Go to Greg

I’m 28, single and work at a small company. One of my bosses is lazy, holds grudges and can be vengeful — and he just crossed the line: He asked me last week if I would do him a favor and have first-time sex with his 16-year-old son. The way I handled it was a laugh and quick, ‘Sorry, I can’t.’ If I report him to our parent company, I’ll get fired, and I can’t lose my job. If I engage a lawyer, I probably could get a settlement, but then nobody in the industry will hire me. Do I just forget it, and move on?

How can you forget working for a crass, offensive jerk? Those in positions of authority at work need to be held accountable for such blatant, flagrant violations of decency, ethics and morals. If you and your boss had a good, close working relationship, and he was a decent guy in every respect and jokingly suggested the scenario you described, I can see forgiving the transgression. But based on your description, the guy is a jerk — so nail the sucker. If you get fired for doing so, then your case just got stronger — because it’s classic retaliation, and courts don’t take kindly to employers who do that. Tell your other boss what happened, and make it the employer’s problem to solve it.

I’m over 50 and have been unemployed for more than a year. I think my age is a factor. I’m working with an outplacement counselor who has advised I get a makeover. I’m not a woman, and I’m not going to dress like a 20-something. Isn’t this enabling age-discrimination?

If you’ve ever been to a gym, you’ve seen guys primping themselves in front of a mirror as much as any woman — so your response suggests you’re a bit “old-fashioned.” I don’t think your counselor is suggesting dressing age-inappropriately or getting a funky ‘do. I’m not saying age isn’t a factor in some decisions regardless of the law — in reality, age is more about how one presents oneself. The workplace is full of 60-somethings for whom age isn’t even a consideration because they’re smart, professional, etc. If your counselor is saying you need a make-over, it’s not an insult, and it may not be just about what you project from the outside.

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Miami Dolphins worry Marlins stand between them and a tax-funded redo for Sun Life Stadium

The Miami Dolphins are reviving their failed bid to win tax dollars for a football stadium. But team executives want no comparisons to a successful bid to win tax dollars for a baseball stadium.

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has called a press conference for Monday to unveil a plan for an improved Sun Life Stadium. Sources say the plan will include asking state and local governments to help pay for a $400 million renovation of the 1987 facility.

State lawmakers in recent years rebuffed the Dolphins when the team asked for help on a less-expensive renovation. And while the economy and state finances are more favorable this time around, Dolphin executives see a bigger challenge now from lingering backlash against the $639 million ballpark taxpayers built for the Miami Marlins in order to move the baseball team from their old home in Sun Life. .

“It can’t be anything close to what the Marlins did,’’ said state Sen. Oscar Braynon, a Democrat whose Miami Gardens district includes Sun Life Stadium and who sponsored a 2011 bill to raise hotel taxes to fund the Dolphins renovation plan. “Unless you do something totally counter to what the Marlins did, nobody is going to vote for it.”

Both the Marlins and the Dolphins declined to comment for this story. The Dolphins have not released details of how they want to pay for the renovation, or what they want to do the stadium. But sources close to the team describe an extensive renovation of Sun Life, including adding a partial roof, a redesign of the seating configuration to improve views of the field, and shifting capacity from the low-priced seats in the upper deck to the more expensive seating closer to the sidelines. Without the space demands of a baseball field, the front row will move 18 feet closer to the field, according to a person briefed on the plans.

Polls showed Miami and Miami-Dade’s 2009 votes to build the baseball stadium with 75 percent public money were never popular. But the Marlins’ recent stripping of star players from their payroll has made the new Little Havana park Topic A when it comes to plotting a Dolphins’ victory for winning tax dollars themselves.

Dolphins executives plan to pursue two funding sources from state and local government, according to several people familiar with the team’s plans. For the first funding stream, the Dolphins plan to ask Miami-Dade to raise taxes charged mainland hotels from 6 percent to 7 percent and earmark the extra money for the stadium. The Dolphins also plan to ask Florida for an additional $2 million rebate on sales taxes on top of the $2 million the stadium already receives from the state each year under a special subsidy for professional sports teams.

Ross is expected to pledge a significant amount of the renovation money himself. Sources who have been briefed on the Dolphins’ proposal say the total pricetag for the project is $400 million. That’s almost double the renovation budget the Dolphins proposed when the team last went to the Legislature for money in 2011.

