Man fires 50 shots at Calif. mall parking lot, sending crowds running for cover — then 'just gives up'; no one hurt

AP

Orange County Sheriff deputies at the Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach, Calif., where a man fired some 50 rounds — hitting no one — just a day after the Newtown massacre

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — A suspect who fired about 50 shots in the parking lot of a crowded Southern California shopping mall, sending shoppers sprinting for safety, was cooperative when officers took him into custody, authorities said Sunday.

Witnesses said people ran, screaming and ducking for cover, when 42-year-old Marcos Gurrola fired into the air and onto the ground Saturday afternoon near the Macy's department store at the open-air Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach.

AP

Suspect Marcos Gurrola gave up without a fight after causing mall panic.

He paused to reload several times, police said.

Then Gurrola put the gun down and offered no resistance when bicycle officers arrested him around 4:30 p.m., said Lt. John Lewis.

"He just gave up," Lewis said.

Investigators have no motive, Lewis said.

Gurrola, of Garden Grove, was charged with shooting at an inhabited dwelling. He was being held Sunday on $250,000 bail. Police recovered a handgun and ammunition.

Officials said one person suffered a minor injury while running away, and was treated at the scene.

The gunfire caused panic, coming a day after a gunman killed 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school, and days after a deadly mall shooting in Oregon.

The mall, near Pacific Coast Highway in the heart of Newport Beach, was crowded with holiday shoppers and the parking lot was full. Many people ran into stores, a movie theater and other businesses.

"It's a miracle nobody got injured," said Sven Maric, who said he was celebrating his wife's birthday at a restaurant patio about 50 yards away. "The bullets had to land somewhere, and he shot so many."

Some stores voluntarily closed their doors and kept shoppers inside while police investigated.

Bret McGaughey, 22, of Laguna Beach, said he was with his mom in the Apple store when shoppers ran to the rear of the store as employees locked the front entrance. He estimated that up to 100 people stayed in the back of the store for about 30 minutes until Apple employees announced that police said it was safe to reopen the doors.

Gurrola is a licensed security guard whose firearm permit expired in 2001, according to the Orange County Register, which cited state records.

Gurrola doesn't appear to have a criminal record, the newspaper said.

A telephone number for a Marcos Gurrola was disconnected.

On Tuesday, a gunman at an Oregon shopping mall killed two people and wounded a third amid a holiday crowd estimated at 10,000 people. Clackamas County authorities are still trying to determine why the gunman opened fire before killing himself.

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Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.

The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.

“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.

“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.

Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”

Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.

And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.

Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.

The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.

Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.

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5 reasons Charlie Crist should (and shouldn’t) run for Florida governor

It was the biggest piece of thoroughly unsurprising news in months: Charlie Crist is becoming a Democrat. The next expectation is Crist will announce a campaign for Florida governor. He’s tanned, rested and ready after two years at a high-profile law firm and anyone who follows his career has a hard time picturing Crist out of public life forever. But the Florida Republicans’ prince-turned-pariah is no lock to win a Democratic primary against the likes of Alex Sink, let alone a general election against Gov. Rick Scott, who can pour tens of millions of his own money into a reelection campaign. A Crist candidacy has pros and cons. Here are five reasons why the former governor should run again and five reasons why he shouldn’t.

FIVE REASONS HE SHOULD

RUN FOR GOVERNOR

1. Democrats need a winner. Tired of losing, Florida Democrats are so hungry for some real influence in state government that they will cut Crist slack for his blatant opportunism and overlook some of his more strident conservative stands.

Yes, President Barack Obama won Florida twice in a row, but Democrats have lost the past four gubernatorial races and now hold just one of six statewide offices. The ultimate prize for party-building and fundraising is the Governor’s Mansion, and Democrats only have to see how relentlessly the Florida GOP has attacked Crist for months to realize how seriously it views him as a threat.

A sizable chunk of the Democratic primary electorate won’t trust Crist, so the more crowded the primary, the better for him. So far, it looks like a crowd with potential contenders including former Chief Financial Officer Sink, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, former state Sen. Nan Rich of Broward County, state Sen. Jeremy Ring of Broward and former Miami-Dade Commissioner Jimmy Morales. But all would have to spend millions to become known statewide.

2. The Democratic coalition. Trial lawyers and teachers are two critical groups to bankroll a statewide campaign, and Crist is uniquely positioned to win over both. He works for one of the state’s most prominent trial lawyers, John “For the People” Morgan, and teachers praised Crist even when he was a Republican governor for vetoing a controversial teacher merit pay bill.

