Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones running for reelection




















Eight years have passed since Michelle Spence-Jones was elected to the Miami City Commission.

She isn’t willing to leave just yet.

Spence-Jones — who was charged with bribery and grand theft in 2009, suspended from office, acquitted and reinstated to her post — is seeking reelection, she announced Friday. She represents District 5, which includes Overtown, Little Haiti and Liberty City.





Whether Spence-Jones could run again has been the subject of much debate. The Miami city charter limits commissioners to two terms and Spence-Jones has twice won election. But City Attorney Julie O. Bru opined that Spence-Jones could run again because her second term was interrupted by the suspension.

“Our charter prohibits a commissioner or the mayor for running for reelection after that commissioner or mayor has served two consecutive terms,” Bru reaffirmed to Spence-Jones at a City Commission meeting Thursday. “You are eligible to seek reelection because you did not serve two full consecutive terms.”

Spence-Jones’s opponent isn’t buying it.

“The bottom line is, Michelle is term limited,” said the Rev. Richard P. Dunn II, who held the commission seat in Spence-Jones’s absence. “She received financial compensation for the time she was away and she was fully vested in the pension. Are the citizens of Miami going to pay her twice?”

Dunn plans to file a legal challenge “immediately,” he said.

Spence-Jones wants the additional term, she said, “to finish what I started.”

She pointed to the improvements she’s spearheaded along Northeast Second Avenue in Little Haiti. “We cleaned the place up, repainted many of the buildings and recreated a Caribbean feel by adding steeples,” she said.

The ultimate goal, Spence-Jones said, is to make Little Haiti a destination for tourists akin to Little Havana’s Calle Ocho. She has a similar vision for Overtown, which was once the cultural hub of Miami’s black community. To that end, Spence-Jones pushed for improvements to Northwest Third Avenue and provided grant money for local businesses.

“Now we’re going to move forward with a marketing campaign and build relationships with cruise lines and tour operators,” Spence-Jones said. “But these sorts of things take time.”

Other big projects are in the works.

Earlier this year, Spence-Jones pushed through a $50 million bond issue for improvements in Overtown — the largest investment the blighted community has seen in decades. The money will go toward affordable housing and some retail projects.

But Spence-Jones takes an equal amount of pride in some of her smaller initiatives, including a project that brought Hollywood director Robert Townsend to Overtown to film an independent movie. Students from the University of Miami and several local high schools had the opportunity to serve as interns. The film will debut this summer.

She plans to focus future efforts on Liberty City. She is already laying the groundwork for a program that will train residents to become laboratory technicians. A second program will help people with criminal records pursue careers in the automotive industry.

Spence-Jones’s tenure has been somewhat of a rollercoaster. After being elected to her second term, she was charged with bribery and grand theft in two separate cases and removed from office by then-Gov. Charlie Crist. Jurors later acquitted her of bribery, and prosecutors dropped the grand-theft charges.

A vindicated Spence-Jones returned to City Hall in August with newfound political heft.

Spence-Jones is now suing Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle and Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, accusing them of conspiring to destroy her political career via the prosecutions. She declined to talk about the suit, saying only: “I’m going to let my lawyers fight that battle.”

She may have another legal fight ahead.

Dunn believes the city attorney’s opinion giving Spence-Jones the go-ahead to run again won’t withstand a legal challenge. He says Spence-Jones has served two consecutive terms because she was paid for two consecutive terms.

Dunn also criticized the city attorney, saying she likely felt pressured to give that opinion because Spence-Jones is her boss.

“If it stands up in a court of law, I will respect that,” said Dunn, who attended Thursday’s commission meeting and took notes on a legal pad. “But I’m not going to be whitewashed by a city attorney’s opinion that’s biased by her boss’s posturing position.”

Dunn, who also sat on the commission in the mid-‘90s after Commissioner Miller Dawkins was removed from office, pointed to his own accomplishments as a commissioner. He said he helped secure funding for Gibson Park,and quelled racial tensions after Miami police officers shot and killed seven black men in 2010 and 2011.

“Michelle Spence-Jones does not own that seat,” he said. “It’s owned by the people of District 5.”

No other candidates have announced they are running for the post.





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Facebook Profile May Expose Mental Illness






A person’s Facebook profile may reveal signs of mental illness that might not necessarily emerge in a session with a psychiatrist, a new study suggests.


“The beauty of social media activity as a tool in psychological diagnosis is that it removes some of the problems associated with patients’ self-reporting,” said study researcher Elizabeth Martin, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Missouri. “For example, questionnaires often depend on a person’s memory, which may or may not be accurate.”






Martin’s team recruited more than 200 college students and had them fill out questionnaires to evaluate their levels of extroversion, paranoia, enjoyment of social interactions, and endorsement of strange beliefs. (For example, they were asked whether they agreed with the statement, “Some people can make me aware of them just by thinking about me.”)


The students also were asked to log onto Facebook. They were told they would have the option to black-out parts of their profile before some of it was printed out for the researchers to examine.


“By asking patients to share their Facebook activity, we were able to see how they expressed themselves naturally,” Martin explained in a statement. “Even the parts of their Facebook activities that they chose to conceal exposed information about their psychological state.”


Participants who showed higher levels of social anhedonia — a condition characterized by lack of pleasure from social interactions — typically had fewer Facebook friends, shared fewer photos, and communicated less frequently on the site, the researchers found.


Meanwhile, those who hid more of their Facebook activity before presenting their profiles to researchers were more likely to hold odd beliefs and show signs of perceptual aberrations, which are irregular experiences of one’s senses. They also exhibited higher levels of paranoia.


“However, it should be noted that participants higher on paranoia did not differ from participants lower in paranoia in terms of the amount of personal information shared,” the researchers wrote in their study detailed Dec. 30, 2012, in the journal Psychiatry Research. That finding suggests this group might be more comfortable sharing information in an online setting than in the face-to-face interactions with the experimenter.


The researchers said information culled from social networking sites potentially could be used to inform diagnostic materials or intervention strategies for people with mental health issues.


Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.


Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Report: J.J. Abrams to Direct New 'Star Wars' Movie

Disney/ Andrew H. Walker/ Getty Images

The Force is with J.J. Abrams. The prolific producer/director has agreed to direct the next installment of the Star Wars franchise, confirms Walt Disney Studios.

Pics: Must-See Movies of 2013

"I've consistently been impressed with J.J. as a filmmaker and storyteller," said George Lucas of Abrams in an official statement. "He's an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn't be in better hands."

In October, it was announced that Disney had acquired Star Wars creator George Lucas' company Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion in cash and stock, in turn announcing that new Star Wars movies will be released. The first new Star Wars movie -- Star Wars: Episode 7 -- will be released in 2015 with Lucas serving as creative consultant. Kathleen Kennedy, who is the current co-chair of Lucasfilm, will become Lucasfilm's president and serve as executive producer on new Star Wars feature films.

Of course, Abrams successfully rebooted the Star Trek franchise in 2009, with his highly anticipated follow-up sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, hitting theaters May 17.

Related: New 'Star Wars' Films in the Works

Said Abrams, "To be a part of the next chapter of the Star Wars saga, to collaborate with Kathy Kennedy and this remarkable group of people, is an absolute honor. I may be even more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid."

Read More..

Henry Kravis and vineyard owner in art feud








It seemed like the perfect arrangement for a Manhattan billionaire and his fat-cat friend.

They had admired a set of three abstract paintings depicting a skull and hairy testicles and decided to buy it — and share custody.

For five years, billionaire Henry Kravis and Napa Valley vineyard owner Donald Bryant happily shuttled the Jasper Johns masterpieces between their Manhattan apartments.

In 2008, they bought the set called “Tantric Detail” for tens of millions of dollars from a Chelsea gallery, and it spent the first year at Bryant’s luxurious East 72nd Street duplex.





The Bryants

Clint Spaulding/PatrickMcMullan.com



The Bryants




The Kravises

FilmMagic



The Kravises




HOW’S IT HANGING? Donald Bryant is allegedly keeping this Jasper Johns from Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis.


HOW’S IT HANGING? Donald Bryant is allegedly keeping this Jasper Johns from Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis.





The next year, Bryant sent the triptych eight blocks to Park Avenue for a year with Kravis and his economist wife, Marie-Josée.