Staying competitive

At the time, the Dolphins unveiled a $225 million redo of Sun Life with expanded sideline seating, high-definition lighting and a partial roof that would both shade seats during hot games and shield spectators from the kind of downpour that drenched the stands during the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami Gardens. The Dolphins, top executives at the NFL and some community leaders have warned that without upgrades to Sun Life, South Florida risks losing its standing as one of the nation’s top venues for the Super Bowl and college football championships.

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Miami International Airport hotel operator under criminal investigation

The company that runs the hotel at Miami International Airport is under criminal investigation by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office and the Office of the Inspector General for allegedly fraudulently billing the county.

In a Jan. 2 memo outlining the joint investigation to Jose Abreu, director of the county’s aviation department, Inspector General Christopher Mazzella wrote that he could provide only general contours of the ongoing probe because of potential, forthcoming criminal charges against the hotel operator, H.I. Development.

The unusual memo was prompted by an earlier letter from H.I. Development defending the company’s performance after harsh public criticism from Abreu. The county is going out to bid for a new hotel management contract, and Abreu has said that he would not recommend H.I. Development if it were to bid.

“Let me be clear that the criminal investigation under way, which is being conducted jointly by the OIG and the State Attorney’s Office, is very serious,” Mazzella wrote. “Indeed, it is expected that criminal charges will be filed in the near future.”

In his Dec. 12 letter, sent to Abreu and commissioners on a transportation committee, H.I. Development President Andre P. Callen addressed some of the complaints on a laundry list Abreu had aired against the company, including an allegation that five administrators were dismissed as a result of the billing probe. Callen wrote that the company had not dismissed anyone of its own accord, and added that no senior company personnel have been arrested or charged.

“Five H.I. Development employees were escorted out of the airport, but only√ at the request of the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department and not√ at the request of law-enforcement personnel,” he wrote.

“It is our understanding that at least three of the five H.I. Development employees were cleared by the County’s Inspector General; nonetheless, the Aviation Department has refused to allow even those three employees to return.”

The county pays H.I. Development a flat management fee and reimburses the operator for expenses. Mazzella did not delve into how the company may have defrauded the county, or what dollar amounts might be involved.

Callen, however, referenced three hotel renovation expenses probed by the inspector general or questioned by the aviation department: a wallpaper purchase, a bathtub refinishing project and a bathroom mirror replacement project.

The inspector general could not account for the wallpaper purchase, the letter says, but an inventory of the wallpaper exists. And while the aviation department considers that there were problems with the completion and billing of the bathtub and bathroom mirror projects, both were “fully completed and properly billed,” according to the letter.

NO SPECIFICS

Mazzella did not mention specifics, saying only that the investigation began after the aviation department notified the inspector general of possible billing fraud.

“In investigating the allegation, the OIG discovered many issues and concerns with H.I. Development’s overall management of the MIA Hotel,” Mazzella wrote. “The OIG also discovered issues with [the aviation department’s] oversight of H.I. Development’s compliance with the management agreement.”

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Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis Engaged

Olivia Wilde, 28, and Saturday Night Live star Jason Sudeikis, 38, are engaged, ET can confirm.

The pair, who went public in December of 2011, moved in together last year and have been seemingly inseparable since.

Related: Olivia Wilde Divorces Italian Royal

According to People, Sudeikis proposed to the Tron: Legacy star shortly after the holidays.

"They are so excited," says a source. "And very, very happy."

No word yet on a wedding date.

Video: Olivia Wilde Steams Up the Screen

This will be the second wedding for Wilde, whose divorce to Italian royal Tao Ruspoli was finalized in late September of 2011.

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Required reading

Mastermind

How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

by Maria Konnikova (Viking)

In the BBC show “Sherlock,” the camera follows Holmes’ observations by filming exactly where his eyes go. Author Konnikova (a fan of the show) takes this one step further in her first book, a treatise on how the Watsons of the world can smarten up. The how-to guide gives us “brain attics,” mindful exercises, ideas culled from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works and cutting-edge psych research to help shape our brains to think like literature’s most clever detective.

Kill Anything That Moves

The Real American War in Vietnam

by Nick Turse (Henry Holt)

In a coincidence of timing, as Turse’s attack on American conduct in the Vietnam War comes out, that war is in the news thanks to the president’s cabinet nominations of Vietnam veterans John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. Turse (“The Complex”) contends the My Lai massacre was far from the only war crime American troops committed. Based on 10 years of research in Pentagon archives and interviews with Vietnamese survivors and American vets, he paints an ugly and graphic picture of the war.

