Socialist crank Hugo Chávez doesn't much care for communication he can't control, so it was only a matter of time before he put the kibosh on Twitter in Venezuela.
Last week, the tag #FreeVenezuela became a trending topic thanks to citizens protesting Chávez's crackdown on press freedom and calling for the president's resignation.
Late last month, Chávez ordered the shutdown of five cable TV stations after they refused to air his addresses. Riots over freedom of the press broke out, leaving at least two young demonstrators dead. The Twitter tag became a cyber component of the protests and at one point reached the third spot on Twitter's trending topics list. Demonstrators also planned some protests through Twitter.
Now the Chávez government have declared Twitter a "tool of terror" and might place restrictions on the site and the Internet in general.
We wonder if any of those Tweets came through the "$15 penis phone" he unveiled last year.
​Deep in the caves of Afghanistan, soldiers use hidden robots the size of children to detect enemy movement. The rolling hunks of metal have less personality than a garbage can -- you won't find them drinking beer with George Jetson -- but in the realm of high-tech battlefield tools, they are quite useful.
Coral Gables Police recently welcomed a nearly identical, $16,420 automaton into their tidy suburban offices. Dubbed a "robotic remote reconnaissance system," it's one of a treasure chest full of cop toys the department recently bought with the city's Fortified Asset Fund, a slush fund that comes from the pockets of the very people they bust.
It works like this: When officers swoop down on a mammoth marijuana grow house or a Mafioso's mansion, they seize the fancy things: BMWs, diamond watches, expensive art. The goods are then auctioned off, and a chunk of the cash is supposed to go back to the city for improvements.
In a four-month span last spring, however, the department spent more than $52,000 of the public money on the following:
​A piece of a flying plane fell from the sky, crashing into the parking lot at Miami International Mall in Doral this morning around 11:30. Luckily, no one was hurt and the plane landed safely.
The 17-foot-long panel fell from an Atlas Air Cargo 747 en route from Santiago, Chile, and landed in front of Dillard's department store. The part first hit a tree before tumbling into the parking lot. No buildings or cars were damaged.
The plane, already in descent, landed safely at Miami International Airport.
Calloway has been at Metro West Detention Center for 13 years
​In a cramped county jail cell in Doral, Tavares Calloway has been awaiting his sentence for 13 years.
On Wednesday, a jury finally recommended death for his murder of five Liberty City drug dealers in 1997.Seven jurors decided the crimes were too heinous to give him life, but five disagreed.
His attorney, Sydney Smith, says that bare majority is enough to spare his 31-year-old client. And thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, and Florida's kinky judicial system, he might be successful in his argument.
​We all had that rich friend growing up, the one with an elevator in his house, a pet tiger, and the parents who rented a Ferris wheel for his birthday parties. Well, that spoiled brat is all grown up, and he keeps throwing outrageous soirees. This year, he's hired stone-faced models to stand on pillars every three feet, and he's created a mini Art Basel, right there in his home, where artists not only exhibit their work but where they paint on command to a live DJ. Anyone can show films at a party but this guy insisted on putting hired help in plastic bags and projecting movies right there on their stretched latex form. That's the kind of a party this will be. 'Cept it's not his party after all; it's the New TimesArtopia event. And you're invited.
The Miami New Times is throwing an art-ridden bacchanal called Artopia, held this year in the spooky Freedom Tower on Thursday, February 11 from 7 to 11 p.m. Barefoot wines, Magic Hat beer, and rum cocktails will flow freely at this multi-room event where the lines between the entertainment and the entertained will blur.
A bit on the dry side, it was not the best sandwich Riptide has ever used as an excuse to lurk somewhere. But it did the job: Eventually, Spence-Jones gave us a big, smiling "No comment." Say what you will about her, but even when she's blowing you off, the suspended commissioner makes it sound like she's offering you a slice of rhubarb pie.
Los Van Van landed in Miami like a lit match dropped on an ancient anthill.
Erik Maza
Ruckus at the concert
​On Sunday, hundreds of grizzled Cubans came out of the woodwork -- Westchester, Little Havana, Hialeah -- to protest the popular band's concert at the James L. Knight Center.
They came bearing all the ardor of Tea Party organizers and stayed well into the night despite a persistent drizzle. A City of Miami cop estimated there were nearly 400 of them.
The protests began three hours earlier in front of Versailles restaurant on Calle Ocho. I had read that organizers would bus old-timers and blue-haired ladies from there to downtown.
My plan: Somehow hitch a ride on one of those buses.
The USS Bataan has 74 severely injured victims aboard its floating hospital off Haiti's coast.
