Gun makers, violent film and video creators benefit aplenty from tax breaks in Florida

TALLAHASSEE --
What do violent video games, gory movies and high-powered assault weapons have in common?

They have all been blamed for tragic mass shootings, including last month’s at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — and are all subsidized by Florida taxpayers.

With Florida’s tax code more business-friendly in recent years, economic incentives and tax breaks have flowed to companies and industries currently under fire for their roles in America’s gun violence.

Meanwhile, the state has cut funding for mental healthcare and school safety programs, two areas at the forefront of the national gun control debate.

While it has become more difficult and expensive to access mental health care in Florida, it is getting easier and cheaper to obtain high-powered weapons. Last year, the Legislature cut the cost of obtaining a weapons license by $5, and a string of gun-friendly measures has boosted the number of concealed firearms carriers past 1 million.

As the White House, Congress and states across the country look at new measures for curbing gun violence, Florida’s tax code and budgeting measures could be having the opposite effect.

“I think the state of Florida has a role to play in preventing gun violence and in gun regulation,” said Sunrise mayor Mike Ryan, who has pushed for gun control but acknowledged that the controversial companies receiving tax breaks are all helping to create jobs in the state. “When you get to the issue of assault weapons, you get to a thornier issue.”

Nationally, Florida ranks 49th in mental health funding, and first in gun ownership. The state has been a trailblazer in providing lucrative tax incentives to a smorgasbord of companies in return for promises to create jobs.

In 2012, a tough budget year when the Legislature cut funding for school safety by $1.8 million and Gov. Rick Scott vetoed $5.7 million for mental health programs, lawmakers were able to find more than $10 million for economic incentives that went to violent film productions, bloody video games and gun manufacturers.

In South Florida, that meant millions of fewer dollars for mentally ill prisoners, while movie-maker Michael Bay received $4.2 million in tax breaks to produce Pain & Gain, an action film about South Beach bodybuilders who become violent criminals.

Tax breaks for gun dealers

The Legislature and powerful business groups are pushing to boost the state’s manufacturing industry, a sector that includes makers of military-style weapons.

At least three gun makers have been on the receiving end of lucrative tax break deals aimed at spurring job creation. Colt Manufacturing Co. was approved for a $1.6 million deal in December 2011, after it opted to open a new regional headquarters in Osceola County, bringing 63 jobs. Scott hailed the tax credit program as a “clear message that Florida is both open for business and a defender of our right to bear arms.”

More tax breaks for gun makers would soon follow.

Kel Tec CNC, a Cocoa Beach company that manufactured the handgun used in the controversial Trayvon Martin shooting last year, received nearly $15,000 in taxpayer cash to train its employees. The company, which also makes the types of high-powered assault weapons used in recent mass shootings, did not have to create any new jobs in return for the money. Repeated efforts to reach company officials were unsuccessful.

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Raspberry Pi creator says sequel unlikely in 2013

Raspberry Pi’s $ 35 Linux-based computer is a runaway success. Creator Eben Upton told ZDNet in a recent interview that his team thought they would sell 1,000 units when they were designing the mini PC, but sales have now topped 700,000. ”We honestly did think we would sell about 1,000, maybe 10,000 in our wildest dreams,” Upton said. “We thought we would make a small number and give them out to people who might want to come and read computer science at Cambridge.” On a slightly disappointing note to those hoping for an upgraded model in 2013, Upton said in the interview that the company has no plans to launch a sequel to the latest Raspberry Pi “Model B” this year.

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

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Manti Teo ESPN Interview on Lennay Kekua

Given the worldwide attention given to Manti Te'o and his fake girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, since it was inevitable the football star would break his silence sooner rather than later. Last night, Te'o sat down for an off-camera interview with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap, where he admitted to lyng about actually meeting Kekua because he believed his friends, family and coaches would think he was "crazy" for engaging in an intense relationship with someone he'd never met. But, throughout the interview, Te'o maintains he was not complicit in perpetuating the story for personal gain.

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"I wasn't faking it. I wasn't part of this," Te'o tells ESPN's Jeremy Schapp, insisting he was duped by the online hoax, now commonly referred to as "Catifshing," thanks to the documentary and MTV show of the same name.

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"She friend requested me on Facebook the winter of my freshman year at Notre Dame," Te'o explains. "We spoke on the phone. We spoke on the phone and talked on the phone, texted. But it's always as acquaintances, as friends. And then she contacted me that Purdue game and she just said 'Hey, how are you doing? I'm going through some hard times with my boyfriend' -- at the time she had a boyfriend at the time. And just want you to be there for me, just be my friend. I said sure, I'll be here for you."

Te'o clarifies that the duration of the relationship has been widely misreported, saying that their were large chunks of time they went without speaking throughout the four year period in question.

RELATED - Have You Ever Bee Catfished?

Then, during Te'o's junior year at Notre Dame, Kekua (who is now believed to be a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and at least one female accomplice) reconnected with him. "We spoke on the phone. We spoke on the phone and talked on the phone, texted. But it's always as acquaintances, as friends ... And eventually we just kept talking and kept talking and kept talking. Everything kind of changed a little when her dad passed away. She told me her dad passed away, and I was there. I was just being that shoulder to cry on ... And so our relationship kind of took another level. But not the kind of exclusive level yet. I was trying to get to know her and get to know a whole bunch of other people. And for that period of time we talked and talked and got to know each other better and better and better. And everything changed April 28th. I got a phone call from her brother that she had got in the car accident."

Te'o says that Kekua's brother acted as an intermediary between them throughout her hospitalization. "I would ask to talk to her, and the only communication I had was through her brother and he used her phone," Te'o says. "He would put me supposedly right next to her mouth and I could hear the ventilator going. And she would be breathing ... They were telling me, 'Bro, she recognized your voice. We know she's there. We know she can hear you.' She would quicken her voice. And I heard it on the phone. They would do it to me. And so that was my communication while she was in a coma."

When asked by Schaap why Te'o didn't think to visit her, he says, "It never really crossed my mind. I don't know. I was in school. I was finishing up my year and I was going home. It was towards the end of my junior year. End of my junior year, and I was about to go home. When I decided to go home, the day that I decided to -- the day I left to go home -- they called me and said that that was the same day that they were going to pull the plug. And so it intensifies the whole thing. I'm on the plane. I figured they're about to pull the plug on someone ... All my focus went just to her, in caring for her. Making sure she was OK. Whenever you feel that you're about to lose somebody, you know, reality kicks in, and it's like, okay, I'm going to be here for her, take care of her. And so my focus turned straight to Lennay."

Te'o not only recounts pieces of the elaborate backstory he was fed, but also explains there was a seemingly endless array of photos; all of which convinced him Kekua was real.

Then, in early July, Te'o is told that Keuka has leukemia, which only intensifies his feelings for her. Throughout her treatment, Te'o constantly spoke to Keuka via phonecalls and online chats. Then, on September 12, Te'o's parents called to say his grandmother had passed away, hours later, Keuka called. "I had already found out that grandma is dead. I was angry. I didn't want to be bothered. So Lennay was just trying to be there for me. I just -- I just wanted my own space. We got in an argument. She was saying, you know, I'm trying to be here for you. I didn't want to be bothered. I wanted to be left alone. I just wanted to be by myself."

