Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano charged with illegal solicitation and expenditure of campaign funds








Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano's political opposition has submitted a criminal complaint to the state Attorney General and the Board of Elections - charging Mangano with illegal solicitation and expenditure of campaign funds.

Nassau County Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs filed the complaint saying Mangano's campaign collected more than $70,000 in corporate contributions, many of which were made by firms doing business with Nassau County.

The complaint alleges that Deputy County Executive Rob Walker solicited the money through the Hicksville Republican Club. Jacobs says that Walker and Mangano violated campaign finance contribution limits by illegally contributing funds to support Mangano's reelection campaign.




Events included hosting a fundraiser in a $200,000 luxury box at Met Life Stadium and a golf fundraiser at Disney World. Jacobs said Mangano also had a September 2012 Bruce Springsteen fundraiser at MetLife Stadium.

"Mangano and Walker are enjoying their 'Glory Days' in a luxury suite purchased with a pile of illegal campaign cash," said Jacobs.

But Mangano's spokesman shot back: "The only campaign Jay Jacobs knows is one of mudslinging and slander," said Brian Nevin

"All campaign contributions were properly reported and the campaign will take the necessary steps to address any contributions that exceeded the cap."










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Miami startup that turns text to video receives $1 million in seed funding




















Guide, a new technology startup based in Miami, announced Tuesday it has closed a $1 million round of seed funding from investors including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Sapient Corp., MTV founder Bob Pitman, actor and producer Omar Epps, and early Google employee Steve Schimmel. The Knight Foundation is supporting Guide through its new early-stage venture fund, the Knight Enterprise Fund.

Led by CEO and founder Freddie Laker and COO Leslie Bradshaw, Guide’s team of seven is focused on turning online news, social streams and blogs into video for users who may be cooking, exercising, commuting or getting ready in the morning. The free application offers consumers a selection of about 20 “anchors” — including a dog, a robot and an anime character — that will read the article and present the accompanying photos, pull-out information and video clips in its video presentation. Revenue drivers for Guide could include in-app purchases, advertising-based anchors and customizations from publishers, said Laker, a former vice president at SapientNitro.

Laker and his team plan to launch a public beta next month, which they plan to do with a splash at the huge technology conference South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.





Read more about Guide here on the Starting Gate blog. Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg





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Judge OK’s plan for gay man, lesbian couple to be legal parents of young daughter




















A Miami-Dade circuit judge has approved a private adoption allowing three people — a gay man and a married lesbian couple — to be the legal parents of their 23-month-old daughter.

“We’re creating entirely new concepts of families. If you have two women seeking to be listed as Parent One and Parent Two, that does not exclude listing a man as father,” said Miami family lawyer Karyn J. Begin, who represented dad Massimiliano “Massimo” Gerina in a two-year paternity case involving lesbian friends who had his baby.

Maria Italiano and Cher Filippazzo, who married in Connecticut, and their attorney, Kenneth Kaplan, declined to be interviewed.





The women, according to Begin, are longtime partners who unsuccessfully attempted to become pregnant through professional fertility clinics.

Instead of giving up, they decided to try again at home and approached Gerina about fathering a child.

“They asked me,” Gerina said. “I was flattered by it. I thought what a great opportunity for me to have a baby.”

A single Bay Harbor Islands hair stylist, Gerina explained why he desires children: “It’s nature — the same reason a woman wants to be a mother.”

Gerina grew up Cagliari, Italy, where he never thought he could become a father. Eight years ago, though, he moved to South Florida and encountered many gay parents raising children.

“It’s not unusual here. Where I am from it’s unusual. I grew up with the mentality that it would never happen,” he said. “When I moved here, I saw gay couples, lesbian couples having families.”

On only a verbal agreement, Gerina gave the women his sperm and Italiano conceived. The lesbians planned for Filippazzo to later adopt the baby and they would both raise the child.

Florida law specifies that sperm donors have no legal rights in artificial inseminations. Thus the hitch: Gerina says he considered himself a parent, not simply a donor. The women, he claimed, “wanted a father for the baby, not just the sperm.”

Two weeks after insemination, Italiano learned she was pregnant. About seven months later, the women called Gerina and asked him to sign a contract.

