REDDING, Conn. — Metro North train service has been suspended on the Danbury line following a train accident involving a car.
A Metro North spokesman said the train struck a car in Redding on Sunday afternoon. The train had no passengers and there was no information about whether there were injuries involving the car.
Bus service will ferry passengers between Danbury and South Norwalk.
Jared Kleinert, a South Florida entrepreneur, plans to soon launch Synergist, a platform that allow social entrepreneurs to meet potential co-founders online, collaborate and crowdfund their new projects. He also just launched AliveNDead, a blog about risk-taking, and he interns for a Silicon Valley startup.
And when he’s not doing all that, he’s going to class — he’s a junior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton.
Lester Mapp is CEO and founder of the new Miami-based startup called designed by m. His team has just designed a sleek, ultra-thin aluminum iPhone bumper and launched the project on Kickstarter. After just a few days, Mapp is already more than a third of the way to his $20,000 fund-raising goal.
Read about both these entrepreneurs on The Starting Gate blog, where there’s also a post on the most pressing issues facing small businesses in the coming year — taxes, healthcare, lending and a skilled worker shortage, for starters.
And as you are ringing in the New Year, you may be resolving to beef up your business’ social media strategy. Susan Linning's guest post offers five top tips for boosting your social media effectiveness. Among them: Go beyond retweets and make your posts original, fun and personal (but not too personal.) Use visuals, too. Find this and other news, views and tools for entrepreneurs on the blog, which is at the bottom of MiamiHerald.com /business.
Follow me on Twitter @ndahlberg and Happy New Year to all.
TAMPA --
To the nation, he was a war hero. To the Tampa Bay community, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was a hero for local charities.
The retired Desert Storm commander died at the age of 78 in Tampa, where he was involved in causes ranging from sick and orphaned children to prostate cancer awareness. Friends said he frequently attended fundraisers as a celebrity guest, which allowed charities to raise much-needed funds.
John Osterweil, a Tampa resident who supports the military through various charities, got to know Schwarzkopf in 1989 when their sons became friends. Over the years, Osterweil and Schwarzkopf attended football games together, played tennis and attended charity events around the city.
Once, when Osterweil’s wife was in charge of fundraising for the Tampa Museum of Art, Schwarzkopf agreed to be a guest celebrity at a $1,000-a-plate dinner. The museum raised $50,000 that night, Osterweil said.
"By his presence alone, organizations were able to raise sizable chunks of money," he said. "He was very gracious about that, very willing."
Schwarzkopf spent much of his time working on children’s causes including the Ronald McDonald House and The Children’s Home in Tampa, which provides family support services and aids in foster care adoptions.
He and the late actor Paul Newman co-founded Camp Boggy Creek in Central Florida, a summer campground for kids with life-threatening illnesses.
"I may have made my reputation as a general in the Army and I’m very proud of that," he once told The Associated Press. "But I’ve always felt that I was more than one-dimensional. I’d like to think I’m a caring human being. ... It’s nice to feel that you have a purpose."
An avid fisherman, hunter and skeet shooter, Schwarzkopf also served on the board of the Nature Conservancy.
Schwarzkopf and his wife also owned a home in Telluride, Colo., where he was on the board of directors for the Telluride Foundation, a group that raises money for local charities.
He was also active in raising awareness about prostate cancer as a national spokesman for the cause; in 1994, he was diagnosed with the affliction and was successfully treated.
Gen. Schwarzkopf stepped down as CentComm commander in 1991, and remained in Tampa for retirement, initially renting a home in the Cheval community.
"The people of Tampa have made me and my family feel right at home the moment we moved here," he said then.
Sports — specifically, skeet shooting — played a major role in the retired general’s social life.
For years, the Gen. Schwarzkopf Cup sporting clays tournament was held in his honor to support the Children’s Home. It has raised more than $1 million, said Merrill Stewart, director of development at the nonprofit that supports abused and neglected children in Tampa Bay.
