Miami’s own Vanilla Ice: a one-hit wonder’s remarkable second act




















He still remembers that moment, even as the chaos of his life swirled about him two decades ago. On the upside of his epic hit, Ice Ice Baby, Robert Van Winkle surveyed what his soaring career had afforded — the cars, the parties, the good times and this modern pad on Star Island. It was a professionally designed showcase of flash, but deeply bereft of soul.

“I felt like I was living in a nightclub,” said Van Winkle, the rapper who commanded the stage as Vanilla Ice. “It never felt like home.’’

Van Winkle, 45, who has spent more than half of his life in South Florida, re-imagined his space in warm earth tones. For Van Winkle, it was about so much more than decorating, but rather the beginning of the next chapter after a rap career that had been so promising, then careened into pop culture obscurity.





Many turns later, Van Winkle emerged from the wreckage as a successful, self-taught real estate investor, renovation whiz and a popular reality television home star, the seeds first planted that moment on Star Island when his house wasn’t a home.

Van Winkle’s third season of the DIY Network’s Vanilla Ice Project premiers next Sunday in which the rapper — who still tours performs concerts — buys, guts and makes pretty upscale homes. With his easy personality and hearty laugh still intact, plus a newfound Zen after a troubled past, Van Winkle mines South Florida’s rich housing landscapes for homes that can be grabbed, renovated and returned to the market for a profit. He is also the star of a DIY special called Ice My House, airing this Sunday at 11 p.m., and has a new lighting collection called, you guessed it: Vanilla Ice Lighting.

“With the recession, people have been feeling so miserable for so long. People don’t want to put money in an upside-down house,’’ said Van Winkle who lives with his wife and two daughters in a Wellington community. “I wanted a show that motivated people to want to invest in their homes, to get that kitchen they always wanted. I want people to enjoy their homes.’’

The show is just the latest stop in Van Winkle’s transformation, and his leveraging of his monster single.

“Vanilla Ice is one of those figures in pop music who was able to successfully reinvent himself,’’ said Matt Donahue, of Bowling Green State University’s Department of Popular Culture. “ Ice Ice Baby is his signature phrase and he has been able to take it all the way to the bank.’’

The Vanilla Ice Project’s 13-episode season follows Van Winkle and a crew of contractors as they transform a 6,000-square-foot house in a Lake Worth subdivision. “This place was rotten, we had to take down every piece of drywall, gut it down to the cinderblocks,’’ he said. “Everything in here now is custom, with state-of-art in-home technology and made with a whole lot less carbon.’’

On an especially muggy weekday, Van Winkle is taking a break from filming. Tattooed arms outstretched, he is animated as he talks about the plans to make this home a showpiece, a lifetime away from his early days as a rising rapper.

Van Winkle, who grew up in Dallas, exploded on the music scene in the early 1990s — just as rap was settling into its second decade — and sold 15 million To the Extreme albums worldwide on the popularity of Ice Ice Baby, the smash that started as a B-side song. The catchy song — along with Vanilla Ice’s high-stepping in parachute pants — became the first rap single in history to top the Billboard charts.





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Timeline: Kim Dotcom’s year, from Megaupload to Mega






AUCKLAND (Reuters) – Here are the milestones in the past year for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Dotcom plans to launch on January 20 a new online file storage system, known as Mega.


January 20, 2012 – Seventy armed New Zealand police raid Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s mansion outside Auckland, acting on a request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.






Dotcom and his colleagues Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk are served extradition and search warrants, arrested, and taken into custody. As operators of the website, they are charged with online piracy, fraud and money laundering, and their computers and files are seized. Megaupload is closed down. The raid occurs on the same day U.S. lawmakers axe anti-piracy legislation following heavy public opposition.


February 22 – Dotcom is released on bail, but his movements are restricted and he is prohibited from leaving New Zealand. His bail conditions are eventually relaxed to allow him free movement within the country, while the millionaire is given some access to his frozen funds to pay his legal team and living costs.


June 28 – A New Zealand court rules that search warrants used by local police to raid the Dotcom mansion were illegal, and moves by the FBI to copy data from Dotcom’s computers to take offshore were also unlawful. The court’s action is seen by many as weakening the extradition case against Megaupload.


August 16 – U.S. efforts to extradite Dotcom are dealt another blow as a New Zealand court rules that prosecutors must show evidence to support charges of internet piracy and copyright breaches. The judge in the case says withholding evidence from Dotcom would give Washington a significant advantage in the extradition hearing. She also rules that the document used to order his extradition was illegal.


September 27 – New Zealand’s Prime Minister admits that the country’s spy agency illegally carried out surveillance on Dotcom, a resident of the country, despite a law which prohibits monitoring citizens and residents.


October 10 – A U.S. federal judge rules that the U.S. government’s criminal case against Megaupload will proceed, while leaving open the option of dismissing the case at a later date on grounds including the possibility that delays in proceedings have denied Megaupload to its right to due process.


January 20, 2013 – Dotcom is due to launch his new cyberlocker, Mega.co.nz, whose encryption system is designed to offer water-tight privacy protection of user files. The launch comes as Dotcom and his colleagues await their extradition hearing, which has been delayed until August.


(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Michelle Obama on Inauguration President Barack Obama

ET's Rocsi Diaz sat down first with First Lady Michelle Obama at the Kids' Inaugural Concert to discuss a variety of topics from her new hairstyle and birthday celebration to Lance Armstrong.


RELATED: Actors Who've Played Presidents

Mrs. Obama debuted her shoulder-length bob with eye-level bangs via Twitter on her birthday, Thursday, January 17, and she told Rocsi that Dr. Jill Biden may have had an influence on her.

"I've been coveting [Dr. Biden's] bangs for four years," joked Mrs. Obama, quipping that they're "the bang sisters." She also revealed that husband President Barack Obama gave her a "beautiful necklace" as a recent birthday gift.

On the topic of Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah in which he admits to doping, Mrs. Obama said, "I didn't even get a chance to see it. It's a sad situation for everyone who's watching ... I think we have to remember all the people that have been helped and who will continue to need the help of [The Livestrong Foundation]. We should focus on making sure that cancer survivors and people dealing with the disease have the kind of support, medical and research, that they need to deal with the situation. We can't lose sight of that accomplishment."

Rocsi will present at tonight's Kids' Inaugural, which marks the latest efforts by the First Lady and Dr. Jill Biden's Joining Forces initiative to urge Americans to support our troops, and our Gold Star and Blue Star families.

The First Lady described the event in a video message, explaining that it's about "celebrating who we are as Americans and the people who make our country great -- our men and women in uniform, our military spouses, and our amazing military kids. So it's no surprise that when Jill and I decided to host this event, everyone wanted to join us -- from Katy Perry to Glee, from Nick Cannon to Usher. They know that military kids serve this country right alongside their moms and dads, and we’re really looking forward to celebrating our military families this weekend."

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O and Israel, apart








Shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that it would advance plans to establish a settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E-1, and that it would build 3,000 additional housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The world reacted to the E-1 announcement in the usual manner: It condemned the plans as a provocation and an injustice. In the weeks after the UN vote, Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation.




The dysfunctional relationship between Netanyahu and Obama is poised to enter a new phase. Next week, Israeli voters will probably return Netanyahu to power, this time at the head of a coalition even more intractably right-wing than the one he currently leads.

Obama, since his time in the Senate, has been consistent in his analysis of Israel’s underlying challenge: If it doesn’t disentangle itself from the lives of West Bank Palestinians, the world will one day decide it is behaving as an apartheid state.

During November’s vote on Palestine’s status, the US supported Israel and asked its allies to do the same. In the end, they were joined by a total of seven other countries.

When such an issue arises again, Israel may find itself even lonelier. It wouldn’t surprise me if the US failed to whip votes the next time, or if the US actually abstained. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised, either, if Obama eventually offered a public vision of what a state of Palestine should look like, and affirmed that it should have its capital in East Jerusalem.

Bloomberg View



Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!










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Norwegian Cruise Line launches strong IPO




















Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line joined its larger local competitors on Wall Street Friday in a strong debut.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. raised nearly $447 million in an initial public offering of about 23.5 million shares and saw stocks sail 30 percent in trading.

Shares closed Friday afternoon at $24.79, up $5.79 from the $19 offering price set late Thursday night. That was above the range of $16-$18 that the company had expected.





“I think this was a classically beautiful IPO, albeit relatively small in terms of total dollars,” said Roderick McLeod, partner in the management consulting practice McLeod.Applebaum & Partners and a former cruise executive.