“When they gave me the paper to sign that I had to give up all my rights to the baby, I didn’t,” he said.

Gerina began to ponder the legal consequences of siring a child. He hired Begin and presented the women with papers of his own.

“My papers said I would have parental rights, a visitation schedule,” he said. “They hated it. They said this wasn’t what they wanted. I said, ‘Now that you’re already pregnant, you should have thought about that before.’ ”

Their daughter, Emma, was born March 10, 2011. “The paternity lawsuit was filed right after the birth of the child,” Begin said.

The three parents feuded in court for nearly two years. A trial was set for Jan. 31, 2013.

A week before trial, Gerina, Italiano, Filippazzo and their attorneys settled the case privately.

Before posing for photos with the three parents and Emma, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Antonio Marin approved the settlement and the court adoption clerk submitted paperwork for Emma’s new birth certificate:

• Birth mother Italiano, a retail saleswoman, received “sole parental responsibility,” Begin said.





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Jennifer Lawrence's Long Lost Monk Appearance

Though she's already been nominated for two Academy Awards at just 22 years old, Jennifer Lawrence hasn't always had her pick of the best roles in Hollywood -- which she hilariously displayed by revealing to Conan O'Brien the major letdown she received earlier in her career when she thought she was getting a plum guest starring role on USA hit Monk.

"For the Monk episode there was Emily J. and Emily C. -- I thought I was going to play Emily C.," she explained during her guest appearance on Conan Tuesday night. "So this one girl that's in [my] church goes, 'I'm gonna be playing Emily J. on Monk,' and I go, 'Oh my God I'm going to play Emily C., this is great!'"

Pics: Fierce Fashions -- Hot Looks of the 2013 Oscar Luncheon

Only it turns out Jennifer didn't exactly get the part she was hoping for.

"[Turns] out I'm not playing that part -- I'm playing the mascot," she laughed. "And so everybody watched it after I told them that I'm going to have this great, huge part and I was just the mascot -- and I've never been back to church since."

Video: J-Law's Biggest Fashion Regret?

Check out the video to see Jennifer's under the radar Monk appearance, and for her priceless reaction to the unearthed clip.

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Can’t find time for play? Try scheduling it




















If your resolutions for 2013 include achieving a better work-life balance, your calendar holds the key to your success.

But, to pull off your goals, you’re going to need to turn the traditional way of thinking upside down.

Most people schedule their work commitments on their calendars and squeeze in family, friends and fun around it. Instead, schedule your work around your personal life, say Michelle Villalobos and Jessica Kizorek, speakers, personal branding consultants and co-creators of Make Them Beg, a professional self development program. For example, they suggest you block out gym time, reading for pleasure time, coaching your kid time and date night. Even a person with almost no flexibility in his or her work schedule can block out 15 minutes for a walk rather than eating lunch at their desks.





“You have to plan for play. Otherwise work expands and there’s no time for play,” Kizorek says. Today, it’s easy to stay a little later at the office or work through lunch because there’s always more to do. Using your calendar effectively can help you with boundaries.

Villalobos says once you put “play” into your schedule, it helps to get people who are important in your life to keep you committed. For example, she blocks out three hours twice a week on her calendar to paint. She has asked her boyfriend to help her stick to that schedule.

Realistically, there will be times when you have to reschedule a fun activity because of work demands. “At least you know what you missed so if you don’t do it, you move it to another day,” Villalobos says.

If you’re in a relationship, experts advise letting your partner participate in creating your calendar. A friend of mine sends his spouse an electronic invite to his poker night signaling that she has the night free to schedule her own fun activity.

Scheduling everything may seem rigid. “That’s the opposite,” Villalobos insists. “By putting things on your calendar, you can focus on what you need to do in the moment. It allows you to be far more present.”

With more people converting to electronic calendars or hovering between paper and online options, how we coordinate our schedules is in flux. But for balance, it’s often better to track personal and professional in one place.

Sharon Teitelbaum, a Boston-based work-life coach, says to calendar all important life events including birthdays. It may sound like common sense to calendar your son’s birthday, but people forget and schedule business travel, she has found. She also advises putting work events in your calendar as far in advance as possible and tasks that lead up to them. “You don’t want to agree to host a dinner party the weekend before a work retreat.”