And so it went until 2012, when Bryant refused to yank the paintings from his wall.

He’s balking, Kravis claims, at having to continue schlepping the works between their homes — and at their agreement to eventually give the paintings to the Museum of Modern Art.

“Mr. Bryant continues to hold the artworks hostage,” Kravis fumed in a new lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

He claims Bryant reneged on “the promised gift of the art works to MoMA.”

Bryant whines it’s a burden to shuttle the pieces to Kravis’ 26-room abode by the agreed-upon drop-off time.

The Kravises don’t believe it.

“This so-called ‘issue’ is nothing more than a pretext,” the suit charges. “It served as an excuse for Mr. Bryant’s unjustifiable refusal to honor his obligation to transfer the artworks to Mr. and Mrs. Kravis by the mutually agreed date of Jan. 14, 2013.”

When the Kravises tried to claim the modernist paintings for their home in January, Bryant canceled delivery and demanded a new sharing agreement, the suit alleges.

“How could he even think that he could get away with this?” gasped art expert Michael Amy.

“These are classic Jasper Johns. It’s a loss because the public does not have access to the work of a major master.”

He said a close look will reveal a penis hidden in the painting.

“The shaft is actually masked by the crosshatches,” he said.

Johns, famous for his American flag paintings, sold the works from his private collection and helped broker the gift to MoMA, the suit says.

Mrs. Kravis, president of MoMA’s board, is also a part-owner of the painting. Her husband is the 92nd richest person in America with a $4 billion net worth, according to Forbes.

Bryant’s personal art collection includes a Picasso nude, a Jackson Pollock and a de Kooning that mixes images of testicles, bananas and tongues.

Bryant’s St. Louis company caters to other rich execs, and cabernets from his family winery are a popular if pricey vintage.

MoMA declined to comment, and Bryant did not respond to messages seeking comment.

jmarsh@nypost.com










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Fed aims for a 6.5% jobless rate




















Six and a half percent unemployment in America would mean almost 2.1 million more people working than today. At the rate the country has been creating new jobs each month, it would take more than a year to find work for that many people.

Keep 6.5 percent in mind this week when the Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday to talk about its efforts to push interest rates down. The hope is that the cheap cash will spur on investment leading to job creation. After all, the central bank has promised to keep its target interest rate near zero as long as more than 6.5 percent of Americans in the workforce are without work. The Fed has put other conditions on maintaining its historically low interest rate such as low inflation, but official measures remain tame. So its job growth the Fed is looking for.

It won’t have to wait long for the latest update. On Friday the first jobs report of 2013 will be released. Hiring has been a slow grind but it has been positive.





Finding work in January, though, can be tricky. Winter weather, a hangover from the holidays and seasonal work ending can slow down hiring.

It will be months, maybe even a couple of years before the U.S. unemployment rate hits 6.5 percent. There is nothing magical about that number, but as long as the Federal Reserve has it in its sights, so should we.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.





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Broward contractor accused of accepting bribe for Florida Keys roadwork




















A Pompano Beach contractor has been charged by federal authorities with bribery for accepting money to steer a state Department of Transportation contract to a subcontractor working on traffic signals in the Florida Keys, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Ron Capobianco Jr., 40, is charged with committing bribery in connection with programs receiving federal funds. If convicted, he could get 10 years in prison. He had his first appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer Wednesday morning.

He is accused of accepting $4,000 for steering a $25,000 contract to a subcontractor. Prosecutors did not say who that subcontractor is or whether the subcontractor approached authorities or they approached the subcontractor.





Prosecutors say Capobianco worked as an engineering and inspection consultant at Miami's Metric Engineering Inc. DOT contracted with Metric to provide services including designing, inspecting and troubleshooting construction of roads, signs and traffic signals.

DOT considered Capobianco an expert on signalization and lighting construction, including the use of video cameras for traffic signalization and control. Prosecutors say that around 2009, DOT began its work in Marathon to improve traffic flow.

They say that around May 2009, an agent of the subcontractor offered to pay Capobianco $5,000 if the subcontractor could receive at least $25,000 to install video detection equipment. Capobianco reportedly agreed to the deal, enabling the subcontractor to make a significant profit.

The subcontractor's estimate was approved and subsequently paid by the state after the equipment was installed. Then around May 2009, Capobianco reportedly met with an agent of the subcontractor in Plantation in Broward County and was paid $4,000 in cash for his help getting the subcontractor the work.





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Nokia CEO closes the door on a potential Android smartphone






Nokia (NOK) CEO Stephen Elop on Thursday shot down rumors that his company might be interested in developing Android-based smartphones. During Nokia’s fourth-quarter earnings call, the executive reiterated his support for the company’s Asha phones and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone platform, while shutting the door on earlier Android rumors.


[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]






“We are clearly innovating with Microsoft around Windows Phone, and are focused on taking that to lower and lower price points,” he said, according to TechCrunch. “You will see that over time [we will] compete with Android. But at the same time we’ve said consistently — and we’re just beginning to see it in the Asha full-touch products — that we will continue to innovate around our Asha smartphone line in order to compete with the very lowest levels of Android.”


[More from BGR: Why the iOS-Android feud is so intense: It’s about core philosophy more than products]


The executive also took shots at Google (GOOG) and the openness of its Android operating system, or lack thereof.


“The situation that Android is facing, where the amount of fragmentation that you’re seeing is increasing as people take it in different directions, is of course offset by Google’s efforts to turn an open ecosystem into something that’s quite a bit more closed as you’ve seen quite recently,” Elop said.


Elop concluded by saying that Nokia is “not in a situation where we are considering something other than Windows Phone combined with what we’re doing with Asha.”


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Plastic Wives Clip

Reality TV has already gifted us with Real Housewives, Mob Wives and Sister Wives, and on January 27, TLC is introducing the world to another group of gals that are ready for their close-up: Plastic Wives.


VIDEO - How Mama June Fell in Love

The one-hour special features four women who are married to some of the most successful cosmetic doctors in Los Angeles, and ETonline has an exclusive sneak peek of a scene that reveals one of the perks that comes from being married to a plastic surgeon.

Meet Veronica Matlock, who is married to Dr. David Matlock, a.k.a "The Vagina Man," as she asks her husband for a very intimate injection. Watch!


Plastic Wives
airs January 27 at 10 p.m. on TLC.

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Egyptians protest in Tahrir Square on second anniversary of revolution








CAIRO — Two years after Egypt's revolution began, the country's schism was on display Friday as the mainly liberal and secular opposition held giant rallies saying the goals of the pro-democracy uprising have not been met and denouncing Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Thousands of protesters filled Cairo's central Tahrir Square, where the January 2011 uprising was born, and the area outside the presidential palace in the city's Heliopolis district. Throughout these places, the iconic Arab Spring chants of "Erha! Erhal!" or "leave, leave" and "the people want to topple the regime" rang out.





AP



Skirmishes break out between protesters and security forces near Tahrir Square today.





The protesters are using the anniversary to stage a show of strength in a bid to force Morsi to amend a disputed constitution drafted by his Islamist allies. They are also demanding freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary.

Smaller crowds also gathered in central squares in the Mediterranean cities of Alexandria and Port Said as well as the Nile Delta city of Mehalla and Suez at the southern entrance of the Suez Canal.

Clashes broke out for a second day on some sidestreets near Tahrir and police fired tear gas to disperse the young men throwing stones. There were also clashes in Alexandria.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood supporters opted not to mark the anniversary on the streets, arguing that they will honor the occasion with acts of public service, like treating the sick and planting trees, a tactic dismissed by the opposition as a public relations stunt ahead of parliamentary elections expected in April.

The Brotherhood's ultraconservative allies known as Salafis also said they would stay off the streets to avoid clashes.

The anniversary of the revolution comes as Egypt faces a new phase in its upheaval: Ruling Islamists trying to push through their agenda, an opposition trying to break their lock on power, and an economy in free-fall that threatens to fuel public discontent.

At the heart of the country's political divide is a disputed constitution drafted by Morsi's allies without the participation of liberals or minority Christians, what the opposition sees as a bid by Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to take control of all state institutions and the president's meddling in the judiciary.

