Knight Foundation announces $23 million for arts in South Florida

After five years of supporting artistic ventures dreamed up by everyone from indie filmmakers to museum directors and musicians, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is ready for more.

The Miami-based foundation is devoting a total of $23 million in new gifts for the arts in South Florida, including $14 million for seven institutions and $9 million to continue the popular Knight Arts Challenge for another three years.

“Miami is continuing to develop this cultural identity,” said Dennis Scholl, the foundation’s vice president of arts. “So much of that is coming from the grassroots organizations. And the community continues to get a sense of itself through culture — that felt like it was still going on and definitely something that was still vibrant, so we wanted to support that vibrancy.”

The news will be officially announced Monday night as the foundation names the most recent round of arts challenge winners, drawing from money pledged in 2008. The new $23 million gift brings the total gifts in Miami to $86 million in six years.

“The point of all of this, as I never tire of saying, is we want to make art general in Miami,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the foundation. “To do that, you want to support arts institutions that day in and day out offer opportunities for people in Miami to see and feel and participate and engage art... and then at the same time engaging anybody in Miami who has an idea.”

The new grant series will continue to solicit ideas that benefit the arts in South Florida and require winners to raise a matching amount.

Michael Spring, director of Miami-Dade’s Department of Cultural Affairs, said the initial challenge came at just the right time to sustain the growth of the arts when the economy took a nosedive in 2008. The Knight support, Spring said, was key for organizations and donors.

“What the Knight Arts Challenge does, in addition to investing a lot of important dollars, is it puts a spotlight on the arts as an important area for civic investment,” said Spring, whose department has been a challenge winner.

The challenge requirement for matching dollars is key, said Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., who taught a two-year arts management training program in Miami funded in part by the Knight Foundation.

“When you just give a grant, it’s too easy for the organization to be thrilled and grateful and spend the money and then when the grant period is over, say ‘What do we do now?,’ ” he said. “When you make a matching requirement...you’re requiring them to build the fundraising skills that they will need to replace the grant when the grant period is over.”

Scholl said the major gifts are going to institutions that are maturing but still fragile.

“Our premiere institutions are not institutions with great endowments,” he said. “We were really looking at institutions that have provided us artistic excellence and made special efforts to do audience engagement.”

Major grants that will be announced include $5 million for the Miami City Ballet to increase outreach and add new works, including commissions; $5 million to the Wolfsonian-FIU to develop programs to engage the community and make the collection more accessible online; $2 million for the Cleveland Orchestra, in part to expand educational outreach programs; $1 million shared by the Design and Architecture High School and New World School of the Arts to send students on cultural trips to New York City and Europe; $500,000 for the Borscht Film Festival to expand and $500,000 for the Miami International Film Festival to add to its prize money to attract entries.

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Bachelorette Ashley Hebert and JP Rosenbaum are Married

Ashley Hebert is a bachelorette no more!

The 28-year-old dentist and her construction manager fiancé J.P. Rosenbaum, 35, walked down the aisle on Saturday in Pasadena, California, reports People Magazine.

The ceremony, officiated by Bachelor and Bachelorette host Chris Harrison, was attended by familiar faces from the series including Ali Fedotowsky, Emily Maynard, and Jason and Molly Mesnick.

Video: 'Bachelorette' Ashley Hebert and Fiance J.P.'s Passionate PDA

Ashley and J.P.'s exchanging of vows will be televised December 16 on a two-hour special on ABC.

The season seven sweeties will be the second Bachelorette couple ever to televise their walk down the aisle, following in the footsteps of Trista and Ryan Sutter, who married in December 2003.

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Street honor for heroic NYPD lensman, killed filming Sept. 11 attacks

A police officer killed after he rushed towards the collapsing World Trade Center towers to gather video on Sept. 11 had a street in front of the Police Academy renamed in his honor.

Glen Pettit, was an award-winning video journalist before he joined the NYPD in 1997, and began working in the department's Video Production Unit three years later.

When the first plane slammed into the Twin Towers, the officer knew where he had to be, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a ceremony today.

"Glen Pettit dedicated his life to serving others," Kelly said, describing how Pettit raced towards the tragic scene and got "crucial video" of the collapse. He was last seen racing toward the South Tower, camera in hand, minutes before the building tumbled down.

Pettit's mother, Jane Wixted, wore an American flag scarf around her neck as the sign renaming the section of East 20th Street "Police Officer Glen K. Pettit Corner" was unveiled.

"Having a street named after him is a privilege and an honor," Wixted said. "Glen always wanted the best shot and I'm sure he got it on 9/11."

She spoke to her departed son, "Thank you Glen for allowing me to be your mother. I'll be very proud of you for the rest of my life," she said.

Pettit had already been awarded the Medal of Honor, NYPD's highest honor, posthumously, and a plaque was installed in the lobby of the Police Academy where the Video Unit is located.

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Boat Show may block Miami’s 2016 Super Bowl bid

This winter, the biggest NFL match-up in South Florida might be Super Bowl versus Boat Show.

As South Florida readies a bid for the 2016 Super Bowl, it must contend with a major potential conflict on the tourism calendar. The National Football League may move the Super Bowl to Presidents’ Day weekend, already home to the five-day Miami International Boat Show since the 1940s.

It’s a significant enough conflict that, in the past, local tourism officials have declined to pursue a Super Bowl if it fell on boat show weekend. But this time around they may have no choice. For the first time, the NFL is requiring that potential host cities agree to a Presidents’ Day weekend Super Bowl if they want to pursue the big game at all, said two people who have seen the NFL request for Super Bowl bids.

