Though never married, Djimon Hounsou and Kimora Lee Simmons are ending their relationship, according to People.com.
PICS: The 10 Most Shocking Breakups in Hollywood
Hounsou's rep tells the news source that the couple has "officially separated after 5 1/2 years."
The actor, 48, reportedly met Simmons, 42, in February 2007 after her split from hip hop mogul Russell Simmons.
They have one child together, three-year-old son Kenzo Lee Hounsou.
A deranged man clad in sweatpants and a hoodie showed the staff of a hyper-expensive Upper East Side jewelry store today that he’s got champagne-and-caviar tastes, police and witnesses said.
The man shoved his way past a security guard into di Grisogono, a Madison Avenue watch-and-gem emporium, at about 1:40 p.m.
“He was demanding business cards and catalogs, and he said, ‘I have millions of dollars to spend.’ He definitely seemed unstable,” recounted Kate Hemphill, a store manager.
The unarmed man claimed he admired a half-million-dollar timepiece in the window -- and then he began fighting with a security guard who tried to get him to leave, said Hesham Ismail, who has a falafel cart on the corner of East 69th Street.
“He headbutted the security guard in the nose, and I saw blood coming from the security guard’s face. The guy kept hitting him,” Ismail said.
“He ended up wrestling with our security guard for eight minutes until the police arrived,” Hemphill said.
The suspect and the security guard were both taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, said police sources.
The suspect, who was not identified, is expected to be charged with criminal mischief and assault, said sources.
EARLY BIRDS GET THE DEALS:
If you’re willing to brave the masses, here’s where you can go:
• Open all day Thursday: Walmart;
• 6 a.m. on Thursday: Kmart opens;
• 8 a.m. Thursday: Bass Pro Shops opens;
• 8 p.m. Thursday: Sears and Toys “R”Us open;
• 9 p.m. Thursday: Dolphin Mall, Sawgrass Mills and Target stores everywhere open.
• Midnight: Black Friday kicks off with the opening of Macy’s, the Gap, Old Navy, Best Buy, Kohl’s and other stores. Dadeland Mall and Miami International Mall open.
• 6 a.m. Friday: Most other malls and stores open by dawn or shortly after.
TWEET TWEET
Follow the action: Miami Herald reporters will hit the stores on Thanksgiving and Tweet about parking, deals, traffic and product shortages at Twitter hashtag #heraldshop. Follow the live stream online at MiamiHerald.com or watch Twitter.
Tweet with us! Be a reporter and tweet out your own experiences and tips. The hashtag: #heraldshop.
SHOP FROM HOME
Relax, have another piece of pie and shop: Amazon.com, Target.com, Walmart.com, Kohls.com, ToysRUs.com, Bloomingdales.com, shopbop.com, BananaRepublic.com and Madewell.com are among the sites offering online specials or discounts on Thanksgiving Day.
SEARCH FOR DEALS
Check online aggregators: //blackfriday.gottadeal.com/Tracker, //findnsave.com, MiamiHerald.com, blackfridayads.com, 2012blackfridayads.com, bfads.net.
Use your smartphone: Download apps that aggregate deals, including Black Friday App by DealNews.com, Shopkick, the Coupons App, Black Friday Survival Guide, Daily Shopper, Slice Price Drop Alert, Black Friday Smart Aisles App and TheFind App.
BE PREPARED
Parking will be crazy. Get a non-shopper to drop you off if possible. Head first for items that could out quickly, like electronics. Wear comfortable shoes and bring water. Be sure your smartphone is fully charged and watch your belongings!
FREE STUFF
• At Macy’s in Aventura, receive a free pair of high-definition headphones with any $75 or more men’s or women’s fragrance purchase and Macy’s will donate $2 to Make-A-Wish. Receive a free sweater when you purchase jeans from American Rag for Juniors.
• Also at Aventura Mall: At Montblanc, Receive free engraving or embossing with purchase. At Steve Madden, Black Friday shoppers can play the scratch card promotion for a chance to win free shoes and discounts up to 40 percent off.
• At A Pea in the Pod: Receive a Free Britax Carrier with a purchase of $300 or more.
• At Destination Maternity stores & destinationmaternity.com: Get a $75 restaurant.com certificate when you spend $125 or more.