"I am asking everyone to go out and demonstrate to show that the revolution must be completed and that the revolution must continue," opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said in a televised message posted on his party's website. "There must be a constitution for all Egyptians. A constitution that every one of us sees himself in it," said the Nobel peace Laureate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, IAEA.

New militia-like groups opposed to the Islamists have declared in video messages posted on social networks this week their intention to defend the opposition protesters if attacked. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds injured when Morsi's supporters descended upon protesters camped outside his palace in December, starting clashes that lasted for hours with firebombs, swords, knifes and firearms.










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Lennar design accommodates multigenerational families




















In some cases, it may be Grandma moving in with the family. Other times, it may be a recent college graduate returning to the nest.

For all sorts of reasons — financial, medical, personal — a rising number of Americans are moving into extended family households.

Spotting a niche in the growing trend, Lennar Corp. has launched a new concept tailor-made for multigenerational family living.





It’s basically a house within a house: a smaller living unit next to the main home designed to provide independence but also access to the rest of the family household.

“People are really loving the whole concept,” said Carlos Gonzalez, president of the southeast Florida division of Lennar, a Miami-based home-building giant. “We adapted to the market from a design standpoint.”

In Miami-Dade County, Lennar is selling various versions of multigenerational homes in three new developments in Doral, Kendall and Homestead.

Louis Moreno of Kendall and his wife, Danilza Velez, signed a contract for a large NextGen home in The Vineyards development in Homestead last October — even before the models had been built.

“We loved it,” said Moreno, a 45-year-old engineer.

Moreno said his mother-in-law will be able to use the new suite when she visits, as will his family members who frequently come to town from Puerto Rico. “This will provide them with more comfortable space and more privacy,” he said. He also plans to use it as a game room and entertainment area.

The two-story Zinfandel home Moreno picked has three bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms in the main home with a family room and two-car garage. In addition, it has an ample 789-square-foot suite with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchenette. The suite has its own garage, a separate front entrance and an internal door connecting to the main home.

The Zinfandel, which has 2,249 square feet of air-conditioned space in the main house, starts at $283,990 in the Homestead community at 128 SE 28th Ter., but a similar home in Kendall would run about $100,000 more, primarily because of higher land costs, Fernandez said. (In Doral, there is a NextGen home priced at $677,990.)

Some multigenerational models have suites as small as 489 square feet, but all have a separate entrance, a bedroom, a bathroom and some sort of kitchen space.

The idea takes various shapes. One option at the Kendall Square development at 16950 SW 90th St. is a Granny unit above a detached garage.

“Independence is the key word,” said Frank Fernandez, director of sales and marketing for the southeast Florida division.

Depending on local zoning rules, some homes can have full kitchens, others are restricted to kitchenettes with a microwave but no stove. Similarly, some municipalities permit the space to be used as a rental, others prohibit it.

The choice is proving popular. Fernandez said in The Vineyards development in Homestead, 10 of the 14 homes sold to date are NextGen. At Kendall Square, 35 of 107 sales are multigenerational, and at the Isles at Grand Bay development at 11301 NW 74th Street in Doral, five of 48 houses are.

Adapting homes for special needs, such as wheelchairs and safety railings, is done at cost, Fernandez said: “That is company policy.”

As one of the nation’s largest home builders, Lennar has been rebounding strongly from the housing crash. Last week, the builder, whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, posted better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Nov. 30, 2012.





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Miami-Dade County Commission helps Miami Dolphins more than voters




















If deceptive inconsistency were currency, the Miami-Dade County Commission could make a mint.

And the Miami Dolphins would be happy for it. That way, the county commission could simply give the money away to help cover the football club’s $400 million stadium renovation plan.

Unable to do that, the commission Wednesday urged the Legislature to give the county the authority to raise hotel taxes and give the Dolphins an additional $3 million annual state subsidy.





The plan has the slimmest of chances in the Florida Legislature. It’s controlled by Republicans, many of whom can’t afford to run in a GOP primary where they can be accused of voting to raise taxes or of doling out corporate welfare or both.

But the county commission asked anyway. Despite the long odds.

Is this the same county commission that decided not to ask the Florida Legislature to reinstate 14 early voting days because of the long odds in Tallahassee?

Why yes, yes it is.

“I’m not sure that you’re going to get 14 days out of the state Legislature,” Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Dec. 14 when a county election advisory group reviewed Election Supervisor Penelope Townsley’s proposal for two full weeks of early voting.

So the commission essentially negotiated with itself and asked for nine days of early voting. That’s just one more than the current eight days, which (coupled with county bumbling over precincts and early voting sites) helped lead to exceedingly long and embarrassing voting lines. The lines stretched for more than eight hours in some places, and made Florida and Miami a national elections embarrassment.

Again.

Even Gov. Rick Scott, who signed the early voting cutback and refused to extend early voting days, realized what a politically bad idea eight days of early voting is. Scott recently proposed a return to 14. That’s not a guarantee it’ll return to 14 days, but it’s a good indication of strong support.

So the commission didn’t ask. Despite the short odds.

The argument was bogus at the time. The commission often urges the Legislature to do things it might not do.

At best, it’s inconsistent. At worst, it’s deceptive. In reality, it’s both. Whether the commissioners are self-deceived or not will take some figuring.

But it’s a good idea of where their priorities are.

More early voting? Well, let’s not ask too much.

Money for a football stadium? Hell, let’s ask for $200 million from taxpayers.

But not every commissioner is to blame.

County Commissioner Esteban “Steve” Bovo, who incidentally supported nine days of early voting, was at least consistent and was one of four commissioners to oppose the Dolphins deal as well. Bovo was a state legislator and said his former colleagues won’t go along with the idea. Also, he said, the last stadium deal from the county was a stinker.

Said Bovo: “The stench of the Marlins deal is in the pores of everything this is about.”

That ain’t the only thing that stinks.





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Go forth and Tweet! Pope sees web networks as “portals of truth”






VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged Catholics on Thursday to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to win converts, as he launched his own smartphone app streaming live footage of his speeches.


The websites – often associated with endless postings of idle gossip and baby photos – could be used as “portals of truth and faith” in an increasingly secular age, the pontiff said in his 2013 World Communications Day message.






“Unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people,” the 85-year old Pope said in the a letter published on the Vatican‘s website.


The Holy See has become an increasingly prolific user of social media since it launched its ‘new evangelization’ of the developed world, where some congregations have fallen in the wake of growing secularization and damage to the Church’s reputation from a series of sex abuse scandals.


The Pope himself reaches around 2.5 million followers through eight Twitter accounts, including one in Latin.


Belying his traditionalist reputation, the Pope praised connections made online which he said could blossom into true friendships. Online life was not a purely virtual world but “increasingly becoming part of the very fabric of society,” he said.


Social networks were also a practical tool that Catholics could use to organize prayer events, the pope suggested. But he called for reasoned debate and respectful dialogue with those with different beliefs, and cautioned against a tendency towards “heated and divisive voices” and “sensationalism”.


The websites were creating a new “agora”, he added, referring to the gathering spaces that were the centers of public life in ancient Greek cities.


The speech coincided with the launch of ‘The Pope App’, a downloadable program that streams live footage of the pontiff’s speaking events and Vatican news onto smartphones.


Pope Benedict‘s embrace of new media responds to the Church’s concern that it is invisible on the internet.


The Vatican commissioned a study of internet use and religion prior to the pope’s Twitter debut, which found the majority of U.S. Catholics surveyed were unaware of any significant Church presence online.


(Reporting by Naomi O’Leary; editing by Andrew Heavens)


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Robin Roberts Makes First Return to 'GMA' Studio Since Taking Leave of Absence

Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts returned to the show's studio on Thursday for the first time since taking a leave of absence last September to undergo a bone marrow transplant. 

The 52-year-old Roberts was on the show's New York set for a behind-the-scenes test run this morning, ABC News announced. "What a thrill to be back at GMA's Times Square Studio this morning and see the best folks in the world, my GMA family," Roberts said. "I can't wait to get back to the anchor chair in a few weeks."

