'Deception' Stars Meagan Good and Laz Alonso on Prospects for a Second Season

I recently caught up with Meagan Good and Laz Alonso -- stars of NBC's Deception -- at a lunch and roundtable discussion at the Four Season's Beverly Hills to chat about the prime time soap opera.

The series opens with the death of wealthy socialite and party girl Vivian Bowers of an apparent drug overdose. When FBI agent Will Moreno (Alonso) is convinced the death is a homicide, he enlists Detective Joanna Locasto (Good), Vivian's best friend 20 years ago, to uncover the dark secrets of the Bower family and clues about why her life was in danger.

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And while we are about halfway through the series with all 11 episodes in the can, there is no word yet on whether it will be returning for a second season. However, the two stars are keeping their "fingers crossed" and explain that there is a lot the fans can look forward to, including the identity of Vivian's killer.

Watch my interview with Meagan and Laz to find out what attracted them to the project and what we can expect for the rest of this season. 

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A new episode of Deception airs tonight at 10/9c on NBC.

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NFL lineman busted with loaded pistol at JFK

A muscle-bound NFL lineman was busted at LaGuardia Airport today for packing a loaded .40 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol.

Da’Quan Bowers - a second-year defensive end for the Tampa bay Buccaneers - was arrested at 11 a.m. at a US Air ticket counter as he was about to board a plane for North Carolina.

Sources believe Bowers arrived in New York with the gun on Friday, and was carrying the piece and a clip with eight rounds in a carry-on bag.

“The two of them were in the same bag, under the law it’s considered a loaded gun,” the source said.

Bowers, a Tampa resident, was boarding a flight to North Carolina, with his unidentified girlfriend, who lives in Raleigh.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Da'Quan Bowers at practice for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The former Clemson All-American was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and was awaiting arraignment.

Bowers, 22, a South Carolina native, just completed his second NFL season in 2012.

For his career he has 38 tackles and 4.5 quarterback sacks.

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Open English expands across Latin America

Back in 2008, Open English, a company run from Miami that uses online courses to teach English in Latin America, had just a handful of students in Venezuela and three employees. Today the company has more than 50,000 students in 22 Latin American countries and some 2,000 employees.

To fund this meteoric expansion, the founders of Open English — Venezuelans Andrés Moreno and Wilmer Sarmiento and Moreno’s American wife, Nicolette — began with $700. Over the last six years, the partners have raised more than $55 million, mostly from private investment and venture capital firms.

Their formula for success? The founders rejected traditional English teaching methods in physical classrooms and developed a system that allows students to tune into live classes every hour of the day from their computers at home, in the office or at school, and learn from native English-speaking teachers who may be based anywhere. Courses stress practical conversations online and the company guarantees fluency after a one-year course, offering six additional months free if students fail to become fluent.

“We wanted to change the way people learn English,” said Andrés Moreno, the 30-year-old co-founder and CEO, who halted his training as a mechanical engineer and worked full-time at developing the company with his partners. “And we want students to achieve fluency. Traditionally, students have to drive to an English academy, waste time in traffic, and try to learn from a teacher who is not an native English speaker in a class with 20 students.”

Using the Internet, Open English offers classes usually with two or three students and a teacher, interactive videos, other learning aids and personal attention from coaches who phone students regularly to see how they are progressing.

Courses cost an average of $750 per year and students can opt for monthly payments. This is about one-fifth to one-third of what traditional schools charge for small classes or individual instructors, Andrés noted.

“We work at building confidence with our students and encourage them to practice speaking English as much as possible during classes,” said Nicolette Moreno, co-founder and chief product officer, who met Andrés in Venezuela while she was working there on a service project. “Students are taught to actively participate in conversations like a job interview, traveling and talking on a conference call,” said Nicolette, who previously lived in Los Angles, worked with non-profits to create environmentally friendly products and fight poverty in emerging markets, and was head equity trader at an asset management firm. “Students need to speak English in our classes, even though it is sometimes difficult. They learn through immersion.”

Open English has successfully tapped into an enormous, underserved market. Millions of people in Latin America want to learn English to advance in their jobs, work at multinational companies, travel or work overseas and understand the popular music, movies and TV shows they constantly hear in English. Many of them take English courses at public and private schools and learn little if any useful conversational English. While students at private schools for the upper middle class and wealthy often learn foreign languages extremely well from native English-speaking teachers, most people can’t afford these schools or courses designed for one or two students.

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Plaque at Little River Post Office to honor Miami civil rights activist

A dedication ceremony to honor late civil rights activist Jesse J. McCrary, Jr. will take place Friday at the Little River Post Office..

Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson and Area Vice President Jo Ann Feindt will be in attendance at the 2 p.m. event at the post office at the branch at 140 NE 84th St.

The public is invited to attend ceremony where a plaque honoring McCrary will be installed in the Post Office lobby.

McCray was born in 1937 in Blitchton, Florida, the son of a Baptist preacher. He eventually went on to attend FAMU, where he was a civil rights activist, organizing sit-ins in Tallahassee before graduating with a law degree.

