuban-Americans have to recognize that not protesting a Che poster is not the same as supporting Castro.”

For Exposito, though, the right to post a Che picture doesn’t translate into a good reason to display it. It seemed to ruin his night out.

“We went to dinner with my wife and two couples at Mr. Chow and after dinner we took a walk to the rear to smoke a cigar, and — bang — there it was. We could not believe our eyes!” he wrote.

El Nuevo Herald Staff Writer Juan Carlos Chavez contributed to this report.

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Now owned by top executives, Cruise Planners on course toward continued growth

With a background in travel and present-day focus on raising her two small children, Lori Jahner set out to find work she enjoyed that would give her the flexibility she needed.

The 33-year-old from Aurora, Colo. decided on Cruise Planners — American Express Travel, a home-based travel agent network headquartered in Coral Springs.

“They have so much training to offer, ongoing education, and the branded name alone is so reputable and distinctive,” Jahner said. “Out of all the ones that I kind of looked into, this is the one that was standing out. More or less, it’s just the perfect opportunity so that I can do what I love, which is raising my kids but also selling travel.”

She has plenty of company. More than 850 franchise owners around the country are actively selling travel through Cruise Planners after paying startup costs that range from zero to $9,995. Those costs cover initial and continued training, marketing and advertising programs, a website, accounting and customer management software and support from the home office.

Fueled by everyone from stay-at-home moms to firefighters and retirees, the number of franchisees has grown by 14 percent annually for the last few years.

That has not gone unnoticed by cruise lines, who welcome more voices pitching their product.

“I think they are very important,” said Camille Olivere, Norwegian Cruise Line’s senior vice president of sales in North America. “They’re big supporters of ours and they’re bringing new people into the industry — and that is something that we desperately need.”

Cruise Planners agents sold $156 million in travel and related services last year, a 16 percent increase over 2011 and 48 percent jump over 2009.

Confident in continued growth, top Cruise Planners executives bought the company late last year from Palm Beach Capital, the private equity firm that had been majority owner since 2007.

CEO Michelle Fee, who has always held a stake in the company and now owns 50 percent, said she and fellow owners chief financial officer Tom Kruszewski and chief operating officer Vicky Garcia did not want to risk Cruise Planners being taken over by another investment group that might try to make changes.

“We wanted to make sure that whatever we keep doing is in the best interest of the company,” said Kruszewski, 60.

Before, Fee said, agents often asked whether the investment company would try to sell or change Cruise Planners. She said the purchase sends a good message.

“It shows them that we’re in this with you,” said Fee, 50, who co-founded the company with two partners 19 years ago. Those partners retired in 2007.

The company has invested about $2 million in technology upgrades and equipment in the last few years, including a mobile reservations system for agents that was introduced about a year and a half ago, and a consumer mobile app for iPhones and Androids that should launch later this month.

“We just have to be cutting edge,” Fee said. “Travel is technology; we have to be there with the big guys. Not only are we matching them, but we want to be better.”

Janet Fernandez, who started her Crise Planners franchise, Cruise Impressions, last July after working in different parts of the cruise industry since 1998, said she is already taking advantage of the latest tech innovations.

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Stacy Keibler's Valentine's Day Plans with Clooney

Stacy Keibler kept a tight lid on what she and beau George Clooney will be up to on Valentine's Day, but she may have left some hints as she gave ET a sneak peek of her new reality competition show, Supermarket Superstar.

PICS: Surprising Celebrity Hookups

Supermarket Superstar, premiering later this year on Lifetime, gives contestants a chance to get their food creation onto supermarket shelves.

"This is the American dream -- if you have a recipe, look what you can become," said Keibler, showing off some grocery store shelves from the set.

As for Keibler and Clooney's recipe for stirring up romance on Valentine's Day, don't be surprised if it's a low-key celebration involving lots of food.

"I love to cook and I love to eat," said Keibler. "[Clooney and I] cook well together."

Watch the video for more.

