WATCH: Obama discusses tragedy during weekly address

President Obama discussed the Connecticut school tragedy during his weekly radio and Internet address this morning, calling for politicians to put partisanship aside in order to better address gun violence.

“Our hearts are broken today,” Obama said in the address, echoing sentiments from his Friday press conference. “We grieve for the families of those we lost. And we keep in our prayers the parents of those who survived. Because as blessed as they are to have their children home, they know that their child's innocence has been torn away far too early.”

The Newtown shooting rocked the nation, leaving 20 children and six adults dead. The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, turned the gun on himself after storming Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Obama referenced recent mass shootings during his address, including the July movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado and the August shooting at a Wisconsin Sikh temple.

“As a nation, we have endured far too many of these tragedies in the past few years,” he said. “Any of these neighborhoods could be our own. So we have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this from happening, regardless of politics.”

Today’s statement followed Obama’s Friday speech when he choked on his words – and wiped a tear from his eye – while addressing the nation.

Republicans normally issue a counter-statement to Obama’s weekly addresses, but this week they ceded their time so Obama could speak for the nation.

With AP

Read More..

Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

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.

Read More..

Miami-Dade elections group to discuss potential changes to state law

An advisory group poring over Miami-Dade elections problems will hold its second meeting Friday, this time to focus on what changes to request from state lawmakers.

County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who convened the group, and his appointed elections supervisor, Penelope Townsley, already asked Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner — the state’s chief elections officer — on Tuesday to make several recommendations to Gov. Rick Scott to tweak elections laws.

But the 13-member advisory group might choose to make additional suggestions. And while the meeting with Detzner was more informal, the Miami-Dade group plans to make its requests in writing, and incorporate them into the county’s annual package of policies to lobby for in Tallahassee. County commissioners are scheduled to vote on the legislative package Tuesday.

The 2013 state legislative proposals drafted by the elections department include allowing early-voting sites in more locations — a request Miami-Dade has been making since 2006. State law currently limits the sites to elections offices, city halls and libraries.

The department also plans to ask legislators to reinstate 14 days of early voting. Scott, a Republican, signed a law passed by the GOP-led Legislature last year reducing the number of days to eight, while keeping the total number of hours offered on the books — 96 — the same.

The law also guaranteed one Sunday of early voting, but prohibited voting the Sunday before Election Day. African-American churches with large numbers of Democratic voters had traditionally used that day to bring “souls to the polls.”

About 90,000 fewer Miami-Dade voters cast early ballots in 2012 compared to 2008, according to the department.

The third request proposed by the department would limit the number of words printed on state constitutional amendments on the ballot, keeping them to the same length as county charter amendments. The county caps its ballot measures at 75 words; this year, one of the constitutional amendments took up a full page in Miami-Dade, where ballots are printed in English, Spanish and Creole. The 2012 presidential ballot ran 10 to 12 pages long, depending on the voter’s location, compared to four to six pages in 2008.

Federal law requires that ballots be available in other languages for minorities whose population meets a certain threshold.

In a letter she sent to the mayor last month, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens, recommended that the county print separate ballots in each of the three languages. “Printing all three languages creates the false impression that the ballot is excessively long,” she wrote. It is unclear how that proposal would work.

She also made other requests, including that the county support extending early voting.

Gimenez replied Thursday that most of Wilson’s recommendations “are in line with what we are proposing.”

In addition, the Miami-Dade elections department would like more time to count absentee ballots, which have become an increasingly popular voting method. State law currently allows tallying to begin 15 days prior to Election Day.

Other requests include:

• Remove political party executive committeeman and committeewoman races from the primary ballot in presidential election years, and require the parties to pay for those elections. This change would shorten the ballot, reduce the number of different ballots printed in the county, and save money.

• Do away with the term “absentee ballot” and replace it with “vote by mail.” The mayor has endorsed this change, saying absentee voting is a misnomer because Florida no longer requires that voters provide a reason — such as being ill or out of town — for voting by mail.