Crist says the feds stopped the planes after he asked for help in paying for treatment. Obama says the flights have stalled because of logistical problems. Desperate Haitians were delighted when the White House announced Sunday the flights would be resumed.
But for the hundreds of Navy personnel on vessels around the devastated coast, this weekend's argument seemed like a distant distraction.
It's hard to focus on political bickering when you're working 12-hour shifts to try to help survivors.
For a firsthand report on the relief efforts, Riptide caught up with Jay Maple, a 20-year-old machinist's mate onboard the USS Bataan. The Miami native spoke to us on Friday by phone from the amphibious assault vessel. "We're just focused on trying to bring as much aid to as many people as possible, frankly," Maple says. "We have working parties going out constantly, breaking down buildings, bringing relief packages, treating patients. It's non-stop work."
Fidgeting in his gray suit coat, disgraced priest David Dueppen told a judge this morning he wants custody of his 1-year-old daughter. He claims the baby's mother -- a former Porky's stripper named Beatrice Hernandez -- has a criminal record and "ambushed" him using the media. Now, he says, she won't let him see his kid.
"We all know he violated his vow of celibacy, but we don't want that to be the focus of this case," says his lawyer, Ray Rafool. "My client is desperate to see his child."
​The first image most people will ever see of Apple's recently unveiled iPad displays Liberty City's own Chad Ochocinco. Interesting, but perhaps more important is that the image was party of the New York Times' app for the new machine. For months, rumors swirled that the iPad would be the killer app that keeps newspapers relevant in the age of technology, and that Times interface does look kinda nice, but will the iPad save the troubling fortunes of daily newspapers? Maybe not. Not yet at least.
Like many newspaper companies, the stock of Miami Herald's parent company, McClatchy, opened up more than a point higher this morning. That's a heck of a jump for a stock stuck in the single digits, but by the time the iPad was actually unveiled, the stock fell half a point. Maybe because the iPad didn't deliver on expectations.
​FIU student Hannah Giles, who won the praise of conservatives and disdain of liberals when she posed as a hooker trying to solicit business advice from ACORN workers, now finds herself targeted by a lawsuit. Katherine Conway-Russell, a worker in ACORN's Philadelphia office, claims that Giles and her partner James O'Keffe, who posed as her pimp, illegally recorded her and "caused emotional distress, harm and injury," by publicizing the tapes.
O'Keffe finds himself in more pressing legal hot water though, after being arrested by the FBI. He was arrested on Monday with three others on allegations that they tried to plant a wiretap on phones in the New Orleans offices of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. O'Keffe allegedly helped two others dressed as telephone repairmen gain access to the office. The group was charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.
In this county, the criminal court system functions like an old bicycle: It works -- just much too slowly.
This week, New Times will feature a story about the inmates who have stayed longest in Miami-Dade county jail, a place that's supposed to be temporary.
via miami dade police
Chazre Davis
​What we found: Eight men have spent more than ten years behind bars waiting for a verdict. One of them has been there 12 years with an open case. And it has cost the county over $4 million.
Take Chazre Davis, inmate number 000000236, for example. The husky 41-year-has a Mohawk that sprouts from his skull like a potted shrub. He sleeps next to a stainless-steel sink inside private cell number 503 at the Miami-Dade County Pre-Trial Detention Center. On Saturdays, he munches Salisbury steak for dinner, lifts weights, and is allowed to rendezvous with visitors.
One year ago, I traveled to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to watch firsthand as President Barack Obama pledged to close the extrajudicial prison.
One year later, these guys are still hanging out by the Caribbean.
​I was witness to Guantánamo's "final days," I wrote. It seemed like a reasonable thing to say. After all, on his very first day in office, Obama promised Gitmo would be emptied of prisoners within one calendar year.
But, as of last week, 12 months have come and gone, and more than 200 prisoners are still rotting next to the Caribbean Sea, far from a fair trial.
So what went wrong? Not to take too much credit, but Obama ran into just the sort of predicament we worried about in our story.
Miami New Times was inside the Guantánamo Bay camps for both [Omar] Khadr's January 20 hearing, likely the last one to be held in Cuba, and President Obama's order the next day to close the place. Cases like the child soldier's represent perhaps the new president's most difficult challenge: what to do with the men -- now further radicalized by torture -- who would almost certainly threaten Americans everywhere if released.
Howard Stern sidekick and self-described "topnotch, prime-time, center-stage celebrity" Elegant Elliot Offen runs 14 miles a day in ladies' lingerie. In New York, he swears, people on the street cheer and salivate over his bodacious curves. "You won't see a sexy, sexy statuesque physique like mine on any real woman," he brags.