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Bloomberg plans pilot program to collect and compost food waste

In an ambitious and dramatic move to boost a dismal recycling rate, the Bloomberg Administration intends for the first time to collect and compost food waste starting with a pilot program on Staten Island.

Officials said Mayor Bloomberg will announce the initiative tomorrow in his 12th and final State of the City address at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

If the program for single-family homes in the smallest borough works, it'll be expanded citywide -- diverting about 20 percent of the garbage from the waste stream of the nation's largest metropolis. Other cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, already turn leftovers into fertilizer.

"The administration seems to recognize it needs to polish up its record on recycling to keep up an overall impressive record on environmental and sustainable issues," said Eric Goldstein, senior attorney of the National Resources Defense Council.

"Recycling has been the soft spot....This can mark a real turning point in returning New York to a leadership role."

The city's recycling rate hovers around 15 percent, less than half the national average. When Bloomberg took office in 2002, it was 19 percent.

The mayor has pledged to double the recycling rate by 2017, which Goldstein said would not only save the environment but also save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. The city spends more than $300 million to ship 10,800 tons of trash each day to landfills. The cost goes up almost every year.

Officials on Staten Island -- many of whom took part in the fight to shut the enormous Fresh Kills landfill during the Giuliani Administration -- reacted warily.

"I think most people are not going to like it," predicted Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro. "I doubt if it's going to be successful."

As someone with experience in the recycling business, Molinari said he's worried that bins for food scraps will quickly vanish after the first collection.

"The DS (Department of Sanitation) truck comes, takes off the cover and dumps the garbage. That's the end of the pail and the end of the cover," he said.

City officials said the administration would supply rigid containers with locked tops that would be collected separately, probably starting in the spring.

"It'll be foolproof," vowed one official.

City Councilman James Oddo (R-S.I.) said he was concerned that his constituents would start getting fined if they mistakenly mix organic and regular garbage.

But officials offered reassurances on that front as well, saying there would be no fines during the pilot period.

To round out his recycling package, the mayor confirmed the worst fear of take-out joints -- he's going to ask the City Council to make New York the first major East Coast city to ban Styrofoam.

An estimated 20,000 tons of the nearly-indestructible stuff enters the waste stream each year.

Finally, the mayor wants to amend the Building Code so that 20 percent of the spaces in all new parking garages are wired for electric vehicles, creating an estimated 10,00 such spots in seven years. The city also plans to set up two sites for 30-minute electric car charge-ups, one in Seward Park for the public and another at Con Ed headquarters on Irving Place for taxi fleets.

Bloomberg's announcement will come on a propitious day, both Valentine's Day and his 71st birthday.

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Disabled Carnival ship limping toward land

Carnival Cruise Lines President and CEO Gerry Cahill on Tuesday apologized to passengers stranded after an engine room fire left 4,229 people adrift on one of the cruise giant’s ships in the Gulf of Mexico.

“No one here from Carnival is happy about the conditions on board the ship and we obviously are very, very sorry about what’s taken place,” Cahill said at a press conference at the company’s headquarters in Doral. “There’s no question that conditions on board the ship are very challenging. I can assure you that everyone on board in the Carnival team and everyone shoreside is doing everything they can to make our guests as comfortable as possible.”

Passengers aboard the fire-stricken Carnival Triumph have one more day at sea without air conditioning or widespread use of toilets before they reach land in Mobile, Ala. under the power of two tugboats. A U.S. Coast Guard vessel is escorting the ship in case of emergencies.

“If something does happen, we’re out there to help,” said Petty Officer Richard Brahm.

Cahill said the company has lined up more than 1,500 hotel rooms in New Orleans and Mobile for Thursday night and 20 charter flights to fly people to Houston on Friday. The company has canceled the ship’s Feb. 11 and 16 sailings. For those who just want to get home, Carnival is arranging for motorcoach service to Houston and Galveston.

By the time they arrive, it will have been a longer trip than they bargained for, and much less of a vacation.

The 14-year-old ship left Galveston for a four-night Western Caribbean cruise on Thursday with 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew on board; it was scheduled to return Monday morning.