• At Motherhood Maternity stores & motherhood.com: Get a $50 restaurant.com certificate when you spend $75 or more.
• At Dolphin Mall all Black Friday Weekend: Spend $350 or more on your MasterCard card in a single day at the mall and receive a $25 MasterCard gift card.
Most of all, have a Happy Thanksgiving!
INA PAIVA CORDLE
Don’t look to Wall Street to sort out Miami’s complicated finances.
On Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service issued a negative outlook for some of the city’s outstanding bond obligations, and gave a below-average rating to a bond issue expected to close next month.
Fitch Ratings, meanwhile, upgraded the outlook for the outstanding bond issues from negative to stable. But it, too, gave a subpar grade to the new bonds.
The mixed bag of ratings came one week after Budget Director Danny Alfonso announced that Miami closed the fiscal year with an unexpected $37 million surplus. The city’s computer system put the figure at $45 million, but Alfonso said several transactions had yet to post.
Fitch called the year-end surplus “impressive,” and noted that Miami had managed to boost its overall reserves to $54 million, or about 11 percent of spending.
“I’m extremely pleased that we’ve improved” our rating, City Manager Johnny Martinez said Tuesday. “They’ve been watching the things that we’ve been doing as far as building our fund balance and living within our means.”
Governments sell bonds on Wall Street as a way to borrow money, with bond buyers collecting interest and principal payments from the issuers in the same way a bank makes money off home mortgages. The ratings reflect the likelihood that any issuer will continue making bond payments, with a lower rating suggesting a higher risk of default.
Fitch assigned the city’s latest bond issue a BBB+ rating — a below-average grade for a municipal security.
The $45 million bond issue, which was approved by the City Commission Monday and will likely be sold in early December, will pay off a short-term loan that financed Miami’s share of the PortMiami tunnel dig.
Fitch Analyst Michael Rinaldi said the committee had expressed concern over recent turnover in the city’s finance department.
Said Martinez: “I wish the rating had been a little bit higher.”
Moody’s also assigned a mediocre grade to the tunnel bonds — an A3 rating — and described the outlook as negative.
“The negative outlook reflects the city’s ongoing challenges to control high fixed costs, uncertainties associated with key managerial turnover and the ongoing [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] investigation,” Moody’s analysts wrote.
Earlier in the year, Moody’s put Miami under review for a potential credit downgrade after the SEC announced intentions to file civil fraud charges against the city. The review was expanded when several key finance officials resigned their posts.
At the end of the review, the ratings stayed consistent, Moody’s spokesman David Jacobson said.
On the whole, Commission Vice Chairman Marc Sarnoff said, the news was positive.
“The needle is moving in the right direction,” Sarnoff said. “The gas tank is starting to get full.”
(Reuters) – Move over computers, your sleek siblings are the prized gift of the holidays.
One-third of U.S. consumers are thinking about buying an electronic tablet this holiday season, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters. And 22 percent of those who want one of the hot devices said they plan to cut back on other holiday purchases in order to afford them.
But the new, smaller tablet from industry leader Apple Inc – the iPad mini – is not taking the world by storm. Only 8 percent named the iPad mini as their first choice, the same percentage that said they would like to buy a Microsoft Corp Surface tablet.
“There has been a lot of controversy about the fact that the iPad mini is $ 329, that the price might not be right,” said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters.
Still, Apple’s full-size iPad remains the leader, with 25 percent picking it as the tablet of choice while 15 percent want to buy Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire, and another 15 percent want a Samsung Galaxy device.
Apple sold about 11 million iPads during the 2011 holiday quarter, and this year analysts expect it to sell about 16 million iPads and 8 million iPad mini tablets, Martis said.
Retailers have prepared for a big tablet season. Walmart, for example, doubled its orders for iPads and other tablets and will offer an iPad 2 with a $ 75 gift card for $ 399 as one of its specials on Thanksgiving night.
Laptops are still on the wish lists for 32 percent of respondents, while 18 percent would like to buy desktop computers and only 13 percent are looking for ultrabooks.
SPENDING LESS OR STILL UNSURE
Meanwhile, retailers may want shoppers to believe the holiday shopping season begins sometime in September. But the poll shows that most consumers still are waiting until around Thanksgiving to start their holiday shopping.
Walmart, Toys R Us and others started promoting their layaway plans in September as a way to reserve hot items.
