Police shoot, kill man in Queens after he pulls a gun on officers: report

Gabriella Bass

Officers shot and killed a man in Queens Saturday.

Police shot a man to death late last night after he pulled a gun on officers, according to a report.

The shooting happened before 11 p.m. near the intersection of Gates and Seneca Avenues in Queens.

Police told CBS 2 that the man, who's in his forties, has a lengthy arrest record.

He pulled a gun on officers and police fired, shooting the man in the chest. There's no word on what precipitated the incident.

The unidentified man was taken to the hospital but later died, CBS 2 reports. A weapon was recovered at the scene.

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Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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Preservation board to decide on Herald building

The city of Miami’s historic preservation office has compiled a lengthy, detailed report that substantially bolsters the case for designation of The Miami Herald’s “monumental’’ bayfront building as a protected landmark based on both its architectural merits and its historic significance.

Somewhat unusually, the 40-page report by city preservation officer Megan McLaughlin, which is supplemented by 30 pages of bibliography, plans and photographs, carries no explicit recommendation to the city’s preservation board, which is scheduled to decide the matter on Monday.

But her analysis gathers extensive evidence that the building’s history, the influential executives and editors associated with it, and its fusion of Mid-Century Modern and tropical Miami Modern (MiMo) design meet several of the legal criteria for designation set out in the city’s preservation ordinance and federal guidelines. A building has to meet just one of eight criteria to merit designation.

A spokeswoman for the city’s historic preservation office said there is no obligation to make a recommendation and the city’s preservation board didn’t ask for one.

Supporters of designation, including officials at Dade Heritage Trust, the preservation group that has received sometimes withering criticism from business and civic leaders for requesting designation, said they felt vindicated by the report, even as they concede that persuading a board majority to support it remains an uphill battle.

“It’s important that an objective expert is saying basically the same thing we’ve been saying, particularly in an environment where there is so much pressure,’’ said DHT chief executive Becky Roper Matkov. “It’s very hard to refute. When you look at the building’s architecture and history, it’s so blatantly historic, what else can you say?’’

The report also rebuts key pieces of criticism of the designation effort leveled by opponents of designation, including architects and a prominent local preservation historian hired by Genting, the Malaysian casino operator that purchased the Herald property last year for $236 million with plans to build a massive destination resort on its 10 acres. The newspaper remains in the building rent-free until April, when it will move to suburban Doral.

Citing federal rules, McLaughlin concluded that the building dates to its construction in 1960 and 1961, and not to its formal dedication in 1963. That’s significant because it makes the building legally older than 50 years. Buildings newer than that must be “exceptionally significant’’ to merit designation under city regulations. Opponents of designation have claimed the building does not qualify because it’s several months short of 50 years if dated from its ’63 opening.

The property also has a “minimal’’ baywalk at the rear but there is room to expand it, the report indicates. The building is considerably set back from the edge of Biscayne Bay, between 68 feet at the widest point and 23 feet at its narrowest, the report says. That’s comparable to what many new buildings provide, thanks in part to variances granted by the city, and could blunt criticism that the Herald building “blocks’’ public access to the bay.

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Bicyclist struck, killed near Aqueduct Racetrack

Kendall Rodriguez

Investigators at the scene of a fatal Queens accident Friday.

A man was killed Friday night while riding a bicycle near Aqueduct Racetrack, police said.

The unidentified man was struck by a horse trailer in the racetrack parking lot near 114th Street and 150th Avenue in Queens at around 5:20 p.m., police sources said. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

The trailer, which had “Belmont Park” and “Saratoga” written on its side, could be seen several feet from the man’s body, meaning the trailer likely struck the man without immediately stopping, sources said.

Police do not suspect criminality.

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Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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Driver of fatal MIA bus crash that killed two offers his “deepest sympathy.”

The driver behind the wheel of a bus that rammed into an overpass at Miami International Airport — killing two passengers and leaving many more injured — expressed his sympathies Thursday to those affected, while a group of survivors began speaking with a lawyer.