But Sunday morning, fire broke out in an engine room for unknown reasons as the ship sailed off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The blaze was put out by automatic extinguishing systems, but the ship lost propulsion and was forced to operate on emergency generator power.

Since then, passengers have complained of stench, human waste in public areas, heat and long lines for food.

Texas resident Brent Nutt, whose wife is on the cruise ship, said Monday that she told him the "whole boat stinks extremely bad" and some passengers were getting sick and throwing up, the Associated Press reported. Nutt said his wife reported "water and feces all over the floor."

Jimmy Mowlam, 63, told the Associated Press his 37-year-old son, Rob Mowlam, told him by phone Monday night that the lack of ventilation onboard Carnival Cruise Lines’ Carnival Triumph had made it too hot to sleep inside. He said Rob and his new bride are among the many passengers who have set up camp on the ocean liner’s decks and in its common areas.

"He said up on deck it looks like a shanty town, with sheets, almost like tents, mattresses, anything else they can pull to sleep on," said Mowlam, 63, who is from southeast Texas.

Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor-in chief of the popular website CruiseCritic.com, said many frequent cruisers take such incidents in stride – but, she said, the fact that there have been several fires on ships in recent years could be cause for concern.

In a strikingly similar case, the Carnival Splendor was set adrift in the Gulf in November 2010 after a major fire. It was out of service for about three months; the company estimated the cost was $56 million.

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State to crackdown on tutoring contractors

Florida will crack down on tutoring contractors that defraud school districts and — for the first time — require criminal background checks for people who head tutoring firms under changes announced Tuesday by the state’s top education official.

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett issued a statement outlining a series of steps his department will take to rein in fraud and ensure that tens of millions of dollars in education funding steered to private tutoring firms is better spent.

“We must hold the businesses and their leaders responsible for proving that the dollars directed to tutoring ... produce the results intended,” Bennett said. “Our students deserve nothing less.”

The statement comes in response to a three-month investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, which found that lax state oversight has made subsidized tutoring a source of easy cash for criminals, cheaters and opportunists.

Besides screening owners of companies that offer the mandated instruction, the state also will work with lawmakers to cut the high costs of the program — the Times found that the average company charges more than $60 an hour per student — and create better ways to measure whether tutors are helping kids learn.

“We should know that our investment in our students is producing a return,” Bennett said.

The commissioner also said the education department will go after fraud and seek to recoup “misused state resources.”

The statement offered few details about how the Department of Education will accomplish these goals, and more specifics weren’t immediately available Tuesday afternoon.

The department office in charge of overseeing the tutoring program, known as supplemental educational services, has been affected in recent years by reorganizations and turnover.

Some companies have capitalized on weak oversight, the Times reported Sunday.

The newspaper found that a convicted rapist, a woman who served probation for child neglect and a fugitive were among the listed officers and directors of state-approved tutoring companies for poor kids in failing schools.

In at least 40 cases in the past few years, companies have faked enrollment forms or billed for tutoring that didn’t happen. And the program is rife with conflicts of interest, the Times found.

Federal education law originally required school districts to hire private tutoring companies for poor students in schools that failed to improve test scores, but Florida got a waiver from that law last February.

A month later, state lawmakers acted to require tutoring as part of a state law, quietly voting to keep the money for tutoring companies flowing. This school year, Florida set aside at least $50 million for private tutors. The money comes from federal Title I funds that districts otherwise would be free to spend in high-poverty schools.

The state requirement was included at the urging of tutoring industry lobbyists and Bennett’s predecessor, Gerard Robinson, who declined to discuss his support for the program.

H. Marlene O’Toole, chairwoman of the state House education committee, said she was ready to work with the education department to tighten oversight.

“It’s very discouraging when we have good programs to help young people, and we find someone, usually an adult, who will take advantage of this,” said O’Toole, R-Lady Lake.

District administrators across the state, including Hillsborough County schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, have decried the program, saying public schools could better spend the tax dollars by hiring more teachers or creating their own programs.

