Timeline: Kim Dotcom’s year, from Megaupload to Mega

AUCKLAND (Reuters) – Here are the milestones in the past year for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Dotcom plans to launch on January 20 a new online file storage system, known as Mega.

January 20, 2012 – Seventy armed New Zealand police raid Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s mansion outside Auckland, acting on a request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dotcom and his colleagues Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk are served extradition and search warrants, arrested, and taken into custody. As operators of the website, they are charged with online piracy, fraud and money laundering, and their computers and files are seized. Megaupload is closed down. The raid occurs on the same day U.S. lawmakers axe anti-piracy legislation following heavy public opposition.

February 22 – Dotcom is released on bail, but his movements are restricted and he is prohibited from leaving New Zealand. His bail conditions are eventually relaxed to allow him free movement within the country, while the millionaire is given some access to his frozen funds to pay his legal team and living costs.

June 28 – A New Zealand court rules that search warrants used by local police to raid the Dotcom mansion were illegal, and moves by the FBI to copy data from Dotcom’s computers to take offshore were also unlawful. The court’s action is seen by many as weakening the extradition case against Megaupload.

August 16 – U.S. efforts to extradite Dotcom are dealt another blow as a New Zealand court rules that prosecutors must show evidence to support charges of internet piracy and copyright breaches. The judge in the case says withholding evidence from Dotcom would give Washington a significant advantage in the extradition hearing. She also rules that the document used to order his extradition was illegal.

September 27 – New Zealand’s Prime Minister admits that the country’s spy agency illegally carried out surveillance on Dotcom, a resident of the country, despite a law which prohibits monitoring citizens and residents.

October 10 – A U.S. federal judge rules that the U.S. government’s criminal case against Megaupload will proceed, while leaving open the option of dismissing the case at a later date on grounds including the possibility that delays in proceedings have denied Megaupload to its right to due process.

January 20, 2013 – Dotcom is due to launch his new cyberlocker, Mega.co.nz, whose encryption system is designed to offer water-tight privacy protection of user files. The launch comes as Dotcom and his colleagues await their extradition hearing, which has been delayed until August.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu)

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O and Israel, apart

Shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that it would advance plans to establish a settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E-1, and that it would build 3,000 additional housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The world reacted to the E-1 announcement in the usual manner: It condemned the plans as a provocation and an injustice. In the weeks after the UN vote, Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation.

The dysfunctional relationship between Netanyahu and Obama is poised to enter a new phase. Next week, Israeli voters will probably return Netanyahu to power, this time at the head of a coalition even more intractably right-wing than the one he currently leads.

Obama, since his time in the Senate, has been consistent in his analysis of Israel’s underlying challenge: If it doesn’t disentangle itself from the lives of West Bank Palestinians, the world will one day decide it is behaving as an apartheid state.

During November’s vote on Palestine’s status, the US supported Israel and asked its allies to do the same. In the end, they were joined by a total of seven other countries.

When such an issue arises again, Israel may find itself even lonelier. It wouldn’t surprise me if the US failed to whip votes the next time, or if the US actually abstained. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised, either, if Obama eventually offered a public vision of what a state of Palestine should look like, and affirmed that it should have its capital in East Jerusalem.

Bloomberg View

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Investors await word from Apple

No company today elicits such devotion and dedication among its customers and shareholders like Apple. The fervor felt by Apple fans for its products, its leaders and its business underscore the company’s technological eco-centric strategy. While that loyalty has made for rich rewards over the long term, it will mean very little to a myopic stock market when Apple reports its latest financial results Wednesday.

When a company so dominates a business like Apple does, it is subject to plenty of rumors, especially when that company, like Apple, is disciplined to not respond to speculation. There have been a series of anonymous and Wall Street analyst worries floated in the past quarter centered on the iPhone 5. First were concerns Apple couldn’t get enough supplies to build the phones fast enough. Then there were hints Apple cut its supply orders, suggesting slower sales.

Apple optimists have been quick to defend the company even as its stock has fallen from $700 to around $500 per share since September. The stock drop has come even as Apple probably sold a record number of iPhones and iPads during the holiday quarter.