Former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco met Gen. Schwarzkopf at a skeet shooting event and they became fast friends. Greco used to tease the retired general about the time they went to the Super Bowl in Miami and billionaire Wayne Huizenga’s mother mistook him for TV personality Williard Scott.
Greco remained friends with Gen. Schwarzkopf after his retirement from the military and was his neighbor when the general settled in Harbour Island.
"It was very difficult to watch a strong, wonderful man not be in good health. He was a great American and a great sportsman," Greco said.
Gen. Schwarzkopf didn’t retire from public life when he hung up his stars, and he gave his time to charities across the area, said Tampa developer Al Austin, who was a friend.
Austin discovered he had prostate cancer in March 2002 — a few years after Gen. Schwarzkopf had his own battle with the disease. The general had become an advocate for research and promoting early detection.
"He gave me advice before my surgery," Austin recalled. "He just did so many great things."
Bob Graham, the former Florida governor and U.S. senator, said he trusted Gen. Schwarzkopf so much he wanted to hand over relief operations to him after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Often people who remember Gen. Schwarzkopf recall what it was like to be with him.
"He just sucked all the air out of the room," said Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
Tampa Bay Times staff writers Robbyn Mitchell and Amy Scherzer contributed to this report.
Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila Alves have another reason to celebrate this holiday season -- they welcomed a new baby into the family!
A source tells ET the Magic Mike star was present for the baby's birth Friday at a hospital in Austin, TX. Specific details were not immediately available.
RELATED: Matthew McConaughey Wedding Details!
McConaughey proposed to his 30-year-old Brazilian model/handbag designer girlfriend on Christmas Day 2011, and they got married during a ceremony in Texas last June.
The couple began dating in 2006 and have two other children together, daughter Vida, who is almost three, and four-year old Levi.
RELATED: Matthew McConaughey Weighs In On His Dramatic Weight Loss
They came from all corners of the globe to join their brothers in blue.
The NYPD recruits sworn in at a graduation ceremony in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center today were born in countries like Nigeria, South Korea, China, Albania, Pakistan, and Somalia — and speak 59 languages.
Others came from less exotic locales like Brooklyn and Queens.
The new class of 1,159 cops was made up of 16 percent women. The racial breakdown is 53 percent white, 25 percent Hispanic, 12 percent black and 9 percent Asian.
Nearly all of them — 99 percent — have a college degree.
One graduate from Rockland County wore the shield of her father, who was killed trying to help people escape from the World Trade Center on 9-11.
Erin Coughlin, 27, was proud to honor the memory of Sgt. John Coughlin, who had served in the elite Emergency Services Unit.
“It’s an absolute honor. It was surreal — I knew he was looking down on me,” said Coughlin, 27, beaming. “I took the same oath he did. I held it together until we had to salute.”
Her mother Patty was also moved. “I’m glad she got his shield,” she said. “It’s amazing that I was at the graduation for him, and now her.”
The graduating class included the son of police union president Patrick Lynch. “It’s something I always looked forward to,” said 21-year-old Patrick Lynch.
His father said he was “extremely proud” to see the shield on his son’s chest.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly praised Lynch and three other cops during the graduation for making a good collar in Queens while driving home from the police academy in September.
The four spotted a young man beating up another man in Bayside on Sept. 13, and intervened to stop the attack.
Lynch was one of many new cops who has the NYPD in his blood.
“Growing up, I had a lot to look up to,” said Officer Adam Torres, 25, whose father Felix Torres, 46, is retired.
“For many of you, this moment was a long time coming,” said Kelly. “Some of you dreamed of wearing this uniform from the time you were children.”
Kelly also hailed the recruits’ life-saving work during Hurricane Sandy.
Newly minted officer John Lattanzio was praised for walking through waist-deep water to rescue people in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn — carrying one person out on his shoulders — even though his own home was flooded.
The new rookies will protect half a million visitors to Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
• Florida Small Business Development Centers. Counseling and training at centers in South Florida and around the state, www.floridasbdc.org.