RELATED: Robin Roberts Speaks About Returning to GMA

During a live interview from her home last week, Roberts
explained that she'd be doing a series of "dry runs" of the show to make sure she's ready to return to work full-time. "My doctors want me to see how many people I
actually come in contact with. How my body reacts to the stimulation -- that's code word for stress -- of being in the studio environment," she said

Roberts began her leave of absence from GMA on September 20 to undergo a bone marrow
transplant in an attempt to combat Myelodysplastic
syndrome (MDS), a rare blood disorder that she contracted after
undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

RELATED: Robin Roberts Reveals Hospital Stay for Virus

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100 live, more than 60 dead cats found in upstate NY home








WRIGHT — Authorities say they've seized about 100 live cats from a rural upstate New York home where more than 60 felines were found dead.

Local media outlets report that a raid by police and animal welfare organizations found cats living in deplorable conditions at a home in the Schoharie County town of Wright, 20 miles west of Albany.

Workers at the Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley say 67 cats were found dead. The rescued animals have been taken to the shelter.

There was no information on any charges and no names have been released. The Schoharie County Sheriff's Office is holding a news conference Thursday morning to discuss the case.











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Miami Dolphins slam Norman Braman, Marlins Park deal




















The Miami Dolphins ramped up their public campaign for a tax-funded stadium renovation this week, buying full-page ads against their top critic and trying to distance the plan from the unpopular Marlins deal.

The team bought an ad in Tuesday’s Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald knocking auto magnate Norman Braman’s criticism of the Sun Life Stadium deal, which would have Florida and Miami-Dade split the costs with owner Stephen Ross for a $400 million renovation. The Dolphins would pay at least $201 million, with taxpayers using state funds and a higher Miami-Dade hotel tax to pay $199 million.

In a fact sheet sent to media Tuesday morning, the Dolphins listed ways their deal differs from the 2009 Marlins deal. First: Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, would use private dollars to fund at least 51 percent of the Sun Life effort, compared to less than 25 percent from Marlins owner Jeff Loria. Second, Sun Life helps the economy more than the Marlins park does.





“Just because the Marlins did a bad deal doesn’t mean we should oppose a good deal where at least a majority of the cost is paid from private sources and more than 4,000 local jobs are created during construction alone,” the fact sheet states. And while the Dolphins’ Miami Gardens stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 2007 and is in the running for the 2016 game, “Marlins Stadium does not generate the ability to attract world-class sports events -- other than a World Series from time to time depending on the success of the team.”

NFL teams play eight home games a year if they don’t make the playoffs, while baseball teams have 81.

Miami and Miami-Dade built the Marlins a $640 million stadium at the site of the Dolphins’ old home at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins contributed about $120 million and agreed to pay between $2.5 million and $4.9 million a year for 35 years to pay back $35 million of debt the county borrowed for the stadium. As a publicly owned stadium, the Marlins ballpark pays no property taxes. Most of the public money came from Miami-Dade hotel taxes, along with $50 million of debt tied to the county’s general fund.

Sun Life is privately owned and pays $3 million a year in property taxes to Miami-Dade. It currently receives $2 million a year from Florida’ s stadium program, a subsidy tied to converting the football venue to baseball in the 1990s when the Marlins played there. The Dolphins also paid for a second full-page ad with quotes from leading hoteliers in Miami-Dade endorsing the stadium plan. Among them: Donald Trump, whose company recently purchased the Doral golf resort. “Steve Ross’ commitment to modernize Sun Life Stadium -- while covering most of the construction costs -- is the right thing for Miami-Dade,’’ the ad quotes Trump as saying.

Also on Tuesday, Ross and team CEO Mike Dee sent a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and county commissioners requesting negotiations over the stadium deal. The letter said the deal Ross unveiled last week is a “baseline for debate” and asked for talks. The letter also urged the commission to adopt a resolution proposed by Commissioner Barbara Jordan endorsing the state bill that would allow taxes for Sun Life. The resolution is on the agenda for Wednesday’s commission meeting.





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Judge to rule on Miami-Dade absentee ballot ordinance




















A judge will rule Wednesday whether Miami-Dade County’s ordinance governing the collection of absentee ballots is constitutional.

The ruling will come in the criminal case against Sergio Robaina, who prosecutors say illegally collected ballots, and filled out two against the wishes of two voters, one of them a woman with dementia. Robaina insists he was just helping elderly citizens who could not deliver their absentee ballots themselves.

Robaina is charged with two counts of violating the ordinance, and two felony counts of voter fraud.





Two years ago, in an effort to crack down on perceived election fraud, the Miami-Dade County Commission passed the ordinance that outlawed the collection possession of more than two absentees ballots, making it a misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail or a fine of up to $1,000.

This past election season, as allegations of absentee ballot fraud rose in Miami-Dade, police used the ordinance as a probable cause-stepping stone to investigate felony charges of voter fraud.

Robaina’s lawyers have asked Miami-Dade Judge Milton Hirsch to throw out the ordinance, saying it unfairly targeted certain voters.

“It cuts off a certain class of voters, for the most part elderly Hispanic who probably live in the Sweetwater area who are accustomed to having confidence in certain people and they talk to them about how to vote,” lawyer Joseph Klock told the judge.

Also, the lawyers alleged, the ordinance is fundamentally unfair because it applies only in Miami-Dade — while some ballots include races for districts that stretch into neighboring counties.

Oren Rosenthal, an assistant county attorney, argued that the commission had every right to enact the ordinance under state law. He also said the ordinance “cuts off a class of fraud that has been proven unique in Miami-Dade County over the years.”





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First “Firefox OS” Phones Previewed, to Launch in February






Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind the popular Firefox web browser, has been promoting its Firefox OS project (once known as “Boot to Gecko”) for some time now. A hardware partnership with Telefonica, the international telecom giant, had been announced, but no phones had yet been unveiled.


But in an announcement today on its blog, Mozilla announced the impending launch of its first “developer preview” phones, the Keon and the Peak. Made in partnership with Geeksphone, a Spanish smartphone producer which used to make Android phones, these devices are meant to help app developers preview their work on the small screen. But they may also serve as a sneak preview of Mozilla’s plan to enter the smartphone market.






Introducing Firefox OS


Designed as an alternative to Google’s Android for low-powered smartphones, Firefox OS’ claim to fame is that it’s “built entirely using open web standards,” or open-source code written in the programming languages which make up the web, like JavaScript. Likewise, Firefox OS apps are websites specially formatted to look and feel like apps, and to respond to touchscreen controls and access phone features like vibration and the GPS.


A selection of Firefox apps is already available in the Mozilla Marketplace, but developers will eventually be able to take the open-source code behind it and create their own app markets like it if they so choose. These apps also run on the preview “Aurora” version of Firefox for Android, which is available for download from Mozilla’s website.


“Say ‘hola’” to the Keon and Peak


The Keon is Mozilla’s entry-level developer smartphone, while the Peak has somewhat more modern hardware specs.


The Keon has a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 3.5-inch touchscreen, and 4 GB of flash memory, plus a microSD card slot to expand storage space. Its built-in camera is a basic 3-megapixel shooter, and lacks an LED flash. It’s roughly comparable to 2010′s iPhone 4 in terms of raw hardware specs, although it probably won’t be able to play the same kinds of 3D games since they’ll be written as web applications.


The Peak has a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, a 4.3-inch IPS display, and an 8-megapixel camera with a flash, plus a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. It has the same amount of RAM and flash storage as the Keon does, though.


Both the Keon and the Peak are unlocked GSM smartphones, which may mean they will work on AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks in the States.


Pricing and availability


According to Peters, the “First phones will be available in February.” Prices have yet to be announced.


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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Is Kate Uptons 2013 Super Bowl Ad Too Sexy

.

Kate Upton is no stranger to controversy -- her Carl's Jr. commercial was banned from airing during the 2012 Super Bowl, and a few months later, Terry Richardson's video of Upton dancing in a bikini was temporarily pulled from YouTube after it was deemed indecent.


PHOTOS - Hollywood's Hottest Bikini Bodies

Now, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model is starring in a new Super Bowl ad that is once again stirring up controversy for its potentially risque content.

In a recently-released teaser for the big spot, the camera lovingly traces every inch of Upton's curves as she watches a team of football players attempt to steal their gaze away from her in order to wash a Mercedes-Benz CLA.


RELATED - Prince Harry Voted 2013's Most Eligible Bachelor

While some have already come down on the commercial for being too sexy, I'm having a hard time seeing what the fuss is about. This is as innocent as it gets. But take a gander and decide for yourself!

