The U.N. General Assembly has voted by a more than two-thirds majority to recognize the state of Palestine.
The resolution upgrading the Palestinians' status to a nonmember observer state at the United Nations was approved by the 193-member world body late Thursday by a vote of 138-9 with 41 abstentions.
ORLANDO --
Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater said Thursday that it’s time for insurance companies to stop complaining and to lower premiums to reflect changes to the no-fault car insurance laws.
“I am comfortable that if assaults on the courts are unsuccessful and the bill can stand there will be more than 25 percent savings,” Atwater said. “We don’t have to gnash about it, argue about it, whine about it or cry about it.”
Under the old system, the average personal injury protection insurance claim is $12,900, Atwater said during a presentation at the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Insurance Summit. That included $4,400 in acupuncture, $3,700 for massage therapy, $3,200 to chiropractors and $1,600 for emergency room costs.
The new law, HB 119, restricts acupuncturists and massage therapists from participating in PIP and requires people injured in a car accident to be diagnosed with an emergency medical condition before they are eligible for the full $10,000 benefit.
“We just eliminated 68 percent of that cost,” Atwater told the group.
In order to get a bill passed on the last day of session, legislators agreed to insert some cost protections.
Insurance companies were required to submit new rate filings by Oct. 1 that either reduced PIP premiums by 10 percent or explain why they cannot. They are also expected to lower PIP by 25 percent by 2014.
So far, the actual numbers from insurance companies are falling short of that initial goal.
Off the 44 rate filings that have been approved by the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation by mid-month, the average PIP savings is 2.5 percent. That reflects about a fourth of the 141 filings from companies selling all types of car insurances, with the rest still under review.
The numbers that insurers submitted vary wildly, said Sandra Starnes, the OIR’s director of property and casualty product review, during a separate presentation at the Insurance Summit. Some companies said they will reduce PIP by as much as 25 percent while the biggest requested increase is 41 percent. Although the 2.5 percent average is less than the Legislature’s target, it should be applauded, Starnes said.
“The straight average was provided to show that while the range of rate changes being approved varies significantly from company to company, the majority of the filings are resulting in overall statewide decreases in PIP premiums and all of the companies are recognizing the significant decreases in losses that are expected due to HB 119,” she later added via email.
Atwater told conference attendees that they shouldn’t have been taken by surprise that lawmakers built some cost-saving guarantees into the PIP law.
“After all the failures in the past, I think somebody would have to really be just a little naive to not think that the Legislature would want to put some aspirational numbers out there,” he said.
Contact Tia Mitchell at tmitchell@tampabay.com or (850) 224-7263.
Jose Padilla, the convicted terrorist who once called the Fort Lauderdale-area home before joining the ranks of al-Qaida, won his bid Wednesday to delay his resentencing in Miami federal court.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke granted a defense request to postpone the resentencing from Monday until Jan. 29. His lawyer argued that would give Padilla time to improve his mental health by visiting with relatives in the meantime, at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami.
Padilla, 42, is serving a 17-year prison at the maximum security prison in Florence, Colo. He faces up to life in prison at his resentencing.
“Since his arrest in May of 2002, the government has systematically attempted to destroy Jose by psychologically torturing him and imprisoning him under the severest of conditions,” Federal Public Defender Michael Caruso, who represented Padilla at his 2007 trial, wrote in court papers.
“Not surprisingly, this psychological torture has taken a toll on Jose.”
Federal prosecutors voiced strong opposition to the delay. “Our position is, we should just get on with it,” Frazier said.
Last year, a federal appeals court ruled that the one-time “enemy combatant” — perhaps better known as the “dirty bomber” — should receive harsher punishment reflecting his extensive criminal record.
The appellate court found that Judge Cooke was too lenient when she “unreasonably discounted” his criminal history before lowering a potential 30-year-to-life sentence.
Padilla, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, was a former Chicago gang member with 17 arrests and a murder conviction before becoming a recruit for al-Qaida, according to federal prosecutors.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the controversial case back to Cooke to resentence Padilla, who trained with al-Qaida the year before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to trial evidence.
Caruso appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying Cooke “imposed a fair and reasonable sentence.” But the high court declined to hear his petition.
The appeals court in Atlanta, in a 2-1 ruling, upheld the terrorism convictions of Padilla and two others: Adham Amin Hassoun, a Palestinian who had met him at a Broward mosque in the 1990s; and Hassoun’s colleague, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a U.S. citizen of Jordanian descent. They were sentenced to 15 years and eight months, and 12 years and eight months, respectively.
