Bernard Madoff’s brother gets 10-year sentence

NEW YORK --
The brother of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison for crimes committed in the shadow of his notorious sibling by a judge who said she disbelieved his claims that he did not know about the epic fraud.

Peter Madoff, 67, agreed to serve the maximum sentence allowable to the charges of conspiracy and falsifying the books and records of an investment adviser that he pleaded guilty to in June.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain urged him to tell the truth even after he reports to prison on Feb. 6 about what he knows about the multi-decade fraud that cost thousands of investors their original $20 billion investment.

The judge said Peter Madoff was “frankly not believable” when he claimed at his plea that he only learned about the fraud when his brother revealed it to him just before he surrendered to authorities.

Peter Madoff spoke only briefly before he was sentenced, saying: “I am deeply ashamed of my conduct and have tried to atone by pleading guilty and have agreed to forfeit all of my present and future assets.”

Two investors spoke during the proceeding, which ended in less than an hour.

Investor Michael T. De Vita, 62, also demanded that the truth be forced out.

“All of this was preventable if only one person was willing to do the right thing and stop this in its tracks years ago. Peter Madoff could have been that person,” he said.

The sentencing comes four years and a week after Bernard Madoff first revealed the fraud, which occurred over several decades as the former NASDAQ chairman built a reputation for delivering unparalleled investment results, even in bad times. The revelation came only days after the business sent out statements that made investors think their investments had grown to a total of more than $65 billion.

Peter Madoff said at his plea that he had no idea his brother was running a massive Ponzi scheme, paying off longtime investors at times with money from newer investors.

But he conceded that he followed his brother’s instructions and helped him decide which favored friends, clients and family members would receive the $300 million that remained in the company’s accounts. The checks were never sent.

Peter Madoff, who joined his brother’s firm after graduating from Fordham Law School in 1970, has been free on $5 million bail.

As part of a forfeiture agreement, Madoff’s wife, Marion, and daughter Shana must forfeit nearly all of their assets. The government said those assets and assets that will be forfeited by other family members include several homes, a Ferrari and more than $10 million in cash and securities. It said his wife will be left with $771,733. Besides the Madoff brothers, no other family members have been arrested.

Read More..

Religious leaders in Miami-Dade to help remember tragedy in Newtown

South Florida religious leaders will be remembering in the coming days the 20 children and six adults killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

On Friday, all Archdiocese of Miami schools will have a moment of prayer at 9:32 a.m. The archdiocese’s churches also will ring their bells 26 times in observance of those killed.

On Sunday, Temple Judea in Coral Gables will offer an interfaith service that will be open to anyone. Rabbi Edwin Goldberg said the idea was to offer a chance for the community to come together after what happened in Newtown.

“The point of the service is to come together and find comfort and hope,” Goldberg said.

The service will be start at 4 p.m. at Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Blvd. in Coral Gables.

Read More..

The Gritty Sixties Will 'Not Fade Away'

The Sixties, music and teen rebellion are the subject of Not Fade Away, the first feature film from The Sopranos creator David Chase in theaters Friday, and the young stars of the film – including John Magaro, Jack Huston and Bella Heathcote – are refreshingly plugged in to the era of their baby boomer parents.

Video: Mini 'Sopranos' Reunion in 'Not Fade Away' Trailer

"I grew up listening to [Sixties tunes] and loving that music," says Magaro, listing his favorite bands of the era: "Stones, Yardbirds, Kinks, Beatles, Dylan – there are so many great ones."

Set in 1964, Not Fade Away kicks off with three best friends from the New Jersey suburbs who are inspired by The Rolling Stones and decide to form a rock band. What follows is a true coming-of-age dramedy as the Italian-American pals (played by Magaro, Huston and Will Brill) discover that chicks dig musicians -- but parents don't approve of long hair and "high-heeled" boots.

"In Jersey in the Sixties, if you were in a garage band -- we had pasty skin and really bad hair, and the car you drove and the things you drink … all the real stuff, the details … were so brilliant," says Huston. "It wasn't this sort of glamorized, Hollywood vision of the Sixties. [Our film is] just really honest, beautiful. It's real gritty."

Video Emmy Flashback '03: Gandolfini Reveals His Crush

"David [Chase] is very detail-oriented and he has a very specific vision," elaborates Magaro. "I think he kind of modeled us all after people from the era. I think mine was Dylan, as you might be able to tell from the poster. … When you're a teenager you see these people and you kind of try and emulate them, and I think that's what he was going for."