No doubt Apple will trumpet its financial prowess on Wednesday. And it should. After all it generates more than $500 million dollars a day. But the short-sighted stock market has been conditioned to expect big numbers. Therein is the challenge for Apple: incubating such devotion without inflating expectations.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.

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King’s son brings message to South Florida

The past few days have kept the eldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. busy. He’s been to at least three states to carry on his father’s message: ending violence and learning from historical wrongs.

In a Fort Lauderdale Baptist church early Friday, he delivered another directive:

“A nation is judged on how we treat our most prized possession,” Martin Luther King III said. “And our most precious resource, I think, is our children.”

King served as the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. inspirational breakfast hosted by the YMCA of Broward County.

More than 500 gathered inside the First Baptist Church on Broward Boulevard, selling out the $2,500 per table event, to honor King’s legacy.

“My concern was that it would not be reduced to a day of relaxation,” said King III. “We have to look at this as a day on — not a day off.”

The Rev. King, a prominent civil rights leader, was born this week 84 years ago. He lead peaceful protests and bus strikes working for racial equality until his 1968 assassination.

The younger King told the South Florida audience about spending his youth at the local YMCA in Birmingham, learning to swim and working out with his dad.

“Those were wonderful experiences, experiences that I will never forget,” he said.

Like his father, King III has been a fighter for human rights, justice and non-violence in the United States and abroad. He also served as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s president, a position his father once held.

During his 2009 inauguration, President Barack Obama declared the holiday honoring King should be spent as a national day of service.

At Friday’s event, 15 youngsters from the Lauderhill YMCA were honored for their service to the community. The young friends managed to clean up a popular overpass and get rid of gangs who were harassing children.

They called their project “Own the Overpath.” The idea started when 14-year-old Kervens Jean-Louis was attacked by a gang on a fenced in walkway that spans the Florida Turnpike while coming from the YMCA, based at Boyd Anderson High School. But Jean-Louis didn’t back down.

He and other students mobilized and launched a campaign to clean-up the area surrounding the “overpath.” The youngsters made a formal presentation to the Lauderhill City Commission and Florida Department of Transportation officials.

Now, there is a $400,000 project in the works to install more lights on the bridge to increase visibility. The city broke ground in November.

“I learned that when you speak out loud it makes a difference,” said Jean-Louis.

For Jean-Louis, speaking loud meant going back to the bridge to warn others of the dangers of traveling across it at night.

He will spend this upcoming Saturday as a volunteer, painting and cleaning up a garden.

“Now I tell others what’s going on and how they can help out,” he said, much like the man they had all come to honor.

After the youngsters were honored, King III left the crowd to ponder a final thought: “We can either be a thermometer or a thermostat.”

A thermometer, he explained, takes the temperature while a thermostat regulates the temperature.

Despite the progress his father saw in his lifetime, and the decades since his death, there is still much work to be done, King III said.

“I always come with a heavy heart in January,” he said. “Because we have not fully realized the dream.”

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Twitter co-founders move Obvious Corp into spacious new digs

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the co-founders of Twitter, have leased three sprawling floors in a historic downtown San Francisco tower for their low-profile start-up incubator, The Obvious Corporation.

Obvious said Friday it leased 75,000 square feet at the busy 760 Market Street location – known as the Phelan Building – in one of the city’s larger commercial real estate deals in recent months.

The downtown space will be able to hold roughly 500 employees and signals ambitions at Obvious, which was re-constituted when Williams and Stone both left Twitter in 2011.

The incubator, with no more than two dozen employees, has mostly stayed out of the press except when it unveiled two new blogging platforms called Medium and Branch last September.

Although still thinly staffed, Obvious’s new space is larger than start-up Pinterest’s recently inked lease in the city.

“We need the right space from which to grow the Medium team and position Obvious to focus on bringing our new ideas to life,” Obvious CEO Williams said in a statement Friday about the new lease.

The company will occupy the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the triangular building, which wraps around a central courtyard, said Jenny Haeg, a real estate agent who has brokered leases for Square Inc, Dropbox, Airbnb and other large tech startups.