American Tropic

by Thomas Sanchez (Knopf)

The dark side of the Sunshine State? On the job, tough-talking police detective Luz Zamora must track down a voodoo assassin, corrupt developers and eco-terrorists. But that’s par for the course in “Mile Zero” author Sanchez’s Key West, Fla., adventure. On the all-female home front, her beautiful partner, Joan, and two teenage daughters keep Luz on her toes. As does a local disbarred lawyer-turned-eco-shock jock. And hurricane season isn’t over yet in this atmospheric page turner. Batten down the hatches!

Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini (Delacorte Press )

Here’s a part of Lincoln’s life that wasn’t addressed in the the 12-time Oscar-nominated movie. In her latest novel, Chiaverini, author of the bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series, pieces together the story of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and Lizzie Keckley, a former slave who became Mrs. Lincoln’s seamstress and confidante. After the president’s assassination, Keckley created the Mary Todd Lincoln quilt and also a scandalous memoir. A new spin on the story.

Elimination Night

by Anonymous (New Harvest)

A scathing tell-all from a nameless author with self-described “firsthand knowledge” of a “top TV talent show” — exposes the inner-workings of a thinly veiled singing competition through the eyes of a lowly production assistant named Sasha King. King dreams of writing a novel but spends her days rigging the results and managing difficult egomaniac judges (the aging Lothario rocker and the big-bummed/small-brained diva). Any similarities to the real-life season 10 of “American Idol” and judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez are only in the minds of readers, since “any similarity to any persons living or dead . . . is coincidental.” Sure.

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Miami Beach builder Robert Turchin looks back — and ahead

If former Miami Beach vice mayor Robert Turchin had been a Miami decision maker during the recent vote that decided the fate of The Miami Herald building, he would probably have voted with the ‘nays’ allowing its demolition.

“There’s nothing special about it,” says the 90-year-old Turchin as he cruises Collins Avenue between 63rd and 48th streets, a strip dense with buildings from the same period as the Herald’s — specimens of post-war Miami Modern (MiMo) architecture that he constructed.

It is no exaggeration to say that Turchin built much of post-war Miami Beach, collaborating with Melvin Grossman, Morris Lapidus and other MiMo period architects. From 1945 to 1985, his firm was the busiest in the building trade. Royal York, Montmartre, Moulin Rouge, King Cole, Charter Club, Four Ambassadors — the list goes on, numbering upward of 100 buildings.

“I grew up when Miami Beach was a small town. It was 1945, and the hotels would close during the summer for renovations because they had no air conditioning. I couldn’t wait for summers, when I would return from school and work on the construction sites,” Turchin says.

In an era when hotel signs sometimes read “No Jews or dogs,” Turchin’s father was a successful builder who hoped his son would be a diplomat. It was not to be. After serving in World War II, for which he recently received a French Legion of Honor medal, he started his first project. Like subsequent ones, it broke the mold.

“The GI Bill made housing affordable for veterans, but it was single-family housing. I wanted to build a four-family unit under the bill,” Turchin says. It was an unprecedented proposal that went from city to state to federal agencies before it was approved. The multi-unit buildings launched the concept of condominiums.

As did other builders, he began to experiment with air conditioning. “Once we were able to air condition them, the hotels stayed open year-round. The beach boomed then,” he says.

Buildings came down to make way for new ones. Turchin’s Morton Towers went up where Carl Fisher’s circa 1920 Flamingo Hotel stood on 15 acres. “The land had become more valuable than the building,” he explains.

Turchin became known as “the builder’s builder” for riding to the top floor of construction sites on the hook of a crane, and walking the beams to inspect the work. His view of the built landscape was daring, pragmatic, and often at odds with those of preservationists like Nancy Liebman, a Miami Beach city commissioner from 1993 to 2001 who served with Turchin on the city’s first historic preservation board.

“A lot of the beautiful mansions on the bay and beach were lost to that kind of development,” laments Liebman. “It was the typical mentality of throw it away and build something new.”

But Turchin was building for the next generation. To him, the Art Deco buildings of his father’s generation — Edgewater Beach, the Sands and the Sea Isle where he honeymooned with his wife — were old school.

“They made no sense. They were all building with a few trees in front. They weren’t called Deco back then. Curlicues on concrete is how we thought of them,” he says.