• Require that community development district elections be carried out only by mail. This change would shorten the ballot and reduce the number of different ballots. Community development districts are special taxing districts of 1,100 acres or more.

The advisory group will meet at 9 a.m. on the 18th floor of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, 111 NW First St.

Read More..

Online gambling companies struggle to clear EU hurdles

LONDON (Reuters) – A partnership stuck on Friday between bwin.party Digital Entertainment and a Belgian casino group has defused one of many disputes pitting online gambling companies against governments across Europe.

The agreement came a month after bwin.party’s co-CEO was questioned by Belgian authorities in an escalating license dispute the company said was costing it 700,000 euros ($ 916,000) in monthly revenue.

By joining forces with Belcasinos, a unit of local casino owner Group Partouche, bwin.party neatly met a requirement to have a presence in Belgium to win a license for online poker, casino and sports betting.

The agreement is a rare bright spot in a tough regulatory environment for online gambling companies across the continent.

Betting online on sports events or playing poker on the Internet are increasingly popular pastimes in Europe, where operators say they are held back by unfair and discriminatory rules in many European Union countries.

“It is not a European Union in any way, it is a patchwork of different countries who happen to be in the EU,” said Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, director of the betting research unit at Nottingham Business School in central England.

“Different countries have different vested interests and different ideas they are trying to promote. Are they trying to protect consumers or to maximize their tax take?” he said.

The 27 EU member states retain the right to regulate their gambling sectors as they see fit, but rules must comply with EU law, broadly meaning they must be consistent and proportionate.

Some companies are scaling back activities in European markets where, they say, regulatory risks are too high or tax rates are punitive.

Betting exchange operator Betfair for instance said this week it was halting marketing and investment in unregulated markets, including EU members Cyprus, Germany and Greece.

William Hill, Britain‘s largest bookmaker, has joined Betfair in pulling out of Greece and has also stopped offering sports betting to German residents because of a 5 percent turnover tax.

STAKES RISE

The stakes are high. Online gambling is growing at an annual rate of almost 15 percent in the EU and will be worth an estimated 13 billion euros ($ 17 billion) by 2015, according to EU figures.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive, stepped in to the debate in October when it published a medium-term plan to clarify regulations and promote cooperation between member states, ruling out EU-wide legislation for the time being.

“All citizens must be adequately protected, money laundering and fraud must be prevented, sport must be safeguarded against betting-related match-fixing and national rules must comply with EU law,” Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said, setting out his approach.

The online operators accuse the European Commission of failing to follow through properly on complaints lodged about regulation in no fewer than 20 or the 27 EU member states.

Barnier has written to member states accused of breaching EU law in the way they handle gambling, seeking an update on the situation by the end of the year.

However, the industry questions whether the EU will go into battle over gambling when it is facing so many other problems.

“They will chip away at some of the most blatant ones,” said Clive Hawkswood, chief executive of trade body the Remote Gambling Association. “What we really need is for them to take some to the European Court and take enforcement action.”

BRITISH TAXES

Gambling companies themselves have taken advantage of different tax regimes where they work in their favor.

This is illustrated in Britain, historically the biggest betting market in Europe and a place with a well-developed gambling culture where bookmakers have operated in town centers for 50 years.

In recent years, most betting companies have moved their British online betting operations to Britain’s overseas territory of Gibraltar. There they are sheltered from a 15 percent tax on gross profit faced by operators based in Britain.

New legislation will close off that loophole after 2014. The shift to a taxation model based on the location of the consumer was expected to cost gambling companies as much as 270 million pounds ($ 435 million) by 2016-17.

Analyst Nick Batram at brokerage Peel Hunt said smaller players would likely be picked off because of the impact of higher tax and regulatory burdens across Europe.

“It is getting more complicated and more expensive. There is more change afoot but it should ultimately play into the hands of the better-capitalized companies.”