"Later that day I get a text message from her brother, just saying 'Bro. That was it.' I wondered why her brother was contacting me. Couple minutes later, I get the call from her brother. He's telling me, he's crying, screaming, and he's just telling me, 'She's gone! She's gone!' He's mumbling, 'She's gone, she's gone, bro', she's gone.' And I'm sitting there wondering who is gone? Why is he telling me that somebody's gone. Lennay's supposed to get home on September 11th, the day before. She was fine, you know? She was going home, she was fine. People were saying that she's getting better. I get a phone call that she's gone. They tell me Lennay's gone."

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"I dropped the phone. I walk around the corner to get to the hall way where nobody is... I started crying and crying, punching the wall." Te'o adds, "Looking back on it now? I don't know. I really don't know. One, to lie about it, and two, to coordinate this death on the same day that I lost my grandmother, I don't know."

For those who believed Te'o created this entire scenario to garner sympathy in a big to win The Heisman Trophy, their biggest piece of evidence is that Te'o didn't attend Keuka's funeral. He tells ESPN the reason he didn't go was because her funeral fell on the same day as a big game. "Before Lennay passed away, we had a conversation where she asked me if she passed away, if I could go to her funeral? I told her no, I'm not going to talk like that. I'm not going to talk like that. She said tell me this, if anything happens, promise me that you'll send me white roses and say you'll play. She said all I want is white roses. And leading up to the funeral, her siblings kept telling me that their mom told them she didn't want me to come. They didn't want -- and I didn't want myself -- I didn't want that to be the first time that I saw her was lying in a coffin. That's why I didn't go."

Months pass, and Te'o begins dating a girl named Alex del Pilar. Then, on December 6, he gets a phonecall from Lennay's sister U'i. "She said, 'Hey, I've got to tell you something that's very important.' So she goes through this whole spiel how my family's involved with drugs and like bad people. And we have to hide and make sure that everybody's -- she's giving me this background about their life. She just basically said I think you know. And I said what do you mean? I don't know anything. She said, well, Manti, it's me. That's all she said."

"I eventually just gave up and said, who is me? And she said, it's Lennay. So we carried on that conversation, and I just got mad. I just went on a rampage. How could you do this to me? I ended that conversation by saying, simply this: You know what, Lennay, my Lennay died on September 12. I don't know who you are, but Lennay died on September 12th and that conversation ended."

Another fact detractors point to as evidence Te'o was complicit in the lie is that he continued to talk about Lennay in subsequent interviews as if she were real. Te'o cites his initial confusion as the reason behind those incidents. 

Since then, Te'o has continued to speak with U'i and Ronaiah in a quest to find out the truth. However, once the story broke, Te'o says his been contacted by several people who were similarly duped by the duo. "Multiple people that he's done it to me contacted me ... and said hey, he's done the same thing to me with the same girl, with the same story. And if you need any help, I'm here."

Te'o, for one, is hoping this saga comes to a close much faster than I believe it will. As for what he'd like to see happen to his hoaxers, Te'o says, "To be honest with you, it doesn't seem real. I hope he learns. I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."

To read Manti Te'o's entire and all-encompassing interview with ESPN, click here.

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Heat's on this guy: Near-naked 'burglar' arrested outside Calif. home — he had been using the sauna

SAN ANDREAS, Calif. — Authorities in Northern California say a man arrested in nothing but a trench coat and socks after a break-in told investigators he had been using the homeowner's sauna.

Calaveras County sheriff's deputies arrested 49-year-old Robert London this week after they responded to a report of a burglary at a home in San Andreas. He pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of burglary and possession of stolen property.

Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Hewitt says arriving deputies found the homeowner on top of a nearly naked London on the driveway.

The homeowner said he discovered London going through his kitchen cabinets and chased him out the door.

Hewitt says London told investigators he thought the house was vacant, and he had used the sauna there in the past.

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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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Kids win contest for creative writing

“How Can I Help Build a Better Community?” was the theme for the 25th annual Junior Orange Bowl Creative Writing Contest and the middle school student winners were honored recently at an awards ceremony at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

Sophie Ruiz from South Miami Middle School was the first place winner. Second place went to Connor Cunningham from Palmetto Middle School, and Audrey Barba from South Miami Middle School won the third-place prize. Winning teachers Alison Wood Griñan of South Miami Middle School and Mary Laughlin of Palmetto Middle School were honored as well.

The Creative Writing Committee received 172 essay submissions from eighth-grade students in Miami-Dade County.

Steve Liebowitz, life coach, author and Managing Partner of Wisdom At Work, was the guest speaker at the Books & Books event. Junior Orange Bowl Creative Writing Chair Connie Goodman-Milone was emcee and the winning students read their winning entries to a full house.

Lawrence Feldman of the Miami-Dade School Board made the medal presentations to the students and their teachers. He also awarded medals to the winners of the Junior Orange Bowl Royal Court Search Essay Competition. Royal Court Queen Aria Armstead, Princess Sophia Periera, and Princess Maya Elias assisted at the ceremony.

Sponsors of the event included South Florida Writers Association, Books & Books, Miami Art Museum, HistoryMiami, Friends of the Everglades, and vice chair Samantha Jones/Assurant Solutions.

DANCE IN THE GARDENS

Contemporary dancers will perform to classical music when artists with Karen Peterson and Dancers, Crosstown String Quartet, and the Miami String Project join in concert at the Pinecrest Gardens Banyan Bowl Amphitheatre, 11000 SW 57th Ave. in Pinecrest. The performances are at 8 p.m. on Feb. 2, and at 3 p.m. on Feb. 3.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students and residents over 60. Call 305-298-5879 for more information or for tickets call 877-496-8499. Tickets are also available at the Pinecrest Gardens Box Office. Check the website for links.

“I love the collaborative spirit, and the dancers enjoy it too. I’m constantly pushing their boundaries,” said Artistic Director and Founder Karen Peterson.

The Karen Peterson and Dancers program features adult dancers with and without disabilities who create and perform "mixed-ability" productions. Founded in 1990 the troupe presents positive role models for the community and offers new visuals for traditional dance audiences. Performances are held year-round. Also at the Pinecrest Gardens event, young mixed ability dancers ages 15 to 22 will perform for the first time with the young musicians of the Miami String Project, ages 12 to 19.

Peterson said she is thrilled to present her new choreography with the Crosstown String Quartet and the Miami String Project in such a beautiful setting as Pinecrest Gardens.

“This gives our audiences the opportunity to view our premiere collaborations of live dance and classical music,” she said.

The performances will include music by Vivaldi, Bach, Britten, Grieg, Petersburski and Piazzolla. The second half, titled “In the Moment,” will feature the collaboration between the youth performers.

Karen Peterson and Dancers recently held a fundraiser for the dance program it hosts for 200 teens with special needs in Miami-Dade Public Schools. The 15-week residency is in its seventh year with students gaining new self-esteem each year, Peterson said.

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In Which Actual Joe Biden and ‘Onion’ Joe Biden Pal Around on Reddit and Twitter

The Onion‘s brilliant creation, “Diamond” Joe Biden, stopped by Reddit, in character, for one of the site’s signature Ask Me Anything sessions on Friday afternoon. And, hey, look who asked something over Twitter just as the AMA began:

Q for @reddit AMA with my @theonion pal: A Trans-Am? Ever look under the hood of a Corvette? #imavetteguy –VP twitter.com/VP/status/2923…

— Office of VP Biden (@VP) January 18, 2013

So that happened, and it’s so beyond meta that our heads hurt. It confirms that the vice-president (or at least his office) is aware of his satirical alter-ego: the foul-mouthed, Trans-Am-driving, skirt-chaser known to hundreds of Onion articles. And, of course, “Diamond” Joe answered:

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So why would Actual Joe Biden indulge the funniest incarnation of the Uncle Joe Biden whom the Internet loves so much? Maybe he thinks he’s funny! After all, Actual Joe Biden is pretty funny himself, and “Diamond” Joe’s answers on Reddit this afternoon didn’t disappoint. Some highlights:

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And another:

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One more:

And, yes, there’s a theme here:

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ashley Benson on How I Met Your Mother Exclusive Clip

In 2007, Lucy Hale played Robin's little sister, Katie Scherbatsky, in an episode of How I Met Your Mother, titled First Time in New York and on Monday, another one of ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars heads on over to CBS' hit comedy.

