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ETonline RSS - Breaking News
Label: LifestyleThe Sandy hook horror
Label: HealthCall it evil, call it insanity, call it whatever you will — yesterday’s slaughter of the innocents in Connecticut was an act of such unfathomable horror that it defies both explanation and understanding.
There are no adequate answers, there is no meaningful comfort to be given — and there are no reasonable preventive measures to be taken.
A lunatic gunman made his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and opened fire.
In the blink of an eye, 26 innocent people, 20 of them small children, lay dead — as did the shooter, who took his own life.
Thus did the soul-scouring search for answers begin.
It will not soon end.
Twenty innocent children — all between the ages of 5 and 10.
Six adults were mercilessly gunned down, as well.
And at least one other victim, possibly the mother of the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, appears to have been killed at another location.
A search for “underlying” answers, of course, is well under way.
And, to no one’s surprise, much blame is falling on the means used to carry out yesterday’s evil: guns.
The atrocity quickly ignited yet another deeply passionate debate, reflecting the nation’s complex relationship with firearms.
Much of the country, indisputably, holds dear the right to bear arms — clearly enunciated in the Constitution’s Second Amendment and upheld by the US Supreme Court as recently as last year.
Moreover, efforts by gun-control advocates over the years have demonstrated — if nothing else — how strongly attached to its guns America really is.
Still, given the mass shootings of recent years — from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Aurora to the Oregon mall nightmare just last Tuesday — it’s hard not to wonder whether the nation’s patience with powerful firearms isn’t wearing thin.
How weapons capable of extinguishing 26 lives in a matter of minutes routinely end up in the hands of madmen is something even the gun lobby will need to reckon with — if for no other reason than its own self-interest.
We fully understand the issues.
We know that there are hundreds of millions of privately held firearms in America — and that for the most part they are beyond “control.”
We know that guns don’t kill, people do.
But we also know that it is extremely difficult to justify the presence of high-volume-of-fire, military-style weaponry in modern society.
Yes, those who would disarm America must contend with the Constitution.
But now those who defend the Second Amendment have to do so in the context of the Sandy Hook slaughter.
As a matter of conscience, it’s going to be a very tough case to make.
Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!
Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events
Label: Business
Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.
The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.
“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.
“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.
Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”
Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.
And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.
Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.
The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.
Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.
Clemency board grants full pardon to wrongfully convicted man
Label: World
TALLAHASSEE --
After a wrongful murder conviction that put him behind bars for 27 years, William Michael Dillon received formal forgiveness from the state Thursday.
Dillon, who was awarded a $1.3 million settlement by the state in March, stood before Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet and recounted how far his life has come since he was released from a maximum security prison four years ago, exonerated by DNA evidence.
Clemency hearings, in which elected officials grant pardons and rule on whether to restore civil rights for convicted felons, are usually somber, even tearful. But Dillon’s testimony was upbeat, drawing smiles from an audience of freed felons waiting for their own opportunity to ask for the legal system’s fullest measure of forgiveness.
In Dillon’s case, his civil rights — the ability to sit on a jury, own guns, hold public office and vote — were returned after he was exonerated. But for him, the pardon he was granted Thursday was the real vindication.
“It’s a great, great, great day to be here...” Dillon said, a silver necklace of a soaring bald eagle draped over his blue tie. “Now my life is good, I’m moving on, and I’m definitely going to make a positive impact from here on out.”
Dillon was 21 years old in 1981 when law enforcement officers approached him at a Brevard County gas station to ask him about James Dvorak, who had been beaten to death in a wooded area nearby.
Dillon worked two jobs — as a bowling alley mechanic and construction worker. And he spent his free time chasing pretty girls and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Innocent and unconcerned, he answered officers’ questions.
But the interrogation resulted in an arrest and a deeply flawed investigation that was later discredited.
Dillon’s full pardon Thursday was a foregone conclusion.
Scott apologized on behalf of the state when he signed a claims bill during an emotional March ceremony. Attorney General Pam Bondi, after Thursday’s hearing, said she was pleased to give the pardon.
“I hope he can go on with his life and be a productive citizen,” she said.
Dillon has big plans for the rest of his life, many of them colored by his desire to fix a flawed justice system.
He the focus of a documentary on the Discovery Channel’s I Didn’t Do It, which first aired Monday and is scheduled for another run Sunday.
He’s written 600 pages for a book about his life. And he performs in an all-exoneree band.
He recently joined the board of the Innocence Project of Florida, which advocates for the exoneration of wrongfully convicted inmates.