For many busy people, the traditional way of scheduling needs to change from calendaring a due date to creating a timeline. If you have a big project you need to have completed by Feb. 15, Teitelbaum says break it into weekly tasks leading up to that date. “People vastly underestimate how long things take and the number of interruptions they have to contend with,” she says.

Julie Morgenstern, who created the Balanced Life Planner for Delray Beach-based specialty retailer Levenger, says that even on a daily basis people don’t plan realistically. “By bravely recognizing the limits of each day and how long each to-do on your list will take, we can see in advance what will or won’t fit into our calendar, and become more strategic,” she said.





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Divorced parents in legal battle over Autumn Pasquale's gravestone








Three months after a 12-year-old New Jersey girl was killed, her divorced parents are in a court battle over control of a memorial fund and headstone for the girl's grave.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday is the latest publicly visible fissure in the family after Autumn Pasquale's disappearance that, at first, united the couple and an entire community in a search for the girl, who went for a bike ride on Oct. 20 and was never seen alive again by her family.

Forty-eight hours after 200 enforcement officers and hundreds more volunteers began searching, the girl's body was found stuffed in a recycling bin several blocks from her home in the small town of Clayton, 25 miles south of Philadelphia.





AP



Autumn Pasquale, 12, of Clayton, NJ, was last seen alive while riding her bike on October 12, 2012.






Donations rolled in for a reward for an arrest in the case. After two teenage brothers were charged with murder, money came in for her funeral and other purposes. In all, donations totaled at least $100,000.

In the suit, the girl's mother, Jennifer Cornwell, says her ex-husband, Anthony Pasquale, took Cornwell's name off the memorial fund bank account that they had agreed to control together to pay for their daughter's funeral, legal expenses and help with the college education for their two surviving children. She also says her ex-husband has refused to consult her on what the girl's headstone should say.

Cornwell is asking a judge to split the memorial fund so that each parent can have partial control and to bar Pasquale from completing the headstone design without Cornwell's input.

About the only thing the lawyers for the parents agree on is how sad it is that the saga has come to this.

"It's just disappointing and curious," said Douglas Long, a lawyer for Pasquale. "That's about it."

"This is a very sad situation," said Robert Feltoon, the lawyer for Cornwell.

Court filings lay out acrimony between the girls' parents: Cornwell moved out in 2002 when her children were 4, 3, and 1 years old. Though the parents legally had joint custody, they spent most of their time living with their father. The couple were divorced in 2005, seven years after they married.

Cornwell says her ex-husband did not inform her that their middle daughter was missing until two hours after police were called on Oct. 20.

Pasquale says his ex-wife picked up items left at a funeral home by mourners without his permission. She contends he said it would be OK. He also says she was wrong to withhold money from a fundraiser from the fund. She says the money — a $15,500 check plus unspecified cash — is in a safe-deposit box where she placed it after learning she no longer had control of the bank account.










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Dolphins get unanimous support for stadium tax deal in first Senate hearing




















The Miami Dolphins started off the legislative season 1-and-0 in their attempt to get lawmakers to approve a multi-million dollar deal to upgrade

Lawmakers in the Florida Senate Commerce Committee gave unanimous support to a bill that would clear the way for higher hotel bed taxes and a new sales tax rebate to help fund a $400 million renovation of the Fins’ digs.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, has cleared its first hurdle, but it still faces an uphill climb. There will be several more committee stops and the bill also has to clear the Florida House, where Braynon acknowledged that there’s still some heavy lifting to do.





“In the Senate, I don’t think that we’re going to have as many problems as we’re going to have in the House,” he said.

The bill would allow the Dolphins to collect an annual $3 million in sales tax rebates from the state for 30 years, as well as millions more in new bed taxes.

Several stakeholders came up to Tallahassee to support the bill at its first committee hearing, including Miami Gardens mayor Oliver Gilbert, SunLife stadium CEO Mike Dee and Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce President Bill Diggs.

