Miami Dolphins slam Norman Braman, Marlins Park deal

The Miami Dolphins ramped up their public campaign for a tax-funded stadium renovation this week, buying full-page ads against their top critic and trying to distance the plan from the unpopular Marlins deal.

The team bought an ad in Tuesday’s Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald knocking auto magnate Norman Braman’s criticism of the Sun Life Stadium deal, which would have Florida and Miami-Dade split the costs with owner Stephen Ross for a $400 million renovation. The Dolphins would pay at least $201 million, with taxpayers using state funds and a higher Miami-Dade hotel tax to pay $199 million.

In a fact sheet sent to media Tuesday morning, the Dolphins listed ways their deal differs from the 2009 Marlins deal. First: Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, would use private dollars to fund at least 51 percent of the Sun Life effort, compared to less than 25 percent from Marlins owner Jeff Loria. Second, Sun Life helps the economy more than the Marlins park does.

“Just because the Marlins did a bad deal doesn’t mean we should oppose a good deal where at least a majority of the cost is paid from private sources and more than 4,000 local jobs are created during construction alone,” the fact sheet states. And while the Dolphins’ Miami Gardens stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 2007 and is in the running for the 2016 game, “Marlins Stadium does not generate the ability to attract world-class sports events -- other than a World Series from time to time depending on the success of the team.”

NFL teams play eight home games a year if they don’t make the playoffs, while baseball teams have 81.

Miami and Miami-Dade built the Marlins a $640 million stadium at the site of the Dolphins’ old home at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana. The Marlins contributed about $120 million and agreed to pay between $2.5 million and $4.9 million a year for 35 years to pay back $35 million of debt the county borrowed for the stadium. As a publicly owned stadium, the Marlins ballpark pays no property taxes. Most of the public money came from Miami-Dade hotel taxes, along with $50 million of debt tied to the county’s general fund.

Sun Life is privately owned and pays $3 million a year in property taxes to Miami-Dade. It currently receives $2 million a year from Florida’ s stadium program, a subsidy tied to converting the football venue to baseball in the 1990s when the Marlins played there. The Dolphins also paid for a second full-page ad with quotes from leading hoteliers in Miami-Dade endorsing the stadium plan. Among them: Donald Trump, whose company recently purchased the Doral golf resort. “Steve Ross’ commitment to modernize Sun Life Stadium -- while covering most of the construction costs -- is the right thing for Miami-Dade,’’ the ad quotes Trump as saying.

Also on Tuesday, Ross and team CEO Mike Dee sent a letter to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and county commissioners requesting negotiations over the stadium deal. The letter said the deal Ross unveiled last week is a “baseline for debate” and asked for talks. The letter also urged the commission to adopt a resolution proposed by Commissioner Barbara Jordan endorsing the state bill that would allow taxes for Sun Life. The resolution is on the agenda for Wednesday’s commission meeting.

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Growers want state to give them 30-year no-bid access to Everglades land

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet will be asked on Wednesday to agree to a no-bid contract to allow two major agriculture companies to farm on Everglades land for another 30 years, a deal that would include pouring tons of phosphorous-laden fertilizer onto the site the state is spending billions to clean-up.

The request from Florida Crystals and A. Duda and Sons is supported by the state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Herschel Vinyard and South Florida Water Management District officials. But environmentalists aren’t happy.

“The State of Florida is putting 13,952 acres of state land off the table as a possible solution to future problems,’’ said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon of Florida at a meeting of the Cabinet aides last week. “It is passing up an opportunity.”

Environmentalists have agreed to allow Florida Crystals to continue sugar farming 7,862 acres in the Everglades Agricultural Area because they believe the company is “holding the state hostage” and won’t allow a crucial next step to go forward in the Everglades clean-up plan if they don’t get the deal.

But environmentalists strongly oppose the Duda deal, which would allow that company to continue to grow vegetables farm 6,089 acres of land and pump 339 tons of fertilizer each year into the Everglades, exacerbating the clean-up problem the state is spending billions to fix. They want the state to require Duda to reduce its phosphorous run-off in exchange for the favorable no-bid contract.

According to emails obtained by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee bureau, Tracy Peters of the Division of State Lands initially suggested that Florida Crystals reduce its pollution levels in exchange for the lease extension. But the attorney for the company, Silvia Morell Alderman of Akerman Senterfitt, responded that such requirements “would be deal breakers” because the company has been improving its phosphorous levels for 17 years.

Peters then backed off and, on several occasions, asked Alderman’s permission to make other minor changes to the proposal, the emails show.

Under a 1994 Everglades Forever Act, the companies were to give 20-year leases to farm land in the Everglades Agricultural Area in exchange for reducing polluted run-off that is choking the Everglades. The proposal to be voted on by the governor and Cabinet Wednesday will extend five of those leases, which are set to expire between 2015 and 2018, and allow them to continue for another 30 years.

In September, Scott formally signed off on $880 million worth of Everglades cleanup projects that will expand efforts to stem the flow of polluted farm, ranch and yard runoff into the famed River of Grass. The agreement between the state, sugar growers and the Environmental Protection Agency, would allow the state to move forward with building stormwater treatment projects and meet a series of discharge limits beginning in 2018.