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

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Drew Barrymore on Oprah's Next Chapter

Drew Barrymore opens up about her complicated childhood and the lessons she's learned when it comes to being a new mother on Oprah's Next Chapter, and we have a sneak peek!

Pics: Celebs and Their Cute Kids

Marking the first time cameras have ever been allowed inside her home, Drew also talks to Oprah about her new marriage to Will Kopelman, shares details about their newborn baby Olive, and reveals the story behind why her mother did not attend her wedding.

Related: Drew Barrymore's Daughter Olive Lands First Cover

Oprah's Next Chapter with Drew Barrymore airs Sunday at 9 pm ET/PT on OWN.

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Bam’s gun-plan misfire: using children as props

The Issue: President Obama’s press conference on gun-control, in which he was surrounded by children.

***

President Obama’s big plan to curb gun violence is more of a wish list of things he would like to see than an actual plan to stop the violence (“Gunning for...What?” Editorial, Jan. 17).

Obama should be ashamed of himself for exploiting children to promote his agenda.

He and his ilk want to disarm law-abiding citizens while ignoring the fact that only criminals will have weapons.

If you tell kids that guns are dangerous, then you are asking them to see for themselves.

Reuters

Signing an executive action on Wednesday.

If you show them the do’s and don’ts, it takes away the mystery.

If the school systems implemented a psychological test and an aptitude test twice during a child’s development, they might be able to tell who should be watched and helped.

If children are taught safety and respect for weapons, then gun violence could be nipped in the bud before it happens.

Gregory J. Topliff

Warrenville, SC

Obama’s shameful use of children was a disgusting display of political grandstanding that exploited the terrible Newtown tragedy.

To allow him to bypass Congress, the Second Amendment and other issues would just be another step in his incremental moves toward tighter control over the citizens of this great nation.

Congress needs to stand strong against Obama’s arrogant, self-serving actions.

John W. Fox

Galloway, NJ

Obama came out the other day, guns blazing (pun intended) with all of these gun-control measures, working up over 20 executive actions.

Why hasn’t he been as brazen and quick to the draw about Attorney General Eric Holder and the Fast and Furious debacle?

Tommy DeJulio

New Rochelle

Obama gave an emotional speech while surrounded by small children, citing the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School as his motivation.

He’s got some nerve. That hypocrite is killing the future of all our children by spending trillions of dollars and saddling them with debt for the rest of their lives.

Tom Ennis

Whitehouse Station, NJ

All America need do is look back at Holder’s botched Fast and Furious operation to realize that the Obama administration knows nothing about gun control.

Nichola Maffei

Croton-on-Hudson

Both Obama and Gov. Cuomo followed the maxim “let no crisis go to waste.”

In their haste, they used a “shotgun” approach — pardon the pun — to a complex problem. They touched the surface on some issues, but missed others that require prolonged study and analysis.

The president’s use of emotional theater was uncomfortable to watch, and the governor’s actions were just a shameful political attempt to co-opt the matter.

Rarely is the timing so appropriate for the formation of a commission to study gun violence in America.

The problem has many tentacles and each one needs separate analysis. These hurried actions have only set the stage for more rancor and arguments.

Phil Serpico

Queens

So it’s the style of the weapon that people find offensive?

What if the guns were painted pink?

The editorial states that “they’ve not given us any clear way to put what they’ve done to the test.”

But we do know what these bans accomplish.

We did have an “assault-weapons ban” and it did absolutely nothing to the crime rate.

A. Levy

Manhattan

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Norwegian Cruise Line launches strong IPO

Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line joined its larger local competitors on Wall Street Friday in a strong debut.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. raised nearly $447 million in an initial public offering of about 23.5 million shares and saw stocks sail 30 percent in trading.

Shares closed Friday afternoon at $24.79, up $5.79 from the $19 offering price set late Thursday night. That was above the range of $16-$18 that the company had expected.

“I think this was a classically beautiful IPO, albeit relatively small in terms of total dollars,” said Roderick McLeod, partner in the management consulting practice McLeod.Applebaum & Partners and a former cruise executive.

In regulatory filings, the company has said it plans to use proceeds from the IPO to reduce debt and pay expenses related to the offering. Norwegian is giving the underwriters a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 3.5 million shares.