Crist also has wide support in the party’s most loyal constituency, African-Americans. They appreciated his outreach and his expansion of the attorney general’s power to prosecute civil rights cases and a decision, overturned by Scott and others, to make it easier for ex-felons to regain their civil rights so they could vote.

3. Obama. Crist has to be the president’s favorite Florida politician. He was one of the few Republicans to enthusiastically endorse Obama’s $700 billion stimulus package, and Crist was all over Florida this election season stumping for Obama. He raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for the president’s reelection campaign and spoke at the Democratic National Convention. At the moment, “the hug” looks pretty good.

And Sink? Right after her narrow loss to Scott in 2010, she told POLITICO the “tone deaf” Obama administration was to blame for her loss. “They got a huge wake-up call two days ago, but unfortunately they took a lot of Democrats down with them,” Sink said.

Obama and senior political advisor David Axelrod have lavishly praised Crist, and it’s likely they would be eager to help him win America’s biggest battleground state. Another big Crist fan: Bill Clinton, whose wife may be keen on having a Democrat lead Florida heading into 2016.

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Google+ app for Android updated with new photo-sharing features, emoticons, GIFs and more

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Riveting Details Emerge from CT School Rampage

As morning turned to afternoon on Friday, further details continued to emerge from Newtown, CT, a tight-knit community shaken by a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that took the lives of innocent students and teachers, in addition to the gunman, reportedly identified as Adam Lanza.

RELATED: President Fights Tears as He Addresses Nation

As President Barack Obama touched on in his tear-jerking press conference, this is not the first time the nation has witnessed a tragedy of this kind. The recent mass shooting at an Aurora, CO movie theater is just one instance of such violence. Columbine High School and Virginia Tech also resonate as prime examples.

Hollywood's biggest stars were quick to react to the news on Twitter and made an outcry for stricter gun control regulations.

Watch the video for ET's complete coverage of today's biggest headline.

RELATED: Celebs Tweet Reactions to CT School Shooting

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Domino's founder sues federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in Obamacare

DETROIT — The founder of Domino's Pizza is suing the federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law.

Tom Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn't health care but a "gravely immoral" practice.

He filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court. It also lists as a plaintiff Domino's Farms, a Michigan office park complex that Monaghan owns.

Monaghan offers health insurance that excludes contraception and abortion for employees. The new federal law requires employers to offer insurance including contraception coverage or risk fines.

AP

Domino's pizza founder Tom Monaghan in 1996

Monaghan says the law violates his rights, and is asking a judge to strike down the mandate. There are similar lawsuits pending nationwide.

A message left Saturday for Monaghan's attorney, Richard Thompson, was not immediately returned.

The government says the contraception mandate benefits women.

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Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.

The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.

“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.

“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.

Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”

Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.

And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.

Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.

The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.

Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.

Read More..

Pentagon official stepping down to join FIU

Miami native Frank O. Mora is stepping down from a high post in the Pentagon to become director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University.

Mora, 48, has spent the past three and a half years guiding Defense Department policy in the Americas as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere — a position that has had oversight of the U.S. Southern Command during a period that included Haiti’s devastating earthquake and lifting travel restrictions on Cuba.

An academic who came to the job from the National War College, Mora held the post with a low-profile approach — few photo opportunities and below-the-radar travel throughout the region.

In a rare interview Friday, Mora disclosed his last day on the job will be Jan. 24, days after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, and that the toughest task of his tenure was the U.S. response to Haiti’s Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake .

“I think we saved lives,” he said of the multi-agency U.S. military-led response to the earthquake. “We had to mobilize everything we had and the resources we had.”

Still, analysis later found international efforts were duplicated and fell short in certain places of the impoverished island.

“It was completely uncoordinated with all these partner nations. The United Nations had the lead; we had a big presence,” he said. “But there wasn’t a coordinating mechanism.”

As a result of that disaster and another earthquake in Chile, Mora and the Department of Defense have championed a system of multi-national coordination for future humanitarian disasters in the hemisphere. It will start next year with a website being managed by Peru, headquarters of the next secretariat of the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, where nations can share contacts and information about resources being brought to a specific disaster.

As for Cuba, Mora said he was surely disappointed that his tenure didn’t see a shift in the political status quo there.