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In Ring Up, Ashley Benson plays a much (much!) younger girl Ted has started dating ... one whose date and word choices constantly remind him just how old he actually is.

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Watch ETonline's exclusive sneak peek of Benson on HIMYM and use the comments to guess which girl (Troian Bellisario, Shay Mitchell) will stop by MacLaren's next, making it a PLL hat trick!

How I Met Your Mother airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on CBS.

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Suing the spies who loved us — Women in Britain file suit against real-life 007s

AP

Sean Connery as James Bond in a scene from the 1963 film, "From Russia With Love."

Now that's a sexy suit!

A judge in Britain has decided that a group of women can sue the spies they slept with.

The High Court judge compared the group to the women of James Bond — a character known as much for his antics in bed as his heroics in the spy game, The Daily Mail reported.

"James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women to obtain information, or access to persons or property.

The environmental activists are suing Scotland Yard for damages for misconduct, deceit, assault and negligence after discovering their long-term bedmates were spies, the site reports.

Madeline Smith, who played Bond girl Miss Caruso in the 1973 film "Live And Let Die," said after the hearing she did not question at the time whether 007's behavior could cause harm.

She told The Telegraph: "I was a dizzy, dippy little character in my frilly knickers, and that was OK then.

"It was entertainment and I don't think anyone questioned it. With all films and computer games, there is a big danger of people crossing into fantasy or fiction from real life."

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Coconut Grove Village Council comes out against trolley project

The Coconut Grove Village Council on Thursday joined the chorus of opposition to a new trolley-bus fueling and maintenance garage now under construction on Douglas Road in the predominantly black West Grove.

Meanwhile, West Grove residents have lined up lawyers to fight the project, and a University of Miami law professor is asking federal authorities to assist the residents with possible civil rights issues.

The garage is part of a deal between the city of Coral Gables and Astor Development to build a luxury mixed-use complex on a site that includes the existing trolley garage. It would sit in the 3300 block of Douglas Road amid a single-family, residential neighborhood.

Although its members are elected by Grove voters, the council has no authority over land use. The Grove is a part of the city of Miami bordering the city of Coral Gables.

Council vice chair Kate Callahan cited “improper notice and improper zoning” as the reasons for the council’s objection to the facility. Members also agreed to provide funding “to help defray legal costs to stop the project immediately.” The council’s resolution will be drafted and presented at the next [Miami] City Commission meeting.

“If the Gables is going to have the luxury of the trolleys, then they should have the negative aspect as well — gas and oil spills, maintenance, the beast as well as the beauty. West Grove village is tired of having the beast dumped on their community without public discourse,” Callahan said, referring to the fact that she and other council members learned of the facility’s development through news reports rather than from City Hall.

Meanwhile, council members learned that neighborhood groups opposed to the garage have lined up lawyers to help them.

Pierre Sands, president of the Village West Homeowners and Tenants Association, or HOTA, said he met with two local attorneys and a third by conference call who had agreed to provide pro bono counsel to affected West Grove residents.

“There is a land use attorney on board and very excited about taking us on. They’ve indicated it’s pro bono. That’s the first victory this community has had,” Sands told the council.

Coral Springs-based land use and zoning attorney Ralf Brookes said he is one of the lawyers who has agreed to take the case.

“The minority neighborhood would bear the burdens of trolley maintenance including public health impacts, but has been denied the benefit of federally funded trolley service for years,” Brookes said in an email on Friday.

Also volunteering his services was Lowell Kuvin, who became a lawyer after Coral Gables cited him for violating a city ordinance against parking a pickup truck overnight in a residential neighborhood. Kuvin lost his case in court, but city voters repealed the law at the polls in November.

"I believe there are many issues here,” Kuvin said Friday. Is the West Grove being singled out as a receptacle for industrial complexes that other cities don’t want? Did the city follow its own zoning laws? Were people properly noticed?"

Meanwhile, students under University of Miami professor Anthony Alfieri, who directs the law school’s Center for Ethics and Public Service, have been conducting legal research into some of the issues surrounding the trolley facility, including questions of civil rights.

“We are reaching out to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District [of Florida] to assist in providing community education and civil rights workshops to residents in the West Grove. We’ll be asking them to explain to affected homeowners and nonprofits how they can initiate a civil rights investigation of the cities of Coral Gables and Miami,” Alfieri said.

Gables officials asked Astor to find a new site for the trolley garage in exchange for the old one. Unable to find a suitable site in Coral Gables, the company found the site in the Grove. Under Miami’s 2010 zoning ordinance, called “Miami 21,” approval of the project did not require a public hearing, according to the city.

Plans call for the garage to be completely enclosed and air-conditioned to contain noise, fumes and odors, and work will be limited to basic maintenance, the city said.

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Bioethics commission meets at UM to consider testing anthrax vaccine on children

In “Dark Zephyr,” fictional terrorists released a cloud of anthrax on San Francisco. Adults were successfully vaccinated, but doctors didn’t know the safe dosage to give children.

Fortunately this was just a practice exercise in emergency response in 2011. But the realization that modern medicine had no protocol to protect children from a deadly bacterial pathogen prompted U.S. Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius to ask the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to consider the ethics of using healthy children in anthrax vaccine research.

The discussion has taken the 13-person commission a full year. The central question is to find the balance between the hypothetical risk of not knowing how to treat children in an anthrax bioterrorism attack and the real risk to healthy children who would participate in a study.

The commission, composed of leaders in medicine, social policy and law, met at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine this week for the last of four sessions to publicly ponder these ethical issues. The UM Ethics Program has long been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the six global “Collaborating Centres for Bioethics.”

Amy Gutmann, the commission’s chair, reminded participants the commission’s role is advisory only. “The question we must address is whether the U.S. Government could ethically support a pediatric [anthrax vaccine] study under any circumstance,” Gutmann said. “We will not render a final decision as to whether a particular study should move forward. Nor are we working to justify any particular protocol or outcome.”

An existing vaccine is routinely administered to adults in the military and other fields to protect against anthrax spores that are deadly if inhaled. Before the vaccine can be ethically researched with children, new trials in young adults should occur, said Col. Nelson Michael, director of the U.S. Military HIV Research Program and member of the commission. These studies would administer lower doses of the vaccine to determine the safest dosage in 18- to 20-year old adults.

Such studies would not be efficacy studies, however, which have been done in animals. Researchers would never infect humans with anthrax for a study, according to Michael, who is an expert in vaccine research.

“It would be completely unethical to conduct an anthrax challenge trial in humans,” Michael said.

The issues surrounding this research question are unprecedented in bioethics for a few reasons, according to Lisa Lee, the director of the commission’s staff. First, testing an anthrax vaccine on healthy children is unlike other pediatric research because research subjects will enjoy no direct benefit, as would, for example, a child with cancer who could be saved by previously untested treatment.