Also starring Brad Garrett, Christopher McDonald and James Gandolfini, Not Fade Away was also executive-produced by rocker/Sopranos star Steve Van Zandt.

Read More..

Thief swipes $700 worth of goods from stroller outside Park Slope day-care center

It was like taking candy from a baby.

More than $700 worth of valuables were stolen from a stroller parked outside a day-care center in tony Park Slope, cops said yesterday.

An absent-minded mom left her personal items outside in the stroller on a front patio around 6 p.m., Dec. 13, as she picked up her child from day care on Seventh Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, police said.

The thief made off with an iPhone 4S, worth $350 dollars, a full tote bag, a $250 wallet, keys, identification and credit cards, cops said.

Someone tried to use one of the credit cards for more than $100 worth of food at a pizzeria but the card was declined, a worker at the day care said.

The 30-year-old victim, who asked her name not be used, called her phone, and a man who answered hung up. No arrests have been made.

She said she regularly leaves the pricy Bugaboo when she enters the daycare.

"Yes, I normally do because I'm in and out and parents are going and coming as well. It is pretty safe here," the mom told the Post.

The day-care owner said a lot of parents leave their strollers unattended.

“There’s another stroller they attempted to steal today,” the owner, Rita, said. “They saw a bag, took the bag, but the bag was empty so they threw it out.”

Read More..

Cargo workers could strike at Miami, Everglades ports

BOSTON --
Weeks after a critical West Coast port complex was crippled by a few hundred striking workers, the East Coast is bracing for a possible walkout numbering thousands that could close 14 ports from Massachusetts to Texas, including the Port of Miami and Port Everglades. It would not affect passenger cruise ships.

The latest talks between shipping companies and dockworkers broke down Tuesday, less than two weeks before the contract expires Dec. 29, leading to worries a strike was inevitable.

The National Retail Federation wrote to President Barack Obama this week to ask him to use “all means necessary” to head off a strike, which they fear could have catastrophic ripple effects nationwide. “We foresee this as a national economic emergency, to be honest,” said Jonathan Gold, the group’s vice president of supply chain and customs policy.

Gold said billions in commerce at countless businesses nationwide could be affected, from auto manufacturers awaiting parts to the truckers that deliver them.

Ingrid Hirstin Lazcano, founder of the Los Angeles-based Andean Dream LCC, said a strike on the East and Gulf Coasts could bankrupt her company, which sells soups, pasta and other products made from quinoa, a grain, grown in the Bolivian Andes.

The company has two containers shipped monthly to both Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and Lazcano said she’s still recovering from the eight-day strike of 450 clerical workers at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, which ended Dec. 4.

“If the strike does happen, we will be paralyzed,” she said. “We will not be able to fill orders.”

James McNamara, spokesman for the International Longshoremen’s Association, said the union knows what’s at stake for others but must protect its membership.

“We offer the labor that keeps the commerce moving,” he said. “If management doesn’t appreciate or respect the labor that has made them a lot of money, then we have to do what we have to do.”

A strike wouldn’t affect passenger cruise ships, U.S. mail, military cargo or perishable cargo with a limited shelf life. It also wouldn’t affect non-container, or break bulk, cargo such as steel, wood products and cars.

The longshoremen’s union represents 14,500 workers at the 14 ports, which extend south from Boston and handle 95 percent of all containerized shipments from Maine to Texas, about 110 million tons’ worth.The impasse comes during a 90-day extension of the current contract. On Tuesday, a federal mediator offered another monthlong extension. Various issues including wages are unresolved, but the sides couldn’t agree on what’s become the key sticking point, container royalties.

The royalties are payments to union workers based on the weight of cargo received at each port. They were created in the 1960s to boost wages and finance worker benefits after increased automation cut down salaries and jobs, making it impossible for the dwindling labor force to finance its benefits, McNamara said.

The container carriers and port operators, represented by the U.S. Marine Alliance, want to cap the royalties at 2011 levels, saying they’ve morphed into a huge expense, totally unrelated to their original purpose, which hurts the industry’s competitiveness as it tries to keep up with new technology. The alliance says the royalty payments now amount to a bonus averaging $15,500 annually forEast Coast workers who already earn more than $50 per hour.