“Certainly I would’ve liked to see important change and transition,” he said. But the Obama administration’s lifting of travel restrictions likely has “had some impact on the families that have been able to see each other.”

Beyond that, he said, “it’s hard to measure what impact it had on the process of change in Cuba.”

For Mora, the new job provides a homecoming. He grew up in Miami, graduated from the old Belen Jesuit Preparatory School on SW Eighth Street in 1982 and, after getting a bachelor’s degree in political science at George Washington University, obtained both a master’s and doctorate from the University of Miami.

Now Mora is crossing town from the university where he studied to rival FIU, where now-President Mark Rosenberg founded LACC in 1979 “to promote the study of Latin America and the Caribbean in Florida and throughout the United States.”

When he starts work in Miami in June, Mora has a new vision for a center that was founded with a Cold War focus: Acting as a clearing house and think tank on common regional issues from energy and infrastructure to public health and the environment.

”These are the hot topic issues in the region that are of great interest,” he said, adding that when he’s not focusing on raising funds for the center, a major area of responsibility, he’ll emphasize its expertise on these issues through conferences and collaboration.

“Those are some of the critical issues going forward,” Rosenberg said Friday, noting that by bringing a “talented academic” from the Pentagon, FIU was getting “a person who understands the real world and the policy interface between the academy and practice.”

Plus, he said, Mora’s University of Miami pedigree and Pentagon service are in keeping with cross-town collaboration as well as LACC’s earliest support of Southcom in Miami. “We try to think out of the box,” he said, “and we don’t necessarily want to get pigeon-holed into what we should do and what we should be.”

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Old School vs. New in Billy & Bette's New Movie

Often times the best movies are the ones that come from personal experiences, and that's just what Billy Crystal mined for his new comedy with Bette Midler, Parental Guidance. Get a first look behind the scenes!

Video: Watch the 'Parental Guidance' Trailer 

Inspired by his own real-life experience of being asked to babysit his daughter's kids for several days, Billy says he immediately cranked out a story after all the mishaps and misunderstandings he endured: "It became a real contemporary story about old school vs. new school, about how I as a parent parented, and how my daughter is parenting now -- and our conflicts about doing that."

In theaters Christmas Day, Parental Guidance casts Billy as Artie, a grandfather who's used to calling the shots. When his eager-to-please wife Diane (played by Bette) agrees to babysit their three grandkids -- much to Artie's chagrin -- modern problems collide with Artie and Diane's old school methods of tough rules. But despite the numerous problems that come up -- yielding hilarious comedic dividends -- the family ultimately learns that they can come together by embracing the best of both worlds. Marisa Tomei and Tom Everett Scott also play the kids' type-A helicopter parents.

Video: Helen Mirren & Billy Crystal Vamp Up 'When Harry Met Sally 2'

"It's a human story told in a very funny and sweet way," says Bette. "I think everybody's in this film -- we've all clashed with our parents … we've all been treated well or badly, we all have vulnerabilities, we've all tried really, really hard to accomplish something and either succeeded or failed at it. It's a human experience."

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Gunman's rampage took only minutes, cop radio calls reveal

AFP/Getty Images

State Police inspect the area near Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Judging by the radio calls, it took only a few minutes for a gunman to snuff out the lives of 20 Newtown school children and six adults.

The first word of the horrifying Newtown school shooting went out over the town’s police radio at 9:36 this morning.

Two minutes later, a dispatcher reported the gunshots had stopped.

UP TO 27 PEOPLE SHOT DEAD AT SCHOOL

“Sandy Hook School. Caller is indicating she thinks there’s someone shooting in the building,” a Newtown dispatcher radioed in the town’s first report of the killings.

Less than a minute later, the dispatcher radioed:

“Units responding to the Sandy Hook School. The front glass has been broken in front of the school They are unsure why ...

“All units, the individual I have on the phone said he is continuing to hear what he believes to be gunfire."

Amid the confusing situation, officers can be heard reporting a possible second shooter headed for the rear of the school.

“The shooting appears to have stopped,” the dispatcher radioed at 9:38 a.m. “There is silence at this time. The school is in lockdown.”

Moments later, an officer apparently at the scene is heard saying: “They’re coming at me through this wood.”

“This is it,” said another.

And after that, at 9:46 a.m., as police searched the school, someone who could not hide the emotion in his voice radioed these haunting words: “I’ve got bodies here. Need ambulances.”

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