Lee told the Cabinet aides that the state may not have the legal authority to negotiate the lease renewal in the first place but, if it does, it should attempt to reduce phosphorous loads onto the land. A similar deal was cut three years ago when the state renewed agricultural leases as part of a land-purchase deal with U.S. Sugar and the company agreed to reduce phosphorous levels on the land in exchange for the deal.

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Is Facebook envy making you miserable?

LONDON (Reuters) – Witnessing friends’ vacations, love lives and work successes on Facebook can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness, according to German researchers.

A study conducted jointly by two German universities found rampant envy on Facebook, the world’s largest social network that now has over one billion users and has produced an unprecedented platform for social comparison.

The researchers found that one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most.

“We were surprised by how many people have a negative experience from Facebook with envy leaving them feeling lonely, frustrated or angry,” researcher Hanna Krasnova from the Institute of Information Systems at Berlin’s Humboldt University told Reuters.

“From our observations some of these people will then leave Facebook or at least reduce their use of the site,” said Krasnova, adding to speculation that Facebook could be reaching saturation point in some markets.

Researchers from Humboldt University and from Darmstadt’s Technical University found vacation photos were the biggest cause of resentment with more than half of envy incidents triggered by holiday snaps on Facebook.

Social interaction was the second most common cause of envy as users could compare how many birthday greetings they received to those of their Facebook friends and how many “likes” or comments were made on photos and postings.

“Passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations and socialize,” the researchers said in the report “Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction?” released on Tuesday.

“The spread and ubiquitous presence of envy on Social Networking Sites is shown to undermine users’ life satisfaction.”

They found people aged in their mid-30s were most likely to envy family happiness while women were more likely to envy physical attractiveness.

These feelings of envy were found to prompt some users to boast more about their achievements on the site run by Facebook Inc. to portray themselves in a better light.

Men were shown to post more self-promotional content on Facebook to let people know about their accomplishments while women stressed their good looks and social lives.

The researchers based their findings on two studies involving 600 people with the results to be presented at a conference on information systems in Germany in February.

The first study looked at the scale, scope and nature of envy incidents triggered by Facebook and the second at how envy was linked to passive use of Facebook and life satisfaction.

The researchers said the respondents in both studies were German but they expected the findings to hold internationally as envy is a universal feeling and possibly impact Facebook usage.

“From a provider’s perspective, our findings signal that users frequently perceive Facebook as a stressful environment, which may, in the long-run, endanger platform sustainability,” the researchers concluded.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Heath Ledger Through the Years

April 1979- Jan. 2008

Five years ago, Hollywood was struck with grief upon hearing that Heath
Ledger had passed away at the young age of 28. Today, we remember the Dark Knight actor and his big smile and presence on the red carpet. Click the pics for a look back at the Ledger's life in the limelight.

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Tuiasosopo apologized to woman whose picture was used to portray fake Te'o girlfriend

The woman whose photo was used as the "face" of the Twitter account of Manti Te'o's supposed girlfriend says the man allegedly behind the hoax confessed and apologized to her.

Diane O'Meara spoke to NBC's "Today" show Tuesday. She says Ronaiah Tuiasosopo used pictures of her without her knowledge in creating a fake woman called Lennay Kekua. Te'o asserts he was tricked into an online romance with Kekua and, until last week, believed she died of leukemia in September.

O'Meara went to high school with Tuiasosopo, but she says they're not close. She says he called to apologize Jan. 16, the day Deadspin.com broke the hoax story, but "I don't think there's anything he could say to me that would fix this."

Photo of the image used to portray Manti Te'o's imaginary girlfriend Lennay Marie Kekua.

The 23-year-old O'Meara is a marketing executive in Los Angeles. She says that for five years, Tuiasosopo "has literally been stalking my Facebook and stealing my photos."

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Existing home sales and prices rose in Broward in December

South Florida’s housing recovery is on strong footing.

In Broward County, the median price of an existing single-family home surged 21.1 percent to $230,000 in December from a year earlier, according to the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors.

The median price of an existing condo or townhouse in Broward in December jumped 24.7 percent to $95,100 year over year, the group said.

Sales of single-family homes in Broward climbed 14.9 percent in December year over year while the volume of condo and townhouse closings increased 4.7 percent over the period.

The inventory of single-family homes in Broward fell 35.5 percent in December from a year earlier, while the inventory of condos and townhomes on the market declined 25.2 percent year over year, the Fort Lauderdale group said.

“Buyers are quite surprised there is not more inventory after everything they have been hearing,’’ said Eyvonne Kafourus, an agent with Prudential in Fort Lauderdale. “I see a lot of people coming in from other states, for job transfers and retirement.’’

“Buyers are getting aggravated because they are losing deals,’’ said Charles Bonfiglio, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors. “Eighty to 90 percent [of sales] are multiple offer situations. They’ve got to move quickly.’’

The median days on the market for a single-family home in Broward declined to 37 days in December from 56 days a year earlier, the Realtors group said.

Florida has been seeing a flow of new arrivals after a period of exodus during the downturn.