All three defendants, convicted of conspiring to support Islamic extremists overseas, sought a new federal trial based on claims of improper testimony by the lead FBI agent and a terrorism expert, along with insufficient evidence and other allegations.
Padilla also challenged Cooke’s decision to reject a motion to dismiss his indictment based on “outrageous government conduct” while the former enemy combatant was held in a Naval brig before his transfer to Miami to face terrorism charges in 2006.
Padilla was held without being charged in the South Carolina brig for 3 1/2 years — time that the Miami judge cut from his sentence.
The appellate court, in an opinion written by Chief Judge Joel F. Dubina and joined by Judge William H. Pryor, sided with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami. Prosecutors, who were seeking life imprisonment for Padilla, appealed Cooke’s 17-year sentence. They argued the judge’s prison term was 13 years below the low end of sentencing guidelines: 30 years.
The appellate court wrote that Cooke’s punishment “reflects a clear error of judgment about the sentencing of this career offender.” The court noted that his codefendant, Hassoun, had no prior criminal history but received a sentence that was “only” 20 months less than Padilla’s.
Cooke “attached little weight to Padilla’s extensive criminal history, gave no weight to his future dangerousness, compared him to criminals who were not similarly situated, and gave unreasonable weight to the condition of his pre-trial detention,” Dubina wrote.
Buckle up, Dwarves, Hobbits and Wizards, and put your seats and tray tables in the upright position! ET was the only U.S. show invited aboard the Air New Zealand Boeing 777-300 "Hobbit Plane" to journey from Auckland to Wellington, NZ with the cast of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey right before the world premiere of the film.
Watch the video as ET's Debbie Matenopoulos tests out her flight attendant skills on the trip with J.R.R. Tolkien's great-great grandson Royd Tolkien alongside the new movie's Dwarf heroes Aidan Turner, Dean O'Gorman, Graham McTavish and John Callen.
Pics: 'The Hobbit' Photo Exclusive
On the tarmac, the travelers were met by the rest of the Hobbit cast, including Martin Freeman, Elijah Wood and director Peter Jackson, and then it was on to the mega-red-carpet premiere (all 600 meters of it, complete with an Air New Zealand Hobbit Plane flyover) to talk to Hobbit stars Andy Serkis, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and more! Sir Ian McKellen was unable to make the event, but he did address fans in a big-screen video message.
The long-awaited big-screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy adventure, a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, follows the adventures of the diminutive Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) as he journeys with a group of 13 Dwarves to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug. On the way, they must battle treacherous Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and sly Sorcerers. And when Bilbo gains possession of Gollum's (Serkis) "precious" ring, the fate of Middle-earth hangs in the balance.
Video: Precious Gollum Moments in New 'Hobbit' Trailer
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey rides into theaters in 3D and 2D in select theaters and IMAX on December 14. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will be released Dec. 13, 2013; while the third installment in the series, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, will hit theaters July 18, 2014.
Thousands of New Yorkers remain in the dark in Sandy’s wake, but Con Ed today touted two industry awards for “outstanding reliability.”
The utility won the awards from the PA Consulting Group for best reliability in the northeast and best overall system-wide reliability during 2011.
“With the hardships so many in our service area have faced with the onset and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, this affords us only a moment before we redouble our efforts to further strengthen our systems,” said Con Ed veep John Miksad.
Sandy-socked New Yorkers, however, were not impressed.
“People had no power for two weeks, three weeks, some people just got power back. It’s pretty funny I would say,” said Victoria Romanyuk, 28, of Brighton Beach, who lost power for five days.
The holidays are coming fast, and if you’re like me, you’ve probably gotten very little of your gift shopping done.
Here are suggestions for a variety of gifts for the techie and the not-so-techie people on your list.
Some of these items can be found in stores and some are only available online, but you should be able to order them in time for Christmas or Hanukkah.
IOMEGA EZ MEDIA & BACKUP CENTER
What is it? A hard drive that lives on your home network so you can share files, store all your photos and music and back up your home computers. Works on Macintosh, Windows and Linux computers.
The EZ Media & Backup Center is available in 1-, 2- and 3-terabyte capacities. It is simple to set up. It lives next to your home router and plugs into the network via Ethernet.
Major features include a built-in iTunes server so your music is available to all connected computers, Time Machine support for easy Macintosh backups and Iomega’s Personal Cloud to access your data from any Internet connection.
It can also stream your video files to your TV if you’ve got a compatible streaming box or an Internet-connected TV.
Software for backing up Windows PCs is also included.
Who’s it for? Any family that wants central storage for their digital lives. This is a great home for your digital photo, music or video library.
What does it cost? One terabyte for $169.99, two terabytes for $209.99, three terabytes for $279.99.