Second, anthrax is not a naturally occurring disease, and the probability of an attack is “unknowable.’’ The capability to use anthrax as a biological weapon is widely acknowledged, since letters infected with anthrax spores were sent to politicians and media outlets in 2001, killing five people. (A 2010 FBI investigation blamed the attacks on an Army scientist who helped develop the anthrax vaccine and later committed suicide.) Security analysts have presented their interpretation of the likelihood of a bioterrorism attack, but even the best intelligence cannot put a percentage on the chance that terrorists will unleash anthrax on American cities.

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Intel’s revenue forecast short of expectations

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Intel Corp forecast current-quarter revenue that was slightly below expectations as the personal computer industry grapples with falling sales and a shift toward tablets and smartphones.

PC makers are struggling to stop a decline in sales as consumers hold off on buying new laptops in favor of spending on more nimble mobile gadgets.

Microsoft Corp‘s long-awaited launch of Windows 8 in October brought touchscreen features to laptops but failed to spark a resurgence in sales that Intel and many PC manufacturers had hoped for.

Intel said its capital spending in 2013 would be $ 13 billion, plus or minus $ 500 million, exceeding what many analysts had expected.

In the fourth quarter, Intel’s revenue was $ 13.5 billion, compared with $ 13.9 billion a year earlier. Analysts had expected $ 13.53 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Intel estimated first-quarter revenue of $ 12.7 billion, plus or minus $ 500 million. Analysts expected $ 12.91 billion for the current quarter.

Net earnings in the December quarter were $ 2.5 billion, or 48 cents a share, compared with $ 3.4 billion, or 64 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Advice Columnist Pauline Friedman Phillips 'Dear Abby' Dies

Longtime newspaper advice columnist Pauline Friedman Phillips -- who wrote Dear Abby under the name Abigail Van Buren -- has died at age 94.

Her publicist confirmed to the Associated Press that Phillips died Wednesday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

PICS: Star Sightings

Since her family revealed in 2002 that Phillips had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, her daughter, Jeanne Phillips (pictured above), has been the sole author for the syndicated Dear Abby column.

Phillips' column competed for decades with the advice column of Ann Landers, which was written by her twin sister, Esther Friedman Lederer, who died in June 2002. 

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State audit shows SUNY Downstate Medical in trouble

SUNY Downstate Medical Center is on life support.

Brooklyn’s fourth largest employer is on the verge of “insolvency” because of mismanagement that included acquiring two other financially troubled health care institutions, according to a scathing state audit.

SUNY Downstate would be broke already had it not received emergency loans from SUNY, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said.

“SUNY Downstate’s fiscal condition is dire and it needs all hands on deck if it going to survive,” DiNapoli said. “Management has made poor financial decisions that often times weren’t justified by economic conditions. As a result, the hospital is hemorrhaging millions of dollars every week.”

DiNapoli said Downstate was losing $3 million a week last year, or an estimated $200 million.

DiNapoli claimed the hospital’s acquisition of Long Island College Hospital and Victory Hospitalwere mistakes. Downstate’s University hospital is in East Flatbush, LICH is in Cobble Hill and the former Victory Memorial is in Bay Ridge.

A state panel had recommended the closure of Victory Memorial because it was underutilized. LICH had massive operating losses and consulting studies recommending Downstate’s merger with LICH were based on “flawed and unrealistic business assumptions,” DiNapoli said.

But the report also said Downstate suffered from cuts in government aid, including Medicaid funding – matters out of their control.

Downstate, which has 8,000 staff and faculty, did not dispute the findings.

Downstate has a new leadership team that “developing a comprehensive, fiscally responsible plan to ensure medical education and quality healthcare continues for the people of Brooklyn,” said SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher.

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Luxury ship damaged on Antarctic cruise

Heavy weather has slammed a Silversea cruise ship on an Antarctic voyage, causing sustained damage but no injuries among the 133 guests, the cruise line reported.

Silver Explorer, a luxury expedition ship, was damaged Jan. 12, according to statement released Thursday. The vessel has full power and control, and stabilizers are working, according to the company, and set course Jan. 13 for Ushuaia, Argentina. A spokesman for the line said no further information was available and could not say when the ship would arrive.

According to the release, four of the 113 crew members were treated aboard for minor injuries.

The cruise company, whose U.S. office is in Fort Lauderdale, said it has cancelled its Jan. 21 departure but expects to resume its Antarctic schedule on Jan. 31.

Jane Wooldridge

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Driver in Rickenbacker Causeway cyclist death to be sentenced

A motorist who killed cyclist Aaron Cohen in a hit-and-run crash on the Rickenbacker Causeway will learn his fate Wednesday.

A Miami-Dade judge on Wednesday afternoon will sentence Michele Traverso, 26, who earlier pleaded guilty for the crash that killed Cohen last February.

The fatality, and a similar hit-and-run wreck in 2010, has renewed calls for increased safety for cyclists and joggers on the popular causeway. Fellow cyclists staged a memorial ride and erected a billboard overlooking Interstate 95 in Cohen’s honor.

Members of Miami’s avid cycling community are expected to be on hand for the 1 p.m. sentencing.

Traverso, driving on a suspended license, struck Cohen and cycling partner Enda Walsh as the two rode in the northbound lanes near the crest of the bridge. Traverso surrendered to police 18 hours after the crash.

Though there were reports of Traverso drinking in Coconut Grove that night, investigators could not prove that his blood alcohol content level was above the legal limit because of the delay in turning himself in.

Traverso pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident involving a death, leaving the scene of an accident with great bodily harm, and driving with a suspended license. He also pleaded guilty to earlier cocaine possession charge.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas could sentence him to as little as 22.8 months in prison, and as much as 35 years behind bars.

In May, Thomas told Cohen’s widow, Patricia Cohen, that he would be unlikely to deliver the maximum sentence, although he could consider “20 or 25 years” after hearing from her and Traverso’s own family at a possible sentencing.

The Cohen family is suing Traverso and his father, who owned the car.

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RIM says users line up to try new BlackBerry 10 platform

TORONTO (Reuters) – BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is helping customers prepare to switch to its soon-to-be-launched BlackBerry 10 smartphones that it hopes will help it reclaim market share from rivals such as Apple Inc.

RIM is betting that the new range of touch-screen and keyboard devices, set for a January 30 launch, will revive its fortunes.

The company was “very enthused by the engagement and response of our customer base” to a program aimed at persuading them to adopt the BlackBerry 10 devices, Bryan Lee, senior enterprise accounts director, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Indeed, whether it will be successful in clawing back market share will depend on the response from RIM’s top clients, like companies and government agencies, who have long valued the strong security features that BlackBerry devices offer.

Lee said more than 1,600 customers in North America had registered for its recently launched BlackBerry 10 Ready Program and more than a thousand were actively using the program, which offers customers access to services, information and tools to ease their transition to the BlackBerry 10 and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10.

RIM also said its BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which runs the new devices on corporate networks, was in beta testing with more than 130 major government agencies and corporations in North America.

SHARES RISE

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, a one-time pioneer in the now ultra-competitive smartphone industry, has bled market share to Apple’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s market-leading Android operating system, even among enterprise clients who once used BlackBerry devices exclusively.

Early adoption of the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 devices by government and corporate clients will help breathe new life into the struggling company, whose shares are down 90 percent from an all-time high of more than $ 148 in 2008.

Still, shares of RIM, which fell as low as $ 6.22 in September, have more than doubled in value over the last four months as the BlackBerry 10 launch approaches.

Lee said clients that were beta testing the new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10 included more than 60 Fortune 500 companies and top North American government agencies.