Facebook, Google tell the government to stop granting patents for abstract ideas
Label: TechnologyFacebook (FB), Google (GOOG) and six other tech companies have petitioned the courts to begin rejecting lawsuits that are based on patents for vague concepts rather than specific applications, TechCrunch reported. The agreement, which was cosigned by Zynga (ZNGA), Dell (DELL), Intuit (INTU), Homeaway (AWAY), Rackspace (RAX), and Red Hat (RHT), notes the only thing these abstract patents do is increase legal fees and slow innovation in the industry. The companies claim that “abstract patents are a plague in the high tech sector” and force innovators into litigation that results in huge settlements or steep licensing fees for technology they have already developed on their own, which then leads to higher prices for consumers.
“Many computer-related patent claims just describe an abstract idea at a high level of generality and say to perform it on a computer or over the Internet,” the briefing reads. “Such barebones claims grant exclusive rights over the abstract idea itself, with no limit on how the idea is implemented. Granting patent protection for such claims would impair, not promote, innovation by conferring exclusive rights on those who have not meaningfully innovated, and thereby penalizing those that do later innovate by blocking or taxing their applications of the abstract idea.”
The companies conclude, “It is easy to think of abstract ideas about what a computer or website should do, but the difficult, valuable, and often groundbreaking part of online innovation comes next: designing, analyzing, building, and deploying the interface, software, and hardware to implement that idea in a way that is useful in daily life. Simply put, ideas are much easier to come by than working implementations.”
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Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
ObamaCare: Cuomo, Christie & you
Label: Health
Michael Tanner
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have taken their states in opposite directions when it comes to implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a k a ObamaCare.
Last week, Christie vetoed a measure to have New Jersey set up a state health-insurance exchange, joining 21 other governors in rejecting the idea. Cuomo earlier used an executive order to move ahead with establishing an exchange in New York, despite the Legislature’s refusal to pass a law doing so. New Jersey taxpayers, businesses and consumers are likely to get the better end of the deal.
An exchange is a new bureaucracy that theoretically will make it easier for consumers to shop for insurance. Health plans for individuals and small groups (not, initially, for large employers) will be grouped together in four categories of nearly identical plans — bronze, silver, gold and platinum.
The difference, even between a bronze or platinum plan, is mostly a matter of copayments, premiums and deductibles rather than benefits. This could make it easier for consumers to compare plans — but will also likely limit the options available and therefore restrict consumer choice. The ObamaCare calls for every state to have an exchange running by Jan. 1, 2014.
We don’t yet know what rules these exchanges will operate under, so we can’t know what insurance plans will eventually be sold there. But chances are good that you might not be able to find the combination of benefits, deductibles and so on that best meets your needs.
The exchanges also provide a mechanism through which Washington can funnel subsidies. That is, individuals who buy insurance through an exchange may be eligible for subsidies designed to reduce the cost of that insurance.
No one will have to purchase a policy through an exchange — but subsidies are only available for insurance bought through one, so the non-exchange insurance market may find it difficult to survive. Plus, many businesses may find it advantageous to stop offering the health insurance that they now provide, leaving their employees with no choice but to buy on the exchange.
The experience of exchanges already operating in Massachusetts and Utah suggests that, in practice, they’ll be fraught with problems, including high premiums and an unwillingness of insurers to participate. They’ll also face “adverse selection” issues: An exchange tends to attract the sickest and most costly patients, driving up premiums and leaving people trying to get insurance through it facing high costs and problems getting care.
Cuomo and Christie took the steps they did because, while ObamaCare requires every state to have an exchange, it doesn’t force a state to set up or operate it. If a state fails to establish one (as in Jersey), the federal government will step in and set up the exchange itself.
At least, it’s supposed to step in. Whether the feds actually can set up exchanges in more than 20 states is an open question. Certainly, Congress seems unlikely to appropriate money for them to do so.
In some ways, there’s not much difference between a federal and a state exchange. The law authorizes the feds to “ensure that states with exchanges are enforcing federal standards.” In other words, each state is free to set up an exchange, as long as it does so exactly as the federal government wants it to. In fact, in establishing its exchange, New York may find that it has actually outsourced control over state insurance laws to the feds.
By setting up its exchange, New York also wins the dubious privilege of paying the full cost for operating it. If the feds set up an exchange in New Jersey, they’ll have to pay for it. Thus, Cuomo has imposed about $100 million a year in costs on New York taxpayers. Christie, by contrast, may well have saved Jersey taxpayers from that burden.
And, by rejecting a state-run exchange, Christie has potentially freed New Jersey businesses from ObamaCare’s mandate that all employers with 50 or more workers provide health insurance or pay a tax of $2,000 per worker.
Potentially, because that mandate only kicks in if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange — and, under explicit language of the ObamaCare law, subsidies aren’t available through a federally run exchange.