In that vein, William Hill has provisionally agreed a 485 million pound takeover of smaller rival Sportingbet, keen to get its hands on the company’s regulated Australian betting business.

“I think there is a lot more M&A activity to come,” said Batram.

(Additional reporting by Rosalba O’Brien; Editing by David Holmes)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Robin Roberts Everything is Fantastic

Good Morning America had a special guest today when co-anchor Robin Roberts called in to help the gang send out 2012 in style!

RELATED - Robin Decks The Halls With Her GMA Family

The Play of the Day has become a signature GMA segment and to honor the year's best, Roberts phoned in to help Josh Elliott announce their favorites. Coming in second was footage of a Walrus doing sit-ups while Eye of the Tiger played over the speakers.

First place honors went to an adorable home movie of two boys trying, and failing, to land a punch in Taekwondo class.

RELATED - Celebs Show Support For Robin Roberts

Roberts then took a moment to let her fans know how she's feeling. "All is well," she said. "Everything is fantastic."

And you can count President Barack Obama among her fans as he was later shown telling Barbara Walters, "Send a big Christmas greeting to Robin Roberts. Such a wonderful person, a person we've come to love. We're rooting for her, and hope she's doing great." So say we all, Mr. President.

Read More..

British billionaire Eva Rausing died as a result of drug abuse: coroner

LONDON — Eva Rausing, one of Britain's richest women, died in a squalid corner of her luxury home as a result of her "dependent abuse" of drugs, a coroner ruled Friday.

Rausing's decomposed body was found by police in July in the London house she shared with her husband Hans Kristian Rausing, whose family founded the Tetra Pak drinks carton empire.

She had been dead for two months. Her body was discovered — lying under a pile of bedding and garbage bags inside a sealed-up room littered with drug paraphernalia — after Hans Kristian Rausing was stopped for driving erratically on July 9. Officers found drugs in his car and decided to search his house.

AP

Eva Rausing and her husband Hans Kristian Rausing in 1996

Police said Eva Rausing was found with an aluminum-foil pipe, used for smoking crack cocaine, in her hand.

Deputy coroner Shirley Radcliffe said Friday that 48-year-old Eva Rausing had died as a result of cocaine intoxication and a heart condition that was likely caused by drug use. Radcliffe ruled the death "a result of the dependent abuse of drugs."

Toxicology tests found cocaine, opiates and amphetamines in Rausing's blood, and a pacemaker she was fitted with after heart surgery in 2006 revealed she had suffered a "non-survivable" heart rhythm on the morning of May 7.

Hans Kristian Rausing told the inquest in a written statement that he had concealed his wife's body because "I could not cope with her dying or confront the reality of her death." In August he was given a 10-month suspended sentence for preventing the lawful burial of a body. He is being treated for drug addiction.

Eva Rausing came from an affluent American family, and Hans Kristian is a scion of one of Europe's richest families. His father has a net worth estimated at 4.3 billion pounds ($6.7 billion) from the sale of his stake in the Tetra Pak milk-carton packaging company.

The couple met at a drug rehabilitation center in 1989, married in 1992 and had four children. They battled drug addiction for years and donated millions to rehab charities.

Their struggle became public in 2008, when Eva Rausing was caught trying to bring heroin and crack cocaine into the U.S. Embassy in London.

Ending the inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court in London, Radcliffe offered "condolences to the family for the loss of a 48-year-old mother, wife, sister and daughter."

Read More..

Wynwood co-working center funded by Knight Foundation, angel investors

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.

Read More..

Miami city Commission considers hiring attorney to defend mayor against commissioner

The Miami City Commission will convene its final meeting of the year on Thursday.

The agenda is long, but few of the proposals are expected to be controversial except for an item from Mayor Tomás Regalado.

Regalado is asking the commission for an outside attorney to defend him in a lawsuit filed by Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones. The suit accuses the mayor and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle of plotting to destroy Spence-Jones’s political career. Spence-Jones successfully fought a pair of political corruption charges last year.