RIM promises that its new line of devices will be faster and smoother than existing BlackBerry phones and will boast a large catalog of apps, crucial to the success of any new line of smartphones.

Shares of RIM were up 3.8 percent at $ 15.03 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq on Wednesday, after Visa approved the smartphone company’s method of handling secure mobile payments; the technology will potentially allow users to tap their smartphones on credit card readers and pay for purchases.

RIM’s Toronto-listed shares were up 3.9 percent at C$ 14.83.

(Editing by Janet Guttsman and Bernadette Baum)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Pretty Little Liars Star Lindsey Shaw Talks Love Me

On last night's episode of Pretty Little Liars, I was shocked to hear Paige, of all people, making so much sense when it came to emotionally handling the recent Rosewood developments. I mean, this was a girl who previously expressed her love for Emily by trying to drown her.

And it's a good thing Paige has come a long way since then because Lindsey Shaw's latest character -- Sylvia in the thrilling Save Me -- could use a little waking up when it comes to her choices. In the new movie (now on DVD) Shaw's Sylvia falls for a mysterious young man who is later implicated in his ex-girlfriend's disappearance. But Sylvia's love overrides her rational thinking and she finds herself in a very dangerous game.

I caught up with Miss. Shaw this morning to talk about Love Me, and discovered we both had the same cinematic touchstone for the film!

ETonline: OK, so I have to tell you, Love Me reminded me so much of Fear, one of my favorite movies, ever.

Lindsey Shaw: Stop it! Stop it right now, that's exactly what I told them when I was getting driven from the airport to my first wardrobe fitting. That is exactly the vibe I got from it and I love that movie, so I'm excited to hear you say that.

RELATED - Shay Mitchell Talks Emily & Paige

ETonline: What is it about Love Me, and Fear, that appealed to you?

Shaw: It's those intense emotions you have when you're young. I'm intrigued by the naivety of a young girl wanting to believe in love and a guy wanting to give that to her, but that not being the whole story. Fear obviously goes very far in that direction, while Love Me keeps pushing the stakes and edging in that direction until the breaking point. The twisted personality and the uncertainty are appealing.

VIDEO - PLL Stars Test Their Rosewood Knowledge

ETonline: Are thrillers like this fun to make?

Shaw: Absolutely. There's no ceiling on the drama you can bring with these movies. For most people, no situation will ever get this intense in real life. so getting to go as far as you possibly can is so much fun. You get to scream and to have permission to let all those crazy and bad and weird emotions out is really cool. Then, you go home at night and are fine.

ETonline: I know you're active on Twitter, what have your fans been saying about Love Me?

Shaw: It's been great. They really support me in anything I do. Yesterday the movie was a little bit in competition with my premiere episode of PLL. But through that, I pimped out the movie, which was genius -- I hope they all check it out.

RELATED - 6 Burning PLL Questions Answered

ETonline: You know, I have to say, I was surprised by how sane and rational Paige was in last night's PLL.

Shaw: It's so funny, I didn't make that connection at first, but everyone on Twitter was saying that too. She was the voice of reason, which is so cool. Sylvia, I think she's normally the voice of reason; she just gets caught up in this intense situation. I think she plows forward in a way she normally wouldn't. Interesting juxtaposition for both of those characters.

ETonline: I thought it was refreshing, and important, to see the rawness of Paige's emotions like that.

Shaw: That is my absolute favorite thing about this whole season of PLL. We all saw what happened to her in the summer finale, but I think because of the Halloween episode people don't remember this hugely traumatic thing happened to her. She's changed so much by that, so it absolutely alters her personality and character, which is a tip to the writers. That theme continues throughout the whole season. Of course, on PLL, you only get light to get dark again, so she's only reasonable for so long [laughs].

ETonline: Would you say there's one character you've played who is closest to who Lindsey really is?

Shaw: I love every single woman I've played, but the one that synched up the most was Kat on 10 Things I Hate About You. I'm still so, so bummed about that show. I think I'll be bummed forever. To have a feeling like that is one of the most validating things I've ever been through. I was her and so empowered on that set. In a way, I'm glad it didn't last because I'm uncomfortable again, which is also fun. But Kat Stratford for sure dude, feminist all the way. I think the characters that come to you are the ones you need at that time. I've definitely learned so much about being a woman from so much about every single woman I've played. Even Jennifer Mosely. Little, pre-pubescent Jennifer Mosely.

Love Me is now available and Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC Family.

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Man pinned by car in critical condition

A 55-year-old man is in critical condition after being pinned to a wall by a car in Brooklyn Heights, fire officials said.

The car rammed the pedestrian near Old Fulton Street and the entrance of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, according to the FDNY.

The victim was rushed to Lutheran Hospital in critical condition, officials said.

Shop owners and workers nearby said they did not witness the accident, which occurred near the ramp to the expressway, where the tall brick wall that the victim was pinned against obscured their view.

A traffic agent said the pedestrian was hit by a car that sped around the turn but police said they did not believe there was any criminality.

kconley@nypost.com

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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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Gov. Scott scolded by legislative black caucus

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott heard a litany of complaints Tuesday from the Legislative Black Caucus, on matters ranging from judicial appointments to civil rights for ex-felons. Throughout an hour-long discussion, the Republican governor held his ground in the face of grievances from Democratic lawmakers.

Criticized for making only a handful of black appointments to the judiciary, Scott said he’s limited to the choices given him by nominating panels and won’t appoint judges who believe in “judicial activism.” He said 6.5 percent of his judges are African-American (Florida’s black population is more than twice that). But Scott broke the tension by pointing out that he has appointed the wives of Reps. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, and Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, to state boards.

Faulted for signing a flawed election law that cut back the days of early voting, Scott said: “We’ve got to make changes, I agree. I didn’t have anything to do with passing it.” Scott’s administration, however, did spend more than $500,000 in legal fees last year successfully defending the law against numerous legal challenges.

Black lawmakers make up about one-fifth of the Legislature’s membership. They remain angry at Scott for one of his first decisions as governor: He and the three Republican Cabinet members imposed a five-year waiting period after ex-felons leave prison before they can apply for restoration of their civil rights.

“Once you’re out as a felon, you should spend time making sure you’re doing the right thing before you get your rights back,” Scott told the group, seated around a large square table.

The meeting ended with a plea that Scott appoint a task force to look at disparities in sentencing that affect young black men. Scott did not directly respond to the request.

“It’s deja vu all over again from last year,” said Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, as the session ended. “He’s still stuck on judicial activism. He wants everyone to think like him. He wants to run the state like a corporation, like it’s Florida, Inc. He’s not flexible on a lot of things.”

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Vogue's Andre Leon Talley Interviews Jennifer Lopez on Sidelines of the Golden Globes

Vogue contributor Andre Leon Talley was front and center at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards and was able to snag an interview with one of the night's fashion winners, Jennifer Lopez!

In addition to complimenting the singer/actress/entrepreneur on the amazingly sheer Zuhair Murad gown she wore on the red carpet, Andre also got an update on Lopez's two children. "They're good, they're great," she said of her twins Max and Emme. "They're going to be five, and it seems like they were just born. But they are going to be five next month."

VIDEO: Andre Crowns His Best-Dressed Star at the Globes

When asked whether she also takes the famous twins on shopping trips, J.Lo confessed, "they do know Target." She also said she spends a lot of playtime with the kids outside at various parks, even while taking them on tour all over the world.