Where can you get it? Online at www.iomega.com, Amazon, Best Buy, Apple store, Fry’s.
NETATMO URBAN WEATHER STATION
What is it? A wireless indoor/outdoor weather station that displays through an application on your Apple or Android mobile device.
There are two parts, one that lives in your house and one you place outside.
The indoor component plugs into the wall and monitors the temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, carbon dioxide level and even the sound level in decibels.
The outdoor module is battery-powered and measures temperature and humidity.
Once you connect the Netatmo to your home Wi-Fi network, you can download the free app and see your weather stats from anywhere.
Setup was easy enough, and you can set the app to notify you when carbon dioxide rises to levels that you should be warned about — which is great.
Who’s it for? Weather geeks and people who like to know what the temperature is without having to fire up a browser.
What does it cost? $179
Where can you get it? www.netatmo.com
3M LED ADVANCED LIGHT
What is it? 3M’s first foray into the home light bulb market is with the LED Advanced Light, which uses light-emitting diodes (LED) to produce 800 lumens (the light of a 60-watt bulb).
The Advanced Light has a life span of 25 years and costs just $1.63 per year if it’s turned on for three hours per day.
The bulb lights instantly and is dimmable.
It’s a little intimidating to start buying light bulbs that might outlive me, but my wallet approves.
Who’s it for? Anyone who wants to save money or wants a bulb that might not have to be changed until 2035.
What does it cost? $25
Where can you get it? Select Wal-Mart stores. For more information, go to www.3mlighting.com/LED.
STEM IZON 2.0 WI-FI VIDEO MONITOR
What is it? A small, wireless video camera that you can monitor remotely with an iOS device.
A Miccosukee Tribe member testified he did not pay millions of dollars to his former defense attorneys in a fatal car-crash lawsuit, putting him at odds with the position they have taken in the long-running case.
Jimmie Bert also denied obtaining advances or loans from the tribe to pay his legal fees — contradicting the assertions of his former attorneys, who collected more than $3 million defending him and his daughter.
Bert, who admitted fault at trial along with his daughter, says he never saw the bills from Miami attorneys Guy Lewis and Michael Tein and paid only a small fraction of their legal fees years ago.
Bert’s testimony, delivered in a deposition on Friday, reversed his own earlier account and appears to undermine the lawyers’ position that they were paid the high fees by their clients — not the Miccosukee Tribe.
Lewis, a former U.S. attorney, and Tein, also an ex-federal prosecutor, are facing potential perjury sanctions for allegedly lying about who paid them. The lawyers maintain the tribe advanced money or made loans to Bert and his daughter, Tammy Gwen Billie, so the defendants could pay their legal bills.
The source of the legal payments to the lawyers carries significant weight. If the funds came from the tribe as opposed to the father and daughter, it means there indeed was more than enough money available to pay an outstanding civil judgment of nearly $3.2 million. The pair has refused to pay, insisting they cannot afford it.
Billie, who served time in prison as a result of the car-crash case, has failed to show up for a deposition and to turn over key documents to the attorney for the victim’s family. This month, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ronald Dresnick found Billie in contempt of court, triggering a warrant to bring her to his court.
The victim’s attorney, Ramon M. Rodriguez, is still trying to obtain important evidence from Lewis and Tein, including their retainer agreement with their Miccosukee clients.
In his deposition, Bert said he signed the retainer agreement with their law firm, but it was not translated for him. Lewis and Tein said they cannot find the 2005 contract.
Bert also testified that he was unaware that Lewis and Tein collected about $950,000 in legal fees after a Miami-Dade jury returned a verdict against him and his daughter in July 2009 — money that could have gone toward paying the judgment.
In their defense, Lewis and Tein’s lawyer, Paul Calli, recently deposed the tribe’s assistant chairman, Jasper Nelson. Nelson testified this month that the tribe approved a loan for Billie and Bert to pay their legal expenses. Asked by Calli if he had “any reason to believe [the] Lewis Tein [firm] ever did anything wrong to the Miccosukee Tribe,” Nelson replied: “No.”
Bert’s testimony comes more than three years after he and his daughter were ordered by a Miami-Dade jury to pay the financial award to the survivors of a woman who was killed in a head-on collision more than a decade ago.
At the 2009 trial, Lewis and Tein represented Billie, the driver who killed Liliana Bermudez, 30, on the Tamiami Trail, and Bert, who owned her uninsured Acura Legend. The defendants admitted fault at trial, so the jury only decided damages. Ever since, the victim’s husband, Carlos Bermudez, a local truck driver, and their teen-age son, Mathew, have futilely tried to collect the judgment.