“I am encouraged by the Commissioner’s bold and immediate response to a very serious issue,” Elia said in a statement Tuesday. “Everyone who receives public dollars needs to be held accountable. The state needs to put safeguards in place and put the focus back on meeting the needs of children.”

Pinellas County schools Superintendent Mike Grego put it bluntly Monday in an interview with the Times editorial board.

“Right now we’re forced to do it,” Grego said of hiring private tutoring firms. “I want out.”

Tampa Bay Times staff writer Cara Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.

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Window washer left hanging sues scaffolding company

A window washer who was left dangling at a 45-degree angle from a midtown high rise last summer is suing the scaffold company and the building for multiple injuries he sustained during the slip, according to a new lawsuit.

Steven Kind, 40, of Long Island, was 42 stories above the street polishing the exterior panes of 1177 Sixth Ave. on July 11 when the “scaffold suddenly failed, collapsed, fell and otherwise violently moved resulting in serious gravity-driven injuries,” he claims in court papers.

He and another washer were left dangling precariously from the platform for 30 minutes before rescue personnel cut through glass to save them.

Kind, a father and the family’s primary breadwinner, has been in and out of the hospital for pain in his neck, shoulder, back and knees, his attorney, Dario Perez, said.

“It seems these are life changing injuries,” Perez added.

The former full-time union man has been unable to work since the accident.

A 2012 Labor Department report said the incident was caused by “operator’s error by the window cleaners.”

Kind wants unspecified damages for his injuries.

A spokesman for 1177 Sixth said he had not yet seen the lawsuit. The scaffold company, Titanium Scaffold Services, did not return calls for comment.

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Green cards for sale at a South Beach hotel: Competition is on for EB5 investment visas

If David Hart gets his way, South Beach’s 42-room Astor Hotel will be on a hiring spree this year as it adds concierge service, a roof-top pool, an all-night diner, spa and private-car service available 24 hours a day.

New hires will be crucial to Hart’s business plan, since foreign investors have agreed to pay about $50,000 for each job created by the Art Deco boutique.

The Miami immigration lawyer specializes in arranging visas for wealthy foreign citizens under a special program that trades green cards for investment dollars. Businesses get the money and must use it to boost payroll. The minimum investment is $500,000 to add at least 10 jobs to the economy. That puts the pressure on Hart and his partners at the Astor to beef up payroll dramatically, with plans to take a hotel with roughly 20 employees to one with as many as 100 workers.

“My primary responsibility is to make something happen here over the next two years that will create the jobs we need,’’ Hart said a few steps away from a nearly empty restaurant on a recent weekday morning. “It’s all going to be transformed.”

Though established in the 1990s, the “EB5” visas soared in popularity during the recession as developers sought foreign cash to replace dried-up credit markets in the United States.

Chinese investors dominate the transactions, accounting for about 65 percent of the nearly 9,000 EB5 visas granted since 2006. South Korea finishes a distant second at 12 percent and the United Kingdom holds the third-place slot at 3 percent. If Latin America and the Caribbean were one country, they would rank No. 4 on the list, with 231 EB5 visas granted, or about 3 percent of the total.

Competition has gotten stiffer for the deep-pocketed foreign investors willing to pay for green cards. The University of Miami’s bio-science research park near the Jackson hospital system raised $20 million from 40 foreign investors under the EB5 program, most of them from Asia. The money went into the park’s first building; visa brokers are waiting to see if the second building will proceed so they can offer a new pool of potential green-card sales.

In Hollywood, the stalled $131 million Margaritaville resort had hoped to raise about $75 million from EB5 investors before ditching that plan last year to pursue more traditional financing. A retail complex by developer Jeff Berkowitz in Coral Gables also launched a program to raise $50 million in EB5 money for the project, Gables Station. Hart worked with other EB5 investors to back pizza restaurants in Miami and South Beach. A limestone mine in Martin County also was backed by EB5 dollars.