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Jurors hear secret tape recording in Miami police corruption trial as feds rest their case

As rain began to fall on a June evening, Miami Police Sgt. Raul Iglesias told an undercover detective in his drug-fighting squad to turn off his cell phone and take out the battery as both officers stood outside the boss’s home.

Iglesias, already relieved of duty on suspicions of being a dirty cop, feared Roberto Asanza’s phone could be recording him. And his instincts were right, because Asanza was wired — though not through his phone.

“No one has done anything illegal or broke the law,” Iglesias told Asanza in the recorded conversation, played for jurors Friday at the sergeant’s corruption trial in Miami federal court. “... If they got, they got [it], but I [have] never seen anyone in my unit do anything wrong.”

Later in their chat, Asanza — who was cooperating with authorities and trying to bait his boss into incriminating statements — expressed fears about lying on the witness stand if he was asked to testify. Iglesias agreed that committing perjury would be a bad idea.

“Yeah, of course, you don’t wanna, you don’t wanna f---ing lie,’’ Iglesias responded.

The secret tape recording from June 2010 was the last piece of evidence that prosecutors presented before resting their corruption case Friday against Iglesias, 40, who has been on the force for 18 years.

Iglesias, an ex-Marine and Iraq War veteran who was shot in the leg during a 2004 drug bust, is standing trial on charges of planting cocaine on a suspect, stealing drugs and money from dope dealers, and lying to investigators about a box of money left in an abandoned car as part of an FBI sting.

Asanza, 33, also an ex-Marine, pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of possessing cocaine and marijuana. The deal helped him avoid a felony conviction; in exchange, he testified Thursday that Iglesias told him it was “okay” to pay off confidential informants with drugs.

The secret tape recording could cut both ways for jurors. On it, Iglesias did not say anything to Asanza to implicate himself in connection with charges in the nine-count indictment, his defense attorney, Rick Diaz, pointed out Friday. The charges encompass the police sergeant’s brief stint as head of the Crime Supression Unit from January to May 2010.

Miami Internal Affairs Sgt. Ron Luquis, a government witness, agreed with Diaz’s general assessment during his testimony Friday, though the witness also sided with many of prosecutor Ricardo Del Toro’s critical views of the same evidence.

Asanza, despite agreeing to cooperate, discreetly gave his supervisor a heads-up that he was facing a potential criminal investigation when they met for the recorded conversation, according to sources familiar with probe.

The recording was made two months after other members of Iglesias’ Crime Suppression Unit wrote an anonymous letter to internal affairs, alleging that he was “stealing drugs and money” from dealers “2-3 times per 4-day work week.” Five CSU members, including Asanza, testified against Iglesias over the past week.

Asanza’s recording of Iglesias was less intelligible when both went inside the police sergeant’s home. Asanza’s wire picked up the sound of a barking dog, a blaring TV and the rustling of paper. Investigators believe Iglesias wrote down information on sheets of paper and later burned them, but that evidence was not presented to jurors.

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Britney Spears Split with Jason Trawick

After more than three years together, Britney Spears and her fiance Jason Trawick have split, her rep confirmed to People.

RELATED - Britney "Working Hard" on New Music

"Jason and I have decided to call off our engagement," Spears says in the statement. "I'll always adore him and we will remain great friends." Trawick adds, "As this chapter ends for us a new one begins. I love and cherish her and her boys and we will be close forever."

Spears, who got engaged to Trawick on his 40th birthday in December of 2011, previously said of her now-ex, "We're really normal. We just like to watch movies. We work out a lot. We love to work out. We do stuff together like that. We take walks."

VIDEO - More Shocking Celebrity Splits

Today has been a big day for sad Spears news as it was previously announced she wouldn't be returning for another season of The X Factor.

"I've made the very difficult decision not to return for another season," Spears told ETonline in a statement. "I had an incredible time doing the show and I love the other judges and I am so proud of my teens but it's time for me to get back in the studio."

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No charges for NBC host David Gregory over ammunition magazine

AP

WASHINGTON — NBC journalist David Gregory won't face charges for displaying a high-capacity ammunition magazine on his "Meet the Press" news program last month, District of Columbia prosecutors announced Friday.

The city's Office of the Attorney General, which handles low-level crimes, said criminal charges wouldn't serve the public's best interests even though possession of the magazine — capable of holding up to 30 rounds of ammunition — was clearly against local gun laws.