• SCORE Workshops, online training and free coaching at local branches, www.score.org, miamidade.score.org, browardscore.org, southbroward.score.org
• Florida Women’s Business Center. Provides training, mentoring and resources to women entrepreneurs, http://www.flwbc.org.
• The Commonwealth Institute. Helps women entrepreneurs, CEOs and corporate executives build businesses through peer mentoring programs and annually honors top women-led businesses in Florida, www.commonwealthinstitute.org.
The Hispanic Business Initiative Fund of Florida. Nonprofit, with a Miami office, provides free bilingual seminars, workshops and technical assistance to Hispanic entrepreneurs launching or expanding businesses in Florida. www.HBIFflorida.org.
• Barry University, Barry Institute for Community and Economic Development. Counseling, workshops and training for Miami-Dade small businesses through the Entrepreneurial Institute, www.barry.edu/biced.
• Broward College. Offers a 24-credit entrepreneurship certificate, www.broward.edu. For noncredit business courses, including training through its Entrepreneurial Institute, http://www.broward.edu/ce.
• Florida International University, Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center. Workshops, webinars and more, entrepreneurship.fiu.edu.
• Miami Dade College. Offers a 12-credit entrepreneurship certificate program, www.mdc.edu/business. For noncredit classes, www.mdc.edu/ce. The Meek Entrepreneurial Education Center offers many programs, www.mdc.edu/north/eec.
• University of Miami, The Launch Pad. Workshops, networking, resources and coaching, www.thelaunchpad.org.
• Southern Florida Minority Supplier Development Council. Connects large businesses with minority businesses across South Florida, www.sfmsdc.org.
• Startup Florida. Programs and training, plus register your company in this Startup America initiative, www.startupfl.org.
• Partners for Self-Employment. Offers training, technical assistance and loans in Miami-Dade and Broward. www.partnersforselfemployment.com
• Miami Bayside Foundation. Provides loans of $10,000 to $50,000 to minority-owned businesses in the city of Miami. www.miamibaysidefoundation.org..
• MetroBroward. Nonprofit offers financing, incubation and training for businesses in low- to moderate-income areas of Broward, www.metrobroward.org.
• ACCION USA. Provides microloans up to $50,000 and financial education, with South Florida offices and programs, www.accionusa.org.
ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions. Nonprofit offers one-on-one, over the phone or Internet credit counseling to entrepreneurs and consumers with poor credit. 305-463-6739, ext 1019 or www.clearpointccs.org .
• Incubate Miami. Start-up businesses in technology can get mentorship, office space and now early-stage funding, www.incubatemiami.com.
• The Technology Business Incubator at the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University. Offers mentors, investor connections and business services, http://www.research-park.org
• South Florida Urban Ministries’ ASSETS Business Development. Nonprofit offers small business development program including one-on-one business coaching and consulting in areas of start-up, marketing, finance and more, www.sflum.org.
• United Way Center for Financial Stability. Center offers a wide array of tools and resources to help families and individuals achieve financial independence. www.unitedwaymiami.org/WhatWeDo/CFS.
• The Startup Forum. Organization’s mission is to foster the development of vibrant regional startup communities, www.startupforum.net.
• StartupDigest. Begun in Silicon Valley as a place to find events for entrepreneurs, this has spread to other cities, including Miami, www.startupdigest.com
If your organization should be on this list, email ndahlberg@miamiherald.com
TALLAHASSEE --
A nonprofit company that holds two dozen state contracts to care for troubled juveniles in Florida pays its chief executive more than $1.2 million a year in salary and benefits, most of it courtesy of taxpayers.
Outraged, the state Department of Juvenile Justice says the money paid to William Schossler is excessive and should be spent to help kids.
The state wants the hefty paydays to stop.
“It was never the department’s intent that such a large share of the funding would go to compensate the top administration of your corporation instead of into direct services for our youth,” wrote Gov. Rick Scott’s juvenile justice chief, Wansley Walters, in a Dec. 12 letter to Schossler. “That is something that neither the department nor the citizens of Florida can abide.”