While 11 percent said they were using layaway more this year than last year, 71 percent said they were not.
Seventy-two percent have done no shopping yet or less than a quarter of it, the poll found.
“The fact that 72 percent haven’t really started yet reinforces why Black Friday is coined the official beginning of the holiday season because that’s truly when shoppers start to open their wallets,” Martis said.
Most of that shopping will still take place in stores, despite the rise of online shopping and fears of shoppers using physical stores as showrooms for products they will buy online using their mobile devices.
“It is still growing, but it is still a very small portion of retail sales,” Martis said of mobile shopping.
Going to a mix of different types of stores is the plan for 42 percent of the respondents planning to go to stores, while 31 percent plan to do most of their holiday shopping at a discount chain such as Walmart, Target or Kmart, which will all be open for at least some of Thanksgiving Day to court shoppers.
The U.S. economy and possible tax hikes continue to be a concern for some, with 28 percent saying that they are spending less this year because of the fiscal cliff, though 58 percent said the fiscal cliff was not affecting their holiday spending plans.
Two-thirds of shoppers said they were planning to spend the same amount as last year or were unsure about their spending plans, while 21 percent plan to spend less and 11 percent plan to spend more. Also, 60 percent said are choosing to shop closer to home to save on gas.
Contrary to the cry of some traditional retailers, “show rooming” is not the norm for most people.
When asked how, if at all, they use a mobile device while in stores, 63 percent said they do not even pull out their smartphones while shopping. Fifteen percent compare prices online and 14 percent said they research products.
Amazon is the top online retailer shoppers plan to visit more than they did last year, with 42 percent picking it, 38 percent choosing Walmart, 23 percent selecting Target and 14 percent picking EBay.
Physical stores remain the top destination, with 26 percent planning to shop primarily at stores and only 14 percent planning to shop primarily online.
The poll is the first in a series that Ipsos will conduct during the holiday season.
The findings are from an Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters from November 15-19, 2012, with 1,169 American adults interviewed online. Results are within the poll’s credibility intervals, a tool used to account for statistical variation in Internet-based polling. The credibility interval was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
(Additional reporting by Brad Dorfman; Editing by Edward Tobin and Leslie Gevirtz)
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
The Amazing Race bid farewell to long-haired music industry veterans James LoMenzo and Mark "Abba" Abbatista on Sunday night, and ETonline caught up with the pair to find out how hard it was to have their bags stolen in Moscow, if they ever made it out of Russia, and what they thought of two other teams taking their cash, in an interview filled with lots of laughs.
James: (Plays the ET theme song on his guitar).
Abba: That was James by the way. How are ya?
ETonline: I'm good how are you? I'm sad to be talking to you guys honestly.
James: Oh we're not… we're happy.
Abba: I'm not. (laughs)
ETonline: Because I wanted you to keep going. Oh my gosh it was so hard to see you--
James: Who says we're out of the race yet -- Abba?
ETonline: You're still out there racing, right?
Abba: There may be a gas leak in James's house, uh...
James: No, there's a gas leak in this Russian prison cell...
ETonline: I was really bummed to see you lose your bags, that was just awful to watch. How did that feel? What was your reaction when you saw that the cabbie left?
Abba: It felt great! It was a lot easier without the bags… No. Let me correct you too because we didn't lose our bags, this was a cabbie drove away with our bags and conscious act of theft here we got out of the cab and he drove away.
ETonline: Oh, okay.
Abba: And so you know, we were like fifty feet away from the clue box, you could see it, and you know we just thought we were running up and getting the clue and coming back, we had not paid him at the time, and apparently he thought that the bags were more important and more valuable than the money we owed him, and as soon as we got out of the car, boom he went.
ETonline: Wow.
Abba: So again it wasn't some act of you know kind of foolishness or you know, slack part of anything on our part, it was really just a bad situation. And the reason to why my passport was in there was because we had come out of the pool and I didn't have a towel, and when we put our closed on they were soaking wet because I couldn't dry off. And that's the reason why. I mean normally my passport, I sleep with it when I travel. And so again, just weird things happened and it got us.
James: I have a confession Abba. I slept with your passport too. Maybe this isn't the place.