In regulatory filings, the company has said it plans to use proceeds from the IPO to reduce debt and pay expenses related to the offering. Norwegian is giving the underwriters a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 3.5 million shares.

Previously, the company was privately held in a partnership of Genting Hong Kong, with 50 percent of the cruise line, and private equity firms Apollo Management and TPG. Genting Hong Kong is a subsidiary of gambling and resort conglomerate Genting Group, which purchased the land currently occupied by The Miami Herald in 2011 for $236 million.

After the IPO, the three groups own a total of about 88 percent of the company’s ordinary shares.

Norwegian, with a fleet of 11 ships and three more on the way by the fall of 2015, has made its name by emphasizing a “freestyle” type of cruising that allows guests to choose from a variety of dining, entertainment and rooming options.

In an interview Friday morning, Norwegian Cruise Line President and CEO Kevin Sheehan said that the timing was right for the offering.

“It just seemed like a very logical time: We’re into 2013, we’ve got these beautiful new ships coming out soon and the marketplace is very excited about them,” he said. “The locomotive is moving and we’re at the tipping point with the brand.”

As the industry grows by just about 2.5 percent over the next five years, Sheehan said, Norwegian will grow capacity by more than 10 percent.

“It’s the double whammy,” he said. “Lower growth in the future with a phenomenal set of assets.”

He said the benefits of going public include raising capital, allowing the company to strengthen its balance sheet and putting it in the same playing field as its competitors. Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise ship company, and rival Royal Caribbean Cruises are both publicly traded. Carnival closed up about a percent at $38.58 Friday, while Royal Caribbean dropped just over a percent to $36.90.

“Now we’re out there and people can look at our results and the analysts can talk about us freely,” he said.

The launch capped years of attempts by Norwegian to go public, all abandoned for economic reasons.

Miami cruise expert Stewart Chiron, CEO of CruiseGuy.com, said the timing was good, with an industry performing well and a vastly improved company.

“I’m glad they finally got it done,” he said. “This was by far one of the important milestones that they wanted to cross.”

McLeod remembers an effort when he was president and chief operating officer at Norwegian that coincided with the stock market crash in October of 1987. He has also worked in senior positions at Royal Caribbean Cruises and Carnival Corp.

“I think we’ve all kind of known this was coming eventually and some of us have known it’s coming for 25 years,” McLeod said. “It’s never too late to do the right thing; this is the right thing for them to do.”

The move is smart, McLeod said, for several reasons.

“In addition to improving their leverage, reducing their debt, this expands their strategic options,” he said. “This is a currency, and that can work for them in lots of different ways.”

This report was supplemented with information from the Associated Press.





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King’s son brings message to South Florida




















The past few days have kept the eldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. busy. He’s been to at least three states to carry on his father’s message: ending violence and learning from historical wrongs.

In a Fort Lauderdale Baptist church early Friday, he delivered another directive:

“A nation is judged on how we treat our most prized possession,” Martin Luther King III said. “And our most precious resource, I think, is our children.”





King served as the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. inspirational breakfast hosted by the YMCA of Broward County.

More than 500 gathered inside the First Baptist Church on Broward Boulevard, selling out the $2,500 per table event, to honor King’s legacy.

“My concern was that it would not be reduced to a day of relaxation,” said King III. “We have to look at this as a day on — not a day off.”

The Rev. King, a prominent civil rights leader, was born this week 84 years ago. He lead peaceful protests and bus strikes working for racial equality until his 1968 assassination.

The younger King told the South Florida audience about spending his youth at the local YMCA in Birmingham, learning to swim and working out with his dad.

“Those were wonderful experiences, experiences that I will never forget,” he said.

Like his father, King III has been a fighter for human rights, justice and non-violence in the United States and abroad. He also served as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s president, a position his father once held.

During his 2009 inauguration, President Barack Obama declared the holiday honoring King should be spent as a national day of service.

At Friday’s event, 15 youngsters from the Lauderhill YMCA were honored for their service to the community. The young friends managed to clean up a popular overpass and get rid of gangs who were harassing children.

They called their project “Own the Overpath.” The idea started when 14-year-old Kervens Jean-Louis was attacked by a gang on a fenced in walkway that spans the Florida Turnpike while coming from the YMCA, based at Boyd Anderson High School. But Jean-Louis didn’t back down.

He and other students mobilized and launched a campaign to clean-up the area surrounding the “overpath.” The youngsters made a formal presentation to the Lauderhill City Commission and Florida Department of Transportation officials.

Now, there is a $400,000 project in the works to install more lights on the bridge to increase visibility. The city broke ground in November.

“I learned that when you speak out loud it makes a difference,” said Jean-Louis.

For Jean-Louis, speaking loud meant going back to the bridge to warn others of the dangers of traveling across it at night.

He will spend this upcoming Saturday as a volunteer, painting and cleaning up a garden.

“Now I tell others what’s going on and how they can help out,” he said, much like the man they had all come to honor.

After the youngsters were honored, King III left the crowd to ponder a final thought: “We can either be a thermometer or a thermostat.”

A thermometer, he explained, takes the temperature while a thermostat regulates the temperature.

Despite the progress his father saw in his lifetime, and the decades since his death, there is still much work to be done, King III said.

“I always come with a heavy heart in January,” he said. “Because we have not fully realized the dream.”





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Twitter co-founders move Obvious Corp into spacious new digs






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the co-founders of Twitter, have leased three sprawling floors in a historic downtown San Francisco tower for their low-profile start-up incubator, The Obvious Corporation.


Obvious said Friday it leased 75,000 square feet at the busy 760 Market Street location – known as the Phelan Building – in one of the city’s larger commercial real estate deals in recent months.






The downtown space will be able to hold roughly 500 employees and signals ambitions at Obvious, which was re-constituted when Williams and Stone both left Twitter in 2011.


The incubator, with no more than two dozen employees, has mostly stayed out of the press except when it unveiled two new blogging platforms called Medium and Branch last September.


Although still thinly staffed, Obvious’s new space is larger than start-up Pinterest’s recently inked lease in the city.


“We need the right space from which to grow the Medium team and position Obvious to focus on bringing our new ideas to life,” Obvious CEO Williams said in a statement Friday about the new lease.


The company will occupy the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the triangular building, which wraps around a central courtyard, said Jenny Haeg, a real estate agent who has brokered leases for Square Inc, Dropbox, Airbnb and other large tech startups.


(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Drew Barrymore on Oprah's Next Chapter

Drew Barrymore opens up about her complicated childhood and the lessons she's learned when it comes to being a new mother on Oprah's Next Chapter, and we have a sneak peek!

Pics: Celebs and Their Cute Kids

Marking the first time cameras have ever been allowed inside her home, Drew also talks to Oprah about her new marriage to Will Kopelman, shares details about their newborn baby Olive, and reveals the story behind why her mother did not attend her wedding.

Related: Drew Barrymore's Daughter Olive Lands First Cover

Oprah's Next Chapter with Drew Barrymore airs Sunday at 9 pm ET/PT on OWN.

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Bam’s gun-plan misfire: using children as props








The Issue: President Obama’s press conference on gun-control, in which he was surrounded by children.

***

President Obama’s big plan to curb gun violence is more of a wish list of things he would like to see than an actual plan to stop the violence (“Gunning for...What?” Editorial, Jan. 17).

Obama should be ashamed of himself for exploiting children to promote his agenda.

He and his ilk want to disarm law-abiding citizens while ignoring the fact that only criminals will have weapons.

If you tell kids that guns are dangerous, then you are asking them to see for themselves.





Signing an executive action on Wednesday.

Reuters



Signing an executive action on Wednesday.





If you show them the do’s and don’ts, it takes away the mystery.

If the school systems implemented a psychological test and an aptitude test twice during a child’s development, they might be able to tell who should be watched and helped.

If children are taught safety and respect for weapons, then gun violence could be nipped in the bud before it happens.

Gregory J. Topliff

Warrenville, SC

Obama’s shameful use of children was a disgusting display of political grandstanding that exploited the terrible Newtown tragedy.

To allow him to bypass Congress, the Second Amendment and other issues would just be another step in his incremental moves toward tighter control over the citizens of this great nation.

Congress needs to stand strong against Obama’s arrogant, self-serving actions.

John W. Fox

Galloway, NJ

Obama came out the other day, guns blazing (pun intended) with all of these gun-control measures, working up over 20 executive actions.

