Think local, former U.N. leader Kofi Annan tells Miami forum

In the Ritz-Carlton ballroom in Coconut Grove on Monday, Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, addressed a crowd of well-dressed world savers to open the Continuity Forum of the Americas Business Council (abc*). In a speech that touched on the environment, the Arab awakening, democracy in Latin America, the spiraling conflict in Syria, nuclear war and resource scarcity, Annan encouraged attendees to address these and other problems by thinking local.

“People ask me all the time, ‘what should one do to become a global citizen?’ I tell them, get involved with your community, your city, your town, your village,” Annan said.

For abc*, a think tank dedicated to “people, planet and philanthropy” in the Americas, Miami is the center of that community. Smack dab in the middle of the hemisphere, for two years Miami has hosted the annual Continuity Forum that attracts more than 300 people from all over North and South America. Rebecca Mandelman, senior director of the abc* based in Miami Beach, said she has recently seen more and more of these would-be world changers coming to Miami to stay.

“There’s this intellectual thirst in Miami that brings a lot of these forces together,” Mandelman said. Referring to the co-sponsoring organizations — many of them local, like the Knight Foundation, Univision, PODER magazine and technology company Ico Group — she said, “Miami is like the fulcrum, the center for people in our community.”

The three-day conference, which sold tickets in advance, features a full roster of impressive speakers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. But the main focus is the competition between 32 “social entrepreneurs” who will present their projects to be judged by the five chairman of abc* and the foundation’s 23 fellows. The best three projects will receive $100,000 grants, media support and business connections for two years.

“We evaluate them by their potential to make the greatest impact,” said Mario Scarpetta, director of Colombian cement and energy company Inversiones Argos and co-chairman of abc*. To evaluate their effectiveness, he said abc* would review each project’s “strategic business plans and economic models of their impact.”

The projects range from a museum of sacred Peruvian plants and an indigenous tourism agency in Mexico to a Nicaraguan organization dedicated to fighting cancer and a “green roof” sustainable building company. The presentations, videos and question-and-answer sessions took place in English and Spanish, and Mandelman said she hoped the casual conversations between sessions would lead to future ideas and organizations.

Even entrepreneurs whose projects are not chosen for the abc* grant have the opportunity this week to interact with investors and leaders of the industries they seek to influence. Pati Ruiz of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda in Mexico said her alliance of five conservation organizations is already active in central Mexico, but if awarded the grant she would use it to expand to the rest of the country and into South America.

“The strength of our project is that it’s already up and running,” Ruiz said in Spanish after her presentation. “We have the tools to expand and reproduce what we’re doing.”

Although most of the conference attendees were excited about the ideas, some expressed frustration with the lack of avenues for individuals to get involved.

“I think that’s the problem with a lot of these conferences: There are no action items, nothing you can really do if you’re not a big-time donor,” said one attendee who didn’t want to be named because he works for one of the co-sponsors of the conference. “We come, watch, applaud and leave.”

Still, abc* continues to connect some of the most creative innovators in a younger generation to current political and business leaders who have the resources to give their ideas wings, Mandelman said, and the rest of the Continuity Forum promises to help make this happen.

“We believe that collective engagement can advance the Americas,” she said.

Read More..

Thieves make off with $35,000 from Miami restaurant

For the second time in four months, thieves hit a Miami restaurant and made off with thousands of dollars in cash.

Late Sunday night or early Monday morning, crooks broke into the Caribe Café in the 7100 block of West Flagler Street. Miami police said they gained access to the restaurant by breaking into a business next door and then cutting a hole in the wall.

Once inside, they stole a safe which had about $35,000 inside. They also took the DVR system that records the restaurant’s surveillance cameras.

Read More..

RIM to unveil new BlackBerry phones on Jan. 30.

TORONTO (AP) — Research In Motion said Monday that it will hold an official launch event for its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones on Jan. 30. The new phones are seen as critical to RIM’s survival.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said Monday details on the much-delayed smartphones and their availability will be announced at the event.

The announcement comes as the company struggles in North America to hold onto customers who are abandoning BlackBerrys for flashier iPhones and Android phones.