Regalado says that City Attorney Julie O. Bru cannot defend him because she was a player in some of the alleged activities outlined in the lawsuit.

“The city attorney is totally conflicted out,” he said.

He believes the city should foot the bill because he was sued for actions he took in his capacity as mayor.

Regalado would like to be represented by attorney José Quiñón, according to the meeting agenda.

Read More..

iPad mini deemed a ‘game changer,’ outgrew Kindle Fire by nearly 50%

Smaller tablets in the 7-inch range have been on the market for more than two years now, but it looks like it took Apple (AAPL) just one month to vault to the top of the category. Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media recently published the findings of a study pitting the iPad mini against Amazon’s (AMZN) popular Kindle Fire, which has been an extremely popular iPad alternative since it first launched last year. According to Millennial, iPad mini usage grew about 50% faster during early November than the Kindle Fire did immediately following its successful launch last year, as measured by ad impressions served by the firm’s network.

Millennial found that impressions served to the iPad mini in early November grew at an average daily rate of 28%. In the weeks following the Kindle Fire’s launch last year, usage of Amazon’s tablet grew roughly 19% each day.

“In the first weeks after the iPad mini went on sale, we saw an average daily growth in impressions of 28 percent. Last holiday season, Amazon launched the Kindle Fire to much anticipation, Millennial Media’s Matt Mills wrote on the company’s blog. “As a comparison, we saw Kindle Fire impressions grow at an average daily rate of 19 percent in the first two weeks after it went on sale last year. So, by our math it looks like Apple could have itself another massive holiday season.”

Mills called the iPad mini a “game changer” and said he expects “a massive amount” of iPad mini tablets to be given as gifts this holiday season.

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Grammys Flashback: Backstreet Boys 1999

It's hard for many to imagine their lives without the Internet. It has changed the world, and at lightning speed. Therefore, it seems like ages ago when the medium through which we live our lives was viewed as a novelty. The Backstreet Boys take us back to that period in history.

While this flashback only rewinds the clock back fourteen years from the upcoming 2013 Grammys, listening to the way that Backstreet Boys' frontman Kevin Richardson talks about the Internet makes us realize how rapidly it's become an integral part of society.

VIDEO: New Kids On The Block & Backstreet Boys Spill Tour Secrets

"The Internet is a whole new generation. The Year 2000, the Internet, computers--I mean, it's a whole new means of communicating and getting in touch with people," Richardson said alongside his bandmates, who had been nominated for Best New Artist at that year's Grammys (the award went to Lauryn Hill).

Although nobody could have foreseen the adverse effect of the Internet on the music industry, the irony in Richardson's sure response of the Internet's ability to aid album sales is nevertheless a laughing point. Napster was launched a month after the Backstreet Boys released their next album, Millennium, and so set off a trending decline in album sales that lasted to the present day.

RELATED: Nick Carter Speaks Out About Sister's Death

However, the Internet only had a positive effect on Millennium, as the group would go on to sell a whopping 30 million copies worldwide of its U.S. sophomore album. As they looked towards the future as a band, Howie Dorough reveals his big hopes for The Backstreet Boys.

"Any time there's a similar formula [like] New Edition [or] New Kids on the Block, normally the odds are most of the times that most groups do split up, [but] our control of our careers [is] within our own destiny here," he says. "Right now we're all very happy as The Backstreet Boys and we plan on being around hopefully as long as The Eagles [and] The Beatles and hopefully doing several reunion tours and hopefully coming back here [in] several years."

VIDEO: Kevin Richardson is a Backstreet Boy Again

The band went on to earn five Grammy nominations for Millennium but never won a Grammy. Despite frontman Kevin Richardson leaving the group for a while, The Backstreet Boys have remained intact over the years and plan to release their eighth studio album in the coming years

Read More..