A man was gunned down execution-style in The Bronx this morning while sitting in a parked car, authorities said.
The 24-year-old victim was found sitting in the passenger seat of a Cadillac CTS on Boston Road near Waring Avenue at 1:40 a.m., police said.
He was shot in the head and neck and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
It was not immediately known if the victim, who is from upstate New York, has a criminal history, cops said.
CHICAGO --
Tribune Co., which owns the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, announced it is emerging after more than four years of bankruptcy.
Tribune said late Sunday the reorganized media company begins Monday with new ownership – the senior creditors – and a new board of directors: Bruce Karsh, Ken Liang, Peter Murphy, Ross Levinsohn, Craig A. Jacobson, Peter Liguori, and Eddy Hartenstein.
“Tribune will emerge from the bankruptcy process as a multimedia company with a great mix of profitable assets, strong brands in major markets and a much-improved capital structure,” said Hartenstein, Tribune’s chief executive officer.
Senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will control the new company. The Chicago Tribune reported late Sunday that Liguori, a former TV executive at Discovery and Fox, is expected to be named chief executive of the reorganized Tribune Co.
Tribune, which was founded in 1847, publishes some of the best-known newspapers in the U.S., including the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune. It also owns WGN in Chicago and 22 other television stations, as well as the WGN radio station. The Tribune’s report Sunday said that the new owners expect to sell all of the company’s assets.
Tribune Co. sought bankruptcy protection in 2008, less than a year after billionaire developer Sam Zell led an $8 billion leveraged buyout that left the company with $13 billion in debt.
Well, here we are, dear Friends and Neighbors, on the eve of another new year. So much happened to us in 2012 — some good and some bad. But through it all, by the grace of God, we made it to the end of the "old" year.
When I was a young woman, I made a new year’s resolution every year. The new year brings with it that kind of fresh-start magic.
To many of us, the new year really does mean having a second chance; a fresh start; a new beginning, another opportunity to do something that matters, to touch someone’s life in a positive way, and to do random acts of kindness.
I thought about the random-acts-of-kindness thing when, on Christmas day while in Washington, where my granddaughter Afra was appearing in My Fair Lady at the -Arena Stage Theater, I stumbled upon the perfect opportunity. Afra and I, and her mother Mary Anne, were on our way to have Christmas dinner with their longtime friends who live in Maryland. (A Radio City Music Hall Rockette since 2004, Afra had suffered with tendonitis in her right knee and decided to take this season off to let it heal.)
We got to the Metro station and found it practically empty. We headed for a bench where a man and woman were sitting and Afra motioned for me to take a seat. I spoke to the two individuals and wished them a Merry Christmas. A few minutes later, the woman who had been sitting on the bench moved away. She looked a bit uncomfortable. A few seconds later, I understood why. The young man seemed to be mentally challenged and needed to talk to someone about something that happened earlier at the facility where he lived.
Apparently there had been an argument with a caregiver at the facility, and he got upset and yelled at her. When I asked what was the matter, he started crying, "I yelled at her ... I didn’t mean to do it ... I was in a hurry to get to the station."
I touched his shoulder and tried to comfort him. "I’m sure she is not angry with you. She understood you were eager to get the train to spend Christmas with your mother." He stopped crying and told me his name was Gabriel. He asked my name. I told him and introduced him to my granddaughter and her mother, who were looking in disbelief at the two of us. Their eyes seemed to say, "Doesn’t Grandma know she is in a strange city and this man is a stranger who could be very dangerous?"
I did know. But somehow, this didn’t seem like a dangerous situation. Something in my heart said this was a chance to do a random act of kindness. I followed my heart. By the time our train came, Gabriel was smiling.
"I like you," he said. "You are a nice lady."
I reached out and offered a hug. He responded and soon my granddaughter and her mother were hugging him too. It was a wonderful feeling. Gabriel repeated our names over and over, pointing to each of us, so as not to forget them.
In a few minutes, we were at our stop. We said goodbye to our new friend and got off the train. We waved at him as the train pulled away. We didn’t say much about the incident, just smiled knowingly at each other. We knew we had just reached out to another soul who needed to be comforted and by doing so, we had spread a little Christmas cheer.