On Thursday, a relative sent out a short statement in Spanish from driver Ramon Ferreiro. In it, Ferreiro extended his “deepest sympathy” to the families of those killed in “the terrible accident.”

“I know there are no words of comfort for what happened, but my family and I are praying for all those affected and their loved ones,” he wrote in Spanish. “I’m emotionally and physically very shocked by what happened, and for this reason I ask you to respect my family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The crash happened a few minutes before 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The bus carried members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation on their way to the annual general assembly meeting in West Palm Beach.

Ferreiro, 47, took a wrong turn on Le Jeune Road. He sped past multiple signs warning of the low clearance at the airport’s arrival concourse, smashing the 11-foot-tall bus into an overpass.

Two people sitting in the front were killed; the remaining 30 passengers went to hospitals for examinations and treatment.

As of Thursday, four people from the crash remained at Jackson Memorial Hospital, spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti said. Of the group, three were in good condition and one was in critical.

Another eight people admitted after the crash already had been discharged.

And some of the survivors have begun speaking with West Palm Beach lawyer Patrick Cousins.

Cousins, who also is Jehovah’s Witness, said that members of his religion tend to shy away from legal battles, and that’s why he hopes to settle the matter with the bus service’s insurance company out of court.

The goal, he said, would be to get compensation for costs such as their hospital bills.

“We are not the type of people to create problems or issues,” Cousins said. “But this is not something we really created. We just want to make sure everybody gets their compensation.”

Saturday’s accident appears to be the first blemish on the record of both the driver and the bus company, Miami Bus Service Corp., which is owned by Mayling and Alberto Hernandez.

Ferreiro has a valid commercial driver’s license with the proper endorsement to carry passengers, according to records from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

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Netflix says CEO’s Facebook post triggered SEC notice

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Netflix Inc said on Thursday securities regulators warned they may bring civil action against the company and its chief executive for violating public disclosure rules with a Facebook post, in a case that raises questions about how public companies communicate on social media.

The high-profile Silicon Valley CEO, Reed Hastings, dismissed the contention and said he did not believe the Facebook post was “material” information.

Hastings wrote in the post on the company’s public Facebook page on July 3: “Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June.” The post was accessible to the more than 244,000 subscribers to the page.

Netflix received what is known as a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the SEC staff will recommend the full commission pursue either a cease-and-desist action and/or a civil injunction against Netflix and Hastings over the alleged violation.

Netflix may have run afoul of the SEC’s Regulation FD, adopted in 2000, which requires public companies to make full and fair public disclosure of material non-public information.

“We think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers,” Hastings said on Thursday in a letter. He also said that he did not believe the Facebook posting was “material” information.

The SEC believes that figure is material information that should have been disclosed in a press release or regulatory filing, according to Hastings’ letter.

“We remain optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process,” said Hastings in the public letter to shareholders that the online video streaming company submitted alongside a regulatory filing citing the receipt of the “Wells Notice” from the SEC.

Netflix’s stock jumped from $ 67.85 a share on July 2, the day before Hastings’ post, to $ 81.72 on July 5. On July 25 its stock fell 22 percent to $ 60.28 when the company reported second-quarter earnings fell from $ 68.2 million a year earlier to $ 6.2 million this year.

“It’s totally disingenuous to say that his statement wasn’t material when the stock went from under $ 70 a share to more than $ 80 and the only data point was that post,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.

REGULATORY GREY AREAS?

But legal and securities experts say the fast-changing world of social media leaves room for regulatory grey areas.

“The evolution of social media presents the SEC with some very interesting regulatory challenges. But if they’re worried about social media, there are ways for them to address that without threatening to sue Reed Hastings. They should have a rulemaking where they can ventilate these issues,” said Joseph Grundfest, former SEC commissioner and Stanford Law School professor.

“This situation has nothing to do with the problems that Regulation FD was designed to address.”

Joseph Marrow, an attorney at the Waltham, Massachusetts law firm Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton, said there are conflicting views on what constitutes disclosure in circumstances like this, also noting the rules are not settled in this area.