Previously, the company was privately held in a partnership of Genting Hong Kong, with 50 percent of the cruise line, and private equity firms Apollo Management and TPG. Genting Hong Kong is a subsidiary of gambling and resort conglomerate Genting Group, which purchased the land currently occupied by The Miami Herald in 2011 for $236 million.

After the IPO, the three groups own a total of about 88 percent of the company’s ordinary shares.

Norwegian, with a fleet of 11 ships and three more on the way by the fall of 2015, has made its name by emphasizing a “freestyle” type of cruising that allows guests to choose from a variety of dining, entertainment and rooming options.

In an interview Friday morning, Norwegian Cruise Line President and CEO Kevin Sheehan said that the timing was right for the offering.

“It just seemed like a very logical time: We’re into 2013, we’ve got these beautiful new ships coming out soon and the marketplace is very excited about them,” he said. “The locomotive is moving and we’re at the tipping point with the brand.”

As the industry grows by just about 2.5 percent over the next five years, Sheehan said, Norwegian will grow capacity by more than 10 percent.

“It’s the double whammy,” he said. “Lower growth in the future with a phenomenal set of assets.”

He said the benefits of going public include raising capital, allowing the company to strengthen its balance sheet and putting it in the same playing field as its competitors. Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise ship company, and rival Royal Caribbean Cruises are both publicly traded. Carnival closed up about a percent at $38.58 Friday, while Royal Caribbean dropped just over a percent to $36.90.

“Now we’re out there and people can look at our results and the analysts can talk about us freely,” he said.

The launch capped years of attempts by Norwegian to go public, all abandoned for economic reasons.

Miami cruise expert Stewart Chiron, CEO of CruiseGuy.com, said the timing was good, with an industry performing well and a vastly improved company.

“I’m glad they finally got it done,” he said. “This was by far one of the important milestones that they wanted to cross.”

McLeod remembers an effort when he was president and chief operating officer at Norwegian that coincided with the stock market crash in October of 1987. He has also worked in senior positions at Royal Caribbean Cruises and Carnival Corp.

“I think we’ve all kind of known this was coming eventually and some of us have known it’s coming for 25 years,” McLeod said. “It’s never too late to do the right thing; this is the right thing for them to do.”

The move is smart, McLeod said, for several reasons.

“In addition to improving their leverage, reducing their debt, this expands their strategic options,” he said. “This is a currency, and that can work for them in lots of different ways.”

This report was supplemented with information from the Associated Press.

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North Dade man claims self-defense in killing of intruder

When a burglar broke into his North Miami-Dade apartment Monday night, Jordan Beswick grabbed his pistol, hid in the living room and squeezed off a volley of bullets.

Unscathed, the burglar ran to the master bedroom to escape.

Beswick himself ran from the apartment, but he didn’t call police.

Instead, authorities say, Beswick circled around to a bedroom window outside, waited three minutes, then fired at least eight more shots as the unarmed intruder tried to escape through the window. The suspect, Bryan Antonio DeJesus, 22, crumpled to the bedroom floor, dead.

The charge for Beswick: second-degree murder.

The unique case is bound to test Florida’s controversial self-defense law that critics say promotes vigilantism but supporters contend allows citizens to protect themselves from criminals.

Defense lawyer Gawane Grant, in a preliminary hearing Thursday, cited the “Stand Your Ground” law in asking for bail for Beswick, 19, who has no criminal history.

“He had the absolute right to defend himself inside his own home,” Grant said.

Miami-Dade prosecutor Dawn Kulick countered that Beswick was no longer threatened after he fired his weapon the first time, then left the apartment.

“He no longer needed to use force to defend himself,” she told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Monica Gordo, who ordered Beswick to be held in jail without bond.

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law — which eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat before using lethal force to counter a threat — has come under intense scrutiny in recent months.

Last year, Sanford police initially cited the law in not arresting a self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman who shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, during a scuffle.

Prosecutors later charged the man, George Zimmerman, with second-degree murder. He is awaiting trial.