VIDEO: Stars Hit Up ET's Golden Globe Platform

Addressing her two-outfit wardrobe change during the Golden Globes, the award-winning entertainer said it's always fun to switch things up. "You know, I go through phases -- a girl has to change it up every once in a while." She then revealed: "I had to change, it was tight -- that dress -- and I needed something open."

VIDEO: Stars React to Jodie Foster's Golden Globes Speech

Watch the video to also hear Jennifer reveal to Andre her favorite Vogue cover and for a preview of her upcoming crime thriller Parker, co-starring Jason Statham.

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State passes 1st US gun control bill since massacre

ALBANY — New York's Assembly on Tuesday easily passed the toughest gun control law in the nation and the first since the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, calling for a tougher assault weapons ban and provisions to try to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill who make threats.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed hard for the bill, which passed the Senate on Monday night. He is expected to quickly sign the measure into law.

"This is a scourge on society," Cuomo said Monday night, six days after making gun control a centerpiece of his State of the State address. The bipartisan effort was fueled by the Newtown tragedy that took the lives of 20 first graders and six educators. "At what point do you say, 'No more innocent loss of life'?"

The measure, which passed the Assembly 104-43, also calls for restrictions on ammunition and the sale of guns.

"This is not about taking anyone's rights away," said Sen. Jeffrey Klein, a Bronx Democrat, when the bill passed the Senate late Monday night. "It's about a safe society ... today we are setting the mark for the rest of the county to do what's right."

Under current state law, assault weapons are defined by having two "military rifle" features such as folding stock, muzzle flash suppressor or bayonet mount. The proposal reduces that to one feature and includes the popular pistol grip.

Private sales of assault weapons to someone other than an immediate family will be subject to a background check through a dealer. New Yorkers also would be barred from buying assault weapons over the Internet, and failing to safely store a weapon could lead to a misdemeanor charge.

Ammunition magazines will be restricted to seven bullets, from the current 10, and current owners of higher-capacity magazines will have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine will face a misdemeanor charge.

Another provision places requirements on therapists, psychologists, registered nurses and licensed social workers who believe a mental health patient made a credible threat to use a gun illegally. They would be required to report such a threat to a mental health director, who would have to notify the state. Any registered handguns — or registered assault weapons purchased before the ban — could be taken from the patient.

The legislation also increases sentences for gun crimes including the shooting of a first responder that Cuomo called the "Webster provision." Last month in the western New York town of Webster, two firefighters were killed after responding to a fire set by the shooter, who eventually killed himself.

The measure passed the Senate 43-18 on the strength of support from Democrats, many of whom previously sponsored bills that were once blocked by Republicans.

The governor confirmed the proposal, previously worked out in closed session, also mandate a police registry of assault weapons, grandfathering in the estimated 1 million assault weapons already in private hands.

It was agreed upon exactly a month since the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

"It is well-balanced, it protects the Second Amendment," said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos of Long Island.

Cuomo said he wanted quick action to avoid a run on assault weapons and ammunition.

Assemblyman Steve Katz said legislators were being "bullied." He said the bill is "solely for the governor's egotistical, misguided notion."

Republicans argued the bill wouldn't stop mass shootings or other gun crimes but instead turns law-abiding into potential criminals.

Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco said the bill was dangerous because it would give people a "false sense of well-being."

"You are using innocent children killed by a mad man for own political agenda," he said. "You are actually making people less safe."

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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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“Large number” sign UM medical school petition

A “large number” of faculty at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have signed a petition complaining about the school’s leadership, the head of the faculty senate said in an email Monday.

Richard Williamson, a law professor who is chair of the senate, sent the email to faculty assuring them anonymity if they signed and saying that the deadline for submitting copies of the petition is Friday, “in order to make a final report in a timely manner.”

Williamson’s email was the first official confirmation about the size of the protest. The medical school did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A copy of the petition obtained by The Herald stated that faculty decried the “failed leadership” of Dean Pascal Goldschmidt and Chief Operating Officer Jack Lord. “We want to make clear that the faculty has lost confidence in the ability of these men to lead the school.”

Earlier this month, Goldschmidt announced that Lord was “stepping down” as COO but gave no indication what he would be doing next. Last week, spokeswoman Lisa Worley said, “We are working on a transition with Dr. Lord, and it will be resolved in the near future.”

Several anonymous sources have said that the number of signatures has climbed to 700. Total faculty at the medical school is about 1,200. On Monday, a faculty senate spokeswoman said her office “nothing more to add” to the Williamson email. Williamson did not respond to a request for comment.

Williamson’s memo said faculty signing the petition “must include identifying information” but “we have gone to very considerable lengths to protect the anonymity of the petitioners. People who claim to have seen or received the ‘official list’ of those who signed are either misinformed or are being disingenuous, as no such list exists. Once the final report is complete, all petitions will be destroyed.”

Williamson told The Herald last month that only a small number of people had seen the signed petitions and none of them would talk about it.

“Please note that the fact that we serve as a conduit for a petition does not make the petition a Senate document,” Williamson wrote Monday. “Having said that, the Senate is very interested in the well-being of the Miller School of Medicine and its faculty. Indeed, our ad hoc Medical Committee has spent considerable time looking into problems at the School, has already provided one report that the Senate endorsed, and will present a follow-on report to the Senate’s General Welfare Committee shortly.”

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Study Shows Gender Bias in Wikipedia, Linux

Today in the age of the “brogrammer,” whose frat boy tendencies are glorified and sought after by cutting-edge online startups, women in tech often find themselves objectified and excluded — especially in communities like Wikipedia and open-source software, where women make up even less of the population (around 13 percent and 1 percent, respectively) than in more mainstream technical fields.

That was one of the facts Joseph Reagle, an assistant professor at Northeastern University, drew on for his study about “Free culture and the gender gap.” He discovered that just because a community (like Wikipedia) says that it’s open doesn’t mean that it isn’t hostile to women.

Free for all?

The “Free Encyclopedia” Wikipedia’s claim to fame is that anyone can edit and contribute to it. To keep errors from cropping up, it has policies that let anyone flag part of an article for review, and allow trusted editors to decide how to present something.

The process by which those editors decide, however, is often highly combative and alienating to women, who “are socialized to not be competitive and avoid conflict” according to Reagle. Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (the project behind Wikipedia), wrote a list of “Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia,” in which she noted Wikipedia’s “fighty” and “contentious” culture, where loud and assertive people drive others out regardless of their competence.

“Otherwise commendable features”

Reagle found that Wikipedia’s values of radical freedom and openness actually led to a culture that is more closed off to women. He noted that “implicit” power structures existed, even in the absence of formal ones; and that imposing few restrictions on how people treat each other can lead to “a chaotic culture of undisciplined vandals,” which disenfranchises women from participation just as surely as if there were rules against women participating.

Similar dynamics exist in popular open-source software projects like the Linux kernel. Open-source luminaries like Eric Raymond are legendarily combative and hostile to “idiots,” even while they they tolerate abusive personalities who drive female contributors away. Reagle’s study quoted numerous female writers with experience working in Linux and open-source software, who called its community “cliquish and exclusionary” as well as “more competitive and fierce than most areas of programming.”

How to achieve equality

Wikipedia’s new Teahouse page is “a friendly place to help new editors,” which is designed especially to encourage women to participate. Meanwhile, women like Denise Paolucci are creating their own startups like Dreamwidth, which are based on existing open-source programming code. Unlike most “proprietary” code, it’s still free for women to do what they want with it — if they can overcome the obstacles in their way.