ETonline: On the show it wasn't really clear, because I know a lot of the times on The Amazing Race people will leave their bags in the cab and so I just assumed watching it that that was what had happened, but the way you describe it, that's much worse.
Abba: You know I would bet, and I'll probably go back and take a look at this, that every single team did exactly that. And that was the first and only time that we ever separated from our bags. In the bamboo challenge we actually put them down and I tied them to the bike that we were in. So, okay I sit corrected that there were actually two times that I ever remember leaving the bag that was not in our possession like that.
James: Throughout the race I kept telling the Sri Lankan girls, you girls are out of your mind, don't leave your bags in the cab cause they were doing it with impunity, and I thought well you know, you guys are just risking it. So it wasn't like we were, you know not aware that could happen or weren't thinking that couldn't happen. Again it was all at the moment, we were rushing, we thought okay let's just get up there, get back in the cab and move on. So that's kind of why we took that shot.
ETonline: Yeah, that guy probably made a lot of money off of all the stuff you had in your bags.
Abba: Well we actually had the lightest bags ever in race history. We were under ten pounds on our bags so good luck to him he stole the wrong ones.
ETonline: Ha!
Abba: But you know, we had to comb our hair with a fork the next day because you know we didn't have a comb.
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ETonline: (laughs) I was going to ask you guys that because besides the fact that you ended up getting eliminated from the race, I mean how hard was it to be in a foreign country with basically only the clothes on your back?
Abba: Yeah it was a little bit uncomfortable. Especially cause it was raining and cold. (laughs)
James: Yeah, actually it was freezing that night. ... Having lost luggage many times, it's not the first time we've ended up somewhere without or stuff, you know? 'Cause we've traveled [while] touring [with a band] for years. And that's almost commonplace to have your bags go away for a day or two.
Abba: It was rough for me because I had contacts in, and my glasses were stolen and I'm pretty not much functional without my glasses, so having contacts in every day and waking up in the middle of the night in a hotel and I couldn't see where the bathroom or something was and I couldn't walk anyway because you know… That was pretty hard to go through a daily situation of nothing but contacts.
ETonline: Totally.
Abba: But you know what, you MacGyver things you know, as best you can.
James: Strapped on some glasses backwards on his eyes.
L: How long did it take you to get a passport and get out of the country?
J: It is an interesting story, tell her why we couldn't get it right away.
A: What happened is that you just can't get a passport ... There's also a Russian visa for entry and exit, so you're dealing with two different governments at this point. This happened on a Friday and a Saturday, and Tuesday was the Russian day of independence like our Fourth of July. ... So not only did we get hit with lightning, we got hit with a hurricane on top of that, and then like an electric eel came and zapped us and then we were stung in the face by a bee. ... We wound up having to go through the bureaucracy of the Russian system which is a very procedure-driven, it's not the easiest kind of culture to be in sometimes, there's no flexibility in it, everything is very much by the rules and very you know, that's the way it is and you have to jump through the hoops. But you know what we got lucky with some of it and we were able to get the passport issued, the temporary passport that got us home, and then the visa that allowed us to get out too. So, and there's a little bit more story to that but um there was actually a letter of diplomatic immunity that was granted, that is how this thing happened.
ETonline: (laughs) Wow.
James: We would have had to stay there for over a month (laughs).
ETonline: How long did it take?
Abba: It was I think six days.
ETonline: Wow.
Abba: I looked at James at one point I said, "Hey you know what, if we had won this leg, we would have got say a trip to go somewhere." So this way here we got our six day all-expense paid trip to Moscow, you know?
James: (laughs)
Abba: And that was kind of how we felt and it was like you know what like alright, we're over it we're out of the race, we have to kind of re-transition ourselves, and even though we're doing this all day long at least at night we can drink voluminous--
James: Vodka!
Abba: Vodka (laughs).
ETonline: So on Sunday night's episode in the last closing scene, you see that you are in a car with a priest. Can you tell me how that happened?
Abba: (laughs)
James: That was our speed bump, if you recall we heard the speed bump. ... So we were the only ones that had to do that, that's why you kept seeing our faces on the speed bump sign, and that was actually his church which was conspicuously placed throughout a bunch of roads going in the same direction. So it was a bit of a challenge, we knocked it out pretty quick. We were kind of hoping that, you know, maybe he'd put in a good prayer for us or at least he'd open up his collection box and the passport would be in it but obviously he wasn't a very good priest because neither one of those things happened (laughs).