RIM’s current software is still focused on email and messaging, and is less user-friendly, agile and robust than iPhone or Android. Its attempt at touch screens was a flop, and it lacks the apps that power other smartphones. RIM is hanging its hopes on the BlackBerry 10 software. It is thoroughly redesigned for the touchscreen, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers now expect. The Canadian company said the launch event will happen simultaneously in multiple countries.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek called it a make-or-break product release and said the date of the launch event suggests a release date in mid- to late February or in March.

A full touchscreen device is expected to be released first followed shortly after by a physical keyboard version.

BGC Financial Partners analyst Colin Gillis said the new phones won’t be dead on arrival as some analysts have said because RIM hasn’t lost the corporate market completely.

“Is 10 going to be the solution to retain that marketplace? We’ll have to wait and see,” Gillis said. “It’s great they set a date, but the challenges are still formidable. It’s not an issue of initial demand. It’s an issue of sustained demand.”

Gillis noted that RIM’s launch of a tablet initially went OK but then demand fell sharply. RIM’s tablet, the Playbook, uses software on which the BlackBerry 10 will be based.

RIM said last month the new BlackBerrys are being tested by 50 wireless carriers around the world.

Thorsten Heins, who took over as CEO in January after the company lost tens of billions in market value, had vowed to do everything he could to release BlackBerry 10 this year but said in June that the timetable wasn’t realistic. Heins says he can turn things around with BlackBerry 10.

The new BlackBerrys will be released after the holiday shopping season and well after Apple’s launch of the iPhone 5, expected to be Apple’s biggest product introduction yet.

RIM’s platform transition is also happening under a new management team and as RIM lays off 5,000 employees as part of a bid to save $ 1 billion.

RIM was once Canada‘s most valuable company with a market value of more than $ 80 billion in 2008, but the stock has plummeted since, from over $ 140 per share to around $ 8. Its decline evokes memories of Nortel, another former Canadian tech giant, which declared bankruptcy in 2009.

Shares of RIM rose 20 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $ 8.74 in midday trading in New York after rising as high as $ 9.07 earlier.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Heidi Klum's EMA Wardrobe Changes

Which Dress is the Best?

If anyone knows how to make a quick wardrobe change, it's supermodel Heidi Klum. The Project Runway beauty hosted MTV's European Music Awards, and kept all eyes on her with her show-stopping styles throughout the show. Klum made around eight wardrobe changes during the show, all totally different but all Versace. Click the pics and let us know which style is your fave.

Read More..

US re-elected to UN Human Rights Council seat

UNITED NATIONS — The United States was re-elected Monday to another three-year term on the UN Human Rights Council in the only contested election for the organization's top human rights body.

The US was competing with four countries for three open seats belonging to the Western Group on the council. Germany and Ireland were also elected by the 193-member General Assembly.

US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said her country was "pleased and proud to have been re-elected to a second three-year term."

"I'm proud to say that, today, the Obama administration's leadership of the Human Rights Council has delivered real results. Today's vote affirms that active US leadership in the Human Rights Council and throughout the United Nations system will continue to pay real dividends for Americans and for the rest of the world," Rice said following the vote.

Germany's UN Ambassador Peter Wittig also praised the vote, thanking member states for their support.

"It was a good sign that we had a healthy competition at least in the Western Group, we could explain and promote our human rights agenda and we believe this also should also be an example for other regional groups," Wittig said.

African, Asian, Eastern European and Latin American countries put forward uncontested slates, meaning candidates were virtually certain of winning one of the 18 open seats up for grabs in this year's election on the 47-member council.

Several human rights groups have criticized a number of the candidates as unqualified, including Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Venezuela.

The five Western nations competing for seats — the US, Germany, Ireland, Greece and Sweden — were all deemed qualified by the rights groups.

Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Estonia, Ethiopia, Gabon, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Montenegro, Pakistan, South Korea, Sierra Leone, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela were also elected Monday to three-year terms beginning Jan. 1, 2013.

Jamil Dakwar, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, welcomed the US re-election to the council.