Why hasn’t he been as brazen and quick to the draw about Attorney General Eric Holder and the Fast and Furious debacle?

Tommy DeJulio

New Rochelle

Obama gave an emotional speech while surrounded by small children, citing the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School as his motivation.

He’s got some nerve. That hypocrite is killing the future of all our children by spending trillions of dollars and saddling them with debt for the rest of their lives.

Tom Ennis

Whitehouse Station, NJ

All America need do is look back at Holder’s botched Fast and Furious operation to realize that the Obama administration knows nothing about gun control.

Nichola Maffei

Croton-on-Hudson

Both Obama and Gov. Cuomo followed the maxim “let no crisis go to waste.”

In their haste, they used a “shotgun” approach — pardon the pun — to a complex problem. They touched the surface on some issues, but missed others that require prolonged study and analysis.

The president’s use of emotional theater was uncomfortable to watch, and the governor’s actions were just a shameful political attempt to co-opt the matter.

Rarely is the timing so appropriate for the formation of a commission to study gun violence in America.

The problem has many tentacles and each one needs separate analysis. These hurried actions have only set the stage for more rancor and arguments.

Phil Serpico

Queens

So it’s the style of the weapon that people find offensive?

What if the guns were painted pink?

The editorial states that “they’ve not given us any clear way to put what they’ve done to the test.”

But we do know what these bans accomplish.

We did have an “assault-weapons ban” and it did absolutely nothing to the crime rate.

A. Levy

Manhattan









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Prices for Miami Beach luxury condos soar to records




















Ultra-luxury condominiums on South Beach are fetching nosebleed prices.

On Tuesday, a penthouse at the Setai Resort at 2001 Collins Avenue closed for $27 million — the highest price ever for a South Florida condominium, according to real estate agents.

“We’re definitely seeing the market turning upward,” said Jeff Miller, of Zilbert International Realty in Miami, who represented the buyer in the sale of the palatial 7,100-square-foot condominium. “We’re seeing buyers come in from all over the globe.”





Just a few weeks ago, Ohio coal mining businessman Wayne Boich Jr. completed the sale of his Icon South Beach penthouse at 450 Alton Road in the uber-trendy South of Fifth neighborhood for just under $21 million.

The 6-bedroom, 7 1/2-bath Icon condo sparked a bidding war that drove the sale $2 million above the listing price — a level that is three times the $7 million Boich paid in July 2007 in the depths of the bust. It was a record price for a Miami Beach bayside condo.

“The luxury market is on fire in South Beach — especially the South of Fifth neighborhood,” said Dora Puig, principal of PuigWerner Real Estate Services, who was the listing broker for the Icon unit. “It’s moving Miami to totally different pricing points.”

The Setai’s record may not reign for long.

Penthouse 2 in the decade-old Continuum South tower at 100 South Pointe Drive in the South of Fifth neighborhood is on the market for $39 million.

That is a record listing price for a Miami-Dade condominium, according to Puig, who also snagged that listing.

Amid the market sizzle, Puig bumped up the asking price late last summer from $35 million.

The penthouse, which has 11,000 square feet of interior space, belongs to Manhattan real estate developer Ian Bruce Eichner, who built the Continuum project at the tip of South Beach and kept the trophy for himself.

The Continuum penthouse, which has 6,000 square feet of deck and a rooftop heated pool, boasts sweeping 13 1/2-foot ceilings that give the feel of a single-family home. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls offer a 360-degree view of the Atlantic Ocean, Biscayne Bay, downtown Miami and Miami Beach from 40 stories up.

“It looks down on Fisher Island, way down,” Puig said with a smile.

The unit has a private interior elevator, of course, and stretches over two indoor levels and two largely exterior levels.

One big plus: It has a gated entrance and sits on an expansive enclave of rolling lawns and gardens adjacent to a city park at the tip of the island.

The unit comes with an additional 874-square-foot guest quarters that would delight most mortals. “The guest unit is intended for professional quarters: the maid, the nanny, the chef, the pilot,” Puig explained.

Also included is a snazzy cabana on the beach.

Eichner has used it as a vacation home and once rented it to Tom Cruise for a couple of months while he was in Miami to film Rock of Ages.

On Thursday, Puig hosted Miami’s power brokers for a look at the Continuum penthouse over champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Next week, she plans to spend three days in New York touting the property to high-end brokers.

Such palatial properties typically are paid for in cash. But what would a monthly payment be?

With a 20 percent down payment of $7.8 million, the buyer would have to finance $31.2 million.

“I don’t know that I’d be able to find anybody willing to go that high on one unit,” warned Steve Schneider, a mortgage broker who is owner and president of Abacus Lending Group in South Miami.

If a buyer could line up a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at 3.5 percent, the monthly payment for principal and interest would be $223,043.35.

“I’d hate to see the tax bill,” said Schneider.

According to Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser records, the 2012 property tax bill on the Continuum penthouse was $264,896.17. That was based on an assessed value of just $9.5 million, less than half what the Property Appraiser listed as the market value of $19.3 million. The tax break came as a result of the state law that caps increases in assessed values on non-homesteaded property at 10 percent a year.

The condo maintenance fee for Eichner’s unit runs $7,624 a month. “I think that’s low for what you get,” said Puig.





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North Dade man claims self-defense in killing of intruder




















When a burglar broke into his North Miami-Dade apartment Monday night, Jordan Beswick grabbed his pistol, hid in the living room and squeezed off a volley of bullets.

Unscathed, the burglar ran to the master bedroom to escape.

Beswick himself ran from the apartment, but he didn’t call police.





Instead, authorities say, Beswick circled around to a bedroom window outside, waited three minutes, then fired at least eight more shots as the unarmed intruder tried to escape through the window. The suspect, Bryan Antonio DeJesus, 22, crumpled to the bedroom floor, dead.

The charge for Beswick: second-degree murder.

The unique case is bound to test Florida’s controversial self-defense law that critics say promotes vigilantism but supporters contend allows citizens to protect themselves from criminals.

Defense lawyer Gawane Grant, in a preliminary hearing Thursday, cited the “Stand Your Ground” law in asking for bail for Beswick, 19, who has no criminal history.

“He had the absolute right to defend himself inside his own home,” Grant said.

Miami-Dade prosecutor Dawn Kulick countered that Beswick was no longer threatened after he fired his weapon the first time, then left the apartment.

“He no longer needed to use force to defend himself,” she told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Monica Gordo, who ordered Beswick to be held in jail without bond.

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law — which eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat before using lethal force to counter a threat — has come under intense scrutiny in recent months.

Last year, Sanford police initially cited the law in not arresting a self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman who shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, during a scuffle.

Prosecutors later charged the man, George Zimmerman, with second-degree murder. He is awaiting trial.

In response to the uproar, Gov. Rick Scott appointed a task force to study the effects of the law, which critics say has led to a rise in homicides. This week, Trayvon’s mother called for a repeal of the law, pushed through by the National Rifle Association. The NRA is now fighting a bitter and very public battle against gun control advocates in the wake of last month’s deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Florida prosecutors say the law is vexing because it allows judges — before jurors hear the facts — greater leeway in tossing out a case.

In Miami-Dade, judges have thrown out at least three murder cases based on the “immunity” claim.

The most controversial: the case of Greyston Garcia, who, armed with a knife, chased down and fatally stabbed a thief who had broken into his truck and stolen his radio in Little Havana.

A judge in March ruled that Garcia acted in self defense in January 2011 because the thief wielded a heavy bag of car radios that could have been used to cause “serious bodily injury or death.”

Beswick has yet to be formally charged at arraignment. Any Stand Your Ground immunity hearing is likely months away.

Records show DeJesus has been arrested at least eight times since age 15, mostly for minor drug, trespassing and vehicle theft charges.

Beswick lives with his mother in a first-floor condominium on the 800 block of Northeast 209th Terrace.

On Monday, he was home alone watching television about 11 p.m. when he heard a knock at the door. He did not answer, then heard someone trying to enter through the condo’s sliding glass door.

Miami-Dade detective Maria Mederos testified Thursday that Beswick, armed with a pistol, lay down on the tile floor near the living room and waited five minutes for the burglar to enter.

DeJesus, 22, emerged from inside a rear bedroom. Beswick saw a shadow and fired seven times. DeJesus fled back into the bedroom.

Beswick ran through the front door, around the building. A few yards away, he saw “the victim’s hands part the window blinds” in an attempt to climb out. Beswick fired the last fatal volley, according to Mederos’ arrest report.