He became the first African-American member of the Florida Cabinet since the end of Reconstruction. He was also Florida’s first assistant Attorney General.

He returned to private practice in 1979 and was active in the community in the 1980s and 1990s.

McCrary died in 2007.

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A Good Day to Die Hard Bruce Willis Takes Over Box Office

Audiences agreed that it was a good weekend to die hard, as the fifth installment of the Die Hard franchise opened strong.

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A Good Day to Die Hard is expected to pull in $28.2 million over the four-day holiday, beating out last weekend's winner, Identity Thief ($27.6 million), and Safe Haven ($25.4 million.

This weekend is on pace to be the biggest international opening in the history of the 25-year-old Die Hard franchise, as it held the top box office spot in many of the 63 markets where it's been released.

Escape from Planet Earth had a harder time getting off the ground, garnering $20.5 million. Warm Bodies dropped to fifth place with $10.9 million.

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Club cad bloodies Rihanna in bottle attack, after yelling something about Chris Brown: report

Startraksphotos / Splash

Rihanna leaves a London nightclub worse for wear after bottle attack.

Bloody hell: Some lout in London crashed Rihanna's party.

The sultry singer was bloodied after a man threw a bottle at her during a night out at nightclub The Box, apparently enraged because of her decision to get back together with abusive ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, MediaTakeOut.com reported.

Rihanna stumbled and fell into a grate, slicing open her leg. Her assailant yelled something about Brown before hurling the bottle of soft drink Lucozade at the star, the site reported.

Brown infamously beat up Rihanna in 2009, and fans have never forgiven him. Apparently some of that anger has spilled over to Rihanna, after her decision to get back together with the hothead last month.

Brown and Rihanna raised eyebrows at last Sunday's Grammys when they smiled and snuggled throughout the ceremony, four years and a day after he sent her to the hospital on Feb. 8, 2009.

Earlier this month, Brown was accused of faking his way through the community service he got for the attack.

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Small business lending rebounds in South Florida

For years, Pablo Oliveira dreamed of buying a property to house his high-end linen and furniture rental company, Nuage Designs, which has created settings for such glamorous events as the weddings of Carrie Underwood and Chelsea Clinton.

A few months ago, that dream came true, when Oliveira purchased a warehouse across the street from his current Miami location. He is now renovating the loft-like space with the help of a $2.1 million, 25-year small business loan.

“It allows me to own my own space as opposed to renting, and that will decrease my costs for infrastructure and allow me to build equity with time,” said Oliveira, who secured a U.S. Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan from Wells Fargo.

For small businesses like Oliveira’s, a loan can be the critical key to growing a business, as well as the kindling to ignite an operation.

Take Harold Scott’s fledgling Great Scott Security, which manufactures window guards in Hollywood that can open quickly in case of need.

When he was 13, Scott’s stepfather perished in a Georgia house fire because he couldn’t escape through heavy window bars. Scott made it his mission to fix the problem.

“I promised myself I would dedicate all my time to working on a solution,” said Scott, 60.

Now retired from a 23-year career in the U.S. Justice Department, Scott recently secured a $7,500 microloan from Partners for Self Employment. He used it to buy a computer and pay for marketing and other business expenses for his quick-release window guards, which have met national, state and Miami-Dade County fire safety codes.

During the depths of the recession, business owners often griped that gaining access to capital was their biggest hurdle. Saddled with bad loans, many banks were wary of making new ones. At the same time, both the value of collateral and the creditworthiness of many borrowers tumbled.

Now, at last, banks are starting to open their pocketbooks again, experts say, though lending is still not on par with pre-recession levels.

“There is no question that small business borrowing declined as a result of the recession and has yet to recover to pre-crisis levels,” said Richard Brown, chief economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., via email. “According to the Federal Reserve, total loans to noncorporate businesses and farms stood at just under $3.8 trillion in September, which remains below the peak of about $4.1 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2008.”

Signs of Growth

In South Florida, more businesses are applying for loans and getting approvals from banks, according to lenders, officials at government agencies and leaders of organizations that help small business owners secure loans.

“Lenders are expressing a greater interest than they have in the past few years in terms of meeting the needs of the small business community,” said Marjorie Weber, Miami-Dade Chapter Chair of SCORE, which helps business owners put loan packages together and refers them to bankers.

Loan figures are indeed rising. During the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2012, SBA-guaranteed loans were up in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties, according to the SBA. In fiscal 2012, 449 loans were approved in Miami-Dade, totaling $213.3 million, up from 426 loans for $154.4 million in 2011. In Broward, 262 loans for $91.4 million were approved in fiscal 2012, compared to 257 loans for $102.4 million in 2011.

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Hard road, cheap pay, for South Florida school bus drivers

If you think driving a car with a couple of children fussing and fidgeting in the back seat can be distracting, consider the plight of school bus drivers.

They maneuver a bulky, boxy vehicle through busy streets while shouldering responsibility for dozens of otherwise unsupervised students.

It’s a full-time job with irregular hours. The pay? Generally less than $20,000.