Bellboys in Miami Beach were not so enthusiastic. The 59-year-old, who tends to refer to himself in third person, was filming a TV show in town last year. He prepaid for a room at the Holiday Inn on Collins Avenue and wore -- What else? -- a black ladies' G-string-style bustier with pantyhose as he checked in. He ended up in jail.
Now, a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court claims hotel management had him falsely arrested because of his passion for panties. He seeks $21 million for psychological damage.
"These people behaved like troglodytes and Loup Garous," Elegant says, his voice growing louder with every word. "I'm talking about H-A-T-E!"
Bart Sherwood passes the grisly photos around the Miami-Dade County Commission chambers.
Photo by Tim Elfrink
Lycra pants mingled with business suits at the county commission chambers last night.
​In the first image, his face is scraped and swollen, his arms are wrapped in plaster, and IVs run into his body. In the other, one ass cheek is completely covered in gauze, and his back is a mess of cuts and gouges.
"That was me ten years ago," Sherwood says. "I got hit not ten feet from where Christophe Le Canne died. I've been talking about it ever since, but nothing's changed."
Sherwood was one of a few dozen cyclists who showed up at the county commission chambers yesterday to protest Sunday's grisly accident on the Rickenbacker Causeway, where Le Canne was killed by Carlos Bertonatti, a 28-year-old singer with a horrific driving record who drunkenly sped away with Le Canne's bike wedged under his car.
Everyone in the chambers agreed something went very wrong on that bridge Sunday, because rescue units took more than 20 minutes to respond to Le Canne. He bled to death in the meantime.
What was less clear was exactly what went wrong. To Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, the culprit was budget cuts that shuttered a nearby fire station. To County Manager George Burgess, it was a screwup by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue dispatchers. To Sherwood, it was much simpler.
"Nothing's going to change until you decide to start enforcing traffic laws and taking down some speeders out there," he says.
Inside the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton South Beach, businessmen sip mint-infused lime water next to a display of diamond rings. Four-foot-tall vases of wild orchids vie with the flat-screen TVs for attention, and the ocean crashes just yards from the entrance.
Behind the scenes, things are not as pretty. Haitian-born chambermaids at the hotel have filed at least three federal discrimination complaints in the past six months, claiming leaders of the housekeeping department refuse to work with anyone from the island.
Their contention: Bosses are so blatantly nationalist they make Pat Robertson's "Haiti's pact with the Devil" statement seem bland.
In the past six months, workers say, five maids -- all of Haitian descent -- were fired. They finger the director of housekeeping, who is Colombian, and a supervisor, who is Jamaican.
Olga Jean-Jacques is a five-year employee who claims she was canned without cause. "[The supervisor] told me Haitians are born from the behind, and Jamaicans come from the vagina." she says.
American Red Cross volunteers attend to earthquake survivors.
​Kerlyne Paraison helplessly saw the drama unfolding on television the way one watches a loved one flat-line through a hospital window. The 26-year-old Haitian had lived in Port-au-Prince until just two years ago. When she saw the first pictures flash across the TV screen of the Haitian earthquake, she thought of her brother and sister, who still lived in a two-story house in the city's Carrefour neighborhood.
"My knees were giving away because I knew Port-au-Prince was already unstable," she said. "I knew it could not be good news."
An 80-foot yacht known as the Patron went up in flames Monday at a marina off Alton Road and Third Street in South Beach.
According to WSVN, fire crews arrived around 7:10 p.m. and took nearly two hours to extinguish the flames. Luckily, the blaze didn't spread beyond the boat, and no one was injured, though one person was treated for smoke inhalation after trying to put out the fire.
Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Kendrick Meek traveled to Haiti over the weekend to assist with the Miami-Dade Urban Search and Rescue Team's efforts.
The team rescued a 2-year-old girl who was stuck under debris for five days and reunited her with her father. Meek captured the moment on video from his iPhone.
"It was an incredible moment to watch a father get his daughter back and hold her once again. This little girl symbolizes the indomitable spirit of the Haitian people. She is the future of Haiti," Meek wrote at the Huffington Post.
​After Hurricane Katrina, a group of researchers at Clemson University devloped the SEED Project, aimed at turning shipping containers into temporary housing in the event a similar storm hit the Caribbean. The idea was only a concept, but in the wake of Haiti's earthquake, the team is working to make the idea a reality.
What kind of person drunkenly slams into a cyclist on the Rickenbacker Causeway and then speeds away while the biker bleeds to death on the road?
via Miami Dade Police Department
​In the case of this Sunday's horrific crash, according to police, it's the same kind of person who can rack up more than 40 traffic violations in 12 years.