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Te'o tells Couric he briefly lied about girlfriend








REUTERS


ABC's Katie Couric interviews Note Dame football star Manti Te'o and his parents, Brian and Ottilia Te'o during an exclusive taped interview in New York.



Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o has told Katie Couric that he briefly lied about his online girlfriend after discovering she didn't exist, while maintaining that he had no part in creating the hoax.

Pressed by Couric to admit that he was in on the deception, Te'o said he believed that his girlfriend Lennay Kekua had died of cancer and didn't lie about it until December.




"Katie, put yourself in my situation. I, my whole world told me that she died on Sept. 12. Everybody knew that. This girl, who I committed myself to, died on Sept. 12," Te'o said in an interview to air Thursday on Couric's syndicated talk show. A segment of the interview with Te'o and his parents was broadcast Wednesday on "Good Morning America."

The Heisman Trophy runner-up said he only learned of the hoax when he received a phone call in December from a woman saying she was Kekua.

"Now I get a phone call on Dec. 6, saying that she's alive and then I'm going be put on national TV two days later. And to ask me about the same question. You know, what would you do?" Te'o said.

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 10.

Te'o's father defended his son when Couric pointed out that many people don't believe the Irish star, suspecting he used the situation for personal gain.


"People can speculate about what they think he is. I've known him 21 years of his life. And he's not a liar. He's a kid," Brian Te'o said with tears in his eyes.

On Tuesday, the woman whose photo was used as the "face" of the Twitter account of Te'o's supposed girlfriend says the man allegedly behind the hoax confessed and apologized to her.

Diane O'Meara told NBC's "Today" show that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo used pictures of her without her knowledge in creating a fake woman called Lennay Kekua.










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Miami Dolphins slam Norman Braman, Marlins Park deal




















The Miami Dolphins ramped up their public campaign for a tax-funded stadium renovation this week, buying full-page ads against their top critic and trying to distance the plan from the unpopular Marlins deal.

The team bought an ad in Tuesday’s Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald knocking auto magnate Norman Braman’s criticism of the Sun Life Stadium deal, which would have Florida and Miami-Dade split the costs with owner Stephen Ross for a $400 million renovation. The Dolphins would pay at least $201 million, with taxpayers using state funds and a higher Miami-Dade hotel tax to pay $199 million.

In a fact sheet sent to media Tuesday morning, the Dolphins listed ways their deal differs from the 2009 Marlins deal. First: Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, would use private dollars to fund at least 51 percent of the Sun Life effort, compared to less than 25 percent from Marlins owner Jeff Loria. Second, Sun Life helps the economy more than the Marlins park does.





“Just because the Marlins did a bad deal doesn’t mean we should oppose a good deal where at least a majority of the cost is paid from private sources and more than 4,000 local jobs are created during construction alone,” the fact sheet states. And while the Dolphins’ Miami Gardens stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 2007 and is in the running for the 2016 game, “Marlins Stadium does not generate the ability to attract world-class sports events -- other than a World Series from time to time depending on the success of the team.”

NFL teams play eight home games a year if they don’t make the playoffs, while baseball teams have 81.

Miami and Miami-Dade built the Marlins a $640 million stadium at the site of the Dolphins’ old home at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins contributed about $120 million and agreed to pay between $2.5 million and $4.9 million a year for 35 years to pay back $35 million of debt the county borrowed for the stadium. As a publicly owned stadium, the Marlins ballpark pays no property taxes. Most of the public money came from Miami-Dade hotel taxes, along with $50 million of debt tied to the county’s general fund.

Sun Life is privately owned and pays $3 million a year in property taxes to Miami-Dade. It currently receives $2 million a year from Florida’ s stadium program, a subsidy tied to converting the football venue to baseball in the 1990s when the Marlins played there. The Dolphins also paid for a second full-page ad with quotes from leading hoteliers in Miami-Dade endorsing the stadium plan. Among them: Donald Trump, whose company recently purchased the Doral golf resort. “Steve Ross’ commitment to modernize Sun Life Stadium -- while covering most of the construction costs -- is the right thing for Miami-Dade,’’ the ad quotes Trump as saying.

Also on Tuesday, Ross and team CEO Mike Dee sent a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and county commissioners requesting negotiations over the stadium deal. The letter said the deal Ross unveiled last week is a “baseline for debate” and asked for talks. The letter also urged the commission to adopt a resolution proposed by Commissioner Barbara Jordan endorsing the state bill that would allow taxes for Sun Life. The resolution is on the agenda for Wednesday’s commission meeting.





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Appeals court throws out Miami judge’s controversial fingerprint ruling




















An appeals court has thrown out a Miami-Dade criminal court judge’s controversial ruling restricting long-accepted fingerprint evidence.

The Third District Court of Appeals this week ruled that Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch should have removed himself from the case before issuing his ruling.

The reason: Hirsch had earlier told two prosecutors that he would remove himself from similar cases because he harbored “preconceived opinions on the subject of fingerprints.”





In October, Hirsch ruled that a police fingerprint examiner could not testify that he identified a conclusive fingerprint “match” for Miami’s Radames Borrego, who is accused of two burglaries.

The judge’s ruling raised eyebrows among legal observers because U.S. courts have long allowed experts to testify to jurors that the accused person’s fingerprint is unique to him or her.

The appeals court did not rule specifically on Hirsch’s fingerprint order, but nevertheless threw it out, saying the judge should not have presided over the case. It is unclear whether Hirsch will be able to preside over future criminal court cases involving fingerprint evidence.

Hirsch, a former president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a law school professor who wrote a book on state criminal trial procedure, is well-known in South Florida’s legal community. He was elected in May 2010.

The judge — who often quotes Shakespeare in lengthy orders — often delves into polemic legal waters.

In 2010, when a Tampa federal judge ruled that Florida’s drug law was unconstitutional, Hirsch was the only local state judge to follow suit. He threw out more than two dozen cases, but the same Miami’s appeals court later reversed Hirsch.

Late last year, Hirsch from the bench criticized relatives of a murder victim after they criticized him in a Spanish-language television interview. After he declined to recuse himself from the case, the Third DCA booted him from the case.

Also last year, the same appeals court said Hirsch “did not have jurisdiction” when he filled in for a fellow judge, then reversed that judge’s decision to keep behind bars a man accused of violating a restraining order.

Hirsch will be ruling on a high-profile case next week.

Lawyers for Sergio Robaina, accused of voter fraud, have asked Hirsch to throw out two misdemeanors charged under a county ordinance prohibiting possession of more than two absentee ballots. The ordinance is unconstitutional, they claim.





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I Might Be Too Old for Facebook Graph Search






On Sunday, I turned 30.


That’s not too old, I tell myself, yet the signs of aging are creeping in. Teenagers listen to music that I either haven’t heard of or believe to be mostly terrible. They use slang I don’t recognize, and I imagine my slang would sound to them like “groovy” or “far out” sound to me.






But for the purposes of our tech blog, the most notable sign is how much more active teens are on Facebook than I am. To hear it from my wife, who works with children and teens at her job, they’re constantly signed in and active, to the point that reaching them by voice call is unreliable. Send them a Facebook message, even during school hours, and they’ll respond right away. (The reality isn’t quite that extreme; according to a Pew survey, most teens communicate through text messages and phone calls more than Facebook, but e-mail is far behind.)


So when Facebook announces a new feature, like Graph Search, I imagine those teens getting the most use out of it. Graph Search lets you look up people, places, photos and other things using natural search queries. Think of it like Google for everything that your friends know; instead of searching the Web for somewhere to eat or something to do, you could just search through the collective wisdom of your network.


Here are some of the example searches on Facebook’s Graph Search home page:


  • Music my friends like

  • Restaurants in London my friends have been to

  • People who like cycling and are from my hometown

  • Photos before 1990

Being able to find all that information–and provide your own information for friends–sounds great. But unless you and your pals are putting lots of data in, you’re probably not going to get a lot of data out. I know for sure that I haven’t put much effort into connecting my real life story to Facebook, and as I poke around my network, I see that many of my friends haven’t either. They don’t check in to places they visit. They don’t “Like” everything that they actually like. They haven’t uploaded photos from before 1990. Collectively, we haven’t invested in making Graph Search as useful as it could be.