This year, the city of Miami itself is expected to get into the business by setting up an EB5 program to raise foreign cash for a range of city businesses and developments. The first would be the tallest building in the city — developer Tibor Hollo’s planned 85-story apartment tower, the Panorama, in downtown Miami.

With a construction cost of about $700 million, Miami’s debut EB5 venture hopes to raise about $100 million from foreign investors, said Laura Reiff, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer in Virginia working with Miami on the EB5 effort. “This is a marquis project,’’ she said.

The arrangement is a novel one for Miami, with the city planning to help a private developer raise funds overseas for a new high-rise. And it would allow Hollo and future participants to tout the city of Miami’s endorsement when competing with other Miami-area projects for EB5 dollars. “We will have the benefit of the brand of the city of Miami,’’ said Mikki Canton, the $6,000-a-month city consultant heading Miami’s EB5 effort. “A lot of these others are privately owned and they won’t have that brand.”

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Papal transition won’t lead to big changes in South Florida parishes, archbishop says

Like millions of other Roman Catholics, when Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski woke up Monday morning and heard the news that Pope Benedict XVI had announced his resignation, he thought it was just rumor.

When he realized it wasn’t, Wenski called Mary Ross Agosta, the Archdiocese’s communications director, and told her: “ ‘Get ready for a busy day.’ ’’

And so it was, as he gave interview after interview on how the pope’s resignation — the first in nearly six centuries — might affect the Church and its believers.

Wenski doesn’t anticipate “radical shifts’’ in the church with a new leader at the helm.

“Whoever comes on as pope will be Catholic, so...he’ll present the Catholic teachings and there’s not going to be any changes in those teachings, because the pope is not an absolute ruler who can make it up as he goes along,’’ Wenski said.

Still, he said, “most people live their faith on a local level,’’ so that a papal transition isn’t likely to shake things up in South Florida parishes.

Wenski, 62, said he understood how demanding the pontifical duties are.

“When the pope says he doesn’t have the strength anymore, considering my own schedule in this little archdiocese, I get it. It’s a grueling job...He embraced the suffering that comes with the job but he doesn’t have the physical health and energy to continue it.

“His doctors have been telling him to restrict his travel, and the ability to travel has become a requisite for a modern-day pope.’’

Anne Llewellyn of Plantation, a parishioner at St. Gregory the Great, applauded the pope for understanding his limitations and for making “the difficult decision for the good of the church.’’

She called Benedict “a brilliant man’’ who deserves thanks for his leadership. However, she remains “angry with the U.S. Church’’ over sex scandal cover-ups, and no longer supports the archdiocese.

Barry University theology professor Edward Sunshine acknowledged the pope’s resignation comes at a time when the church sex-abuse scandals ”have weakened the moral authority and credibility of church leaders,’’ and when 10 percent of U.S. adults identify as former Catholics.

By bowing out, Sunshine added, the pope “is setting a modern precedent that is necessary for the church to function well in the world today.”

With people living longer — Pope Benedict XVI is 85, his predecessor Pope John Paul II was 84 when he died after 27 years as head of the church — there is an increased chance of someone suffering from a debilitating condition, such as infirmity or senility, Sunshine said.

“An orderly transition of church leadership if necessary is much better than a long, agonizing wait for an infirm pontiff to die in office,” Sunshine said. “Pope Benedict has set an example for world leaders and everyone else that there comes a time when it is better to let go of power.’’

When it comes to Benedict’s successor, Karen McCarthy, of Hollywood, is hoping for someone more moderate. She’s angry about certain church positions, and no longer attends Church of the Little Flower

“The Vatican has treated women horribly, like we are less than men,’’ she said. “What they have done to the nuns is repulsive...I hope we get a more moderate pope and one in tune with the times.’’

Archbishop Wenski said he doubted Pope Benedict XVI would interfere with his successor once he leaves the post Feb. 28.

“There’s still going to be only one pope, and I don’t think there’s any danger of any polarities of power, one against another.’’

This article includes comments from the Public Insight Network, an online community of people who have agreed to share their opinions with The Miami Herald. Sign up by going to MiamiHerald.com/Insight.

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