So, as I write this last column of 2012, I don’t have a list of new year resolutions. What I do have is a determination to live one day at a time, and try to live my life by reaching out to more Gabriels and offering comfort and spreading cheer and good will wherever I can. It may not be in the form of a hug. It just might be a warm smile, a "How do you do?", or "You look nice today". I learned from the Metro Station incident that it doesn’t take much to make somebody’s day. Just be kind. Make it a part of your everyday routine. No resolution is needed. Just do it.
And have a wonderful and healthy New Year!
Arts in the Gardens
Arts at St. Johns will kick off the New Year with the SALA Arts Social at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 15 at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, 2000 Convention Center Dr. SALA is an acronym for Social Action, Local Arts, and is a multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory arts event featuring music, dance, the visual arts, refreshments, drinks, interactive DJ music, networking and a silent auction.
The artists include Tiffany “Hanan” Madera performing Mid-Eastern dance; DJ Madame Turk, who will mix new and old dance club music and Afro/Latin and Brazilian beats.
The visual arts will include a group show by the Artist Colony, a Miami artist collaborative. There will also be a selection of paintings, graphics and assemblages donated for the silent auction by Carol Hoffman-Guzman and her husband Robert Guzman. Carol is the founding director of Arts at St. Johns. She and her husband have been collecting local and emerging artists for over 40 years.
The event celebrates 12 years of SALA presenting performances and art at Arts at St. Johns. According to Hoffman-Guzman, SALA’s name was chosen because it is reflects Arts at St. Johns’ vision to present local artists and art forms and t use the arts to build community, nurture dialogue about social issues and seek to bring about change through the arts.
Tickets to the event are $75 each at the door or online at www.artsatstjohns.com or by calling Hoffman-Guzman at 305-613-2325.
According to Famitsu, Nintendo’s (NTDOY) portable 3DS console continued to see huge success during the week ahead of Christmas. It racked up sales of 433,000 units in Japan, up from 333,000 units in the prior week. But weirdly enough, the brand new and heavily promoted Wii U home console wobbled badly as its weekly sales slipped to 122,000 units from 130,000 units in the previous week. This may have been the biggest week in Japanese console market in 2012, so the stakes were high.
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
To put Wii U performance in context, the old PSP portable console sold 58,000 units in Japan during the same week. It is not an encouraging sign that the more than half-decade old PSP (which was displaced by the PlayStation Vita a year ago) managed to sell nearly half as many units as the brand new Wii U during the holidays. Of course, PS Vita continues to miss sales expectations dramatically — it sold only 19,000 units last week, barely more than a quarter of what its predecessor managed.
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Wii U performance may improve dramatically once compelling titles arrive. But during December, it did have “New Super Mario Brothers” and “Nintendo Land” to boost it in Japan. This clearly wasn’t enough. The aging PlayStation 3 sold only 30,000 units and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 barely cleared a thousand units, so the Wii U should have had a clear shot at strong sales performance in the Japanese home console market.
Overall, Japanese game console sales were down sharply from the week ahead of Christmas in 2011. The 3DS is a big hit in 2012 but instead of buoying the entire console market, it seems to be sapping energy from the Wii U and PS Vita.
It’s still early days for the Wii U, but Nintendo has probably started sweating a bit.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
A huge blow was dealt to the music industry and the world on February 11 when Whitney Houston was pronounced dead at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. She was 48 years old.
PICS: Remembering the Life of Whitney Houston
The six-time Grammy winner -- often referred to as the "Queen of Pop" or simply "The Voice" -- was found nude in a bathtub, lying in "extremely hot water," according to the coroner's report.
The report attributes the cause of death to drowning, and effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.
On the day of her death, The Recording Academy released a statement, calling Whitney, "one of the world's greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades. Her powerful voice graced many memorable and award-winning songs. A light has been dimmed in our music community today, and we extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends, fans and all who have been touched by her beautiful voice."
SANAA, Yemen — Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen has announced that it will pay tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who kills the US ambassador in Sanaa or an American soldier in the country.
An audio produced by the group's media arm, the al-Malahem Foundation, and posted on militant websites Saturday said it offered three kilograms of gold, worth $160,000, for killing the ambassador.
The group said it will pay 5 million Yemeni riyals ($23,000) to anyone who kills an American soldier inside Yemen.