"Despite an imperfect human rights record, US membership on the council helped turn the tide on key issues, especially in the area of LGBT rights, freedom of speech and association, and women's rights," Dakwar said in a statement. "Now that the Obama administration has won a second term, human rights at home and abroad should be a high priority." The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to replace the UN's widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission. But the council has also been widely criticized for failing to change many of the commission's practices, including putting much more emphasis on Israel than on any other country and electing candidates accused of serious human rights violations.

Former President George W. Bush's administration boycotted the council when it was established because of its repeated criticism of Israel and its refusal to cite flagrant rights abuses in Sudan and elsewhere. But in 2009, then newly elected President Barack Obama sought to join the council, saying the US wanted to help make it more effective.

Rice said Obama's decision was vindicated Monday when the US was re-elected to serve on the council with 131 votes.

"The United States is clearly of the view that the Human Rights Council clearly has its flaws ... including its excessive focus on Israel, but it is also a body that is increasingly proving its value and we've been proud to contribute to some of what we think are some of the finer moments of the Human Rights Council it's approach to Syria, it's approach to Sudan, it's approach he situation in Libya with the commission of inquiry."

Read More..

Self-publishing industry explodes, brings rewards, challenges

The publishing world is being upended, and reinvented, by people like Hugh Howey, Ily Goyanes and Kristy Montee.

They are part of a movement using the power of e-books and the Internet to lead publishing into a new frontier, and through the biggest upheaval of the industry since Guttenberg’s press.

“It’s the Wild West,” Montee said. “It is literally changing at the speed of light.”

Howey is a writer who authored, designed, formatted and self-published all but the very first of his 14 novelettes and stories as e-books — and saw his Wool series of sci-fi stories make the Top 100 Kindle Best Sellers of 2012, above J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy and the four-book bundle of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

Goyanes is one of a new breed of independent publishers filling the void between self-publishing and traditional publishing giants, offering technical, marketing and distribution help for do-it-yourself authors.

Montee is a Fort Lauderdale-based writer better known to her readers — along with her sister and writing partner, Kelly Nichols — as P.J. Parrish, the pseudonymous author of the Louis Kincaid and Joe Frye thriller series. She’s among the new “hybrid authors,” with a foot in both traditional and the self-published worlds.

“For a long, long, long time in our business anything that you published yourself just had a stench of amateurism about it,” she said. “That was just for desperate people who couldn’t make their way through the labyrinth of the New York system, so they resorted to paying pretty much scam artists to publish their books for them at great expense. And then, Amazon came out with the Kindle, which pretty much changed everything.”

With the stigma fading, and Amazon’s help, self-publishing has exploded. On its website, Publishers Weekly last month cited a new analysis of data from Bowker, which shows the number of self-published books produced annually in the U.S. has nearly tripled, growing 287 percent since 2006, with 235,625 print and e-titles released in 2011.

As a “mid-list author” with 13 moderately successful books to her name, Montee felt the pressure when her publisher began trimming its author list to reduce costs.

“So a lot of us, and this includes a lot of my friends,” began looking for ways to survive independently, Montee said. “Amazon made it extremely easy and very attractive to go self-publish through their model.”

She and her sister regained rights to two of their early books to re-publish and have a novella in the works they plan to self-publish.

The advantages, and the profits, can be huge. The downside, of course, would make a Vegas gambler sweat.

“The largest, by far, percentage of authors are making less than $500 a year self-publishing, because there’s a glut,” said M.J. Rose, a best-selling novelist and founder of the writer’s marketing company AuthorBuzz.com. “There’s over 350,000 books being self-published every year and readers are not finding them. There’s just no way to expose people to all of these books.”

Howey, however, who spends mornings writing at his home in Jupiter, might be the perfect example of what “making it” looks like in this thoroughly modern twist on every writer’s dream. He began writing while working at a bookstore, and he received a modest advance when a small press picked up his first novel.

Read More..

Voter suppression and Florida’s butterfly effect

MiamiHerald.com/columnists

Edgar Oliva waited to vote at Shenandoah Elementary School and fretted.

The line was too long. The clock was ticking. He had to get to work across town.

Twice before, during in-person early voting, he tried to vote but he had to leave because lines were even longer. Tuesday was his third try at voting in between one of his two jobs, cleaning carpets in Doral and working at an airport hotel.