Schossler, 65, is president of The Henry & Rilla White Foundation, a Tallahassee-based nonprofit that has done work for the state for more than two decades and currently has a contract with the state’s agriculture department to feed the children it oversees.
Named for Schossler’s grandparents, the foundation manages residential treatment beds, provides counseling and therapy to troubled children after they complete residential care, and has programs to divert kids from delinquency.
In the current budget year, the foundation’s 23 juvenile justice contracts statewide have a total value of $10.2 million.
The battle between the state and the foundation surfaces at a time when legislators are promising a more in-depth review of state contracts with private vendors, which comprise more than half of the state’s $70 billion annual budget yet receive only token scrutiny.
Legislators rarely probe the details of contracts, but Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, has challenged senators to exhume contract details in agencies’ budgets to see how money gets spent.
In what it called a routine review of contracts, the Department of Juvenile Justice discovered that Schossler earned $397,940 in salary and $862,837 in other compensation in 2010, according to the foundation’s Form 990 filing with the IRS.
The previous year, Schossler made $382,906 in salary and $579,914 in bonuses and incentive compensation, that year’s IRS filing shows.
Schossler, who worked for 15 years in state corrections and social services jobs, said the foundation board of directors decided he deserved a boost to his retirement package after years of building up the foundation. Some of the compensation was in the form of land that the foundation no longer needed, he said.
“You work your butt off for 25 years, and then you get ready to retire, and somebody decides to pay you some retirement money and somebody doesn’t like that,” Schossler said.
One of the foundation’s board members is Schossler’s sister, Linda Durrance, the board secretary. He said she is required to abstain from votes on compensation matters.
Henry and Rilla White were longtime residents of Bronson, a crossroads town and the county seat of Levy County, where he was a teacher and superintendent. They also ran White’s Grocery, according to the foundation’s website, www.hrwhite.org, which defines quality as “constantly striving for the best and gearing ourselves for the unexpected.”
The unexpected is what happened when Schlosser met with Walters earlier this month.
Earlier this year, BlueStacks App Player made headlines by allowing Android apps run on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 platform. The company announced on Thursday its App Player is now available in beta form for free on Mac, giving OS X users access to 750,000 Android apps normally reserved for smartphones and tablets.
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
BlueStacks uses patent-pending virtualization software called “Layercake” to allow Android apps to run on other platforms. It works virtually the same as running Windows within OS X using software such as Parallels or VMWare. The Windows 8 version of BlueStacks has been out since March and has been installed on more than 5 million PCs, which is a good sign that people want to run mobile apps on their computers.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
BGR tested BlueStacks on a mid-2011 MacBook Air running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and found performance to be hit or miss. Android apps can be searched and it will list which app stores to download them from, but sometimes apps won’t install properly because of missing code, especially from the Google Play store. Downloading apps from the Amazon (AMZN) Appstore seems to be a better bet, though. If it’s any consolation, Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja are perfectly playable.
BlueStacks works as mostly advertised, but honestly, why bother running Android apps on your Mac? A mouse or trackpad isn’t a better substitute for a touchscreen. But if you must do so, it’s reassuring to know BlueStacks is available.
This article was originally published by BGR
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Twilight vamp Robert Pattinson plays a bloodsucker of an altogether different kind – the Wall Street kind – in his new movie Cosmopolis, on Blu-ray and DVD New Year's Day, and the film's director David Cronenberg tells ETonline that he was actually quite impressed with what Rob brought to the table, and that after the baggage of casting -- once you get to that point when you're on set and cameras are rolling -- "Twilight is irrelevant."
Video: Robert Pattinson Smells of Sex in 'Cosmopolis'
"He surprised me every day with good stuff," says Cronenberg. "I don't do rehearsals, and I try not to shape the actor's performance at first. I want to see what his intuition is going to deliver. And then if there's a problem then I start to shape it, nudge it, manipulate it a little bit. I did very little of that with Rob."