Both Bert and his daughter have insisted they have no money of their own to pay the award. Each collects $160,000 a year — like hundreds of other Miccosukees — from the tribe’s profitable gambling operation at the west Miami-Dade casino.
The perjury allegations surfaced last year after the Bermudez family’s lawyer, Rodriguez, accused both attorneys and their clients of lying when they asserted the Miccosukee Tribe did not foot their huge legal bill. Rodriguez had obtained 61 checks totaling $3.1 million — made out by the tribe to the Lewis Tein law firm — to back up his allegations.
During a prior sanctions hearing in August 2011, Tein swore to Dresnick, the judge, that their two tribal clients, Billie and Bert, paid their legal bills.
Early last year, both clients submitted court affidavits asserting they had paid Lewis and Tein’s legal fees — a claim now denied by Bert in his deposition under oath and in a new sworn statement.
His daughter also signed an affidavit in October 2011 to back up Lewis’s and Tein’s claim that she and her father borrowed money from the Miccosukees to pay their legal bills.
The fallout from the Bermudez wrongful-death case has not only led to the perjury complaint, but also to state malpractice and federal racketeering suits filed by the Miccosukees against Lewis, Tein, former tribe chairman Billy Cypress and others.
Never believe anyone who tells you that the Internet is all nice or all terrible. Just like real life, there are good people and bad ones here. The majority of people behave badly occasionally and decently most of the time. Yes, there are some truly horrible people lurking and behaving in ways consistent to their form, but the thing is, we’re complicated creatures, online and off. So I don’t buy into theories that the Internet is all nice anymore than I believe all commenters are trolls. Still, there is something worrisome going on online, and if you were the Chicken Little type (which none of us here are, obviously), you might be covering your head and hiding from the Twitterverse. It’s this matter of death threats online.
RELATED: After His Vulgar Assault on Jenny Johnson, Chris Brown Quits Twitter
The most recent example of this, of course, is the recent Chris Brown/Jenny Johnson nastiness. Brown has his share of on- and offline haters, but he has plenty of adamant supporters, too. This became apparent when Johnson, a comedian who’d been on a Twitter crusade of sorts against Brown since his physical attack on Rihanna, after a stream of tweets intended to shame/provoke the singer, finally hit pay-dirt with a response (other than Brown blocking her at one point). Over the weekend, Chris Brown tweeted: “I look old as fuck! I’m only 23,” to which Johnson tweeted, “I know! Being a worthless piece of shit can really age a person.” (That tweet’s been retweeted by Johnson followers more than 7,000 times.)
RELATED: The Internet–Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
You probably know what happened next, even if you don’t: After a pretty gross back-and-forth that doesn’t make either side look great, Brown deactivated his account. But his followers started to pile on, threatening Johnson with—what else?—death. There is no irony here about the followers of a guy who beat his girlfriend offering up a stream of brutish death threats; it is only sad.
RELATED: Is Twitter for Girls?
Enter the age of the online death threat. It’s scary, yeah, because it’s a death threat. Humans rarely like being threatened with an end to their basic essence, no matter the delivery method for that announcement. And yet, on Twitter, this becomes such a weird, surreal concept: It’s deeply impersonal (these people don’t even know each other and probably never will; NONE of them know each other, likely), fueled by a false kind of rage spawned by the way the Internet works (one side gets self-righteously mad, another side self-righteously madder, and repeat). Fortunately, in most cases, the threat is also incredibly unlikely to be fulfilled. That doesn’t make it pleasant. One might be prone to try to laugh away the kind of death threats Johnson received, from people she doesn’t know (people who don’t know Chris Brown either), who might not recognize her on the street, who most likely live nowhere near where she does and probably also don’t plan to actually kill her. Yet a death threat is pretty much the ultimate “I hate you,” and it’s worth wondering, when “I hate you” doesn’t serve to deliver the message strongly enough and we start saying “I’m going to kill you”/”you deserve to die,” how far has humanity gone down some sick drain?