The union says the payments aren’t a bonus, they’re an important supplemental wage. It argues that in its previous contract, management agreed to remove the royalties cap in exchange for being allowed to use $42 million of royalty payments to cover a previously negotiated wage increase. There’s no way the union can allow the alliance to revive the cap now and accept the cuts in worker income and union revenue, McNamara said.

Read More..

Return to sender: Christmas card didn’t come from Governor’s Mansion

TALLAHASSEE --
It is definitely not the Governor’s Mansion. There are no stately white columns on the modest house 3 miles east of the state Capitol.

But that’s the return address on envelopes containing a Christmas card and a $25 historical Christmas ornament sent to several thousand of Gov. Rick Scott’s supporters.

The mail is from Let’s Get to Work, the political committee raising money for Scott’s 2014 campaign, but the name of the committee appears on the envelopes as “Let’s Go to Work.’’

Scott’s committee has raised about $5 million toward 2014. Scott spent more than $70 million to win the job in 2010 but has indicated he will not spend as much of his own money to win re-election.

Steve Andrews, a Tallahassee lawyer embroiled in a bitter lawsuit against the governor, says his wife received one of the packages.

“It’s a typical intimidation tactic,’’ Andrews told the Tampa Bay Times. He says his wife has not donated to the governor’s campaign or his political committee and should not be on his list to receive anything.

Andrews went to the return address listed and discovered young tenants who were steadily tossing out all of the packages postal authorities were returning as undeliverable. Andrews collected a dozen of them and left them with a Tampa Bay Times reporter.

John French, the lawyer who manages Scott’s political committee, says it was all a mistake made by the printer. The return address should have been his home just down the street, the official address of the committee.

Andrews filed suit against the governor earlier this year in an attempt to keep the state from taking over his office building near the Governor’s Mansion. Andrews had a contract to buy the building from the estate of former Gov. LeRoy Collins when Scott pushed to acquire it so he could expand access to the mansion.

French said no one was attempting to intimidate Andrews or his wife.

“I’m sorry if Mr. Andrews felt intimidated,” French said. “No one was attempting to do anything but recognize that his wife had been a contributor to Republicans in the past. Her name will be removed from the list.”

French added: “If the governor sent me a pretty ornament, I’d put it on my Christmas tree.”

Read More..

Google Music adds free iTunes-like song-matching feature

Title Post: Google Music adds free iTunes-like song-matching feature
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

'Django ' Ugliness Required for Hero's Journey

While it's a thoroughly entertaining movie, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained doesn't pull any punches in its depiction of the horrors of slavery, and the film's stars tell ET that by facing the ugly truth of our shared history, we can grow to understand it and learn not to repeat it.

New Pics: Jamie & Leo Smolder in 'Django'

"Those things are supposed to create dialogue," says Jamie Foxx. "It puts it in historical context. If we hadn't done it this honestly, there's no need to do the film. If you sugarcoated it, it would have been absolutely … terrible."

"I also think what's great about the film is it's a story of a hero, and in every fairytale, in order to have a hero, you have to have some dragons to slay," says Kerry Washington. "So there had to be the ugliness of slavery in the film so that you understand that Django's rise into his own heroic story [is] coming from somewhere -- that he's up against some really ugly demons. And yet in that context, in this ugly world of slavery, love allows him to conquer all of that. We had to be willing to show the ugly stuff so that the hero's journey meant something."

In theaters Christmas Day, Tarantino's action-packed "Southern" tracks a former slave-turned-bounty hunter (Foxx) who sets out to rescue his wife (Washington) from a ruthless plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) with the help of his mentor, German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz).

Video: Tarantino's 'Genius' Revered at 'Django' Premiere

"I'm fully aware that [the story] is fiction – that doesn't mean that I doubt in any way any of the horrific details of history," says Waltz. "If we all of sudden claim we understand [slavery] by making a movie, I think we would sort of sidestep a little bit the responsibility of dealing with the real thing."

Don Johnson, Bruce Dern, Walton Goggins, James Remar, Franco Nero, RZA and Samuel L. Jackson round out the cast of Django Unchained.

Related: LA Premiere of Bloody 'Django Unchained' Canceled

Read More..

New DNA evidence found in brutal 1994 rape-slay

Eighteen years after a young boy stumbled on a pregnant woman's raped and strangled body on a Harlem rooftop, her accused killer was hauled before a judge today -- thanks to new testing of old forensics from the horrific slaying.

