Police continue hunt after man set afire Christmas night

Miami-Dade police are searching for a group of people they believe are connected to a man being set on fire Christmas night.

The attack happened about a half hour before midnight on Dec. 25, according to police. Darrell Brackett, 44, had gone to a gas station at 4700 NW 27th Ave. after his van ran out of gas.

But, soon after he bought a small amount of gasoline, witnesses told police they saw him running in the middle of the street, on fire.

Brackett was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center for treatment. He was still in Jackson on Sunday.

Since the attack, one man, Alex Cineas, 21, of Miramar, came forward and talked to police. No charges were immediately filed. Police are still searching for a second man, Willie Summersett, 29, of Brownsville.

They also are looking for two other people, an unidentified man and woman who might have information about what happened and might have been involved.

Investigators asked anyone with information to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

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Mobile revolution in Myanmar is on the cards, but too slow for many

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar is on the cusp of a mobile revolution. Only it’s happening way too slowly for many locals.

Last week the government invited expressions of interest for two mobile phone licenses – a first step towards increasing mobile penetration from its current 5-10 percent to 80 percent in three years. That would lift it off the bottom of the world’s ladder of mobile use and put it on a par with neighbors like Bangladesh.

In the meantime, users are chafing at the pace and price of adding connections.

A year ago the informal technology conference Barcamp Yangon was buzzing with rumours of a SIM card that would cost about $ 6 – or 1 percent of its actual price at the time.

A year on, Barcamp is back but the talk is much less dramatic: whether the state-owned operator might this week release SIM cards costing between around $ 100. That would still be half of what the last tranche sold for, but it still leaves many unhappy.

“The clock is ticking,” says Ravi Chhabra, a local technology entrepreneur. “People are frustrated. There is lots of speculation and this creates anxiety.”

Nobody questions the need for more connections, and foreign operators have salivated at what amounts to one of the last major untapped markets.

President Thein Sein has made it clear that mobile telephony is a cornerstone of his policy, and has also vowed that mobile communications would be cheap – a promise he reiterated to a conference of donors on Saturday.

Still, getting it done is not proving easy.

The notice inviting expressions of interest in two licenses was a welcome sign that things were moving, but IT experts and sources close to the communications ministry said the timing was surprising, given that the revised telecommunications law which would define the nature of any investment had yet to be passed by the parliament.

The government said in an appendix to the notice that a new draft of the law – which had been quietly withdrawn last year after criticism about its contents – had been submitted to parliament and was expected to be passed by June.

“After the law is finished then there should be a clear policy before any expression of interest is sought,” said Zaw Min Oo, secretary general of the Myanmar Computer Federation.

On top of that, the next day Telecommunications Minister Thein Tun, who had overall responsibility for mobile licensing, resigned. No reason has been given, and officials declined to comment.

“BIT OF AN EARTHQUAKE”

Sources close to the ministry say his departure had been rumored for several months, but the timing was unexpected, and raises questions about what might happen next.

“It’s been a bit of an earthquake; now we need to sit back and watch, see which buildings fall down,” said one source close to the ministry who, like others interviewed, declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing business relationships with the ministry and its companies.

Not everyone is concerned. Romain Caillaud, a Yangon-based consultant with Vriens and Partners, says both the notice and the resignation “should accelerate the liberalization and growth of the telecom sector.”

Major foreign telecommunications companies are likely to submit expressions of interest ahead of the deadline of January 25, say experts.

Alessio Polastri, a lawyer who represents several such firms in Myanmar, says whatever delay in the process there has been will benefit the government.

“It’s almost an asset in that initial concerns about political stability have disappeared, so, most likely, not only more telecommunications companies will take part in the tender process but also the winners shall be more confident in committing higher investment,” he said.

More thorny for the government, however, may be assuaging local interests. By inviting expressions of interest for two licenses, the government appeared to be committing itself to offering four licenses – two for foreign companies, and two for local ones: state-owned Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications, or MPT, and Yatanarpon Teleport, an internet service provider which is 51 percent owned by MPT.