“He still didn’t know how many guys were inside and whether or not they were armed,” Grant said Thursday evening. “He was still in fear.”





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Ex-Red Sox pitcher Schilling puts bloody sock up for auction after video game company collapse






PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling — whose video game company underwent a spectacular collapse into bankruptcy last year — is selling the blood-stained sock he wore during the 2004 World Series.


Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions, says online bidding begins around Feb. 4. Live bidding will take place Feb. 23.






The sock previously had been on loan to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It has been at Heritage’s Dallas headquarters for several weeks and will be displayed at the auction house’s Manhattan office before it is sold, according to Ivy.


He said the sock is expected to fetch at least $ 100,000, though he described that as a conservative estimate.


“I do expect the bidding to be very spirited,” Ivy said.


Schilling’s company, 38 Studios, was lured to Providence, R.I., from Massachusetts with a $ 75 million loan guarantee in 2010. In May, it laid off all its employees and it filed for bankruptcy in June. The state is now likely responsible for some $ 100 million related to the deal, including interest.


Schilling also had personally guaranteed loans to the company and listed the sock as bank collateral in a September filing with the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office.


Messages left for his publicist were not immediately returned.


The bloody sock is one of two that sent Schilling into the annals of baseball lore in 2004.


The other was from Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, when Schilling pitched against the New York Yankees with an injured ankle. That sock is said to have been discarded in the trash at Yankees Stadium.


The one being sold is from the second game of the World Series, which the Red Sox won that year for the first time in 86 years.


Schilling has said he invested as much as $ 50 million in 38 Studios and has lost all his baseball earnings. He told WEEI-AM in Boston last year that possibly having to sell the sock was part of “having to pay for your mistakes.”


“I’m obligated to try and make amends and, unfortunately, this is one of the byproducts of that,” he told the station.


Brad Horn, a spokesman for the hall of fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., said the loaned sock was returned in December under the terms of the hall’s agreement with Schilling. The hall had had it since 2004.


The Feb. 23 live bidding will be held at the Fletcher-Sinclair mansion in New York City, now home to the Ukrainian Institute of America. The auction will feature other “five- and six-figure items,” including a jersey and cap worn by New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, Ivy said.


Heritage last May auctioned off the so-called “Bill Buckner ball,” which rolled through the legs of the Red Sox first baseman in the 1986 World Series. Ivy said that item, like Schilling’s sock, was listed at the time as being expected to bring in “$ 100,000-plus,” but it was sold to an anonymous bidder for $ 418,000.


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Lance Armstrong Confesses to Doping During All Seven Tour De France Wins

In a no-holds-barred interview with Oprah Winfrey, disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong finally admitted to years of doping while riding professionally, arguing that performance-enhancing drugs are essential to succeed in the sport.

Wasting no time in the sit-down, Winfrey asked Armstrong right off the bat if he had ever used banned substances during his career. During a series of rapid-fire yes or no questions, the retired cyclist confirmed that blood transfusions and EPO usage was common during his career, particularly during all seven of his Tour de France victories.

Related: Armstrong Stripped of Tour De France Titles

When asked if he believed it was humanly possible to achieve his seven consecutive wins without doping, Armstrong replied: "Not in my opinion."

In the end, Armstrong refused to out any of his fellow cyclists in the interview. Rather, he blamed the culture of professional cycling for creating a need for underground doping in the sport. Despite this, the 41-year-old athlete took personal responsibility for his disgrace, telling Winfrey that, at the time, he didn't feel he was cheating, but now understands the magnitude of his actions.

Related: Armstrong Confession 'Riveting,' Says Oprah Winfrey

"I see the anger in people," said Armstrong of fans' reaction to his drug use. "These are people that supported me and believed in me… They have every right to feel betrayed and it's my fault. I will spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologize to people."

Last year, a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency led to Armstrong's downfall. The shamed cyclist was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and, until now, vehemently maintained his innocence.

Tonight's interview was only part one of Winfrey's explosive sit-down. Part two, which delves into Armstrong's reasons for agreeing to come clean (among other things), airs tomorrow night on OWN.

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Queens boy struck & killed by SUV








A Queens boy was struck and killed by an SUV tonight after running into the middle of a busy Ridgewood intersection, police said.

The 7-year-old was standing on the sidewalk near Myrtle Avenue and Madison Street with his father when the boy darted into traffic at around 6:50 p.m., cops and witnesses said.

“I saw the child lying in the street -- right on the double yellow line,” said pharmacy worker Darlyn Deleon, 22. “The father was kneeling next to the child and crying. The child looked bad.”

The boy was struck by a 2002 Toyota Highlander traveling east on Myrtle Avenue, cops said. He was taken to Wyckoff Hospital where he was pronounced dead, authorities said.



The driver remained at the scene and cops said they do not suspect any criminality at this time.










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Miami Dolphins bill would bring state money to aging stadiums




















A bill drafted by the Miami Dolphins would give Florida sports teams $3 million a year in state money to improve older stadiums, provided the owner pays for at least half the cost of a major renovation.

Under the law, the stadium would need to be 20 years old and the team willing to put in at least $125 million for a $250 million renovation. That’s less than the $400 million redo of Sun Life Stadium that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross proposed this week, which he hopes will win state approval thanks to his offer to fund at least $200 million of the effort to modernize the 1987 facility.

Miami-Dade and Florida would fund the rest through a mix of county hotel taxes and state general funds set aside for stadiums. Sun Life currently receives $2 million a year through the program, and the Dolphins want to create a new category that would give them an additional $3 million.





While the Miami Marlins and Miami Heat both play in stadiums subsidized by county hotel taxes, the Dolphins receive no local dollars. The bill would change that by allowing Miami-Dade to increase the tax charged at mainland hotels to 7 percent from 6 percent, and eliminate the current rule that limits the money to publicly owned stadiums. Sun Life Stadium, in Miami Gardens, is privately owned but sits on county land.

The bill pits enthusiasm for one of Florida’s most popular sports teams against a lean budget climate and lingering backlash against the 2009 deal that had Miami and Miami-Dade borrow about $485 million to build a new ballpark for the Marlins. Ross also must navigate a Republican-led Legislature that has twice rebuffed his requests for public dollars.

“I would be surprised if that bill even got a hearing in committee,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican representative from the Tampa area and a critic of tax-funded sports deals. “I’m a big Dolphin fan, and have been for years. But with all due respect, we’ve got people who are struggling throughout this state right now . .. The last thing we should be doing is giving a professional sports team or facility additional tax dollars.”

While the bill would open up the $3 million subsidy to other the teams, the Dolphins see it as unlikely that another owner would be willing to put up as much money for renovations as Ross, a billionaire real estate developer.

If the bill were enacted today, any stadium opened before 1993 would be eligible for the money, provided it could show the proposed renovation would generate an additional $3 million in sales taxes.

Ross and his backers are pitching the renovation as a boon to tourism, with Sun Life a magnet for the Super Bowl, national college football games and other major events. The National Football League is considering South Florida and San Francisco for the 2016 Super Bowl, and the Dolphins say approval of renovation funding is crucial to winning the bid.

Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, who sponsored the Senate bill, said the funding makes sense because when Sun Life hosts a Super Bowl, the entire state benefits from both tourism dollars and publicity.

“It’s a small price to pay for economic development, and for all the shine we get from major sporting events,” said Braynon, whose district includes Sun Life. Rep. Eduardo “Eddy” Gonzalez, R-Hialeah, is the sponsor on the House side.





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Scott supports review of state gun laws: ‘I want people to feel safe’




















Gov. Rick Scott voiced his support for a broad review of Florida’s controversial gun laws by state lawmakers Wednesday, saying the state’s vital tourist economy depends on visitors being able to “feel safe” amid an increasingly well-armed population.

“We have a legislative session coming up,” Scott said during a visit to the Honeywell Aerospace plant in Largo, where he was touting his new plan to boost state manufacturing. “I think the right thing to do is go back and look at our laws.”

The father of a teacher, Scott said he would particularly support looking at ways to make schools safer. But he did not specify which other areas of existing state law might deserve scrutiny, refusing to respond to questions about universal background checks for firearm sales and a ban on assault weapons.





“I want people to feel safe in our state,” he said.

His remarks came in response to reporters’ questions on gun control, as the nation awaited an announcement from the White House on proposals to reform federal firearm regulations. President Barack Obama called on Congress Tuesday to enact bans on assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines, and expand background checks for gun purchasers.