It might be different if I was part of the generation that uses Facebook more often. Though it’s hard to find data on how Likes and check-ins vary by age, younger users tend to have more Facebook friends than older ones, according to Edison Research, so at least they have a bigger base of people to work with. And according to a 2011 study, teens spend more time on the network per day than older users. If posting on Facebook is part of your social circle’s daily life–that is, it’s not just a way to see what old high school buddies are up to–I imagine Graph Search will be a lot more useful.


That’s not to say Graph Search won’t be of any value to someone like me. It could come in handy as a way to sort through photos, for instance. There’s also a chance that Facebook will improve the ways that it picks up on our interests, and integrate frictionless sharing so there’s less work involved in becoming an information source.


But while I plan to keep up with technology for a long time, I realize it’s hard to keep using social networks like a teenager when your friends are getting older too. Facebook isn’t part of my daily life anymore, so I can’t imagine rewiring my habits and turning it into a primary information source, especially if my friends aren’t doing the same.  It’s much easier to rely on the tools I already have, such as traditional search engines and sites like Yelp–just like it’s easy to stop keeping track of popular music or to pick up on new slang.


Graph Search is in “very limited” beta now, and users who want to try it can join the waiting list. I look forward to seeing what I can do with it, even if it’s not really for me. In the meantime, here’s to growing older.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Dallas Killing off JR Ewing

Larry Hagman's tragic passing on November 24 served a double blow to the cast and crew of TNT's Dallas. Not only had they just lost a dear friend, but they also had to come up with a way to write J.R. Ewing off the show without derailing their planned storylines.


VIDEO - Larry Hagman Charms in Final ET Interview

Today, TV Guide Magazine reports that the 2012 redux will take a page from the seminal series' most iconic moment and have J.R. Ewing murdered by an unknown assailant towards the middle of the show's upcoming second season.


VIDEO - Matt Damon: Larry Hagman Impacted My Life

This, of course, pays a haunting homage to the "Who Shot J.R." cliffhanger from Dallas' 1980 season finale. The ensuring storm of speculation that swirled throughout the subsequent summer led to the highest-rated TV episode in U.S. history (at the time) with an estimated 83 million people tuning in for the season premiere, Who Done It? -- which was higher than the number of voters in that year's presidential election.


Dallas
premieres January 28 on TNT.

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Accused family killing NM teen was suicidal and homicidal, annoyed with mother: statement








ALBUQUERQUE, NM — The New Mexico teenager accused of fatally shooting his parents and three younger siblings told authorities he was annoyed with his mother and had been having homicidal and suicidal thoughts, according to a probable cause statement.

Nehemiah Griego, 15, was arrested following the shootings Saturday at a home in a rural area southwest of Albuquerque where he lived with his family. He remained in custody on charges of murder and child abuse resulting in death.

Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston plans to hold a news conference Tuesday morning, and the teen could make his first court appearance in the next day or two.





AP



A bouquet of flowers adorns the entrance to the home where Nehemiah Griego allegedly shot his parents and three siblings.





A sheriff's detective questioned the teen Saturday night. The statement detailed their conversation.

The teen allegedly told the detective that he took a .22-caliber rifle from his parents' closet around midnight Saturday and shot his mother in the head while his younger brother slept next to her.

Griego told the detective that his brother did not believe him that their mother was dead so he showed his mother's bloody face to his brother and then shot him, according to the statement.

He's accused of then shooting his two young sisters in their room. He retrieved an AR-15 rifle from his parents' closet and waited in a downstairs bathroom for his father to come home. The statement said he shot his father multiple times after he passed the bathroom doorway.

The teen said he reloaded the guns so "he could drive to a populated area to murder more people," according to the statement. His plan, the statement said, was to "shoot people at random and eventually be killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement."

Sheriff's spokesman Deputy Aaron Williamson said Monday he couldn't immediately comment on the document.

Detectives have spent two days collecting evidence and trying to piece together what led to the violence.

"There's no other way to say it, except that we have a horrific crime scene down there that we are working on," Houston said Sunday.

On Monday afternoon, the metal gate at the home's entrance was shut, a small bouquet of purple flowers was on the top of the gate and at each side sat religious signs, including one that read: "Jesus is the reason for the season."

The sheriff's office identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sarah Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. All appeared to have gunshot wounds to the head.

Greg Griego was a pastor who had once served at Calvary, one of Albuquerque's largest Christian churches. He was also well-known throughout the law enforcement community for his work as a voluntary chaplain.

Neighbor Terry Wootan described Greg Griego as a man with a big heart. The two sometimes chatted at the mailbox and waved when passing by. Wootan said Griego told him about his time in California when he was involved in gangs and how he turned his life around and found God.

"What he wanted to do was help people, and he would never quit," Wootan said.

The pastor's death has shocked the community, including the Albuquerque Fire Department and the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he volunteered his spiritual guidance.

A records check by the Children, Youth and Families Department indicated no trouble with the family and that Nehemiah Griego had never been in trouble with the law.

"This youth had no history with the juvenile justice system," agency spokesman Bob Tafoya said Monday.

Williamson confirmed there was no history of any emergency calls to the home in the recent past.

Neighbors said they saw the first police cars and ambulances arrive at the home Saturday night. The road was blocked and word of the shootings began to make its way through the neighborhood.

According to the probable cause statement, Nehemiah Griego told his girlfriend at Calvary that his family was dead and that he placed the two rifles in the family van as protection before driving to the church.

At the church, he was called into the pastor's office after his girlfriend's grandmother began asking questions about the youth's account, the detective's statement said. It was previously reported that a person at the church called 911, but the statement did not address that.

After being taken to the sheriff's office for questioning, Nehemiah Griego changed his story, according to the statement.

The statement said he was asked if he had told anyone else about killing his family. He allegedly told the detective that he had taken a picture of his dead mother and sent it to his girlfriend.










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Series for Miami’s emerging art collectors begins Thursday




















For art enthusiasts interested in bring their interest home, Miami’s Bakehouse Art Complex is hosting a lecture series for emerging collectors. The first panel, slated for Thursday at 6 p.m., features arists and curators who will talk about fine tuning your taste and learning to make informed decisions. The second session, Feb. 7, is oriented to the mechanics of purchasing. The third, on Feb. 21, explores how to manage your collection.

Moderating all three panels will be Denise Gerson, independent curator who served as associate director for the Lowe Museum of Art for 24 years. Cost is $25 per session or $60 for the series. Seating is limited; reservations are recommended.

Information at 305-576-2828; www.bacfl.org.





Jane Wooldridge





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Cuban exile mother of inaugural poet laureate Richard Blanco now in spotlight as his inspiration




















At first, Geysa Blanco thought her son was kidding.

"He said, ‘Mom, I have news for you,’ " Blanco said, recalling the telephone call from her son a few weeks ago.

"Between English and Spanish, he told me that they had chosen him to write and read a poem at the presidential inauguration,” she said.





But Richard Blanco, a child of exiles who was raised in Miami and graduated from Florida International University, was serious.

The Barack Obama inaugural committee chose the 44-year-old Cuban-American civil engineer and author to recite an original poem at Monday’s inauguration.

Richard Blanco has also been speechless. “It took me 10 minutes to remember what the word for inauguration is in Spanish," he said in a telephone interview Sunday from Washington, D.C., less than 24 hours before taking center stage.

Blanco, who now lives in Maine, will become the first Hispanic inaugural poet and the first openly gay one. He is also only the fifth and youngest poet in the exclusive club of poets.

The first was Robert Frost, who in 1961 wrote a poem for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.

Then in 1993, Bill Clinton chose the African-American writer Maya Angelou. William Miller was chosen for Clinton’s second inauguration, and Elizabeth Alexander wrote the poem for Obama’s first ceremony.

In a statement, Obama said Blanco’s work represents "the great strength and diversity of the American people."

This diversity and strength could be reflected in the story of the poet’s Cuban exile mother.

"She is a very brave woman and has worked hard all her life for my brother and me," Blanco said.

During an interview at her Westchester home, Geysa Blanco, 75, said that it still seems surreal that a woman who grew up in a sugar refinery in Cienfuegos will stand in front of the National Capitol, watching her son recite a poem for the nation and the president of the United States.

“My son said reporters might want to interview me and I said, ‘Me? What for?’ ” Geysa Blanco said. Indeed, local reporters and TV cameras have come knocking and the proud mother has given several interviews.