ETonline: Unfortunately he couldn't materialize your passport for you (laughs). ... I also want to talk to you about another turning point in the race this season, another major, major event. What did you think when you watched the episode where the twins took your money and shared it with Trey and Lexi?
James: I was dumbfounded because we were convinced that we had lost the money. I mean just lost it, like it just slipped out of Abba's pocket along the way. So that was the first, I mean we kind of discovered that with the audience watching the show, you know. It was kind of weird to all of a sudden look at these people we'd been running around with and go, 'Oh my God, look at them!' But you know, my take on it, Abba's a little different, there's no rule against picking up somebody's money if it's fallen on the floor, you know, and part of the game is to kind of compete and get ahead and stuff like that. I don't know if it was a scrupulous thing but you know I don't hold really any animosity towards them. I think it was kind of, you know it's bad taste to have to be shown on TV doing something like that. And I was really surprised that Lexi jumped on board as well. You know, and to me it is kind of a part of the game, maybe not the most, [moral] part of the game. I don't know.
Abba: Yep, and as he said I don't totally buy into that kind of situation. I mean, I don't condone what happened. I think under the circumstances that we were the only people in there, it was a substantial amount of American money, and they knew it was, and so I'm disappointed, kind of shocked at Trey and Lexi. Not so shocked at the twins. But you know what, it happened to us, we didn't know that that had happened until we saw it on television that week. Previously going there we had been in a van as our cab and I had fallen asleep on the back bench and that's how I thought the money was lost. You know I wasn't going to accuse anybody because I didn't know that, and now, looking at it in hindsight, I just don't think that looking in the rearview mirror is the best way to go forward. So, you know, it happened and I think that you know I was very happy the way that we kind of dealt with it level-headed and--
James: It created a really great experience anyway, you know? Despite all that we did get back on track relatively quickly, so I mean it kind of [ended up being positive] in a strange way.
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ETonline: Yeah, I thought it was pretty amazing that in a country like Bangladesh where there's clearly so much poverty, that you were able to replace that money with everyone being so generous.
Abba: Yeah. And you know what again if we had had the money, we would not have had that life experience, and I think that quite honestly for me, that day was probably one of my highlights of the whole race, you know? Because it's really like the generosity of strangers giving you something that, you have no chance of ever paying back, and it really is just like, why are you doing this, you know? And then it kind of makes you feel guilty about all the times that maybe you could've reached out your hand to somebody and you didn't, you know? And you're kind of like, God I feel somewhat terrible about myself here, but at least at the same time it's like there's these angels around us that are you know, kind of like -- wow.
Abba: I'll tend to look at it as, if that didn't happen that day we would have never had that experience, and you know again it wasn't something fatal, you know we said sort of through it that a lot of times you know you're gonna to make mistakes trying to stay away from the catastrophic ones, well we hit one of those (laughs), you know? But I think just going through life if you bend and don't break, you're probably better off. And I think that you know it was a nice gesture of the Bangladeshi people. You saw throughout the race, we had support of a lot of the locals. Everywhere we went with the children in Bangladesh, and the people helping us with the bamboo, and if you look there's always a circle around us that are sort of smiling and enjoying what it is that we're doing. And you know, I think that that's sort of a testament to James and I, and I hope anyway that that's why they were there, because they wanted to be with us. And we could respect their culture and their local customs, and you know, who they are, and I'd like to think that's some of the experience of us traveling, you know? That we're not scared of this stuff that seems so exotic and so foreign sometimes the first time that you see it.
Abba: And even the poverty that was there in Bangladesh, it's awful, you know? I mean the conditions that these people are living in -- they're there right now today and have the same conditions. But the spirit of the people in some of the poorest places that I've ever been has been the most wonderful spirits that I could find. Anywhere. And you know it's just I think a nice reminder sometimes and people use it as that positive kind of reminder, then you know what, it was a lesson that we learned, and hopefully everybody else could kind of benefit from it.
ETonline: Yeah definitely. Has it changed how you live your life daily now that you're back in any way?