"Influencing our judgment in this case, among other things, is our recognition that the intent of the temporary possession and short display of the magazine was to promote the First Amendment purpose of informing an ongoing public debate about firearms policy in the United States, especially while this subject was foremost in the minds of the public" after the Connecticut school massacre and President Barack Obama's address to the nation, D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan wrote a lawyer for NBC.

Still, Nathan said, there were other legal ways to prove the point and that "there is no doubt of the gravity of the illegal conduct in this matter, especially in a city and a nation that have been plagued by carnage from gun violence." He said it was a "very close decision" to not bring charges.

Firearms laws in the nation's capital generally restrict the possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines, such as the one Gregory said he was holding up during a Dec. 23 interview, regardless of whether they're attached to a firearm. Punishment can carry up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine.

D.C. police say NBC asked for permission to use the clip during a segment and was advised that it would be illegal, though NBC has said it received conflicting guidance from other law enforcement sources.

Gregory held up the magazine as a prop during an interview on gun control with Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.

"Here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn't it possible that if we got rid of these, if we replaced them and said, 'Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets or ten bullets,' isn't it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?" Gregory asked, referring to the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

LaPierre replied: "I don't believe that's going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that even if you had that" ban.

Police began investigating after the program aired and recently referred its findings to the attorney general's office.

The NRA couldn't immediately be reached for comment Friday.

However, NRA president David Keene told CNN last month that he didn't believe Gregory should be prosecuted for what he called a "silly felony."

"I do think it illustrates the craziness of some of these laws," Keene said at the time.

Gregory, a longtime correspondent, was named "Meet the Press" moderator in 2008. The program is generally taped in Washington.

"Meet the Press" issued a statement Friday that said: "We displayed the empty magazine solely for journalistic purposes to help illuminate an important issue for our viewers. We accept the District of Columbia Attorney General's admonishment, respect his decision and will have no further comment on this matter."

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What the week’s big mortgage moves mean for consumers

This week brought three big developments to the nation’s beleaguered mortgage landscape. For consumers, the complex moves have been mostly mystifying, but experts say they all aim at turning the page.

“There is a strong desire to put behind us all this period of time — the aftermath of the darkest period in American finance. All these things [announced this week] are intended to do that,” said John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group. “There are good and bad things in it for consumers.’’

A new rule issued Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aims to prevent lenders from making the sort of toxic mortgages that forced many unsuspecting borrowers into ruin. Yet the new “qualified mortgage” rule, according to some lenders, also could perpetuate the nation’s tight credit problem and keep many would-be homebuyers on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, two settlements unveiled Monday with big banks should resolve some lingering issues from the mortgage meltdown that have kept banks focused on past errors instead of getting back to the business of lending.

Here is a quick primer on the week’s developments and some likely implications for consumers.

OCC Settlement

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates nationally chartered banks, Monday unveiled an $8.5 billion settlement with 10 giant banks that service mortgages.

As part of the controversial settlement, the OCC is scrapping its Independent Foreclosure Review, which was aimed at identifying victims of robo-signing and other improper foreclosure tactics by banks, but soon proved to be a badly flawed effort.

Instead, under the OCC’s new approach — which will be spelled out in enforcement actions in a couple of weeks — more than 3.8 million borrowers who faced foreclosure between Jan. 1, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2010 stand to get some payment regardless of whether they actually suffered any harm.

The mortgage servicing banks covered are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust, PNC, Sovereign, U.S. Bank, MetLife Bank and Aurora.

The agreement provides for $3.3 billion to go directly to borrowers. Another $5.2 billion is earmarked for loan modifications and the forgiveness of deficiency judgments.

The OCC said the amount that eligible borrowers get will range from a few hundred dollars up to $125,000, depending on the type of error that possibly occurred in their mortgage servicing.

“If a borrower went through foreclosure with one of those 10 lenders, they should receive a couple hundred bucks, whether they deserve it or not,” said Guy Cecala, publisher and CEO of Inside Mortgage Finance Publications in Bethesda, Md., which tracks news and statistics in the residential mortgage industry. “The odds of getting $125,000 is the odds of winning the lottery. It would have to be a false foreclosure or where they were thrown out of their house illegally.”

The OCC will look to 13 broad categories of errors outlined in the Independent Foreclosure Review launched in April 2011.

Those include a litany of bumblings and misdeeds by the mortgage servicers, ranging from foreclosing on a homeowner who was following the rules during a trial period of a loan modification, to failing to offer a loan modification as mandated under a government program, to failing to follow up with a borrower to obtain needed documents under a government program.

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