Bertonatti can now add to that lengthy record charges of DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of a fatal accident, driving without a license, and resisting arrest.
Police say that on Sunday, the 28-year-old Bertonatti was driving drunk when he crushed Christophe Le Canne, a 44-year-old cyclist, near Key Biscayne and then sped away with the man's bike lodged under the front of his Volkswagen.
A search of Bertonatti's driving record (with thanks to a number of posters on Monday who pointed Riptide toward the violations) shows six infractions in 2009 alone, ranging from failure to pay a toll to parking permit fraud to driving without insurance.
​Including an unprecedented surge of text message donations, people have now contributed more than $150 million to earthquake relief in Haiti, according to figures released yesterday by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. That's five times the amount donated in the days immediately after the 2004 Asian tsunamis, and more than the $108 million received in the first four days after Hurricane Katrina.
The impromptu wave of giving-- even more impressive because many Americans are still cash-strapped from a weak economy-- will likely have a detrimental effect on domestic non-profits as people adjust their donations for the rest of the year. That said, charities are reporting huge numbers of new donors giving in small amounts. As of Saturday, American Red Cross, which had raised $87 million overall, had received $12 million through its handy $10-at-a-time text-donation
program (text "HAITI" to 90999)-- exponentially more than the $200,000 raised in the same
manner following Katrina.
​Want to open that family-owned erotic bakery you've always dreamed of? How about a boutique that specializes in footwear for dogs? A cleaning service that sends maids dressed as the clients' favorite Star Wars character?
Whatever the small business idea, conditions seem to be getting more favorable to realize it. A Portfolio.com/BizJournals survey ranked the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metro area as the seventh best place to open a small business in the entire nation, the highest in Florida.
The survey noted the area had 32.62 small business per resident (a relatively high figure) and a growing population.
The seventh-place spot is up from number 12 in last year's survey but down from when the metro area topped the list in 2006.
An up-and-coming Miami pop singer with slick looks and a Sony recording contract has been charged with vehicular homicide in a horrific hit-and-run crash near Key Biscayne yesterday.
via Rolling Stone
Police say Carlos Bertonatti was drunk when he plowed into a cyclist on Sunday.
​Carlos Bertonatti, a 28-year-old who lives on Key Biscayne, was arrested yesterday near his battered Volkswagen after a short police chase.
Officers say Bertonatti was drunk when he slammed into Christophe Le Canne, a 44-year-old South Miami cyclist, and then sped away with Le Canne's bike lodged under his front fender as the biker lay bleeding to death next to the road.
Miami cyclists today have flooded websites with comments slamming the singer and rescue units, which witnesses said took 20 minutes to arrive from Miami instead of from the nearby Key Biscayne firehouse.
The free Wi-Fi works great here on Lincoln Road, but good luck logging in at your condo.
​"We are the first in the country to have a free citywide hotspot," City Manager Jorge Gonzalez crowed to the Miami Herald.
Well, Jorge, there might be a good reason for that.
After a more than three-year delay and $5 million signed away, Miami Beach's Wi-Fi project is still spotty at best. Signals are strong in high-traffic public areas, but if you live on the Beach, good luck trying to join the network in your condo or back yard.
Even worse, technology experts wonder why a city needs free Wi-Fi in the age of web-browsing phones. That's exactly why pretty much every other metropolis in America dropped their plans of going wireless in the early 2000s.
"Everyone today is walking around with smartphones with 3G and iPhones," says Glenn Fleishman, a freelance technology writer for Wi-Fi Net News. "There's a really marginal audience who want public wi-fi and don't have access to an alternate method."
​If you see grown men dressed in elephant costumes on Biscayne Boulevard today, it's not conceptual art. Nor are they practicing for Burning Man or coming from a really good rave.
Activists from the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF) plan to dress as ringmasters, clowns, and tigers to protest "the miserable life of circus animals" at the American Airlines Arena this afternoon. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will perform at the stadium this weekend, and ARFF-ers say they plan to "educate patrons."They claim at least 26 elephants have died since 1992 and that trainers use ropes, chains, and metal bull hooks to control the gentle giants. ( True or not, it sounds like a sad, shitty life.)
​Music was still blaring from store fronts. Stray dogs were still lumbering around. Women were still getting their hair done. And Maguet Thimotus turned down the stereo playing outside of his namesake record store on NE Second Avenue to express his frustration at not reaching his loved one.
"All of my family is back in Haiti," the 56-year-old said, holding a hand-written list with five phone numbers."I've been calling since it happened."
Socialist crank Hugo Chávez doesn't much care for communication he can't control, so it was only a matter of time before he put the kibosh on Twitter in Venezuela.
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