Some local businesspeople are questioning the wisdom of this, saying that MPT should not effectively own more than one license.

CHEAP SIM CARDS

Dozens of local IT entrepreneurs last November formed the Myanmar Technologies and Investment Corporation to bid for a license, and are currently lobbying parliament to merge the two local licenses, giving them a better chance of either winning one or setting up with a partner.

“So far the ministries have come back with positive responses and encouraged us,” said Thaung Su Nyein, who is also managing director of local media and IT company Information Matrix. “Even if we don’t get this license we’ve been led to understand we’ll get other business licenses.”

But more pressing is growing public frustration at the lack of progress on the ground.

Last year’s talk of cheaper SIM cards was fuelled partly by MPT’s decision to press ahead with expanding its own network, promising to add 30 million GSM connections by 2016 – financed by allowing contractors building the towers to sell a certain number of SIM cards.

Since then, the rumor mill has been alive with chatter about when new tranches of SIM cards might be available, and how much they might cost. A few weeks before the tech meet up, a previously obscure businessman held a press conference at which he promised SIM cards costing only 5,000 kyat (around $ 6).

While the promise went unfulfilled and the businessman disappeared from view, it started a movement of sorts: stickers appeared demanding 5,000 kyat SIM cards and several people were arrested in small demonstrations, according to exile media.

Those hopes have been dashed, but the shortfall of SIM cards ensures interest in a steady stream of sometimes conflicting reports about another imminent sale. One local media report quoted officials as saying more than 1.5 million SIM cards would be sold on Monday for 100,000 kyat each, or about $ 112.

That would still be out of the reach of most people in Myanmar.

“People want to see faster progress,” said a source close to the ministry. “At least half the country want a phone, and they want it soon.”

(Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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Mama Wins Arnold Schwarzenegger Flops at Box Office

Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand came in last place on the box office Top 10 list over the weekend.

RELATED: New on Blu-ray & DVD

The action flick struggled through its debut, pulling in $6.3 million, as audiences couldn't get enough of Jessica Chastain -- the star of Mama and Zero Dark Thirty.

Jessica's films came in at first and second as Mama garnered $28.1 million and Zero Dark Thirty $17.6 million.

Silver Linings Playbook landed in third with $11.4 million.

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Will Mike strike out?

Nicole Gelinas

How long should New Yorkers put up with the school-bus strike? Last week, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 was in charge of the schedule. Mayor Bloomberg should make clear that the city will get kids to school on time and safely — by making it clear that striking workers are risking their jobs.

As temperatures fell below freezing late last week, barely a third of the private yellow school buses that take 152,000 New York kids to school were on duty. That was a drop from Wednesday, the first strike day. Picketers intimidated replacement drivers and blocked buses.

Tomas E. Gaston

Bloomberg can get tougher: NYPD officers keep protesters away as a bus crosses a picket line in The Bronx last week. The mayor should hire new bus companies now.

The last time the union went out on strike, in 1979, it stayed out 13 weeks.

And the city caved in, giving the workers the civil-servant-style job protections that they want to keep now, no matter which private company employs them. (The city’s drive to do away with those protections after 34 years has pushed the union out this time.)

So without decisive action from Bloomberg, New York parents could be looking at chaos till summer — or longer. Your kid may not get to school until the bus drivers run out of money.

But the mayor can take action — by moving to terminate the bus companies’ contracts for nonperformance.

Whatever the city does, it’ll end up in court. Its contracts with bus companies are not well written. Unlike solid contracts that outline who does what in the event of everything from war to earthquakes, the contracts are vague on who — the company or the city — is responsible in a strike. The contracts require that bus companies make “good faith” efforts — and the mayor hasn’t said what he thinks that means.

But the contracts do define what is a violation of the contract. “Failure to conform to and maintain the route,” “exclusion of any rider from a run,” “failure to provide service to a school,” “failure to dispatch the kind of bus specified” and “failure to have the minimum number of spare vehicles” are among violations, with no excuses.