Scott’s statements about a review of state gun laws were a rare — if still vague — foray into the debate over gun control in the wake of the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 children and six adults by a gunman at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

In previous public remarks, he has emphasized his sympathy for the victims’ families, rather than a legislative response. Scott skipped a conference call held by Vice President Joe Biden last week in which Biden solicited views on gun violence.

Scott’s press secretary, Jackie Schutz, later said she wanted to clarify that the governor’s support for a review of existing gun legislation doesn’t detract from his backing for citizens’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms. She said his remarks were not a “call to action” for specific legislation or reforms.

“Gov. Scott, as he has continued to say, is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Schutz said. “He’s open to having a conversation, and he wants people to feel safe.”

Florida’s patchwork gun laws have subjected the state to criticism from gun-control advocates across the country. The state received a grade of “D-” in a recent review of state firearm laws by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a San Francisco-based nonprofit.

In addition to its hotly debated “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law, Florida does not require background checks for private sales of weapons and places no limit on the number of guns a person can buy at one time. The state has issued more than a million permits to carry a concealed handgun.

Top Republicans in Tallahassee have so far balked at the prospect of adjusting those laws, though they have signaled some openness to increasing funding for school-security measures after the Newtown shooting.

Senate President Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican, told the Orlando Sentinel this month that regulating gun access is “not something I think the Legislature will get involved in, other than peripherally.”

Asked to clarify the governor’s position on which state laws should be examined, Schutz said she could not offer specifics.

“Generally, he wants to take the [legislative] session to look at them, like he said,” Schutz said. “He wants to look at any ideas.”

Schutz declined to offer details about the governor’s ideas on school safety, or the possibility — advocated by the National Rifle Association — of placing armed guards in every elementary school.

“The safety of our schools — the teachers, the students, the people who work in the schools — is incredibly important,” she said.





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Commentary: Background Checks? Yes, but Leave Video Games Alone






COMMENTARY | I have mixed feelings toward the White House‘s gun violence response. I agree that background checks should be required before people are allowed to buy a firearm and that an assault weapon ban should be reinstated into law. While limiting the number of bullets in a weapon’s magazine will decrease the number of deaths in a mass shooting, the public does not need high-capacity magazines. Therefore any weapon using high-capacity magazines should be banned from public use, not just capping the magazines to 10 bullets.


But violent video games and other media images and scenes real-life violence? These media do not kill people. The shooters kill the people. Those who are mentally unstable may not understand that violent video games are not real life and should not be duplicated in real life. As long as gamers understand the difference between video games and real life, that shouldn’t be touched.






– Edmond, Okla.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Kirstie Alley's Cheers Reunion

It's been nearly two decades since Cheers went off the air, but the onscreen chemistry hasn't changed between Kirstie Alley and Rhea Perlman, as seen in Kirstie's new TV Land pilot, Giant Baby.

On the show, Kirstie plays a Broadway diva whose life gets up-ended.

VIDEO: Kirstie Alley Celebrates 62nd Birthday with ET

"You know, we were planning this when we were doing Cheers," Kirstie said of reuniting with Rhea. "We said when Cheers isn't on the air anymore we'll do a show together."

Rhea plays Kirstie's best friend on Giant Baby, but she's also been a close friend to the Golden Globe winner in real-life, as Kirstie mentions in her New York Times bestseller, The Art of Men.

Kirstie's book, detailing her sexual exploits and struggles with drug addiction, has had so much success that it's attracted readers that Kirstie never thought would buy it.

"It never dawned on me that my dad would read my book," Kirstie said. "I didn't give it to him!"

Click the video for more.

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The price of legal pot








Last week, the board of The Fontaine, a luxury Upper East Side co-op, sued a resident over what it alleges is a constant, overwhelming smell of marijuana wafting from his apartment. This may just be a glimpse of our future.

After all, Colorado and Washington state voters just passed ballot initiatives to allow state-regulated marijuana sales. And Gov. Cuomo in his State of the State Address just suggested that pot possession shouldn’t be illegal.

But legalization raises a host of neglected issues. As one Fontaine resident complains in the lawsuit, “It is 10:45 p.m. and my apartment smells like a party was going on while I was out for the evening . . . The stench of musty pot that is lingering in my closet is unbearable.”





It’s great for him: Smoking on New Year’s Eve at pot-focussed Club 64 in Denver, soon after Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana use.

AP



It’s great for him: Smoking on New Year’s Eve at pot-focussed Club 64 in Denver, soon after Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana use.





Lots of high-end New York buildings go (tobacco) smoke-free now — surely plenty will want the same if marijuana’s legal.

What else changes in this brave new world of pot legalization?

Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at Yale, estimates that pot consumption would rise 10 percent the first year after legalization, then edge back down to a net gain of 3 percent or 4 percent. But just who would be smoking more?

In photos of the celebrations after those ballot measures passed, we see a lot of college students having a good time, along with a few shabbily dressed grown-ups. But businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers and stay-at-home moms didn’t rush out into the street to light up.

Cuomo cited racial disparities in arrests as the main reason to legalize, saying, “It’s not fair, it’s not right. It must end, and it must end now.” But what about the disparate impact of legalization?

Anthony Daniels, a retired British prison doctor and psychiatrist, says that, if legalization increases consumption, “My suspicion is that it will mainly increase among people with comparatively little responsibility” — that is, the young and the poor.

He compares it with heroin. In the 1920s and 30s, it was mostly an occasional habit of the middle classes, he says, “But as it permeated into lower classes, it became a way of life in and of itself.” And the effects were devastating.

Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, worries that legalizing pot opens up a “Pandora’s box that will only create one more potential problem” for the lower classes. He explains, “The new world we live in is about freedom and choice in any number of domains. People who are well-educated and affluent can successfully navigate those choices. But Americans with fewer advantages fall into self-destructive patterns.”

Says Daniels: “For the most part, drug use is not going to rise among people who have important jobs and will not want to lose their important jobs because they are stoned.”

Nor will it affect what middle-class parents teach their children. As Wildeman notes, “Smoking [cigarettes] is legal, but if you look at the average middle-class parent, the stigma they attach to smoking is so strong that whether it’s legal or illegal has a tiny effect on that population.”

But among the lower classes, it’s a different story. In a 2006 study, a Harvard economist found that more than a third of Americans with a ninth- to 11th-grade education smoked, compared to only 7 percent of people with a graduate degree. The lower life expectancy of poor people has been tied to higher smoking rates.

Yes, tobacco smoke is far more toxic than pot fumes. But marijuana still has detrimental effects. As Wilcox notes, “If pot is indeed a kind of drug that makes people more likely to become kind of docile, if it saps the will to go out and make your mark on the world, then it’s the last thing we need to give to working-class and poor men.” They are already “dropping out of the labor market” at alarming rates. Pot may only “accentuate the problem.”

As for the rest of us, we can just head to the Upper East Side.



Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!










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Coral Gables culinary students learn the art of sushi making




















Christian Rivas is still years away from becoming a professional sushi chef, but his hand-crafted California roll looks good enough to serve professionally.

“The hard part was getting the roll to be in good shape,” Christian, a 16-year-old junior at Coral Gables Senior High, said of his first attempt.

The Gables student was one of about 30 who stood in rapt attention inside the school’s kitchen classroom. He is a member of the school’s culinary arts program.





On Tuesday morning, chefs and executives from Sushi Maki, including CEO Abe Ng, volunteered to teach these students about the restaurant business. The main part of the presentation was Kingston-bred director of sushi education Steve Ho Sang’s instruction on how to make sushi rolls and hand rolls.

Sushi Maki goes through three tons of fresh salmon every week, Ng said. The succulent Norwegian fish in front of the class, expertly filleted via Ho Sang’s knives, looked like half a week’s supply.

The executives were there as part of the Education Fund’s Teach-a-Thon program which brings business professionals into Miami-Dade County Public School classrooms. These pros volunteer to teach a class at the elementary, middle or high school level to help raise money for school activities such as Coral Gables’ culinary program and to promote the value of public school teachers.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that teaching is really brain surgery,” said Linda Lecht, president of The Education Fund. “We want to call attention to the fact that teaching is a hard job and we, as a community, have to rally around our teachers if we are going to improve education. We want to get out the message of how important teaching is to our whole economy.”

Mercy Vera, Coral Gables’ culinary teacher, sought a partnership with The Education Fund — a North Miami-based non-profit that helps fund programs at Miami-Dade public schools from Homestead to Miami Gardens — to help prepare her students for careers in the profession.