The Obama administration has claimed the authority to unilaterally rewrite the law in order to offer subsidies through a federal exchange. The issue is surely headed to the Supreme Court; it’s anyone’s guess how the justices will rule. But if the courts uphold the plain language of the statute, New Jersey and other “refusenik” states will find themselves at a significant competitive advantage when it comes to attracting businesses.
Come 2016, Cuomo and Christie may well face off in a race for the presidency. For now, their contrasting approaches to ObamaCare are a pretty clear indication of that debate.
Michael Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow.
Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!
Wynwood co-working center funded by Knight Foundation, angel investors
Label: Business
The LAB Miami announced Thursday it will open a 10,000-square-foot co-working center in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and local angel investors are investing $650,000.
As Miami’s startup community continues to grow, The LAB Miami said its “work-learn campus” will offer an in-house mentor network that will include investors and serial entrepreneurs, said Wifredo Fernandez, co-founder of The LAB Miami with Danny Lafuente and Elisa Rodriguez-Vila.
The LAB Miami, now in a 720-square-foot space in the same neighborhood, turned a Goldman building at 400 NW 26th Street into an artsy, modern space that can support 300 members, including tech startups, programmers, designers, investors, nonprofits, artists and academics.
In addition to offering space to work, the new co-working space plans to offer courses and workshops in business and technology — including a startup school and code school — as well as art, design and education, Fernandez said. It will be a welcoming space for traveling Latin Americans, too. “We want this to be a community center for entrepreneurs,” said Fernandez, explaining that the mix of activities and workshops will be structured by the needs of the LAB’s members.
While the Knight Foundation’s Miami office has sponsored many entrepreneurship events in the past four months, this is the foundation’s largest investment announced so far in its efforts to help accelerate entrepreneurship in Miami, said the Knight Foundation’s Miami program director, Matt Haggman. The Knight Foundation’s Miami office, which made accelerating entrepreneurship one of its key areas of focus this year, is investing $250,000 with the rest of the funding coming from a group of investors lead by Marco Giberti, Faquiry Diaz-Cala, Boris Hirmas Said and Daniel Echavarria.
“This is an important part of our strategy,” said Haggman. “Entrepreneurs need places to gather, connect and learn.”
The LAB Miami has already hosted several events, including HackDay and Wayra DemoDay earlier this week, and the co-working space plans to open for membership in January.
Co-working space will start at $200 a month to use the communal tables, and private offices that will accommodate up to six are also available. The LAB will also offer “Connect” memberships for $40 a month, which allows members who do not need co-working space to participate in events. In addition, there will be phone booths, classrooms, flexible meeting spaces, a lounge area, a kitchen, a “pop-up shop” for local fashion, art or technology products, a shower for those who bike to work and an outside garden with native landscaping.
Wisteria Island: A tussle for a wild isle in the Florida Keys
Label: World
In the middle of Key West Harbor, there’s a modern-day Gilligan’s Island just a short dinghy ride from Schooner’s Wharf. It’s 21 acres of wild green space with a rusting barbecue grill and an empty beer keg swinging from a tree.
And if you thought the fictional island on the 1960s TV show harbored a quirky assortment of characters, get a load of the ones who’ve figured in Wisteria Island history:
There was Key West luxury developer Pritam Singh, who lived on the rent-free paradise as a hippie.
There were the pot-smokers, partiers, poets and picnickers — as well as artists, vagrants and nature-seekers — who used it to get away from civilization for hours, days or even weeks at a time.
Navy SEALs trained for secret missions on its terrain. Thieves used it, too, as a chop shop for stolen outboard motors.
And don’t forget Dennis Walsh, a guy who sold dirty jokes for $1 to tourists on Duval Street and enjoyed walking his dog on the island’s beach.
Over the past four decades, it seems like just about everyone has used the island except its acknowledged owners: the Bernsteins, a well-to-do family with New York roots who developed most of nearby Stock Island. “We kind of ignored it,” Roger Bernstein said.
But in 2007, Bernstein and his brother, Jordan, decided it was time to turn their “trophy property” into a luxury resort. Those who loved the scruffy island — created during a Navy channel-dredging project around the turn of the last century — had other ideas.
Among them were Naja and Arnaud Girard, who own a Key West marine assistance and boat salvage company. The couple have fond memories of their two children playing on the island with kids from other live-aboard families who grew up on boats anchored off its shore.
The Girards started poking around Washington, D.C., archives and online databases, trying to find a way to keep at least some of the island undeveloped. They hit the jackpot: documents that suggested the Bernsteins could not own the island because the Navy had not given up title to Wisteria until 1982. And, when it did, it transferred it to the U.S. Department of the Interior, not the state of Florida.