“We’ve obviously turned the corner. We’ve noticed inventory tightening up,’’ said Philip Vias, a broker associate with Prudential in Fort Lauderdale.

Vias said more buyers seem to be coming in from the Northeast. “What’s held things up is homes weren’t selling up north. North it’s starting to trickle down.’’

Statewide in Florida, single-family home sales climbed 15.8 percent in December from a year earlier as the median price increased 14.1 percent to $154,000.

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Lemurs run amok in North Miami Beach; scratch toddler

It was a case of lemurs on the loose in one North Miami Beach neighborhood early Monday morning.

Julio Hincapie, who owns the two lemurs, said someone cut the locks on their cage and tried to steal them around 2 a.m.

The lemurs, however, had other ideas and ran wild through the neighborhood in the 2000 block of Northeast 73rdSt.

They charged at neighbors, launched themselves at police and at one point jumped on a toddler and scratched her face.

“They were scared. They were running around, everyone chasing them. There were a lot of lights,” said Hincapie. “They were scared.”

Rosemary Alonzo will never forget the screeching sound one made.

“A terrible sound, like a ‘roar’, very strong,” she said.

Surveillance video at her house shows a family quickly walking past with a lemur hot on their trail.

“I saw this lady running with a kid in her hands and a gentleman, it was terrible,” said Alonzo.

Her German Shepherd Thor went haywire trying to get it, as it walked the top of the fenceline.

“It was trying to fight and trying to scream at the dog,” said Alonzo.

One of the lemurs jumped on a two-year-old girl as she got out of the car with her mother. It jumped on her and scratched her face just under her eye.

Police and Hincapie finally managed to round-up the lemurs and put them back in their cage.

“In my 17 years, I have never seen anything like this. This is the first time I’ve been dispatched to a call like this,” said North Miami Beach Sgt. Richard Rand.

Rand said when he first got the call he thought he was being ‘punked’ by his fellow officers.

Neighbors familiar with the little lemurs said they are normally no threat.

“There’s nothing wrong with the monkeys. They’re very peaceful, we feed them and everything,” said Carlos Lezcano.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has launched an investigation into the incident.

Hincapie was ticketed for having an expired permit for the lemurs, and for allowing them to escape. But FWC officers say the caging for the animals is actually better than the state requires. They say he will be allowed to keep the animals.

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Atari US files for Ch. 11 to separate from parent

NEW YORK (AP) — Video game maker Atari’s U.S. operations have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to separate from their French parent company.

In a statement, Atari says the move is necessary to secure investments it needs to grow in mobile and digital gaming.

Atari’s U.S. operations have shifted to focus on digital games and licensing, including developing mobile games, and have become a growth engine for its owner. France’s Infogrames Entertainment first took a stake in Atari in 2000. It acquired the remaining stake in 2008 and changed its name to Atari S.A.

But the U.S. operations have been better performing than the rest of the company. In fiscal 2012 digital and licensing revenue both grew significantly and contributed 70 percent of revenue, while sales in bricks-and-mortar stores declined.

In December, Atari S.A. said a credit agreement it entered into with investor BlueBay would lapse at the end of the year and the company was seeking other ways to raise capital. It added that it expects to report a “significant loss” for fiscal 2012.

Atari, which turned 40 last year, was a videogame pioneer with games like “Pong” and “Centipede,” but has changed owners several times amid financial problems. In its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, Atari said it had $ 1 million to $ 10 million in assets and $ 10 million to $ 50 million in debt. It is seeking approval for $ 5.25 million in debtor-in-possession financing from private investment firm Tenor Capital Management.

Atari said it expects to sell its assets or confirm a restructuring plan within the next three to six months.

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Alexander Skarsgard The East Trailer

Alexander Skarsgard's new movie, The East, was unveiled this weekend at The Sundance Film Festival, and now a bracing new trailer for the drama has been unleashed upon the world.

In the politically charged drama, the nearly unrecognizable True Blood star plays Benji, a founding member of an eco-anarchist group, called The East, that aims to punish those who pollute the earth. But don't you dare call him the leader.

RELATED - 2013's Most Anticipated Movies

"It's very important to Benji that he is not the leader," Skarsgard told EW. "There's no leader. They discuss everything. It's very decentralized, it's a collective."

Also fueling that hive mind is Ellen Page's character, who she describes as "a very intense eco-anarchist [who] believes in people taking responsibly for their destruction and death and sickness they're putting on the planet." Page says that she related to her character on a ethical level, adding, "In our world, we don't hold those people accountable. I can understand [her] frustration."

Click here to watch a trailer for The East, in theaters later this year.

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Former president Clinton photobombs Kelly Clarkson during inauguration

Twitter.com/@BrooklynSpoke

Oh Bill!

Former President Bill Clinton may have been putting in a request to become the Internet's latest meme.

Clinton, who was in attendance for the second inauguration of President Obama, seized the opportunity to photobomb Kelly Clarkson during the "American Idol" winner's rendition of "My Country 'Tis of Thee."

In the photo, posted to Twitter by Doug Gordon, who describes himself as a Brooklyn documentary TV producer, the 42nd President of the United States sticks his head out and gives what appears to be a look of approval.

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