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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Josh Duhamel Safe Haven Interview NCM Fathom Event

Josh Duhamel has a lot to live up to now that he's bringing a Nicholas Sparks leading man to life. But how will Duhamel's in Safe Haven compare to Ryan Gosling's work in The Notebook, Channing Tatum's performance in Dear John or Liam Hemsworth's star-making role in The Last Song?

That was just one of the questions I asked when Duhamel rang up ETonine in support of A Night With Nicholas Sparks' Safe Haven: Filmmakers, Author and Stars Bring the Book to Life, the NCM Fathom event taking place in cinemas nationwide on January 17.

ETonline: This is a very cool partnership you're doing with NCM Fathom. What appealed to you about this opportunity?

Josh Duhamel: I thought it was an interesting new way to get people interested and involved with the movie. The way Hollywood involves fans now is much different than it was when I first started, 12 years ago. Especially with a genre like this.

ETonline: Twitter has become a major way stars connect with their fans. Are you a fan of the platform?

Duhamel: It's interesting. There's something to be said about keeping your anonymity in some ways; maintaining some mystery. Some people say that familiarity breeds contempt, while sometimes it's the other way around. Nobody wants to know what I'm doing 24 hours a day, they'd be painfully bored, trust me [laughs]. At the same time, if I'm doing something interesting or funny, I like being able to share that with my fans. I'm not a completely closed book; I'm a social person and if I see something worth sharing, I'm happy to do that.

VIDEO - Exclusive Behind the Scenes of Safe Haven

ETonline: One of the things you'll talk about during the NCM Fathom event is the film's production. Did you have a good time making this movie?

Duhamel: It was one of the best experiences I've ever had. I'll be honest; you have to be a pretty miserable person to not enjoy making movies. It's something I always dreamed about. I do not take it for granted. We were in Southport, North Carolina -- this beachtown in the middle of summer. Julianne is so much fun to work with. She's so real, and Lasse [Hallstrom, director] is about the most collaborative director you could have. You can do no wrong with him, and when you're in a situation like that, you can't help but make a movie you're proud of. All the elements were there to make the kind of movie we set out to. I'm so grateful I got the opportunity to work with him, Lasse is one of the greats.

VIDEO - Julianne Hough's Shocking Admission

ETonline: When you first read the script, what appealed to you about this role?

Duhamel: To be honest, and I talked to Nicholas at length about this, if I was going to do this character, I wanted the freedom to make him three dimensional. I ran the risk of playing a boring suburban dad. The interesting parts in the script were Julianne's character, and David Lyons' character. Mine was a guy who could have easily been boring. But Lasse was open to all these ideas, and it was so much about finding moments in improv, that we ended up with something amazing. I mean, this is a single guy in the prime of his life trying to raise two kids and run a store, there's a lot of complexity there, and sometimes those are the hardest characters to play. They're not obvious, you have to do a lot of searching to find what these characters are made of.

ETonline: Now that you've created a character you're proud of, do you think he stands up against previous Sparks' men, like Noah in The Notebook or John in Dear John?

Duhamel: You can only hope. There have been so many successful stories and movies that Nicholas has told over the years, it's scary to compare yourself to those. We wanted sentiment without being sentimental here, and I talked at length with Nicholas about this. He said to me that if you look at a character like Noah, he's a guy who spends a whole movie pining for a girl. It was what Ryan brought to it that made the movie so interesting -- and that's what we focused on here. Forgetting what the expectations of a movie like this are and just focusing on getting to the core of what these two people are going through. By doing that, I think we found a lot of real moments between these two broken people who weren't searching for love, but happened to find it.

ETonline: Nicholas Sparks' movies are notorious for making people cry -- what was the last thing that made you cry?

Duhamel: Just yesterday, I was shown this love story that's told in 22 pictures. You can go online and look at it -- it's 22 photos about the genesis of this couple's relationship. It tells the whole story of their love in 22 photos and that had me crying. I'm a bit of a sap in that way. It doesn't take much to make me cry if I'm being honest.

NCM Fathom's A Night With Nicholas Sparks' Safe Haven in theater Q&A is on January 17, click here to buy tickets!

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Brookfield Office Properties starts long-awaited Manhattan West deck

Steve Cuozzo

After six years of promises, Brookfield Office Properties has finally started to build a deck over the exposed Amtrak rail yard for its planned Manhattan West development project.

The platform is a long-awaited breakthrough in Mayor Bloomberg’s dream to create a vast new Hudson Yards District in the once-forlorn far West 30s that will be home to major companies, residents and a wealth of public amenities.

It’s also crucial to publicly traded Brookfield’s plan for a $4.5 billion, five million-square-foot project on five acres anchored by two tall office towers and an apartment building.

The Manhattan West project, between Ninth and Dyers avenues and W. 31st and 33rd streets, will include a public plaza designed by High Line Park creator James Corner Field Operations.

The deck was first announced in 2006 but held up by caution over the real-estate market, changes to the original mix of towers and delays in negotiating agreements with Amtrak over use of the rail lines through the yard.

Manhattan West spans the irregular rectangle bounded by Ninth and Dyer avenues and West 31st and 33rd streets. Most but not all of it consists of the exposed train yard 65 feet below street level.

Brookfield CEO Dennis Friedrich told The Post, “Excavation started a while ago. This is the formal launch of the next phase.”

Giant machines will soon appear on-site to erect a street-level surface comprised of 16 “bridges.” The deck will occupy 50 percent of the entire site.

Friedrich said the platform will be finished in late 2014 and the site will be ready to receive tenants by 2016.

He estimated Brookfield’s land and platform costs at a total $700 million. The deck is to be financed with a five-year, $340 million construction loan from a bank consortium including HSBC, Bank of New York Mellon and four others.

Brookfield will invest more than $300 million of its own capital with no public subsidies.

The details are to be announced tomorrow at a photo-op. Bloomberg, Friedrich, Brookfield co-Chairman John Zuccotti, Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye and Hudson Yards Development Corp. President Ann Weisbrod are expected to attend.

“Our initial plan was for all offices,” Friedrich said. “But we got excited about residential because the market was so heated. So in our current plan, we replaced what was the third office building with apartments.”

Manhattan West lies just east of Related Cos.’ much larger Hudson Yards project. Each giant enterprise can now claim its own bragging rights.

While Related is raising its first tower for Coach Inc. without first building a deck over its own rail yard site, Brookfield is plunging ahead with a deck before it puts up a building — which it won’t do until it lands a tenant. Cushman & Wakefield has been tapped to find one or more.

Manhattan West was originally to have three office buildings. Now, it will have two of them at the yards’ Ninth Avenue corners of West 31st and 33rd Streets, and a high-rise apartment tower between them and Dyer Avenue.

Brookfield also owns 450 W. 33rd St., the massive, million-square-foot office address on 10th Avenue, which stands between the Brookfield- and Related-controlled portions of the sunken rail yard.

While Brookfield has long owned development rights above the tracks, Amtrak still controls the right of way through the yard.

So the two parties — as well as the MTA, Long Island Rail Road and the Port Authority, which also hold easements through the site — had to work out arrangements that will allow the deck and the towers to be built without interfering with the train routes, which terminate at Penn Station.

Despite a popular myth that the deck will support the towers, they will actually rise from bedrock at the sites’ corners and in effect be thrust through the platform. But the deck is needed to create a welcoming location for commercial and residential users.

Brookfield has committed to creating a 100 foot-wide park running east-west through the site, effectively forming an extension of 32nd Street. The public space will be designed by James Corner Field Operations, which designed the High Line Park.

“The platform is needed to create the land to create the plaza,” Friedrich said.