The murderer of Isabelle Joye, 32, of St. Nicholas Avenue, had left a tissue stained with his DNA nearby, and more of his DNA inside her body and under her fingernails. Now that genetic profile has been matched to imprisoned sex fiend Melvin Kelly, 55, prosecutors said.

At the time, in May of 1994, "Detectives investigated as best they could, but there were over 2,000 murders in New York City that year, and the case went cold," the Manhattan DA's Cold Case Unit chief, Melissa Mourges, told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley at a brief arraignment today.

The press -- distracted at the time by the death of Jackie O -- paid virtually no attention to the violent death of Joye, who was five months pregnant with an otherwise healthy baby boy when her body was found, stripped from the waist down and severely scraped from having been dragged across the tarpaper roof.

Still, the city medical examiner's office kept hold of the tissue and swabs all these years, and earlier this year developed a male DNA profile that matched Kelly, Mourges said.

"Clearly she had fought and scratched him as he raped and strangled her," the prosecutor said.

Kelly has been in prison for a 2004 sex assault on a 19-year-old man in Greenwich Village, and is serving a 25-to-life for first degree criminal sexual act and aggravated sex abuse, officials said.

"Now we have to make sure there is no contamination and everything was done properly," court-appointed lawyer Glenn Abolafia said of the evidence that has come back to haunt his client.

Kelly pleaded not guilty to second degree murder and was hauled back to Elmira Correctional Facility; the judge set Jan. 31 as his next court date.

Read More..

Pressure on for a Super Bowl Boat Show

Miami-Dade’s tourism bureau faces more pressure to endorse holding the 2016 Super Bowl during the Miami International Boat Show and drop objections that there aren’t enough hotel rooms in the Miami area to handle both events.

On Tuesday the mayor of Miami-Dade County, which helps fund the bureau, all but endorsed holding both events on the same weekend if the National Football League opts to move the championship game to President’s Day Weekend, the Boat Show’s home for decades.

“We can hold two parties at once,’’ Mayor Carlos Gimenez said during a County Commission discussion on pursuing the Super Bowl.

The Miami Dolphins and the team’s backers on the South Florida Super Bowl organizing committee contend downtown Miami is capable of holding Super Bowl during Boat Show, which is primarily based at the Miami Beach Convention Center. On Tuesday, the committee picked a downtown Miami hotel to announce new celebrity spokesmen for the region’s Super Bowl bid: Dolphin greats Bob Griese, Dan Marino and Jason Taylor.

“I think every Super Bowl, personally, should be in South Florida,’’ Marino said from the stage at the Intercontinental Miami hotel on downtown’s waterfront. “I’ve been telling people that for years.”

South Florida is competing against San Francisco for 2016, and the loser will take on Houston for the 2017 Super Bowl. Though South Florida has already hosted a record 10 Super Bowls, the latest campaign for the big game has brought new tensions.

For the first time, Broward and Miami-Dade were required to make separate presentations to the Super Bowl group, which intends to pick one “urban core” to be the hub for pre-game activities. Meanwhile, team executives are still mulling another push for tax dollars to renovate Sun Life Stadium, improvements NFL executives have said would help South Florida’s Super Bowl bid.

Broward’s tourism director, Nicki Grossman, drove from Fort Lauderdale to Miami for the Super Bowl committee’s first public event for the 2016 bid. The presentation included unveiling the group’s new logo featuring palm trees and the Roman numerals of the Super Bowls held in the Dolphins’ home stadium since 1968.

In past years, the Host Committee has held bid events at Sun Life Stadium. Rodney Barreto, a partner in one of Miami-Dade’s top lobby firms and long-time chair of the Super Bowl committee, said picking the Intercontinental for the unveiling wasn’t a sign that Miami leads Fort Lauderdale in the competition. “We have not made a decision,” he said. “We feel this is neutral territory.”

William Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, attended the event but declined to talk to The Miami Herald about the Boat Show issue afterward. He has said publicly and privately that he does not believe Miami-Dade’s 45,000 hotel rooms are enough to accommodate Super Bowl and Boat Show — not to mention the other major Miami event on President’s Day weekend , the Coconut Grove Arts Festival.

With NFL owners pushing the players’ union for an extended season, the league has begun asking cities to prepare for a Super Bowl held later than usual. In 2010 and 2011, the NFL requested that cities bid on three potential weekends for future Super Bowls, including President’s Day. But given the Boat Show conflict, South Florida declined and instead offered Super Bowl proposals for the other two weekends. South Florida lost out both times.

Read More..