James: You know what, I've always kind of had an open heart for people, and more so than a lot of people in my business. But this has kind of reinforced that. When we were stuck in Russia we were at the police station, and we were trying desperately to find our passport, we just couldn't make a connection language wise with the guy on duty, and we had to fill out a form. And so you saw this fellow come walking up and I asked him could you help translate. That guy stood there for hours. Hours. He had just come home from school, and he had his smoothie he was gonna sit down and eat, and he gave us all that time. And, I mean, I was amazed, I am forever thankful to him. It didn't get us the passports, nonetheless he gave us all that time to try and help us. I mean there are so many great people in the world and I think you know, we get the kind of the thing of being ugly Americans, you know that kind of strips off once you see the generosity of people with maybe a little less. I mean not so much [with this guy] but certainly Bangladesh. I came away with so much renewed positivity for people in general throughout the whole world.
Abba: I think we kind of came across as being kind of serious and it's really not the way that so much of this was, you know I think we had a whole lot of goofy like moments through things, and there were people that helped us. Again we wound up even going into the final pit stop, there was a really pretty girl that was jogging along, and it was kind of like I put out my thumb like hitchhiking and she laughed, and you know she walked up to the pit stop with us, and we kind of hugged her, and when we were in Moscow the first time again there was another very pretty woman that was dressed in this business suit and she was the one who kind of helped and walked with us, and got a cab for us. Going on to the one plane that we wound up getting on going into Russia we met these two women that were I think from Ireland or Scotland, and they got on the plane and we wound up going down the runway with them holding hands and like singing and dancing, and like you know. I mean it was just so much fun that like we had, and you know obviously they can't show everything but you know what it's like we enjoyed the experience.
Abba: And I think that's really something everybody should take [away, that] there's so much stuff in the world that you could just kind of unbelievably enjoy. Try to eat something different today. Say hello to somebody you've never said hello to before, you know just do something different, whatever it is. And I think that if you have that attitude, life really opens up and maybe these people were all around us all the time but you know what, it's like a clenched fist can't receive the gift. So if you open up your hand sometimes you might be surprised what falls into them. And not just when you need something. And, again, I think our experiences of traveling have sort of maybe taught us that slowly along the way, and maybe you saw some of that. I'd like to think that that's sort of how we live our life, and I think it was pretty accurately represented.
ETonline: One last question: Who do you think of the remaining pairs, who do you think will win?
Abba: I'm gonna go with Monster Truck.
James: Yeah me too.
ETonline: (laughs) You guys know they're not in it any more, right?
A: They're not? Who are you voting for?
J: They only let us watch TV for forty minutes at a time here in Russia.
A: Yeah we're still in Russia by the way. Did they tell you that?
You can catch the remaining teams on The Amazing Race on Sunday nights at 8/7 c on CBS.
No, that’s not Niagara Falls -- its the Queens Midtown Tunnel!
Raging river water completely submerged the toll lanes during super storm Sandy, according to the never-before-seen video released by the MTA.
The water is so high it pours over the lane dividers and almost reaches the security gates.
At one point, the camera pans back and reveals the whole road flooded and pouring into the tunnel.
The MTA also released photographs of the tunnels fully flooded tubes, which were closed for over two weeks before being completely reopened.
Millions of gallons of water flooded the tubes, officials said.
NewME brought its first Popup Accelerator to Miami last week, and together with the Knight Foundation and LAB Miami, gave 65 South Florida participants a two-night pitch workshop, a one-on-one mentoring session with a Silicon Valley venture capitalist or NewME expert and the opportunity to present their ventures at Demo Night.
On Wednesday evening, 38 startup teams pitched to a crowd filling the risers of The Light Box Theater in Wynwood, and competed for tens of thousands of dollars in prizes. On the intimate stage, the teams made their two-minute pitches, each one accompanied by a pitch deck of 8 to 10 slides.
“Can’t you feel the energy? This is super exciting,” said Matt Haggman, program director of the Knight Foundation’s Miami office, which has been supporting and funding projects to help the startup community. “What’s going on here clearly shows there is something special happening and we look forward to contributing to it further.”
After the pitches, which were judged by two investors and Angela Benton, founder of NewME, Benton announced the winners:
• First place: Sew Love, pitched by Sabrina Scandar. Sewlove.co, founded by sisters Sabrina and Silvia Scandar, is a platform for crowdsourcing fashion design. The Scandars want to raise $300,000 to help them continue developing their platform, make some key hires and fire up a marketing strategy. They won a prize package worth $45,000 in goods and services to help them build their startup, plus they were accepted into NewME’s 2013 Accelerator class.