Based on the novel by Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis follows one day in the wild life of multi-billionaire asset manager Eric Packer, who travels aimlessly through the streets of New York City in his limousine while conducting investment trading from the back seat. As the day progresses, it devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart.
"He absolutely would say to you right now, 'I had no idea what I was doing at any time,' and he would mean it," says the veteran director of Rob's performance. "I think he really didn't realize how good he was. … He was surprising himself, but he was surprising me by his accuracy. It was just dead on. I mean, by the end of it we were doing one take. Honestly the whole last scene, the whole last shot in the movie with him and Paul [Giamatti] -- one take. And it's a long take as well. And it's very emotional, and very subtle. One take for both of them, it was so good. … In fact, we finished the shoot five days early, and a lot of that was due to Rob."
Video: Robert Pattinson on Playboy Role in 'Cosmopolis'
Of course, when Cronenberg first cast Rob, he had to overcome what he calls Twilight "baggage," explaining, "You often have to consider what we call baggage for an actor, and you have to decide whether it's a problem or not. I hate the idea of it because I know I'm going to be on the set with the guy at three in the morning shooting in the streets of Toronto, and none of that stuff is relevant. We're just two people trying to make the movie work. So his past performances, or his fame, or lack of it, or whatever the factor is, is at that point irrelevant. What's relevant only is what we can do creatively with each other.
"On the other hand, when you're financing a movie you have to have lead actors who have some weight and some substance and will attract investors so that you can get your movie financed, so it's a weird situation," he continues. "Aside from the fact that yes, he was an exciting and interesting, surprising choice in terms of how investors viewed it -- and it worked because we got the financing for the movie -- after that Twilight is irrelevant, you know?"
What mattered most to Cronenberg was that his lead could carry the scene and had the proper charisma: "It starts very simply with is he the right age, does he have the right look, does he have the right presence onscreen?" he says. "He is in absolutely every scene in the movie, and that's really quite rare. Even in a movie with Tom Cruise, you don't see Tom in every scene. But in this case you do, and so he has to have some charisma. You have to want to watch him for that long and that intensely, because I knew I was going to be crawling all over his face with the camera."
Video: Robert Pattinson's First ET Interview
Of course, it wouldn't be a David Cronenberg film without a little oral or anal fixation – themes prominently placed in such films of his as Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers and Videodrome – and there's an especially amusing scene during Cosmopolis in which Rob gets examined by a doctor in his limo and discovers that he has an "asymmetrical prostate."
"Orifices are the entry and exit of our bodies, and that really talks about identity and where the boundaries of an individual identity end and where the environment begins," says a straight-faced Cronenberg, adding with a laugh, "I could do an academic analysis of my own movies, but that wouldn't help me create [my new] movies. … You could do that analysis and make those connections amongst the movies, and you'd be correct."
Two construction execs facing up to 20 years in the slammer for faking steel and concrete test results at some of the city’s most prominent projects, including Yankee Stadium and the World Trade Center, got their sentences cut to four years or less by a state appellate panel today.
The judges tossed the 2010 enterprise corruption convictions against Testwell Laboratories Inc. CEO V. Reddy Kancharla and his No. 2., Vincent Barone, for the long-standing scheme that netted their firm millions of dollars.
Their other dozen fraud-related convictions for submitting phony tests at some 120 different construction sites remain unchanged.
In addition, the panel found Manhattan Justice Edward McLaughlin’s order that their sentences be serviced consecutively “unduly harsh.”
At the time, McLaughlin said he hoped the sentences would “send a message” to the notoriously corrupt construction industry.
Kancharla, who twice attempted suicide since his conviction, had his 7- to 21-year sentence reduced to 16 months to four years.
Likewise Barone saw his 5 ¹/₃- to 16-year sentence cut to the same.
In their decision, however, the judges found prosecutors “failed to produce any evidence that either defendant knew that the rest results and inspection reports were fabricated, much less that the defendants spearheaded a criminal enterprise.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which has the right to appeal, declined to comment.
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