“This came out of nowhere,” said Barry Richard, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig, which is representing the Bernsteins. “I have to say it came out of a relatively low administrative level . . . and may well be, at some point, reversed administratively. But it is not a risk we can take.”
As a result, Key West’s local drama has turned into a federal case: F.E.B. Corp. vs. the United States of America.
The ownership controversy prompted the Monroe County property appraiser to slash the island’s valuation to $17,900 (it once was $700,000), and it has brought to a halt the Bernsteins’ effort to turn Wisteria into a resort that mirrors its twin spoil island, Sunset Key.
The Bernstein brothers are shocked that the feds are disregarding the warranty deed their late father, Ben, obtained for $155,000 in 1967, the four decades worth of property taxes they’ve paid and the Submerged Lands Act of 1953, which they believe confirms their ownership.
“This is a land grab by the federal government of epic proportions,” Roger Bernstein said.
But according to Naja Girard, the “real land grab” occurred in 1951, when the state auctioned off the island. She dug up documents that showed the Navy claimed ownership at the time and objected to the auction. The state went ahead anyway.
New Flickr iPhone app to compete with Instagram and Twitter with 16 filters
Label: TechnologyHot on the heels of its email redesign, Yahoo (YHOO) announced on Wednesday that it has completely redesigned the Flickr iPhone app. The new app borrows heavily from Instagram and focuses on what makes Flickr special: photos and communities. Yahoo’s new Flickr app also includes 16 filters with their own fancy names to go head-on with Instagram and Twitter’s recently updated app that added eight filters. Users can now access the Flickr app with numerous accounts including Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) and photos can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or via email. The new Flickr app is available for free on iPhone but to our disappointment, there isn’t an iPad-optimized version.
Ellis Hamburger from The Verge penned an interesting editorial on how Twitter misses the mark by simply adding filters to its app without having the close community that makes Instagram so addictive. Led by CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo seems aware that mobile apps thrive on the communities that sprout up. The new Flickr app’s emphasis on how the images are displayed and shared in visually appealing and digestible thumbnails suggests Yahoo finally understands mobile.
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Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
’12 rounds
Label: HealthThe year 2012 will go down in real estate history as the year of the 100-year storm — and the $100 million apartment.
From a housing perspective, the biggest story by far was Hurricane Sandy. Millions of New Yorkers were left without power. Neighborhoods like Breezy Point and Red Hook experienced crippling damage. Thousands of residents still have not returned to their apartments in the Financial District, and dozens of buildings in that neighborhood were flooded.
“From a personal standpoint, I was homeless,” says Shermon Peters, the owner of Rosetta Wines, at 40 Exchange Place in FiDi, who was living at 2 Gold St.
Lorenzo Ciniglio(2)
Hurricane Sandy hasn’t stopped downtown development, which will include conversions like the Woolworth.
Peters stayed with his parents in Queens, and then camped out in his van parked outside Rosetta Wines (mercifully spared from the storm). “Several businesses were looted, so I decided to stay in front of my store each night, just to keep an eye on it.”
Move-back dates for the 2 Gold rental building are not scheduled until March, so Peters asked one of his customers, Cyrus Eyn, of Platinum Properties, if he knew of any nearby apartments. Eyn found him a one-bedroom at William Beaver House. For about two weeks, Peters would climb 20 stories to get bags of clothing out of his old apartment while wearing a gas mask. (A boiler had exploded during the storm, and the hallways reeked of fuel.)
And 2 Gold (which also suffered a rash of robberies in the ensuing chaos) was only one of the luxury apartment buildings — which included 88 Greenwich St., 201 Pearl St., 95 Wall St. and others — damaged by Sandy. According to the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, rental transactions are down a jaw-dropping 70 percent from last year in lower Manhattan.
But the fact that Peters is still living in FiDi says something about the area’s staying power.
“In the last couple of weeks, we have rented to a number of people from 2 Gold and 88 Greenwich,” says Kristen Risko of LCOR, whose building, 25 Broad, is offering displaced residents six-month leases, or three free months on an 18-month lease. “We’ve probably gotten 12 residents — and I have two pending applications.”
“People are still renting and still looking down there,” says Platinum Properties President Daniel Hedaya, who sells and leases apartments all over FiDi.
And developers aren’t shying away from the area, either.
Ken Horn, the head of Alchemy Properties, is moving full speed ahead with plans to turn the top 30 floors of the 58-story Woolworth Building into 36 to 42 condos. (Exact numbers haven’t been set.) “Our goal is to hit the market in the fourth quarter of 2013,” Horn says. The building will feature a 6,000- to 7,000-square-foot cupola penthouse, which will almost certainly be one of the city’s top trophy properties.
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