• Second place: Gozump, pitched by Charleston Malkemus. Gozump is a platform to help people buy homes, which will begin by targeting the military market. “We are Marines on a mission to change the way real estate works forever,” Malkemus pitched. Gozump won $23,000 in goods and services.
• Third place, Indira, pitched by Carrie Ann Mantha: Indira is a fashion tech platform that creates personalized fashion and decor for weddings. It has a factory running in Little Haiti and is launching next month. Indira won $7,000 in goods and services.
Honorable mentions: ToddlerTV, SkillU, GoGeekster and NightPro. “We thought the judging process would be a lot easier. There was a lot of great technology,” said Benton, speaking Friday by phone after returning to San Francisco, where the NewME Accelerator is based.
All winners received co-working space at LAB Miami, which is soon moving to a larger space in the Wynwood neighborhood. All participants received a one-month “connect” membership to LAB Miami. Read more about the NewME PopUp here.
Many of the PopUp participants said getting the opportunity to mingle with other startups in South Florida was also valuable.
“We were really excited to meet more of the startup tech community,” said Mantha, who moved Indira from New York City to Little Haiti about six months ago. “It is much more dynamic than we realized.”
Last week was also big for other entrepreneurs taking the stage. Several hundred women attended the two-day Women’s Success Summit, where summit founder Michelle Villalobos and her business partner Jessica Kizorek laid out a system for work/life balance (hint: It starts with scheduling in your playtime, involves firing your least-profitable clients and includes developing strong systems for efficiency.)
The Miami Commission will meet Monday evening to finalize a $45 million bond issue.
City leaders say the debt will be used to pay off a short-term bank loan that financed Miami’s share of the PortMiami tunnel dig. The balance is due in January.
The bond issue has been controversial, in part because the city’s finance department waited until this fall to address the two-year loan.
Adding to the intrigue: The city had sought proposals from private equity companies interested in holding the debt, but tossed the sole proposal it received from Gates Group Capital Partners. Gates, which wanted to loan the city $48 million by taking control of a city-owned building as collateral, complained about the bid process.
Then, last week, the night before the commission was scheduled to vote on the bond issue, the city budget director announced that he had discovered a surprise surplus of between $37 million and $45 million. Commissioners delayed Thursday’s vote saying they needed more time to digest the new budget figures.
Despite the controversy, the bond issue is likely to pass Monday.
At the commission meeting last week, Vice Chairman Marc Sarnoff and Commissioner Willy Gort expressed support for the measure.
Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado told The Miami Herald that City Manager Johnny Martinez had since “made the rounds” to the other city commissioners’ offices, and there didn’t seem to be any lingering hang-ups.
Martinez said he was confident he could win the votes to move forward on the bond issue by Monday.
The tunnel loan is technically the responsibility of the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency, a quasi-independent city body tasked with eliminating slum and blight in the downtown corridor.
While the city took out the short-term bank loan and would issue the bond, the CRA would be responsible for the debt-service payments.
Justin Bieber was a big winner at last night's American Music Awards, but on Saturday he got into a confrontation with paparazzi following him around the streets of Los Angeles.
In this exclusive video obtained by ET, Bieber is seen darting through traffic in his white Ferrari while being trailed by photographers recording his movements.
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At one point when Bieber stops in traffic, he has paparazzi vehicles on both sides of his car. One of the photographers converses with Bieber, who has his window down. "You're driving pretty crazy," he tells the pop star, adding, "I think you should slow down a little, don't you think." Bieber responds: "I think you guys should probably stop following me."
Bieber then speaks to the photographer on the other side of his car and says, "I like you." But he then gestures to the other paparazzo who criticized his driving skills, saying, "I think this guy's just not fun."
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Bieber then asks the photographer, "What do your parents think about what you do?" When the photographer says, "I make them proud," Bieber responds: "Oh, you make them proud. Do you tell them, 'I stalk people for a living.'"
Traffic is halted in the street as the conversation continues, with other drivers honking and loudly urging Bieber to move. The teen heartthrob then tells the photographer, "You guys love this don't you?"
Watch the video for more of our exclusive footage!
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