It did not say how the bounty could be collected, but said the offer is valid for six months.
The bounties were set to "inspire and encourage our Muslim nation for jihad," the statement said.
Washington considers al Qaeda in Yemen to be the group's most dangerous branch.
Jared Kleinert, a South Florida entrepreneur, plans to soon launch Synergist, a platform that allow social entrepreneurs to meet potential co-founders online, collaborate and crowdfund their new projects. He also just launched AliveNDead, a blog about risk-taking, and he interns for a Silicon Valley startup.
And when he’s not doing all that, he’s going to class — he’s a junior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton.
Lester Mapp is CEO and founder of the new Miami-based startup called designed by m. His team has just designed a sleek, ultra-thin aluminum iPhone bumper and launched the project on Kickstarter. After just a few days, Mapp is already more than a third of the way to his $20,000 fund-raising goal.
Read about both these entrepreneurs on The Starting Gate blog, where there’s also a post on the most pressing issues facing small businesses in the coming year — taxes, healthcare, lending and a skilled worker shortage, for starters.
And as you are ringing in the New Year, you may be resolving to beef up your business’ social media strategy. Susan Linning's guest post offers five top tips for boosting your social media effectiveness. Among them: Go beyond retweets and make your posts original, fun and personal (but not too personal.) Use visuals, too. Find this and other news, views and tools for entrepreneurs on the blog, which is at the bottom of MiamiHerald.com /business.
Follow me on Twitter @ndahlberg and Happy New Year to all.
Road closures on Interstate 595 continued Friday morning to repair damage from a eastbound crane colliding with a powerline around Hiatus Road at about 5:30 p.m. the previous day.
The powerline snapped in half and came across I-595, forcing closure of the eastbound lanes, Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Chris Fletcher said.
The lanes were reopened at 10:40 p.m. Thursday but around 6:30 a.m. Friday, Florida Power and Light closed down the 595 to State Road 84 ramp and the eastbound exit to Hiatus to replace and repair the line.
It was unknown when the repair work would be completed.
A few vehicles collided with the downed powerline but there were no reports of injuries.
Many might be surprised to learn that the castle housing the Crawley family on the award-winning series Downton Abbey is in fact real, and has been home to a line of royals since 1679.
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Lady Fiona and Lord George Carnarvon live in the now world-famous Victorian estate called Highclere Castle, which boasts more than 50 bedrooms, six entertaining rooms and 35,000 sq. feet of living space.
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Redesigned in the 19th century by Sir Charles Barry, the historic British residence is regarded as one of the finest Victorian mansions in England.
Watch the video for a sneak peek at Castles On Camera: Royal Residences on TV, which gives viewers a look inside the incredible site and tells the story behind its role in Downton Abbey, the UK miniseries created by Julian Fellowes.
The show, premiering on HGTV January 4, also explores the childhood home of Princess Diana.
One of the most useful features of the Wii U — and what could make it a staple of our connected living rooms — is its ability to hook in to the entertainment ecosystem seamlessly. When you start up your Wii U for the first time, you’ll be prompted to enter your television and cable box brands. In a surprisingly painless process (you only need the brand name of your TV, not the model number), your Wii U GamePad becomes a very useful remote control. It will be the only thing you have to touch when turning your system and television on in the future. When the Wii U’s television and video on demand aggregation dashboard comes fully online, that remote will be even more useful as you use it select shows on your DVR, video-on-demand services like Netflix, or live TV.
Click here to view this gallery.
[More from Mashable: 10 iPad Cases With Convenient Hand Grips]
Since the holiday gift-giving period is over, many of you might be fortunate enough to have received a brand new Wii U.
Nintendo’s latest console is quite different from other gaming consoles, and there are lots of great ways for you to take advantage of it. There are already a wide variety of games coming out for the Wii U, so you have a plethora of entertainment options as soon as you take it out of the box.
[More from Mashable: 8 Startups to Watch in 2013]
We’ve compiled a list of tips for first-time Wii U owners that should make your setup and first few days much easier. We’ve included a few games to try, as well.
Are you setting up a Wii U for the first time? Share any of your thoughts and tips in the comments.
Thumbnail image courtesy nubobo, Flickr.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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