RELATED: Only Six Percent of Americans Use Twitter
As David Knowles writes for The Daily in a piece titled “Twitter Terror,” Johnson is hardly the first person to be threatened on Twitter. President Obama, Mitt Romney, Ellen Page, Tom Daley, and Taylor Swift can claim this dubious badge of fame, too. The list goes on. But before the little bird was the death-threat method of the year, death threats would arrive to famous people, politicians, and those in the public eye, particularly controversial figures, as a matter of course—on paper, perhaps by telephone, and in the movies, via the weird scrawlings or puzzle-piece letter constructions of madmen. Of course, there’s no handwriting to decipher on Twitter, there are only assumptions of power and education based on icons and followers, word choice and spelling, what the person says and has said, as well as their affiliations. But again, probably, the people threatening Jenny Johnson shouldn’t scare her (if you’re really going to try to kill someone and are dumb enough to publicize it on Twitter, that’s a clear benefit to your intended victim). If there’s anything to be afraid of, it’s this idea that death threats are this kind of new online norm. I think part of that fear, the fear that this is just a regular thing nowadays, is what subconsciously creates the need in us to assume a such a horrified shock-and-outraged position about such death threats. Knowles quotes digital media expert Jeanette Castillio as calling “the Twitterverse … a very uncivil place.” Is it any more uncivil than anywhere else, though? The Internet hardly created hate, or hate-speak, or bullying. Further, do we only increase the levels of that incivility by freaking out about what a bunch of random people are raging about behind the protection, and often anonymity, of Twitter?
RELATED: Friday’s Top Tweets
As Knowles writes, also, Twitter does have a rule against this sort of thing; people aren’t supposed to “publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Still, like everything online, there is too much information, and not enough time for comprehensive monitoring. Knowles adds, “A small percentage of violent tweets are investigated by police, but even then Twitter is reluctant to betray what it believes is a sacred duty to protect a user’s privacy.”
That’s the other thing about online threats: They manage to be so incredibly cowardly, and an utterly ineffectual form of communication—until, suddenly, the media is paying attention to said threats and in some ways legitimizing them. I’m honestly not sure what the media’s role should be in acknowledging tweets of the sort that Brown and Johnson and Brown’s followers and Johnson exchanged. Sometimes it seems like that old “ignoring” tactic your mom taught you could work out to everyone’s benefit—and yet these things are bound to go viral; badly behaving celebrities are something TMZ taught us people want to know about. These things are also, when discussed calmly and rationally, fodder for good conversations about how we live now.
Like a rude comment, a Twitter death threat is a way of hiding in your comfy-safe basement in your comfy-safe boxers and saying really gross things to someone in the hopes that they will get upset. These people are bullying, or hope to bully. Which means we shouldn’t take the bait, a thing far more difficult to do than say. Turning the other cheek was hard in real life, too, and you never know, better safe than sorry. But more important than preventing “actual Twitter murders” (which I dare say and hope will not become the norm), it’s worth paying attention to this ratcheting up of the hate ante as a new kind of communication norm. A cynical person would say we no longer need to touch people, instead, we reach out to them online. We no longer need to talk on the phone, we simply tweet or email or text. We certainly don’t write letters, and we hardly write on paper. Instead we blog and Tumbl and Instagram and Facebook. And so, when we get angry, irrationally or otherwise, we take to those methods of communication to speak out, retaliate, vow revenge. The most worrisome thing about the Twitter death threat, I think, that if it’s just something people do now. I don’t want to be in the Age of the Twitter Death Threat. It makes me pretty nostalgic for the good old days of the handwritten love letter, actually.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Backstreet Boy AJ McLean and wife, makeup artist Rochelle Deanna Karidis, had their first child together on Tuesday, In Touch reports.
PICS: Celebs & Their Cute Kids
According to the news source, the couple welcomed a baby girl named Ava Jaymes.
"We are all doing well and are thrilled to welcome Ava to the world," said the singer, 34.
Ava was born weighing 7 lbs. and 7 oz., according to In Touch.
VIDEO: A.J. McLean & Wife Expecting a Baby
AJ and Rochelle made their pregnancy announcement just four months after their Beverly Hills wedding.
AJ announced the baby's gender and name via Twitter in July.
It took less than two hours for a Manhattan jury today to convict a Bronx man who'd been linked by DNA to 19-year-old' college student's violent rape on Prince Street in 2008.
"He may have gotten away that day," prosecutor Shannon Lucey had told jurors of Andres Suarez, 30. "But he left his mark."
Suarez had indeed skated for more than three years, only getting tied to the attack after his DNA was swabbed for the state database after a recent assault arrest and it matched DNA left at the rape scene.
Jurors had heard the woman describe the attack on the witness stand. Suarez had stalked her by subway from Brooklyn, following her home to her Prince Street apartment building and then pushing his way inside behind her.
"I just shut off," she testified tearfully of how she braved the attack on the concrete floor of her building's courtyard, Suarez's box-cutter at her throat.
"I kind of went somewhere else," she said.
Suarez had alluded that his DNA wound up at the scene because of consensual sex.
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance credited the fast conviction to his office's Sex Crimes unit -- and to the courage of the victim, who now lives in Germany.
Suarez gets sentenced on predatory sex assault, rape, burglary and sex abuse by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro on Dec. 12.
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