The city can issue fines of $2,800 a day, in some cases per bus route or per child, which could add up to tens of thousands of dollars (or more) a day.

Since contractors aren’t getting paid by the city while their buses are idle, such fines could put them out of business.

In the meanwhile, the city could move up its call for bids for new contractors to now, instead of next fall, signing emergency short-term deals with new bus fleets.

New drivers and matrons, like the old, would have to meet safety qualifications and criminal-background checks, just as the city plans for next year’s contracts.

Killing existing contracts means killing the drivers’ jobs — a threat Bloomberg hasn’t wielded yet.

It works. In 1994, Legal Aid lawyers who worked for a private firm under a city contract, similar to the bus drivers today, went out on strike for a raise. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani immediately moved to terminate the contract. Just as immediately, the lawyers went back to work — on the city’s terms.

The mayor should be clear that striking workers are risking their jobs. Union leaders don’t necessarily have workers’ interests at heart — just as they didn’t in the recent past. When bus companies must make extortion payoffs to the union’s leader, as they did under former chief Sal “Hotdogs” Battaglia, now a felon, that means less money for drivers.

And new bidders are not going to hire minimum-wage workers. All companies need experienced drivers and matrons who won’t walk off the job in a few months’ time for a better opportunity.

Commercial drivers’ licenses and clean records are worth something. If that weren’t true, the bus companies would’ve ditched the union years ago.

The mayor’s duty is to taxpayers, parents and kids. There’s a lot at stake.

The members of a different union, the Transport Workers Union, who staff the subway and bus system, struck in 2005 (illegally, because they, unlike the school-bus workers, are public workers).

The TWU has been without a contract for a year now — and it’s been gingerly testing its power again in recent weeks.

Union members have given out fliers to riders suggesting that the MTA makes subway motormen enter stations too fast for safety — and is reminding the drivers and conductors to “use caution.”

Since work slowdowns are illegal, the TWU has been careful to not tell drivers to slow down.

But TWU leaders not only support the striking school-bus drivers; they’re watching closely.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s
City Journal.

Twitter: @nicolegelinas

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Three generations — and counting

In 2009, when Larry Zinn took over as sales manager for the Infiniti dealership that his father owned, he had a great idea: retrain the sales staff in a team approach and offer customers complimentary add-on services for the first year.

Some salesmen who were used to selling the same way for decades up and quit. But that didn’t deter Larry from insisting a new sales culture and value proposition for new car buyers was necessary. “I was persistent with everything I’ve believed we needed to do going forward. People were going to embrace change or move on,” says Larry, 28.

The resistance quieted, however, after Larry recruited young salespeople and had them trained in the new advantage program. The new approach helped push sales volume up 72 percent. "We had a lot of success with it,” he says.

Larry Zinn’s experience is not unusual for family-owned businesses that survive into a third generation and employ new tactics to keep from becoming obsolete.

Nationally, family-run businesses account for nearly 35 percent of the largest companies including Ford, Koch Industries, Hilton, Wal-Mart, Loews and Ikea. In South Florida, family-run businesses are particularly prevalent and account for a majority of the largest Hispanic companies, including Goya, Bacardi, El Dorado and Sedano’s Supermarkets.

But while more than 30 percent of all U.S. family-owned businesses survive into the second generation, only about 12 percent are passed onto the third generation, according to Family Firm Institute, a Boston-based association for family enterprise professionals. Those that do survive have a few intriguing commonalities: an ability to stay relevant, think bigger and take a long term view.

“They try to figure out where they want to be in 10 years and take steps to make that target,” says Wayne Rivers, president of The Family Business Institute in Raleigh, N.C.

Most third-generation family businesses, particularly those in South Florida, were started by a scrappy entrepreneur who saw business ownership as a way to provide for the family. Those businesses include grocery chains such as Sedano’s, restaurant operators such as Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine and airport concessionaires such as NewsLink.

