CrimeWatch: Son asks mom why no one saw Sandy Hook coming

Today is the second anniversary of the death of Miami-Dade police officers Roger Castillo and Amanda Haworth, who were killed while serving an arrest warrant. I extend our thoughts and prayers to their families, theses officers died protecting this community and we should all be extremely grateful for their sacrifice.

Words will never easy the pain and suffering for the family, but may they know that this community holds them in their heart. I know I do. Rest in peace, officers Castillo and Haworth. You will never be forgotten.

During the last couple of weeks, I have received several emails from parents regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Many emails were filled with anger and helplessness along with fear of the unknown. There was one email that I want to share with you because it relates to our Youth Crime Watch program in the schools. This mother wanted me to share so that parents understand that our children are very astute and understanding of serious situations.

Dear Carmen,

I want to share with you something that happened with my son after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.

My son attends an elementary in the north area of the county I don’t want to give the name. But my son is a member of your Youth Crime Watch program, this is his second year being involved, and he is in the sixth grade.

Needless to say he was very upset because he couldn’t understand how someone could kill so many kids, but what really bothered him was why no one had known about [shooter Adam Lanza]. I tried to explain to him some of the facts of the incident. His answer: “Mom, at our Youth Crime Watch club we learn from McGruff the do’s and don’ts when there is danger, especially reporting to teachers if we see something that is not right. Someone must have known something.”

My son is not and was not scared to going back to school, because he knows that his club members have vowed to always keep their ears to the “ground” and speak when something is not right. At the same time he spoke about the “school bus shooting,” another tragic incident. He stated that lots of kids knew this kid had a gun, yet no one told a teach or police officer. My son wants to grow up to be a police officer, and that makes me fearful since it’s such a dangerous job, but I will support his efforts as he grows up.

My son has learned much from your Youth Crime Watch program, and I am very grate full for the efforts you and your staff have produced in his school. I truly feel that your efforts, and those of the school counselors that handle this program will help in keeping our kids safe and I pray that they never see themselves in this situation, but I am confident that his small group of students are in the forefront of helping to make his school safe. I truly hope that our superintendent and School Board members recognize the work you all do for our children.

S. Coleman, North Dade

Congratulations to this mom for having a great conversation with her son!

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Samsung decides to kick RIM when it’s down by bashing BlackBerry in new ad [video]

Samsung (005930) is well known for its clever ads mocking Apple (AAPL) and its fans, but the company has decided to pick on a less powerful target in its newest ad that takes swipes RIM (RIMM) and its BlackBerry smartphones. The ad revolves around an office that is implementing its own bring-your-own-device policy and is meant to show that both the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II are ideal business phones that can enable greater creativity. While most workers in the ad happily switch to Samsung smartphones after the BYOD policy is put in place, one of them insists on clinging to his BlackBerry, which prompts one of his coworkers to ask, “Are you finally going to retire that thing?” The full video is posted below.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 OS walkthrough, BlackBerry Z10 pricing]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sheryl Crow on Her Ex Lance Armstrong's Confession

ET's Nancy O'Dell sat down with music star Sheryl Crow to ask about her ex-fiance, former cycling champion Lance Armstrong, and his recent doping confession.

RELATED: Most Shocking Hollywood Breakups

"I think that honesty is always the best bet and that the truth will set you free," said Crow, who caught "bits and pieces" of Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey. "To carry around a weight like that would be devastating in the long run."

Armstrong, 41, and Crow, 50, began dating in 2003 -- the same year that Armstrong divorced his wife of five years, Kristin -- and split in 2006.

RELATED: Shelton Taps Sheryl for The Voice

Last year, a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency led to Armstrong's downfall. The shamed cyclist was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and, until now, vehemently maintained his innocence.

During a series of rapid-fire yes or no questions, the retired cyclist confirmed to Oprah last week that he had blood transfusions and used the banned substance erythropoietin (EPO) during his career -- particularly during all seven of his Tour de France victories.

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Cop killer's lawyers angling for life in prison instead of lethal injection

He killed two NYPD cops in cold blood — but he’s a pussycat with the other convicts.