The High Line, which now ends at 30th Street, is to be extended along the old trestle’s loop westward to curl around Hudson Yards, and eastward along a spur toward Ninth Avenue.

Meanwhile, Related has begun work on the first office tower at its own Hudson Yards site — which is not to be confused with Extell’s One Hudson Yards, a 1 million square-foot tower to be developed by Gary Barnett’s company just north of Related’s land.

Brookfield’s portfolio includes 77 million square feet in New York, Washington, Houston and other US cities, as well as in Canada, Australia and London. It owns the World Financial Center downtown as well as trophy properties such as One New York Plaza.

“The new district is going to be successful for everybody here,” Friedrich predicted.

He said Related’s coup in signing Coach as an anchor tenant is “also great news for us. It creates a perfect bookend” for Manhattan West.

scuozzo@nypost.com

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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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Woman dies after boat crashes in Biscayne Bay

A woman died after the boat her husband was piloting crashed into a concrete piling underneath the McArthur Causeway bridge late Saturday, officials said.

The woman, who has not been identified, tried to push the red and white 18-foot boat in another direction when they began to veer toward a piling underneath the bridge, said Jorge Pino, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Her body somehow became lodged between the boat and the piling, Pino said.

Investigators did not know exactly how fast the boat was moving during the crash.

“We believe the vessel was going slow at the time of the impact,” Pino said. “Nothing at this point would indicate speeding.”

The woman was taken to Ryder Trauma Center where she later died.

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4 gadgets that defined Vegas electronics show

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The world’s largest gadget show wrapped up on Friday, and the organizers said it was the biggest ever, beating last year’s record in terms of the floor space companies purchased to display their wares.

What was it that drew more than 3,500 companies and 150,000 people to Las Vegas for this mega-event? Here are four gadgets that exemplified the top trends at this year’s International CES.

— Sony‘s 55-inch ultra-high-definition TV

The introduction of high-definition and flat-panel TVs sent U.S. shoppers on a half-decade buying spree as they tossed out old tube sets. Now that the old sets are mostly gone, sales of new TVs are falling. To lure buyers back, Asian TV makers are trying to pull the same trick again. They’re making the sets sharper. This fall, Sony and LG introduced 84-inch sets with four times the resolution of regular high-definition sets. They provide stunning sharpness, but they’re too big for most homes, and at more than $ 20,000, too expensive. At the show, the companies unveiled smaller “ultra-high-definition” sets, measuring 55 inches and 65 inches on the diagonal. They will go on sale this spring. Prices were not announced, but will presumably be a lot lower than for the 84-inch sets, perhaps under $ 10,000.

Both the size and price of these smaller ultra-HD TVs should make them easier buys, but the higher resolution will be a lot less noticeable on a smaller screen, unless viewers sit very close. Analysts expect ultra-HD to remain an exclusive niche product for some years. There’s no easy way to get ultra-HD video content to the sets, so they will mostly be showing regular HD movies. However, the sets can “upscale” the video to make it look better than it does on a regular HD set.

Analyst James McQuivey of Forrester Research believes the TV makers are focusing on the wrong thing. He doesn’t think consumers really care that much about picture quality.

“What matters most is not the number of pixels or the quality of the pixels themselves … but the increasing convenience of the content’s discovery and delivery. This is why TV makers should be investing in a better experience rather than a bigger one,” McQuivey wrote in a blog post.

— LG’s 55-inch OLED TV

Organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, make for thin, extremely colorful screens. They’re already established in smartphone screens, and they have a lot of promise for other applications as well. For years, a promise is all they’ve represented. OLED screens are very hard to make in larger sizes. Now, LG is shipping a 55-inch OLED TV set in Korea, and is expected to bring it to the U.S. this spring for about $ 12,000.

Beyond being thin, power-thrifty and capable of extremely high color saturation, OLEDs are interesting for another reason: they can bend. LCDs have to be laid down on flat glass substrates, but OLEDs can be laid down on flexible glass or plastic. The major obstacle here is that flexible substrates tend to let through air, which destroys OLEDs, but manufacturers seem to have tackled the problem. Samsung showed off a phone that can bend into a tube. It consisted of a rigid plastic box with electronics and an attached display that is as thin as a piece of paper. The company suggested that in the future, it could make displays that fold up like maps — big screens that fit in a pocket.

We’re likely to see the benefits of bendy OLEDs sooner in a less eyebrow-raising but more practical implementation. It may never have occurred to you, but all electronic screens, except for cathode-ray tubes, are flat. With OLEDs, they don’t have to be. LG and Sony showed TV sets with concave screens at the show — not very useful, but an interesting demonstration. In the future, you could have a phone with a screen that laps over onto the edges, providing you with “smart” buttons with labels that change depending on whether you’re in camera mode or music mode. You could have a coffee mug with a wrap-around news and weather ticker. A revolution in design awaits.

By the way, you won’t have to choose between ultra-HD and OLED screens — Sony, Panasonic and LG showed prototype TVs that combine the technologies.

— The Pebble Watch

The Pebble is a “smart” timepiece that can be programmed to do various things, including showing text messages sent to your phone. The high-resolution display is all digital, so it can be programmed with various cool “watch faces.” But what’s really interesting about the Pebble is how it came to be —and that it exists at all.

Young Canadian inventor Eric Migicovsky couldn’t find conventional funding to make the watch, so he asked for money on Kickstarter, the biggest “crowdfunding” website. In essence, he asked people to buy watches before he actually had any to sell. The fundraising was a blowout success. Migicovsky raised $ 10.3 million by pre-selling 85,000 Pebbles. At CES, he announced that the watches were ready to ship.

Kickstarter’s goal is to bring things and events into fruition that otherwise wouldn’t happen, by creating a shortcut between the people who want to create something and the people willing to pay for it. The effect is starting to become apparent at CES. At least two other “smart” watches funded through Kickstarter were on display. Some startups were at the show to drum up interest in ongoing Kickstarter campaigns, including a Swedish company that wants to make a speaker with a transparent body, and a California outfit that wants to produce a swiveling, remote-controlled platform for cameras.

— Creative Technology Ltd.’s Interactive Gesture Camera

This $ 150 camera, promoted by Intel, attaches to a computer much like a Webcam. From a single lens, it shoots the world in 3-D, using technology similar to radar. The idea is that you can perform hand gestures in the air in front of the camera, and it lets the computer interpret them. Why would you want this? That’s not really clear yet, but a lot of effort is going into finding an answer. CES was boiling with gadgets attempting to break new ground when it comes to how we interact with computers and appliances like TV sets. The Nintendo Wii game console, with its innovative motion-sensing controllers, and the Microsoft Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 console, which has its own 3-D-sensing camera, have inspired engineers to pursue ways to ditch —or at least complement— the keyboard, mouse, remote control and even the touchscreen.

Samsung’s high-end TVs already let viewers use hand gestures to control volume, and it expanded the range of recognized gestures with this year’s models. Startup Leap Motion was at the show with another depth-sensing camera kit, this one designed to mount next to a laptop’s touch pad, looking upward.

So far, though, the “new interaction” field hasn’t had a real hit since the Kinect. Consumers may be eager to lose the TV remote, but there’s a holdup caused by the nature of the setup: to effectively control the TV, you need to take command not just of the TV, but of the cable or satellite set-top box. TV makers and the cable companies don’t really talk to each other, and there’s no sign of them uniting on a common approach. Only when both devices can be controlled by hand-waving can we permanently let the remote get lost between the couch cushions.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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