About 4 p.m. on Election Day, he gave up.

“I had the intention of voting but there were always a lot of people,” Oliva, a native of Guatemala, told a Miami Herald reporter as he left the scene.

Oliva had so much company on Tuesday.

Voter after voter who spoke to Herald reporters on Election Day said the longer early voting lines dissuaded them from casting early ballots in person. And then the unexpected long lines on Election Day just compounded the sense of frustration in some places. Many dropped out of line.

The experience played out across the state. Data show the 71.13 percent turnout percentage in 2012 fell well short of the rates in 2008 (75 percent) and 2004 (74 percent).

In 38 of 67 counties, fewer people cast a ballot for president this time than in 2008.

Only 80,351 more people voted now than in 2008 even though the voter rolls increased by 686,812, according to the latest numbers from the state’s elections division.

Relatively speaking, Florida in 2012 moved backward when it came to voting.

If the statistics and the experience of voters like Oliva are not evidence of voter suppression, then we’ll need to change the definition of “suppressant” in Webster’s dictionary: “an agent (as a drug) that tends to suppress or reduce in intensity rather than eliminate something (as appetite).”

Tuesday showed the appetite was there.

But the government wasn’t.

The chief suppressant: HB1355, signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott in 2011.

The law shortened early voting periods. And it created a longer ballot by giving lawmakers the ability to print the entire text of proposed constitutional amendments because the courts kept rejecting the Legislature’s ballot summaries as misleading.

Early voting was shortened to prevent a repeat of 2008, when Barack Obama won Florida, largely on the strength of early voting. So Republicans cut early voting days from 14 to eight. And they loaded amendments on the ballot, which stretched for at least 10 pages in Miami-Dade.

The other voter suppressant was local: a lack of enough voting booths and ballot scanners in some precincts. That’s controlled by each county’s supervisor of elections.

Bottom line: there was less time to vote a longer ballot without adequate equipment this election.

There were a significant number of early votes — 2.4 million — and almost as many absentee ballots, 2.35 million. Together, the early and absentee ballots account for about 56 percent of those cast this election.

Republicans typically prefer absentee ballot voting. So it wasn’t touched by HB 1355. Democrats prefer in-person early voting. That’s what the Republican Legislature and Scott cut.

Some Republicans have said that those who complain about long lines have no excuse, that they should have voted by absentee ballot.

But some voters don’t trust the mail. Indeed, more voters than ever this year complained they never got their absentee ballots or received them too late. Also, if a person’s on-file signature doesn’t match the signature on his absentee ballot, it can be rejected. Voters won’t know until after the election that their vote didn’t count. So there are those who don’t trust absentee voting because they can’t be on hand to defend their ballot, their right to vote.

Read More..

10 Adorable Clips of Sesame Street Satire

Read More..

Buzzmakers: Brooke's Cancer Fight & World War Z

What had ET readers buzzing this week?

1. It's Brad vs. Zombies in World War Z

Zombie attack!!! Brad Pitt plays a family man and United Nations employee who faces a deadly zombie pandemic in World War Z -- we gave you an exclusive first look and now we've got the intense trailer!

Just when you thought that the zombie genre may be starting to generate less screams and more Zzzz's, World War Z arrives with an adrenaline shot in the arm for the genre -- complete with insane special effects and a claustrophobic urgency and realism not seen since the introduction of those "speed zombies" in 28 Days Later.

Directed by Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace), World War Z invades theaters June 21, 2013.

2. Oprah Reveals Her 2012 'Favorite Things'

It's officially the holiday season!

Oprah just revealed her "Favorite Things" for 2012, which includes such items as a $1,800 Jetson E-Bike, a $192 hand-picked Tom Ford lipstick palette and a $238 Lafco soap set.

"This luxuriously oversize, deliciously scented soap is my new go-to gift. I even brought a set to Mr. and Mrs. Colbert when I interviewed Stephen for Next Chapter," she says about the pricey soap set.

But of course if you don't have the income of Oprah, you can pick up O's December issue to learn how you can win all 49 of Oprah's favorite things, which hits newsstands November 6.