At a time when the state is looking to ramp-up security in schools, some point out school buses have not been a part of the conversation.

In Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest school district, which has more than 1,300 drivers, none of the school buses have security cameras, a situation that was underscored not long ago when a 15-year-old student brought a loaded gun onto a bus and it accidentally discharged, hitting a 13-year-old in the neck, killing her.

In New York City, where about 9,000 school bus drivers recently went on strike, close to $7,000 is spent annually for each student passenger. Miami-Dade, the nation’s fourth-largest school district, spends about $1,000 for each school bus passenger.

Parents like Robin Godby of Pembroke Pines say school bus drivers should just be in charge of driving students safely — that there ought to be an aide on board watching students to make sure they’re behaving and are safe.

“I don’t think they get the support,” Godby said of bus drivers. “They have to deal with kids who have disciplinary problems and they have to drive a vehicle.”

She knows what it’s like to try to discipline her two daughters from the driver’s seat.

“It drives me nuts,” Godby said. “Especially if they start fighting or bickering. It’s distracting.”

School bus drivers in Florida’s larger districts can have close to 90 students behind them.

Ronda Martin, with the Office of Labor Relations for Miami-Dade public schools, says bus drivers are paid for the 191 days when students are in school. But she says many of the drivers work overtime and weekends to earn extra money.

“I try to do overtime at least every day, five days a week,” said Sharayne Milton, a school bus driver for Miami-Dade schools. “And if they want me to work on the weekend, I will.”

Milton takes students on field trips and waits to transport students who have after-school sports and activities. Her day starts at 4 a.m. and can end at 10:30 p.m., with about four unpaid hours in between while students are in class.

In Miami-Dade, about 75 percent of school bus drivers are female, which can make it difficult to discipline older, male students.

When fits fly

Driver Gwendolyn Tillman says she won’t get in between fighting students.

“Usually if there are some other guys on the bus and the guys have respect for the bus drivers, the other young men on the bus will pull them apart,” Tillman said.

If nobody pulls the kids apart, bus drivers are instructed to call the district dispatcher — and not the police.

“Our drivers do not take actions against individual students,” said Jerry Klein, who is in charge of school transportation in Miami-Dade County.

“There is a process for them to fill out a report and then the schools deal with it like any other misbehavior in the schools.”

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Hugh Grant is a Dad Again

Hugh Grant confirmed Saturday that he is a dad again.

PICS: Celebs and Their Cute Kids

The 52-year-old British actor tweeted, "In answer to some journos. Am thrilled my daughter now has a brother. Adore them both to an uncool degree. They have a fab mum."

Hugh and actress Tinglan Hong welcomed a daughter named Tabitha in 2011. No word yet on what Tabitha's little brother is named.

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Hugh told The Guardian in 2012 of being a dad, "I like my daughter very much. Fantastic. Has she changed my life? I'm not sure. Not yet. Not massively, no. But I'm absolutely thrilled to have had her, I really am. And I feel a better person."

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Upstate fire department's squirrel hunt fundraiser draws ire

HOLLEY — A weekend squirrel-shooting contest in upstate New York is a sell-out, with all 1,000 tickets spoken for, organizers said, despite a push by animal rights groups and others to cancel the event.

The 7th annual "Hazzard County Squirrel Slam" will raise money for the volunteer Holley Fire Department, the event sponsor.

Prizes ranging from $50 to $200 will be given out Saturday for the largest squirrel shot and the heaviest group of five squirrels. Five rifles and shotguns are to be raffled off, according to a flier on the western New York fire department's website.

Critics have sought to stop the event through online petitions and protests, calling the event cruel and a bad example for children. The contest targeting red and gray squirrels is open to anyone over age 12 with a hunting license.

"Declaring someone a winner for killing the most animals influences children and the wider community to believe that wildlife is unimportant and killing for a monetary prize is meritorious," Brian Shapiro, New York state director of the Humane Society of the United States, wrote in a letter to Holley Fire Chief Pete Hendrickson.

Supporters say hunting is just part of life upstate, including in the largely rural village of 1,800 people on the Erie Canal.

"This is a community of hunters and they're going to hunt anyways. Why not hold a fundraiser that will reach our community," the event's chairwoman, Tina Reed, told the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester. She said the event has grown each year: This year, 1,000 tickets were made available after it sold out of 200 tickets last year.

Participants must abide by New York's hunting regulations, hunting only where it is permitted and killing no more than six squirrels in a single day. Shooting will be followed by a weigh-in, then a dinner.

State Sen. Tony Avella, a Queens Democrat, called the contest insane during an Albany news conference with the group Friends of Animals earlier this week. The group planned to protest outside the Holley Fire House on Saturday afternoon.

Avella's upstate colleague, Sen. George Maziarz, a Democrat who represents Holley, defended the fundraiser, saying hunting, fishing and shooting sports are part of the region's lifestyle.

"It's like a fishing derby but it's squirrels, not fish," Maziarz spokesman Adam Tabelski said Friday.

Neither the fire department nor members of its board of directors returned telephone and email messages from The Associated Press.

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