Geysa Blanco has also become a celebrity among her neighbors, friends and customers at Regions Bank on Bird Road, where she has worked for more than 30 years.

The roots of Richard Blanco’s writing began in 1968 when his parents fled the Communist island and went into exile in Spain. At the time, Geysa Blanco, a teacher, was pregnant and she and her late husband Carlos, already had an older son, also named Carlos.

"We decided to leave Cuba because the government was becoming more and more difficult to live under," she said. "But it was very painful for me because I left my mother and brothers behind and came here virtually alone and with nothing."

After five months in Spain, where she gave birth to Richard, they emigrated to New York.

As a boy, she said Richard always had an interest in exploring his Cuban roots.

"I always had questions about Cuba, about the family we left there," he said. On his website he refers to himself as being “made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the U.S.”

That sense of not belonging and trying to belong seeps through his books of poetry, which often feature his family and their efforts hold on to their traditions.

When Richard was about 5 and Carlos 11, the family moved to the closest place to Cuba – Miami. His mother went to work in a supermarket and later landed her bank job.

"We lived three generations in one house, my husband’s parents, my husband and I, and Charles and Richard," the poet’s mother said. "Sometimes it was hard because grandparents are not accustomed to the modern ways of young people.”

Today, she laments that those family members are gone. “I wish Richard’s father and grandparents were here to enjoy this day,” she said.

Richard Blanco did get to visit the homeland his parents yearned for when he was growing up.

"Everyone thought he wasn’t going to speak Spanish and was going to feel uncomfortable," Geysa Blanco said of her relatives on the island. "But they were surprised because he picked yucca in the fields, jumped in the canals and danced a lot, just like everyone else.”

That trip as a young man would shape the poet’s future work, his mother said. "I think that’s where he caught the bug to write about his roots," she said.





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Why Google Isn’t Scared of Facebook’s Graph Search






Facebook may have just released a major search product that many are saying “declares war” on Google or may at least put the social network “on a collision course” with the search giant, but Google CEO Larry Page doesn’t sound all that worried about the new competition. Because who said Facebook and Google couldn’t get along someday? In an interview for the new issue of Wired published just two days after Facebook’s Graph Search came out to so-so reviews, Page tells Steve Levy that Facebook is “doing a really bad job on their products.” But before you laugh off that swipe — Google Buzz flopped, Google killed Reader, and Google+ has a loyal but relatively small user base — Page wants to remind everyone that Facebook isn’t direct competition, that these two Silicon Valley giants are too big for either to fail. “We’re actually doing something different,” Page tells Levy. “I think it’s outrageous to say that there’s only space for one company in these areas.”


RELATED: Three Things Google+ Can Learn from Myspace






That’s not to say Page isn’t making Google go social, or that Facebook isn’t in his rearview mirror. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long talked about the rise of social search, and Page has taken a vested interest of late in getting people to use Google+ — even if they don’t want to. In an attempt to conquer the space, direct orders from Page forcefully integrated Google’s social network into its main search results… and pretty much everywhere else its products touch. If it were up to Larry Page, Google would require a Google+ account just to read reviews. His evaluation of Google+ as it stands? “I’m very happy with how it has gone. We’re working on a lot of really cool stuff. A lot of it has been copied by our competitors, so I think we’re doing a good job.”


RELATED: FTC Is Officially Looking into Google’s Self-Promoting Search Features


Critics might beg to differ — Google+ is often referred to as a lesser “Facebook copycat” from the search king — but critics are now comparing Facebook’s search product (which was announced before the Wired interview with Page was conducted) to Google’s main offering. And from a product standpoint, Facebook may have yet to train its users to give Graph Search what it needs to be great. Furthermore, business analysts seem to agree that Facebook’s social recommendation engine won’t hurt Google’s core business … in the near future. But Zuckerberg said at Tuesday’s announcement that Facebook wasn’t focused on the business side of Graph Search just now — even if it does offer huge advertising potential. At the same time, Graph Search could take away eyeballs (and ad dollars) from Google. If Facebook, with its friend-powered engine, ends up giving “better” results than Google for recommendations on restaurants, travel, books, music, and movies — a domination Google is still fighting anti-trust charges over — then why end up Googling at all?


RELATED: The New Google+ Aims to Perfect Procrastination


Well, even Page might think Facebook and Google can complement each other — sort of. To wit, he asked Levy: “For us to succeed, is it necessary for some other company to fail? No.” As Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, “our mission is to make the world more open” by giving people tools to connect. And Google’s stated mission ”is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Are those so similar that they can’t get along? After all, that could be the future of search: You go to Facebook to see what your friends and the people you trust have to say, and then you head to Google for the facts. Of course, neither Facebook or Google wants the future that way, exactly: Facebook has actually teamed up with Microsoft to complement Graph Search, sending people to Bing for those fact-finding, Google-style queries; Google, meanwhile, as Google+ as its social-search equivalent of Graph Searching. And users don’t really want to go to so many different places for basic information that’s built to make their lives easier. Part of the reason people have stuck with Google, despite all of its privacy and anti-trust issues, is that the company’s ultimately done a really good job on their products — GMail, Google Drive, Reader, and their fellow “apps” have become an integral part of our Internet lives. Facebook wants that role, and if social search ends up working — well, then why not chat on Facebook, email (and make phone calls) with Messenger, sext with Poke, and read your news via the News Feed? 


RELATED: Why Google Really Wants You to Use Google+ This Year


Of course, Page said all this stuff weeks ago. And who knows how Graph Search is going over at Google headquarters. Maybe he just he meant a different product that was so… bad. Or maybe he really just doesn’t get Poke? Either way, Larry Page knew this fight was coming. The whole world did.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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The Wanted Give Final Tease of I Found You Video

The countdown is almost over, but in the meantime ET has one last tease of The Wanted's I Found You music video.

PICS: Who Would You Date?

In the clip, guitarist Tom Parker and the boys are cracking jokes after one wild night.

"That was metal," says Parker. "Remember that girl that ripped me tie off?!"

The group's latest single is off their upcoming album Third Strike, out later this year. ET will premiere the full music video for I Found You Tuesday, January 22nd, and you can catch the full video on Vevo.com and ETonline.com Tuesday night.


In Case You Missed Them, Check Out ET's First Four I Found You Teasers:


Get Your First Look at The Wanted's Next Video



The Wanted Teases I Found You Video



Sexy Siva Stars in the The Wanted's I Found You



More of The Wanted's I Found You Video!

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NY vets head to DC for inaugural parade








New York veterans, from every military campaign since Korea, boarded a bus for Washington this morning to march in President Obama’s Inauguration Day Parade.

Jeff Swansen, production manager for the United War Veterans Council which organized the trip, called today's journey an "incredible honor."

"We're very excited. It's the first time we've done this. I mean, the president is the Commander-in-Chief, so this is an incredible honor and we're proud to represent New York," Cold War-era vet Swansen told The Post.

Korean War vet Sal Scarlato said he would tell Obama "not to forget the vets."





Wayne Carrington



Sandi Williams, left, an Army Korean War veteran and Debbera Ransom, right, a Cold War veteran both from Buffalo, NY.




Wayne Carrington



Sal Scarlato, a Korean War vet





"[Obama's] in the ballpark in supporting the vets, but there's always more that can be done … medical, housing, education, jobs...especially for the new guys coming home. They need jobs."

Cold War vet Debbera Random drove from Buffalo to New York for the ride to DC.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Random said. "I'm so honored that I'm physically able to march and to be able to show how excited we are."

The 44 veterans, who left from downtown around 4:30 a.m., will roll past Obama and thousands of spectators on a float that’ll feature the Statue of Liberty wearing dog tags.

Organizers with the United War Veterans Council said the float will be blast Empire State-inspired songs like Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."










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Three-generation family businesses share their secrets of success




















In 2009, when Larry Zinn took over as sales manager for the Infiniti dealership that his father owned, he had a great idea: retrain the sales staff in a team approach and offer customers complimentary add-on services for the first year.

Some salesmen who were used to selling the same way for decades up and quit. But that didn’t deter Larry from insisting a new sales culture and value proposition for new car buyers was necessary. “I was persistent with everything I’ve believed we needed to do going forward. People were going to embrace change or move on,” says Larry, 28.