The Education Fund’s latest fundraising campaign currently has $23,202 to split among 26 participating schools.

But having pros come into the classroom is also invaluable, Vera said, because it is impractical, if not near impossible, to cram 30 or more teenagers into a professional restaurant kitchen. And, of course, they would not be allowed to use the knives and other utensils. Here, in the school’s carefully stocked kitchen classroom, the guests give the kids a taste of reality.

“This brings a totally different dynamic to the classroom. This is an experience they normally wouldn’t have and this is the only way to show the children industry,” Vera said.

“I love the energy of public schools,” said Ng, 39. “I’m excited to do a restaurant 101, and to ignite a spark in them would be a big thing to me.”

The experience met with much enthusiasm from senior Jorge Castro, 19, who says he hopes to follow in the footsteps of Food Network star chef Bobby Flay, one of his inspirations in the culinary world.

“This is one of those jobs where you meet a lot of people and you make people smile when you make them good food and that counts — to see them smile,” Castro said.

Ng, a Palmetto High and Cornell grad, is part of a family that opened the Canton chain of Chinese food restaurants locally in 1975. His mom and dad still work at the South Miami and Coral Gables locations and the family also operates the spin-off Sushi Maki chain, which opened in 2000.

Ng enjoyed stepping out of the boardroom and into the classroom for his two-hour teaching experience.

“These students seem to have a good foundation,” he said as the students hustled to clean the kitchen. “The future generation of culinary, I’m optimistic about it.”

Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.





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Support mounts to allow unlimited political contributions in Florida




















Florida’s campaign finance system is so riddled with holes that a state ethics watchdog group will urge lawmakers Wednesday to open the spigot and let an unlimited amount of campaign cash gush into campaign coffers.

Integrity Florida, a non-profit, independent ethics advocacy organization, will tell the Houses Ethics and Elections Committee that the state should allow no-limits campaign finance in exchange for public disclosure of all donors.

Disclosure would be made within 24 hours of every check deposited to any state or local campaign account and every expenditure paid. The group also wants the elimination of powerful political slush funds that whitewash funds and shield donors, known as Committees of Continuous Existence.





“There is no evidence that caps on contributions are effective,’’ said Dan Krassner, executive director of Integrity Florida. “The money is going to find its way into the system. It is broken in every possible way.”

House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, who has made eliminating CCEs a political priority, told the Herald/Times that he is “open to considering” the removal of contribution limits.

“We already have a system that allows for unlimited money,’’ he said.

Republican Party Chairman Lenny Curry said he supports any proposal “that creates more transparency,” but would leave it to lawmakers to work out the details.

Democratic political consultant Steve Schale said ending donation limits and requiring fast-track disclosure “is the only way to get rid of the fiction of limits and open the gates of sunshine.”

The proposal was unanimously supported by the board of Integrity Florida, which includes the president of the Northwest Florida Tea Party Mike Hill, the executive director of the First Amendment Foundation Barbara Petersen, and retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times, Martin Dyckman.

For about two decades, Florida has required political contributors to limit donations to candidates to $500 in the primary and another $500 in the general election. But those limits have been outmatched by a flood of money pouring into the system in the era of Super PACs and the 2010 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision to recognize corporate contributions as political speech.

In the 2011-12 election cycle, Integrity Florida found that $230 million of the $306 million raised — about three out of four dollars — went to parties and political committees, which skirt the campaign finance limits and were subject to fewer disclosure rules.

Many of those CCEs are controlled by legislators and used to raise money, which they transfer to other campaigns or use to pay for meals, travel, car expenses and even gifts. The process has allowed the Legislature’s most powerful lawmakers to amass more clout during the election cycle as they transfer funds to the campaigns and committees of other members in an attempt to consolidate power.

In the last cycle, lawmakers who have risen to the most powerful posts in the House and Senate, raised more money in their political committees than most special interest groups in Florida. Most of the money was transferred to other accounts, leaving the public no clear trail to follow the money.

The Senate Ethics and Elections Committee chairman, Sen. Jack Latvala, R-St. Petersburg, said he wants to close those spending loopholes by banning the use of CCE funds on gifts and meals. But he does not want to eliminate CCEs. Latvala is also not a fan of removing the contribution limit because he believes the $1000 per-cycle contribution cap is working fine.





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Tablet Too Small? Try Lenovo’s 27-Inch ‘Table PC’






Google’s aptly-named Nexus 7 tablet made a splash when it debuted last year, at $ 199 and with a screen 7 inches across. Apple soon released its own iPad Mini to join the increasingly crowded world of miniature tablets, which — at about half the size of a regular iPad — are so small as to be pocketable.


Other manufacturers, however, aren’t taking the “smaller is better” route. Microsoft‘s Surface tablet debuted with a 10.6-inch screen, almost an inch across more than the iPad. And now at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, at least two companies were showing off “tablets” the size of an HDTV.






The “IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC”


That’s the actual name of Lenovo‘s new product, which Lenovo is calling an “interpersonal PC” (yes, that is an interpersonal Personal Computer, in case you were wondering). It’s a Windows 8 tablet, with a screen 27 inches across. It can apparently serve as an iMac-style, all-in-one desktop just fine, but Lenovo wants people to use it flat on their tables, like in a promo video which evokes the original Microsoft Surface.


A $ 10,000 bathtub


That’s basically what the first Surface amounted to — the Microsoft prototype of years ago, which never saw widespread use. It was a super-expensive, bathtub-sized table, with a Windows Vista PC inside and a camera array which optically scanned its top surface. It wasn’t a true touchscreen, in other words, so much as an expensive hack that was mostly just good for demos and reminding people of the desks in “Tron.”


Lenovo’s “Table PC” is smaller than that Surface, but will also be a lot cheaper when it comes out “beginning in early summer,” at $ 1,699. And like in those giddy tech demos, it’s designed for multiple people to use it at once; for things like sorting through vacation photos, or even playing animated digital board games, using physical accessories like special dice. (Lenovo calls this sort of hybrid activity “phygital,” a name which probably won’t catch on.)


What about the games and apps?


Thanks to Microsoft’s push for developers to make tablet apps, the Windows Market is starting to fill with touch titles. Lenovo is mostly pushing its own shop, however, run in partnership with Intel, which has “5,000+ multi-user entertainment apps.” It’s not clear how many of those are actually designed for the Horizon Table PC, but it comes with a selection of entertainment and children’s titles, and with the built-in BlueStacks player it should be able to run certain Android apps as well.


Is 27 inches a little too big?


The Asus Transformer AiO, also shown off at CES, is based on a similar concept. It’s an 18.4-inch all-in-one Windows 8 PC, where the screen can detach and become a huge (but not as huge) tablet. Most of the hardware is in the base station, but it can connect to it wirelessly inside the home, Wii U style. It also converts to an Android tablet, for use separate from the base station.


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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Megan Fox Apologizes for Lindsay Lohan Comments

In the process of explaining her reason for removing a Marilyn Monroe tattoo on her forearm to Esquire magazine, cover girl Megan Fox unleashed what appeared to be a harsh criticism of actress Lindsay Lohan. In light of all the attention Fox's words have garnered, the star has taken to Facebook in an attempt to clarify her comments. 

Pics: New Mom Megan Fox's Sexiest Shoot Yet

"In the newly released article that I did for Esquire, there is a reference that is made to Lindsay Lohan that I would like to clarify before it snowballs into something silly," began Fox in an open letter posted to her personal page.

"The journalist and I were discussing why I was removing my Marilyn Monroe tattoo, especially since, in his opinion, Marilyn was such a powerful and iconic figure for women. I attempted to draw parallels between Lindsay and Marilyn in order to illustrate my point that while Marilyn may be an icon now, sadly she was not respected and taken seriously while she was still living.

"Both women were gifted actresses, whose natural talent was lost amongst the chaos and incessant media scrutiny surrounding their lifestyles and their difficulties adhering to studio schedules etc.

"I intended for this to be a factual comparison of two women with similar experiences in Hollywood. Unfortunately it turned into me offering up what is really much more of an uneducated opinion. It was most definitely not my intention to criticize or degrade Lindsay.

"I would never want her to feel bullied, as she does not deserve that. I was not always speaking eloquently during this interview and this miscommunication is my fault."

Related: How Megan Fox Lost All That Baby Weight

Fox's original quote to Esquire reads as follows:

"I started reading about [Marilyn] and realized that her life was incredibly difficult. It's like when you visualize something for your future. I didn't want to visualize something so negative.