Defense attorneys for Ronell Wilson say that when defendants are portrayed as dangerous it often sways federal death penalty juries to vote for execution. So they want a judge to bar prosecutors from telling jurors in Wilson’s upcoming penalty phase retrial that the man convicted of gunning down two undercover cops on Staten Island in 2003 poses an ongoing risk — in the hope of him getting life behind bars instead of lethal injection.

“In the almost seven years since he was sentenced to death ... Mr. Wilson has not committed a single act of violence — not even of a minor nature,” attorneys David Stern, Colleen Brady and Beverly Van Ness wrote Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis.

Wilson’s first death sentence was overturned on procedural grounds.

But Brooklyn federal prosecutors have insisted that Wilson still “represents a continuing danger” and poses a “serious threat to the lives and safety of others.”

Last year, the feds say that Wilson was involved in an incident in prison where he refused to leave a recreation area, flashed Bloods gang signs, and made incendiary gang remarks to prison guards. It took a special team of officers to remove him.

Yesterday, Garaufis directed prosecutors to submit a written response detailing their views on the issue.

In 2007, Wilson was sentenced to death after a federal jury found him guilty of the point-blank shooting deaths of NYPD detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin during an undercover gun buy-and-bust operation.

Wilson became the city’s first federal defendant to receive a death sentence since 1954, but an appeals court reversed the death sentence on procedural grounds in 2010.

mmaddux@nypost.com

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Series for Miami’s emerging art collectors begins Thursday

For art enthusiasts interested in bring their interest home, Miami’s Bakehouse Art Complex is hosting a lecture series for emerging collectors. The first panel, slated for Thursday at 6 p.m., features arists and curators who will talk about fine tuning your taste and learning to make informed decisions. The second session, Feb. 7, is oriented to the mechanics of purchasing. The third, on Feb. 21, explores how to manage your collection.

Moderating all three panels will be Denise Gerson, independent curator who served as associate director for the Lowe Museum of Art for 24 years. Cost is $25 per session or $60 for the series. Seating is limited; reservations are recommended.

Information at 305-576-2828; www.bacfl.org.

Jane Wooldridge

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Few blacks appoint to judgeships by Gov. Rick Scott

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott is on pace to appoint fewer African-Americans to judgeships in Florida than either of his two

predecessors, Charlie Crist and Jeb Bush.

In his two years as governor, Scott has appointed 91 judges. Six are black, including the reappointments of three judges who handle only

cases involving benefits to injured workers.

Scott has appointed two African-Americans to the circuit court bench, both in Miami-Dade County, and has appointed a black county judge in Jacksonville.

In a state as diverse as Florida, racial and ethnic diversity in the court system has been a concern for decades, and it erupted anew last

week in the state Capitol.

At a roundtable meeting with black legislators, Scott defended his appointments in the face of criticism that his record is “appalling.”

“There’s a sentiment in the black legal community that we need not apply because we don’t think like you,” Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St.

Petersburg, told the governor.

Unmoved, Scott said he’s limited in his choices by the lists of finalists he gets from local judicial nominating commissions or JNCs,

which screen judicial candidates and can recommend up to six candidates for each court vacancy.

Scott said he’s trying to improve diversity on the judicial panels but also emphasized that he won’t appoint activist judges.

“If an applicant — I don’t care who they are — believes in judicial activism, I’m not going to appoint them,” Scott told the black legislators’ group.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush also opposed activist judges and sought “interpreters of law, not creators,” as he said in 2004. But one of

every 10 judges Bush appointed was African-American.

Scott’s immediate predecessor, Crist, who served one four-year term, appointed 15 black judges, five in the first half and 10 in the second

including James Perry, a justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

Statistically, 6.6 percent of Scott’s judicial choices are black at the midway point of his term, compared to 8.3 percent for the term of

Crist, governor from 2007-2011, and 10 percent for Bush, who served the previous eight years. African-Americans make up 16.5 percent of Florida’s population according to the Census.

Scott has appointed proportionally more women and Hispanics to judgeships than Crist, and about the same as Bush.

For four decades, Florida judicial vacancies have been filled through a system known as merit retention, which replaced a system in which

governors could pick the candidates of their choice. It was designed to lessen political influence and improve the caliber of legal talent

on the bench.

Scott’s new chief legal adviser, Pete Antonacci, a veteran of four decades in state legal and political circles, said nominating panels

continue to be controlled by local political forces and bar groups and that Scott is at “the end of a pipeline” dominated by local politics.