All supporters pitched the same message: This tax deal is a smart economic move for the state, and would lead to Super Bowls, college championships and other major tourism events.





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Worn Out? Stars Step Out in Same Style



Jessica vs. Kim vs. Ashley







Jessica Chastain was perfectly put-together as usual at The Hollywood Reporter Nominees' Night 2013 in Beverly Hills, California on February 4, 2013, though there's a reason her black Givenchy peplum dress looks so familiar -- a pre-pregnant Kim Kardashian wore it to the Ryu Restaurant opening in April in New York City, and Ashley Greene beat them all to the punch, sporting the exact same dress all the way back in October of 2011 at The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 Paris premiere.

Who looks best in the dress?








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Chris Brown likely faked community service: DA

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles prosecutors are asking a judge to order Chris Brown to redo his community service because of significant discrepancies in records submitted to a court.

Deputy District Attorney Mary Murray writes in a motion filed Tuesday that the records submitted by Richmond, Va., police to prove the R&B singer performed six-months of community labor are "at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting."

Brown was allowed to perform his community labor sentence for the 2009 beating of Rihanna in his home state of Virginia. Richmond police submitted paperwork last year indicating Brown had completed his sentence, but the logs showed the singer performing double shifts in the city and at a day care center where his mother once worked.




Splash News



Chris Brown is seen performing a hard day of his community service clearing weeds in Richmond, Virginia 2009. Los Angeles prosecutors are now casting doubt over the records of his work.




Richmond Police spokesman Gene Lepley had no immediate comment, and a phone message for Brown's attorney wasn't immediately returned.

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Cutting edge tech from Swiss Army




















The Victorinox Swiss Army Jetsetter looks like a traditional pocket knife the company is famous for, but instead of the knife you get a pocket full of storage.

A foldout and detachable USB 2.0 flash drive is among the features in the mini tool kit, which includes a ball point pen, bottle opener, Phillips screwdriver, tweezers and scissors in the 16 GB model I tested out.

The detachable flash drive is Windows- and Mac-friendly, although it comes loaded with Mac-friendly security software to protect your data stored on the device.





It’s available in capacities of 8 GB black ($39.95), 16 GB red ($49.99) and 32 GB silver ($99.99). There are a few different features in each, with the 32 GB model having a LED mini light, for example.

Details: www.swissarmy.com

A great find

Kensington’s Proximo Fob and Tag Kit creates a wireless (Bluetooth) monitoring system between your keys, accessories and an iPhone (4S or 5) that will alert you if they are separated.

I tried the starter kit ($59.99), which includes a fob, tag, keyring and has a screen driver to open the hardware and insert the included CR2032 lithium coin batteries, along with a key ring.

The fob attaches to the key ring and after you have it linked with the free Kensington Proximo app, anytime the devices are separated an alarm sounds. If your phone is within range but you can’t find it, press a button.

It’s easy to think of this as a monitoring device for your expensive smartphone but it also works in reverse once everything is linked up. With your phone in your pocket or purse, it can alert you that you have left your keys behind.

can be placed in a computer bag or attached to anything (or anyone) that you want alarmed. But unlike the fob, it’s only one direction; the app will find it but you can’t use it to find your phone.

The Proximo App Dashboard tracks up to five items with a single fob and up to four tags. Additional tags cost $24.99 each.

If you get out of range between the devices, an app lets you tap a button to let you know where your device was last seen and even pulls up a map with a specific address.

Details: www.Kensington.com

Sound investment

RadioShack’s Auvio expanding Bluetooth speaker ($39.99) is as simple and useful as a gadget can be. Just twist open the speaker, pair it with your device via Bluetooth and you’ll be amazed at how much better the sound is than the built-in speaker on your smartphone or tablet.

A rechargeable battery is built in for up to eight hours of use and can be powered up in two hours with a USB charge using the included cable.

It is 2.5 inches in diameter, just over 3-inches tall when expanded and about 2.5 inches when closed.

Another choice, with a bigger size (2.8-by-6.5-by-2.9 inches) but much better sound is the brick-shaped Auvio Portable Speaker ($79.99).

Both speakers have aux-in ports to connect to non-Bluetooth devices.

Details: www.radioshack.com





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