"She was sort of like Lindsay [Lohan]. She was an actress who wasn't reliable, who almost wasn't insurable. ... She had all of the potential in the world, and it was squandered. I'm not interested in following in those footsteps."

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Accused subway shover: I 'shouldn't have let this happen'








Now that’s an understatement.

Accused subway pusher Naeem Davis said he was in a bad mood and “shouldn’t have let this happen” when he clashed with a drunk man on a subway platform before allegedly pushing him onto the tracks, according to court papers.

“Yes, for the sake of argument, I could have walked away,” Davis told cops after he was arrested the next day. “But it was just bad timing. He came at the wrong time.”

Davis said he was still mad over an incident that happened two day before involving a man who threw away his boots.

Still, he claimed he was defending himself Dec. 3 when Ki-Suk Han, 58, confronted him on the platform.




Davis pleaded not guilty at his arraignment today .

His lawyer, Stephen Pokart, told Judge Bonnie Wittner that prosecutors should share its witness list so he can build a proper defense that would show victim Han was the aggressor and that Davis was merely protecting himself.

Even Wittner suggested that Davis’ self-defense claim may be going too far.

“There was no other way to prevent injury to himself except by pushing [Han] onto the train tracks with an oncoming train?” Wittner asked. “He could have been drunk, but I still don’t think it was in defense to throw somebody onto the subway tracks. I could be wrong.”










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.CO sets sights on changing ‘the fabric of the Internet’




















For the millions of people who equate the Web with .com, . CO Internet is out to change that mindset.

The Miami company that manages and markets the .co domain is already making impressive gains — more than 1.4 million in 200 countries have hung their businesses, blogs, personal projects or dreams on a .co virtual shingle. Still, that’s just a tiny fraction of industry titan VeriSign’s 105 million .com registrants.

“We want to change the fabric of the Internet,” Juan Diego Calle, founder and CEO of .CO Internet, said during an interview in .CO’s Brickell office. “We can only make that happen not by changing what happened in the last 25 years of the Web, which is owned by .com. We want to change the next 25.”





About 2½ years after the launch of .CO Internet, .co — the country code of Colombia — continues to be one of the fastest-growing Internet domains in the world and grew by 24 percent in 2012. .CO Internet is profitable and is projecting to bring in more than $25 million in revenues this year, the company said. The early success of .CO Internet, with operations in Miami and Colombia, is powered by passion and perseverance.

Calle moved to Miami from Colombia at age 15 with his family. He started several businesses, including one he sold in 2005 providing seed capital for what would come next. “I can’t say I ever sat still.” When he learned Colombia would be commercializing the country's .co domain extension in late 2006, he said it hit him like a lightning bolt.

With the right strategy and by “marketing the hell out of it,” the entrepreneur believed .co could solve a huge problem in the market — vanishing Internet domain names. If you’ve tried to nab a new .com address lately, you can relate — it’s difficult to find one that hasn’t been snatched up.

Calle thought that by appealing to the hearts and minds of the entrepreneur, .co could go where .info, .biz, .net or .me had never gone before. But first he needed the right team.

One of this first stops: The Big Apple, to visit Nicolai Bezsonoff, who had been an advisor and shareholder in Calle’s TeRespondo.com, a sort of Ask Jeeves for the Latin American market that was sold to Yahoo in 2005. At the time, Bezsonoff was the director of technology and operations at Citigroup.

“We went out for coffee, he started pitching me on a napkin. I said ‘really dude you want me to leave a big job at Citigroup for this?’ ” said Bezsonoff. “But he kept showing me the numbers … Later, that napkin was on my desk and it was one of those boring days and I kept looking at it and thought maybe I should.” He would become .CO’s chief operating officer.

Lori Anne Wardi, a lawyer and serial entrepreneur who was working at a venture capital firm at the time, became vice president in charge of brand strategy, business development and global communications. “She’s the heart and soul of the company,” said Calle. Eduardo Santoyo, based in Bogota, would become corporate vice president over policy and be the liaison with the Colombian government. “Some would say it was overkill talent but I needed the best. ... When you have a big dream, you have to think big and hire the right people,” Calle said.





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FAU professor with controversial theories on Newtown massacre says he was misunderstood




















Most of the victims of the Connecticut school massacre were just like Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy’s daughter: 7-year-old first graders at a public school.

“If a similar tragedy were visited upon me and my family, I would be beside myself,” he said. “But I think one of my ways of healing would be attempting to find out what went wrong, where was the failure.”

But trying to start a public discussion of the public’s small hope of ever finding out what went wrong has been costly.





Tracy, a tenured associate professor of communications, is in damage control mode after a disastrous interview he gave to a Sun Sentinel reporter who was following up on an entry in Tracy’s blog. The story, under the headline FAU prof stirs controversy by disputing Newtown massacre, portrayed him as a conspiracy theorist not completely convinced that the massacre had even occurred.

At the very least, as the story went, the event had been massaged by the government and cooperative “corporate media” into a parable on the need for gun control.

Tracy insists he was misunderstood.

But the story quickly went national, and a storm of anger, scorn and ridicule exploded over his head. Bloggers called him “the nutty professor.” Sun Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo urged students to boycott his classes. The top elected official in Newtown, Conn., called on FAU to fire him.

That has him worried, and his voice even shakes a little as he talks about it.

“I am sure [FAU is] receiving emails that are emotionally driven,” Tracy told WLRN-Miami Herald News. “But I would think if FAU wishes to revoke my tenure and terminate me, that’s a blow against academics’ being able to speak their minds on the events of the day.”

“Emotionally driven” is the thing that Tracy really hates, and that feeling goes a good way to the explanation of what he says he was really trying to express: That the news media’s first take on Newtown, guided almost exclusively by government sources, was likely to harden into the accepted history of the event, a history that could never be questioned without exposing the skeptic to a charge of being a “conspiracy theorist.”

Look at Pearl Harbor, he says. The sinking of the USS Maine. The sinking of the Lusitania. 9/11. All of those events are now viewed through prisms that, as Tracy warns his journalism students (now with the fresh lesson of his own experience), trigger vitriolic defenses when doubted.

And it’s all because the news media have never been good at their traditional duty of writing the first draft of history.

“The news media swooped into Newtown very briefly to cover the tragedy in a very vampiric sort of way, then swooped back out again without giving us any real answers,” Tracy says. “Then, they immediately went into the grieving mode. I’m not saying there’s not a place for that. But if we want to actually pay homage to the events, we want to find out what actually went wrong. That’s the greatest honor we can give them.”

Tracy’s theory does depend partly on a conspiracy theory that most journalists will scoff at: that a major news organization would agree to withhold major details of a huge story just to allow the government to frame the story as it wished.

Exposure would be inevitable, and the reporter who blew the whistle would get credit for a story bigger than Newtown itself.





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TSX off 10-month high, energy weakness offsets RIM jump






TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index finished short of a 10-month high on Monday as investor optimism for Research In Motion Ltd shares over the upcoming launch of its BlackBerry 10 devices was offset by falling energy shares.


Weakness in the materials sector, which includes mining stocks, also added pressure, while volatile oil prices were a drag on the energy sector. The two heavyweight sectors kept an otherwise positive index in check.






RIM shares extended a 13-percent gain made on Friday. The stock added 10.44 percent to C$ 14.70 and helped the information technology sector gain 2.48 percent.


“The investor confidence is brought about simply because of hope, and hope that the new BlackBerry 10 is going to be an answer to their prayers,” said Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod.


“There has been some talk that this is a revival of RIM. We’ll have to wait and see,” he added.


The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> finished little changed, up a 0.91 of a point, or 0.01 percent, at 12,603.09. Earlier, it touched 12,636.68, its highest since March 5, 2012.</.gsptse>


The index, which marked its fifth consecutive day of gains, swung back and forth between positive and negative territories in choppy trade.


“There’s a lot of indecisiveness out there. People don’t really know which way to go and you’re getting these markets that aren’t really doing much of anything,” said Julie Brough, vice president at Morgan Meighen & Associates.


Investors kept a close watch on the U.S. debt ceiling talks, seen as a significant catalyst for the markets, with hopes that a compromise will be reached. “There is reasonable optimism that it would be resolved,” Brough said.


The energy sector was down 0.5 percent, with Canadian Natural Resources Ltd slipping 1.81 percent to C$ 29.26 and Talisman Energy Inc falling 2.64 percent to C$ 11.78. Oil prices were volatile, with Brent crude rising to $ 112 on supply concerns.