“If people are believing that the system is a politics-pure zone, they’re wrong,” Antonacci said. “It all occurs inside the bubble of

the bar.”

By law, Scott has a free hand in making five of nine appointments to each of 26 judicial nominating commissions. He must pick the other

four from lists of three names for each vacancy, submitted by the Florida Bar, which Scott can reject without explanation.

Just last week, Scott asked the Florida Bar for new names for JNC vacancies in the Pinellas-Pasco circuit and in the Gainesville area.

Scott has appointed more judges in Miami-Dade than in any other county. Of Scott’s 21 selections in the state’s largest county, 13 are white (seven women and six men), six are Hispanic and two are African-American: Rodney Smith and Eric Hendon. In four instances in Miami-Dade, Scott chose white judges to replace Hispanics.

All three of Scott’s judicial appointments in Hillsborough are white; two men and a woman.

“We have a dynamic pool of African-American attorneys in Hillsborough County,” said Tampa lawyer Cory Person, president of the George Edgecomb Bar Association, a black lawyers’ group. “Gov. Scott’s record does not suggest a real effort to attract and appoint minority candidates.”

Scott has filled six of nine seats on Hillsborough’s judicial nominating panel; none is African-American. All seven Scott appointees

to judicial panels in Miami-Dade and Broward are white or Hispanic, according to the governor’s office.

To date, Scott has not appointed any judges in the Sixth Judicial Circuit for Pinellas and Pasco counties.

Tampa Bay Times researcher Natalie Watson contributed to this report.

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BlackBerry 10 camera software revealed, including built-in Instagram-like photo filters [video]

Just when we start to think we know everything there is to know about BlackBerry 10, new details leak. Mobile blog The Gadget Masters on Friday published a video revealing the new BlackBerry 10 camera software included on a pre-release version of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. While the software on this prototype phone likely isn’t final, several new features that will be included in RIM’s (RIMM) new BlackBerry 10 camera software are displayed in the video. Among the highlights is a built-in photo editor that includes cropping, rotation and Instagram-like photo filters. The full video follows below.

[More from BGR: RIM heats up as BlackBerry 10 launch nears]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Mama Wins Arnold Schwarzenegger Flops at Box Office

Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand came in last place on the box office Top 10 list over the weekend.

RELATED: New on Blu-ray & DVD

The action flick struggled through its debut, pulling in $6.3 million, as audiences couldn't get enough of Jessica Chastain -- the star of Mama and Zero Dark Thirty.

Jessica's films came in at first and second as Mama garnered $28.1 million and Zero Dark Thirty $17.6 million.

Silver Linings Playbook landed in third with $11.4 million.

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Man critically hurt in Brooklyn lab fire

A man was left in cardiac arrest and two firefighters injured after a raging inferno erupted at a Brooklyn medical lab, fire officials said.

The fire started on the third floor of the four-story building at 2:03 p.m. on the corner of Utrecht Avenue near 52 Street in Borough Park, sources said.

The critically injured man, who was found inside the burning building, was rushed to Lutheran Hospital. The two firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries, fire officials said.

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Investors await word from Apple

No company today elicits such devotion and dedication among its customers and shareholders like Apple. The fervor felt by Apple fans for its products, its leaders and its business underscore the company’s technological eco-centric strategy. While that loyalty has made for rich rewards over the long term, it will mean very little to a myopic stock market when Apple reports its latest financial results Wednesday.

When a company so dominates a business like Apple does, it is subject to plenty of rumors, especially when that company, like Apple, is disciplined to not respond to speculation. There have been a series of anonymous and Wall Street analyst worries floated in the past quarter centered on the iPhone 5. First were concerns Apple couldn’t get enough supplies to build the phones fast enough. Then there were hints Apple cut its supply orders, suggesting slower sales.

Apple optimists have been quick to defend the company even as its stock has fallen from $700 to around $500 per share since September. The stock drop has come even as Apple probably sold a record number of iPhones and iPads during the holiday quarter.

No doubt Apple will trumpet its financial prowess on Wednesday. And it should. After all it generates more than $500 million dollars a day. But the short-sighted stock market has been conditioned to expect big numbers. Therein is the challenge for Apple: incubating such devotion without inflating expectations.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.

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