"Oprah's Favorite Things" is also getting its own two-hour, prime time special airing Nov. 18 on OWN. The special will surprise unsuspecting military spouses with items from the media mogul's exclusive must-have gift selections for the holiday season, and for the first time, viewers of Oprah's Favorite Things: 2012 will have the opportunity to watch and win select items featured in each segment of the show.

3. Brooke Burke-Charvet Reveals Cancer Diagnosis

Brooke Burke-Charvet released a video online Thursday to announce that she was recently diagnosed with a cancerous growth on her thyroid gland. In the video posted on her Modern Mom blog, the 41-year-old actress and TV host explained that a nodule was discovered on her thyroid and after a series of tests over the last few months, it was eventually determined to be cancerous and her thyroid will have to be removed.

"Which means that I'm going to have a nice big scar right her across my neck," Brooke said. "And I don't get to just walk around and pretend like nothing happened or not follow up or not share it, because it's going to be pretty much dead center."

Brooke said the discovery -- which originated from a regular physical -- came as a complete shock because she's otherwise healthy. "As crazy as it is, my head is in the right place, and it's going to be good," she said, adding that the doctors consider this a form of "good cancer" compared to many others and the prognosis is good. "I'm just going to make a positive out of this negative thing."

She said the surgery has been scheduled and she promised to keep her fans updated through her blog. "Now I'm ready to deal with it and I'm going to be fine. And I feel really, really strong."

Speaking on Thursday's episode of The Talk, Brooke's co-host on Dancing with the Stars, Tom Bergeron, commented on her cancer diagnosis. "My love and support are with you -- we are all there with her," he said. Bergeron added that he personally has a very positive outlook. "I've known about this for a few months. I have had experience with this in my family. You never want to hear the word cancer. But thyroid cancer is one of the most treatable cancers. It has an incredibly high success rate."

4. Kirstie on Secret Relationship with Swayze

Kirstie Alley reveals to ET's Chris Jacobs intimate details about what she says was a powerful attraction and hidden relationship with her North and South co-star, Patrick Swayze. Although both stars were married during filming of the mini-series, Alley tells Jacobs when she first saw Swayze, they had an intense attraction and she tried to avoid "going down that road," but they ultimately fell in love.

"Both of us were married. We did not have an affair. But again, I think what I did was worse. Because I think when you fall in love with someone when you're married, you jeopardize your own marriage and their marriage. It's doubly bad," said Alley.

Alley goes on to say that although she's friends with Patrick's wife, Lisa Niemi, who asked Alley to speak at Swayze's funeral, she is uncertain if Lisa is aware of their relationship.

5. One Direction & Drew Brees Play Catch - Exclusive

One Direction and Drew Brees teamed up last month to film an adorable Pepsi spot and during Thursday night's episode of The X Factor, the band will not only perform their newest singles, Live While We're Young and Little Things, but also reveal an alternate ending to the ad!

For those who missed the spot, the original ended with Drew Brees sacrificing his last can of Pepsi in order to become an unofficial member of One Direction. But, according to Angelique Krembs, VP Marketing for Pepsi, they also wanted to show fans what would happen if Drew won the last can of Pepsi. "Our latest Live For Now spot has received an enormous amount of buzz and online excitement," Krembs said. "And of course everyone wants to see the boys from 1D suit up in football gear and have some fun."

While you have to wait until Thursday to see the entire surprise ending to Pepsi's Live For Now television commercial, ETonline scored an exclusive sneak peek of One Direction tossing the pigskin around with Brees!

Tune in to The X Factor on November 8 at 8 p.m. to see the alternate ending!

Read More..

Queens man dies from injuries sustained in fall at dark apartment building as NYC's Sandy death toll reaches 43

Police say a 77-year-old man who died from injuries sustained in a fall at his darkened apartment building has become the latest victim of Superstorm Sandy.

That raises the city's death toll related to the storm to 43.

Authorities say Albert McSwain died Saturday. He was found Oct. 31 at the bottom of the steps of his building on Rockway Beach Boulevard. The building had no power. He had injuries to his head and was paralyzed from the neck down and was taken to the hospital.

Police say there have been 23 storm-related deaths on Staten Island; 11 in Queens; seven in Brooklyn, and two in Manhattan.

Read More..