“I would not suggest companies publish material non-public information on Facebook and Twitter without discussing it before with in-house counsel. Companies are putting together social media policies,” he said.

“If Netflix doesn’t have a policy, I bet they will have one very soon,” he said, adding the issue was unlikely to be serious enough to threaten Hastings’ position as CEO of Netflix, but could result in some type of financial penalty for the company.

Netflix shares fell 1.4 percent to $ 85 in after-hours trading on Thursday.

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Sue Zeidler in Los Angeles Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic and Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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New equity options exchange owned by Miami company starts trading on Friday

MIAX Options Exchange, a new fully electronic, equity options trading exchange, said it will begin trading on Friday.

MIAX Options Exchange is based in Princeton, N.J., but its parent company is Miami International Holdings. While MIAX’s executive offices, technology development center and national operations center are based in Princeton, additional executive offices, and a multi-purpose training, meeting and conference center will be located in Miami, the company said.

MIAX Options Exchange’s trading platform has been developed in-house and designed for the functional and performance demands of derivatives trading, the company said.

INA PAIVA CORDLE

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State lawmakers cautious about projected $437 million budget surplus

TALLAHASSEE --
Initial, positive indications about Florida’s budget for the coming fiscal year could be overtaken by events if the Florida Supreme Court strikes down changes to state employees or the nation plunges over the fiscal cliff, the state’s top economist warned Wednesday.

Speaking to the first meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Amy Baker — coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research — told lawmakers that the current projection of a $436.8 million budget surplus could still change.

"I think the message is that this is not a large cushion," Baker said. "It could evaporate on you if economic circumstances turn against us."

Lawmakers have long watched a decision in the case challenging a 2011 law that required employees to contribute 3 percent of their income to their retirement funds, along with other changes. It could cost the state around $2 billion if the Supreme Court strikes down the law.

A Leon County circuit court judge voided the changes for employees hired before July 1, 2011; justices seemed hesitant about upholding that ruling at oral arguments earlier this year.

But Baker said the so-called "fiscal cliff," a package of federal spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect on Jan. 1 unless Congress and President Barack Obama can reach agreement, also looms large.

If there is a long delay in reaching a deal — one that stretches past January and into March — it could cost the state as much as $375 million, Baker said, comparing it to the debt-ceiling fight in August 2011 that dragged down the state economy.

Even if there is an agreement, it is likely to include some measures that will reduce estimated state income by hundreds of millions of dollars, Baker said.

"There is no likelihood that Florida will escape from the final decision with no changes to our budget," Baker said.

The uncertainty has pushed lawmakers who are optimistic about the numbers to nonetheless urge caution. Senate Appropriations Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, told the committee that he wanted to boost the budget stabilization fund, one of the state’s reserves, to $1.5 billion. That’s at least $500 million over where the fund is projected to be, Negron said.

After the meeting, Negron told reporters that might be as much as the Legislature can do.

"You can never have too much in a reserve, but realistically I think $1.5 billion is a reasonable target to shoot for," he said.

Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said the situation should send a message to advocates for various state agencies in the audience.

"They need to be on notice that there is a lot of uncertainty out there and that this budget if these two things come to fruition is going to be very, very difficult to put together," Thrasher said. "And I think either one of them could devastating to us."

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Dancing with the Stars Partners Reunite on Big Screen

Dancing with the Stars pro Karina Smirnoff is joining her Season 12 partner Ralph Macchio in a new movie, Us Weekly reports.

RELATED: Ralph Macchio Gets 'Happily Divorced'

According to the news source, the 34-year-old dancer plays a woman who becomes the object of a 10-year-old boy's fascination when he sees her dancing in a neighboring house.

"It is a dream come true to have this opportunity in working with Ralph again," she says of her former dance partner who writes and directs the film. "He wrote such an inspiring script, and I'm grateful to be a part of it. The story is sweet but profound, and my character is very compelling. I'm loving the process!"

This is Smirnoff's first movie role but she gave her acting qualifications, saying, "I feel like I've always acted within a dance ... Now I get to just act, and I'm extremely excited for the opportunity."

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