Encana Corp shares dropped 2.31 percent to C$ 19.05 after the surprise resignation of the chief executive officer of Canada’s largest natural gas producer.


The three energy companies were the three biggest drags on the index.


Materials stocks, home to mining firms, was down 0.3 percent amid a slew of deals within the sector.


Miner Alamos Gold Inc said it will buy Aurizon Mines Ltd for about C$ 780 million ($ 793 million) in cash and stock to get access to Aurizon’s only operating gold mine, Casa Berardi, in northern Quebec. Aurizon shares jumped 34 percent to C$ 4.57, while Alamos Gold fell 11.94 percent to C$ 14.90.


Russia’s state uranium firm agreed to pay $ 1.3 billion to take Canada’s Uranium One Inc private, as the successor to the Soviet Union’s nuclear industry seeks to strengthen its grip on supplies. Uranium One’s stock rose 14.52 percent to C$ 2.76.


In other company news, shares of Harry Winston Diamond Corp rose 4.41 percent to C$ 14.90 on the company’s plans to sell its high-end watches-to-necklaces division to Swatch Group in a $ 750 million cash deal that expands the Swiss watchmaker’s luxury offering and lets the Canadian group concentrate on its diamond mines.


(Additional reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski)


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Pregnant Kristen Bell Gives Baby Update

A vision in lavender Jenny Packham, glowing mom-to-be Kristen Bell was all smiles as she gave ET an enthusiastic (and hysterical) update about her pregnancy on the Golden Globes red carpet Sunday evening.

Joined by fiancé Dax Shepard, 38, Bell seemed to take her impending motherhood in stride when speaking with our Brooke Anderson. Fueled by tea and coffee, Bell and Shepard (respectively) were giddy at the prospect of a fun night out.

Related: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are Expecting!

Feeling "great," the 32-year-old House of Lies star revealed she and Shepard are expecting a spring arrival. Not one to miss an opportunity for humor, the dad-to-be made it known we shouldn't get our hopes up so soon about the baby's delivery.

"She's having an elephant," joked Shepard of their child's projected 2014 birth. "They gestate many months longer than a human."

Despite Bell's lengthy time spent with child, the couple teased they weren't ready for parenthood and would likely pass the baby on to a lucky taker.

Related: 'House of Lies' Stars Preview What's Next

"We're giving the child up for adoption," said Shepard.

Added Bell, "If anybody wants it, let us know."

Watch the video for more of the couple's hilarious interview.

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The beauty of Brooklyn








It’s been more than a century since Brooklyn was a separate city, but forgive residents if they think of themselves as the center of the universe.

The latest feather in the borough’s cap? It can now boast of being home to the newest Miss America. Crowned Saturday in Las Vegas, Mallory Hagan is the first city winner since Bess Meyerson back in 1945.

Like many a Brooklynite, Hagan wasn’t born in the borough; she moved to the Big Apple from Alabama five years ago. Twice runner-up in the Miss New York contest, she finally broke through in 2012 to represent the Empire State.





AP



Mallory Hytes Hagan





Hagan’s victory is the latest in a great Brooklyn winning streak — coming just months after the opening of the Barclays Center, home to a resurgent Brooklyn Nets and, in a couple of years, a transplanted New York Islanders hockey team. And Barclays has aready hosted concerts by Jay-Z, Barbra Streisand and the Rolling Stones.

More than just a tree grows in Brooklyn these days. It’s now a bustling borough, boasting basketball — and beauty.

Congratulations to Mallory Hagan.



Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!










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After rough year, Carnival hopes for calmer waters




















After boarding the latest addition to the Carnival Cruise Lines family, Josh Beaver sampled lasagna at the new onboard Italian restaurant, downed some drinks with his traveling companions and hit the water slides while the afternoon was still young.

“So far, from what I’ve seen, there’s lots to do,” said Beaver, 33, of Holden Beach, N.C.

The Carnival Breeze hadn’t even left PortMiami yet on a recent Saturday, and already it buzzed with vacationers exploring all there was to do: nosh on a Pig Patty from the new Guy’s Burger Bar, make friends with bartenders at the new RedFrog Pub or check out a novel and a glass of the grape at the new Library Bar.





Here aboard one of the largest ships in the biggest brand of the Number One cruise ship company in the world, there was little hint that the last year was one of the toughest in the 41-year history of parent company Carnival Corp. & plc.

Last year got off to a catastrophic start when Costa Concordia, owned by Carnival unit Costa Cruises, struck rocks in Italian waters as the captain steered the ship on an unauthorized route. The massive liner listed to one side, and 32 people died in the chaos that followed.

“When you lose lives, it’s heartbreaking,” said Carnival Corp. Vice Chairman and COO Howard Frank, who devoted much of his time last winter handling the aftermath with Costa leaders. “And so I think in terms of our emotional reaction to it, it’s been the toughest year we’ve had.”

Carnival Corp. Chairman and CEO Micky Arison took criticism for not going to Italy following the wreck, but said he believes the company did the right thing and doesn’t second-guess his actions.

Financially, the company took a hit as well, starting with discounts that were necessary to drum up business after the accident. Costa’s future bookings plunged, but picked up after the operator slashed prices. As of mid-December, prices at Costa remained lower than they were a year earlier, though the company expects that to change once the anniversary of the accident passes.

“I think we’ve been consistent in saying the recovery at Costa is not a one-year issue,” Arison said during the December earnings call with analysts. “It’s going to be multiple years, and we are forecasting a recovery of about half the yield deterioration.”

The ship remains on its side off the island of Giglio; it’s expected to be removed by the end of summer.

A flurry of civil lawsuits have been filed, but none have reached trial yet; the company has reached compensation agreements with 70 percent of the more than 3,000 passengers who were not physically injured and 60 percent of injured passengers and families of those who died.

As the company and broader industry focused anew on safety, the summer months presented a fresh set of problems when the European economy weakened just as cruise lines were stationing more ships in the Mediterranean. While North America was immune to those concerns, the run-up to the Presidential election and the fiscal cliff debates prompted Carnival to worry about a slowdown in business at home.

Last month, Carnival forecast 2013 earnings that were lower than expectations and said advance bookings for the year were behind what they were a year earlier at lower prices. Many analysts believe the projections were conservative, though, and executives said they were hopeful that January would bring more robust business.





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SunPass coming to Rickenbacker, Venetian causeways in 2014




















The introduction of SunPass on two Miami-Dade causeways is the latest in a series of initiatives to expand use of Florida’s electronic toll-collection system beyond state highways.

“We are hoping that a year from now, in 2014, the new system will be in place on both the Rickenbacker and then the Venetian Causeway,” said Michael R. Bauman, chief of the Miami-Dade public works and waste management department’s causeways division.

Originally, the county had planned to activate SunPass on the causeways in 2012, but the project was delayed because of contractor issues and efforts by all Florida tolling agencies to centralize back-office operations that include billing and other customer services, Bauman said.





Conversion of causeways’ C-Pass system to SunPass transponders will be one of the most significant changes in the history of the storied roads that carry tens of thousands of commuters every day to and from the mainland.

The 5.4-mile Rickenbacker, the longer of the two causeways, is also the newest. It opened in 1947. The 2.8-mile Venetian opened in 1925.

Tolls have been charged on both causeways for decades. The Rickenbacker was the first to adopt electronic tolling in 1997 with the C-Pass system, followed by the Venetian shortly after.

Both causeways still take cash at some toll plaza lanes.

While the plan is to eliminate cash tolls, Bauman said details are more advanced for the Rickenbacker than for the Venetian.

As a result, he said in an interview, details of how SunPass will operate on the Venetian remain undecided.

On the Rickenbacker, however, he said the toll plaza will be removed and its eight lanes will be reconfigured into four lanes with electronic gantries. Cash will no longer be accepted.

In both cases, said Bauman, lower annual tolls paid by residents and commuters served by the Rickenbacker and Venetian will be preserved under the SunPass arrangement.

The vehicles of residents and commuters already registered with causeway systems will be recognized by SunPass, and no additional toll charges will be made, Bauman said.

The current cash toll price on both causeways is $1.50. Whether that rate will remain once SunPass kicks in is still under discussion, Bauman said.

On the Rickenbacker and Venetian, residents with C-Pass transponders pay a flat $24 per year. Nonresidents who drive the Rickenbacker pay $60 per year and Venetian commuters pay $90.

Registration will continue, but it will be done online.

Drivers who don’t have SunPass will still be allowed to use the causeways. They will be billed later via Toll-by-Plate, Bauman said.





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