Typically, in those businesses, the founder brought his kids with him to work, put them in the kitchen, the stock room, the sales floor, and taught them on-the-spot business lessons. Those kids eventually came to work full time and helped the company evolve beyond a seat-of-the-pants start-up into a more sophisticated business with processes and systems.

Now comes the third generation, who are more likely to have received formal business education before they return to the company. Often, they are able to leverage that training and move the company forward dramatically. But the succession also comes with challenges. They must keep the respect of longtime employees and show the same dogged commitment to seeing their company succeed, even after having already grown up enjoying the fruits of its success.

In successful third-generation businesses, the senior generation often stays on to ensure that commitment, adopting a role as mentor or advisor while creating an environment where younger family members can take on real responsibility, says Rivers, who consults for family businesses. “They get out of the way, let the next generation make their own mistakes, and gracefully exit when it’s appropriate.”

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Miami’s own Vanilla Ice: a one-hit wonder’s remarkable second act

He still remembers that moment, even as the chaos of his life swirled about him two decades ago. On the upside of his epic hit, Ice Ice Baby, Robert Van Winkle surveyed what his soaring career had afforded — the cars, the parties, the good times and this modern pad on Star Island. It was a professionally designed showcase of flash, but deeply bereft of soul.

“I felt like I was living in a nightclub,” said Van Winkle, the rapper who commanded the stage as Vanilla Ice. “It never felt like home.’’

Van Winkle, 45, who has spent more than half of his life in South Florida, re-imagined his space in warm earth tones. For Van Winkle, it was about so much more than decorating, but rather the beginning of the next chapter after a rap career that had been so promising, then careened into pop culture obscurity.

Many turns later, Van Winkle emerged from the wreckage as a successful, self-taught real estate investor, renovation whiz and a popular reality television home star, the seeds first planted that moment on Star Island when his house wasn’t a home.

Van Winkle’s third season of the DIY Network’s Vanilla Ice Project premiers next Sunday in which the rapper — who still tours performs concerts — buys, guts and makes pretty upscale homes. With his easy personality and hearty laugh still intact, plus a newfound Zen after a troubled past, Van Winkle mines South Florida’s rich housing landscapes for homes that can be grabbed, renovated and returned to the market for a profit. He is also the star of a DIY special called Ice My House, airing this Sunday at 11 p.m., and has a new lighting collection called, you guessed it: Vanilla Ice Lighting.

“With the recession, people have been feeling so miserable for so long. People don’t want to put money in an upside-down house,’’ said Van Winkle who lives with his wife and two daughters in a Wellington community. “I wanted a show that motivated people to want to invest in their homes, to get that kitchen they always wanted. I want people to enjoy their homes.’’

The show is just the latest stop in Van Winkle’s transformation, and his leveraging of his monster single.

“Vanilla Ice is one of those figures in pop music who was able to successfully reinvent himself,’’ said Matt Donahue, of Bowling Green State University’s Department of Popular Culture. “ Ice Ice Baby is his signature phrase and he has been able to take it all the way to the bank.’’

The Vanilla Ice Project’s 13-episode season follows Van Winkle and a crew of contractors as they transform a 6,000-square-foot house in a Lake Worth subdivision. “This place was rotten, we had to take down every piece of drywall, gut it down to the cinderblocks,’’ he said. “Everything in here now is custom, with state-of-art in-home technology and made with a whole lot less carbon.’’

On an especially muggy weekday, Van Winkle is taking a break from filming. Tattooed arms outstretched, he is animated as he talks about the plans to make this home a showpiece, a lifetime away from his early days as a rising rapper.

Van Winkle, who grew up in Dallas, exploded on the music scene in the early 1990s — just as rap was settling into its second decade — and sold 15 million To the Extreme albums worldwide on the popularity of Ice Ice Baby, the smash that started as a B-side song. The catchy song — along with Vanilla Ice’s high-stepping in parachute pants — became the first rap single in history to top the Billboard charts.

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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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