The resistance quieted, however, after Larry recruited young salespeople and had them trained in the new advantage program. The new approach helped push sales volume up 72 percent. "We had a lot of success with it,” he says.





Larry Zinn’s experience is not unusual for family-owned businesses that survive into a third generation and employ new tactics to keep from becoming obsolete.

Nationally, family-run businesses account for nearly 35 percent of the largest companies including Ford, Koch Industries, Hilton, Wal-Mart, Loews and Ikea. In South Florida, family-run businesses are particularly prevalent and account for a majority of the largest Hispanic companies, including Goya, Bacardi, El Dorado and Sedano’s Supermarkets.

But while more than 30 percent of all U.S. family-owned businesses survive into the second generation, only about 12 percent are passed onto the third generation, according to Family Firm Institute, a Boston-based association for family enterprise professionals. Those that do survive have a few intriguing commonalities: an ability to stay relevant, think bigger and take a long term view.

“They try to figure out where they want to be in 10 years and take steps to make that target,” says Wayne Rivers, president of The Family Business Institute in Raleigh, N.C.

Most third-generation family businesses, particularly those in South Florida, were started by a scrappy entrepreneur who saw business ownership as a way to provide for the family. Those businesses include grocery chains such as Sedano’s, restaurant operators such as Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine and airport concessionaires such as NewsLink.

Typically, in those businesses, the founder brought his kids with him to work, put them in the kitchen, the stock room, the sales floor, and taught them on-the-spot business lessons. Those kids eventually came to work full time and helped the company evolve beyond a seat-of-the-pants start-up into a more sophisticated business with processes and systems.

Now comes the third generation, who are more likely to have received formal business education before they return to the company. Often, they are able to leverage that training and move the company forward dramatically. But the succession also comes with challenges. They must keep the respect of longtime employees and show the same dogged commitment to seeing their company succeed, even after having already grown up enjoying the fruits of its success.

In successful third-generation businesses, the senior generation often stays on to ensure that commitment, adopting a role as mentor or advisor while creating an environment where younger family members can take on real responsibility, says Rivers, who consults for family businesses. “They get out of the way, let the next generation make their own mistakes, and gracefully exit when it’s appropriate.”





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Ex-Mayor Diaz to talk about new book at alma mater




















Congratulations to my friend and former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who has will be presenting his new book at 9:45 a.m. in the Roca Theater at his alma mater, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, 500 SW 127th Ave. in West Miami-Dade.

His book is titled Miami Transformed: Rebuilding America, One Neighborhood, One City at a Time.

Born in Cuba, Diaz really is a Miami success story. He came to Miami when he was 6, and went on to become a local attorney and later mayor, serving two terms. He also served as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.





Diaz is being presented by the Belen Alumni Association of Jesuit Schools from Cuba and Miami, the Ramón Guiteras Memorial Library and the school's Social Studies Department.

For those who are unaware, the school was founded in 1854 in Havana. In 1961, Belen and all private schools in Cuba were confiscated by the new political regime. That same year, Belen was re-established in Miami. Today the all-boys' school has an enrollment of 1,500 in grades six through 12 and has more than 6,000 alumni.

The program is free and open to the public.

Music for Overtown

The Overtown Music Project will have its annual fundraiser from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. The program will include an 18-piece big band, along with hip hop, funk and soul.

According to Amy Rosenberg, spokeswoman for the fundraiser, the event will celebrate the connection between Overtown and the Fontainebleau, a hotel where Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Etta James once performed.

The program will include several musicians who played in Overtown's many venues during its heyday. The musicians are now in their 60s and 90s and will be showcased at the event.

Rosenberg said the event will fund the six annual events in Overtown, and three programs geared toward bringing music back to the area permanently.

For tickets and more information go to: www.evenbrite.com/event/5147700912 or www.overtownmusicproject.org.

Children’s Chorus

The Miami Children's Chorus will present a program, "Bring on the Boys," a singing workshop for boys with unchanged voices, from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday at the University of Miami Frost School of Music in the Victor E. Clarke Recital Hall, 5501 San Amaro Dr. in Coral Gables. Timothy A. Sharp is the music director for the Miami Children's Chorus..

The registration deadline is Thursday and the fee is $20 per person and $17 per person when registering five or more youngsters together.

For more information call 305-662-7494 or go to miamichildrenschorus.org or info@miamichildrenschorus.org.

Play looks at gay marriage law

A staged reading of the play 8 will be performed at 7 p.m., on Jan. 27, in Room E352 at the University of Miami School of Law. The play, written by Dustin Lance Black, chronicles the historic constitutional challenge to California's Proposition 8. Black is the Academy Award-wining screenwriter of Milk

The production of 8 will be staged under license from the American Foundation for Equal rights (AFER) and Broadway Impact. It will be directed by Marc Fajer, a member of the law school's faculty who has had more than 30 years of theatrical directing experience.

The performance was arranged by OUTlaw, a student organization at the University of Miami School of Law, that seeks to advance the priorities of the gay, lesbian, bisexzual and transgender community on the campus.





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Why does Michelle Obama need two Twitter accounts?






Michelle Obama is on Twitter! That was big news on Thursday, the first lady’s birthday. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama had launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, and lots of folks chimed in with messages welcoming her to the world of micro-blogging social media.


But hold it – wasn’t she already on Twitter? We’ve been following @MichelleObama since the beginning of the 2012 presidential campaign. Is this a reboot, a dual account, or what? Is it the equivalent of the grand opening of a store that’s been in business for months?






Sort of, yes. Except it’s a retail establishment that has two branches kept separate for legal reasons.


RECOMMENDED: Michelle Obama: 10 quotes on her birthday


The invaluable Mashable has the full story here. The @MichelleObama feed is paid for and run by the Obama/Biden political campaign machinery. That’s why it was so active during the summer and fall, as it exhorted everybody to get out and vote, and in general pushed the fortunes of the incumbent presidential ticket. It’s an overtly political use of social media.


The first lady’s Pinterest site is run the same way. Most of those photos of her and her family, and favorite recipes (grilled peaches with yogurt and pistachios?), and exhortations about “why we vote” were put up by campaign staff.


Mrs. Obama’s new @FLOTUS handle reflects her official White House duties, however. It’s run by people from her office who are executive branch (and hence official US government) employees.


Legally speaking, @FLOTUS tweets will have to be stuff that deals with her official duties and the nation as a whole, as opposed to President Obama’s political fortunes. Thus on Thursday she tweeted “Join me and Barack for #MLK Day of Service” after thanking everyone for sending birthday wishes.


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Hmm. @FLOTUS has sent three tweets, and it’s got more than 78,000 followers. That’s a pretty good tweet-to-listener ratio.


Most of this social media stuff is done by staff, of course. The few that she sends herself are supposed to be signed “-mo.”


Is the White House actually good at social media? We think that question can be answered definitively only by someone more versed in the dark electronic arts than we are. But from our point of view, it’s a pretty shrewd operator. Take the White House petition site. You can put up a petition on anything, and if it reaches a certain signature level in a certain period of time, the White House will respond with its point of view.


Most of the coverage of this “We the People” effort has focused on the weird stuff: petitions for Texas to secede, to deport CNN’s Piers Morgan, and so forth. And responding to them has to be a pain for staff. Mother Jones has a piece on Friday in which anonymous staffers gripe about having to spend time actually writing about why the US won’t build a Death Star, and things like that.


But to us, “We the People” really is a clever technique for harvesting e-mail addresses. When creating an account to sign stuff, you can check whether you want to receive missives from the White House. Most of the petitions are in fact about real policy – the need for more or less gun control, for instance. What the White House may get out of this is a continually growing list of voter contact information segmented by policy interest. To push the president’s new gun policies, for instance, they may send targeted e-mails to pro-control addresses, urging them to contact Congress.


We think this because media organizations do the same thing with interactive questionnaires and quizzes. We figure out who’s interested in what kind of stories and we direct those subjects their way.


Surprised? Don’t be. Building brand loyalty – everybody’s got whole new ways of approaching this old problem in today’s Internet age.


RECOMMENDED: Betty Ford to Michelle Obama: How seven first ladies have changed the office


Related stories


Read this story at csmonitor.com


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Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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