In response to the uproar, Gov. Rick Scott appointed a task force to study the effects of the law, which critics say has led to a rise in homicides. This week, Trayvon’s mother called for a repeal of the law, pushed through by the National Rifle Association. The NRA is now fighting a bitter and very public battle against gun control advocates in the wake of last month’s deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Florida prosecutors say the law is vexing because it allows judges — before jurors hear the facts — greater leeway in tossing out a case.

In Miami-Dade, judges have thrown out at least three murder cases based on the “immunity” claim.

The most controversial: the case of Greyston Garcia, who, armed with a knife, chased down and fatally stabbed a thief who had broken into his truck and stolen his radio in Little Havana.

A judge in March ruled that Garcia acted in self defense in January 2011 because the thief wielded a heavy bag of car radios that could have been used to cause “serious bodily injury or death.”

Beswick has yet to be formally charged at arraignment. Any Stand Your Ground immunity hearing is likely months away.

Records show DeJesus has been arrested at least eight times since age 15, mostly for minor drug, trespassing and vehicle theft charges.

Beswick lives with his mother in a first-floor condominium on the 800 block of Northeast 209th Terrace.

On Monday, he was home alone watching television about 11 p.m. when he heard a knock at the door. He did not answer, then heard someone trying to enter through the condo’s sliding glass door.

Miami-Dade detective Maria Mederos testified Thursday that Beswick, armed with a pistol, lay down on the tile floor near the living room and waited five minutes for the burglar to enter.

DeJesus, 22, emerged from inside a rear bedroom. Beswick saw a shadow and fired seven times. DeJesus fled back into the bedroom.

Beswick ran through the front door, around the building. A few yards away, he saw “the victim’s hands part the window blinds” in an attempt to climb out. Beswick fired the last fatal volley, according to Mederos’ arrest report.

“He still didn’t know how many guys were inside and whether or not they were armed,” Grant said Thursday evening. “He was still in fear.”

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Ex-Red Sox pitcher Schilling puts bloody sock up for auction after video game company collapse

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling — whose video game company underwent a spectacular collapse into bankruptcy last year — is selling the blood-stained sock he wore during the 2004 World Series.

Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions, says online bidding begins around Feb. 4. Live bidding will take place Feb. 23.

The sock previously had been on loan to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It has been at Heritage’s Dallas headquarters for several weeks and will be displayed at the auction house’s Manhattan office before it is sold, according to Ivy.

He said the sock is expected to fetch at least $ 100,000, though he described that as a conservative estimate.

“I do expect the bidding to be very spirited,” Ivy said.

Schilling’s company, 38 Studios, was lured to Providence, R.I., from Massachusetts with a $ 75 million loan guarantee in 2010. In May, it laid off all its employees and it filed for bankruptcy in June. The state is now likely responsible for some $ 100 million related to the deal, including interest.

Schilling also had personally guaranteed loans to the company and listed the sock as bank collateral in a September filing with the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office.

Messages left for his publicist were not immediately returned.

The bloody sock is one of two that sent Schilling into the annals of baseball lore in 2004.

The other was from Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, when Schilling pitched against the New York Yankees with an injured ankle. That sock is said to have been discarded in the trash at Yankees Stadium.

The one being sold is from the second game of the World Series, which the Red Sox won that year for the first time in 86 years.

Schilling has said he invested as much as $ 50 million in 38 Studios and has lost all his baseball earnings. He told WEEI-AM in Boston last year that possibly having to sell the sock was part of “having to pay for your mistakes.”

“I’m obligated to try and make amends and, unfortunately, this is one of the byproducts of that,” he told the station.

Brad Horn, a spokesman for the hall of fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., said the loaned sock was returned in December under the terms of the hall’s agreement with Schilling. The hall had had it since 2004.

The Feb. 23 live bidding will be held at the Fletcher-Sinclair mansion in New York City, now home to the Ukrainian Institute of America. The auction will feature other “five- and six-figure items,” including a jersey and cap worn by New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, Ivy said.

Heritage last May auctioned off the so-called “Bill Buckner ball,” which rolled through the legs of the Red Sox first baseman in the 1986 World Series. Ivy said that item, like Schilling’s sock, was listed at the time as being expected to bring in “$ 100,000-plus,” but it was sold to an anonymous bidder for $ 418,000.

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