The NFL “invited South Florida [to bid] knowing there was going to be an issue with Presidents’ Day weekend and the boat show,” said Nicki Grossman, Broward’s tourism director. “In the past, South Florida has not responded to a Super Bowl date that included Presidents’ Day weekend. This package is different.”

South Florida vies with New Orleans as the top Super Bowl host, with government and tourism leaders touting the game as both a boon to the economy and a publicity bonanza. But the notion of accommodating both Super Bowl and boat show — not to mention a major arts festival in Coconut Grove — strikes some top tourism officials as a bad idea.

“There is not sufficient hotel inventory available in Miami that weekend to host a Super Bowl,” said William Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We have taken a close look at that weekend, and it’s not physically possible in Miami to host Super Bowl during the Presidents’ Day weekend because of the boat show and the Coconut Grove Arts Festival. The hotel inventory is all being used for these two great events.”

His comments are at odds with the region’s top Super Bowl organizer and reflect the burden that the boat show may be to South Florida’s Super Bowl hopes for 2016 and 2017. The NFL invited Miami and San Francisco to bid for the 2016 Super Bowl by April 1, with the loser vying with Houston for the 2017 game. Talbert said the bid package states both decisions will be made in May.

For now, South Florida’s Super Bowl organizers face a largely hypothetical challenge, because the current NFL schedule has the Super Bowl occurring two weeks before Presidents’ Day weekend. The bid requirements for the ’16 and ’17 Super Bowls include three consecutive weekends as possibilities for the game, with the latest falling on the Presidents’ Day holiday.

Still, possible logistical hurdles may combine with political obstacles if the Miami Dolphins resume their push for a tax-funded renovation of Sun Life Stadium, the Super Bowl’s South Florida home.

Last year, the Dolphins proposed that Broward and Miami-Dade counties subsidize a $225 million renovation at Sun Life as a way to keep the region competitive for Super Bowls and other large events. The renovation includes a partial roof that would prevent the kind of drenching Super Bowl spectators suffered in 2007 when a rare February downpour hit Miami Gardens.

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Scott’s ALF panel let industry off hook, critics say

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott used tough language in the summer of 2011 when he created a panel to help fix the deadly abuse and neglect in Florida assisted living facilities.

He pledged to provide protections for elderly and disabled ALF residents, who in recent years saw sweeping breakdowns of care as lawmakers stripped regulations and failed to protect the state’s most vulnerable people from burns, beatings and death.

Then politics happened.

In a change of tide, Scott’s panel issued its final report this week, calling for diminished transparency, fewer regulations and more money for ALF operators. The panel calls for the state to better enforce existing rules rather than create new ones. And to reward ALFs when they do right rather than punish them when they do wrong.

Although some hailed the recommendations as a step forward, not everyone was cheering.

“[Providers] are probably doing cartwheels right now,” said Brian Lee, a resident advocate and director of Families for Better Care.

The recommendations are a product of more than a year of contentious meetings and a panel on which advocates for the powerful ALF industry had the lion’s share of seats. Scott appointed the group after The Miami Herald reviewed thousands of documents and published a sweeping series on the squalid conditions for many of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Some advocates for the elderly have blasted the panel since its formation, accusing Scott of stacking the committee with business-oriented ALF operators. Scott promised a second round of meetings would include more ALF residents and advocates. Critics contend the reverse was true.

On Friday, Scott insisted the work group is just one step, and that he’ll work with lawmakers to pass meaningful reform. He made similar promises last year.

“We need to act this session to make sure that existing regulations are being enforced to protect our seniors from abuse and to make necessary changes to stop facility operators from breaking the law,” he said this time around.

The furor from the Herald series prompted Scott’s panel to offer a variety of solutions in 2011, from stricter educational requirements for ALF caretakers to more government oversight for facilities that cause patient harm. Those emerged shortly after the series was published and served as a foundation for sweeping legislation that lawmakers softened and then defeated in 2012, under pressure from powerful industry lobbyists.

The new round of proposals offer bits and pieces of that original package.

Larry Polivka, chairman of the panel and head of the Claude Pepper Foundation, touted the group’s more resident-friendly proposals. Those include an appeals process to give evicted residents recourse and the creation of an independent nonprofit organization to train and credential providers.

“I think the workgroup struck a good balance,” he said, adding that the first round of proposals are not moot. “It has to be a carrot-and-stick approach. You can’t live by punitive measures alone.”

But Pat Lange, lobbyist and director of the Florida Assisted Living Association, said the final report appears to stand on its own. And she hopes it stays that way.

“The more recent conversations have been much more productive. This agrees with what we’ve felt from the beginning, which is that the regulations that exist are adequate,” she said. “I think [the panel] realized they need to make some differences in some of the ways they were handling recommendations.”

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Act of kindness turns New York cop into media darling

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. national media just got the perfect holiday gift: a feel-good tale about a young police officer who dug into his own pocket to put boots on a barefoot panhandler on a freezing city sidewalk.

Even better was the way the story of New York City Police Officer Larry DePrimo‘s kindness unfolded.

Thanks to a blurry Facebook photo snapped on a cell phone by a tourist who happened the incident in Times Square, DePrimo, 25, went from anonymous Good Samaritan to national media celebrity in less than 72 hours.

The photo of the officer crouching with the new pair of boots next to the bedraggled man was featured on the front pages of New York‘s two popular tabloids, the New York Post and the New York Daily News, on Friday. An article describing the good deed was the most viewed story of The New York Times’s website on Friday morning.

DePrimo told and retold the story of his labor of love in interviews Friday on a half dozen national TV morning shows, including NBC’s “Today” show, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’s “Morning Show,” CNN’s “Starting Point” and Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“We’ve been speaking a lot the last couple of days about who should be the ‘Time’ person of the year — Time magazine. I’d like to nominate you,” “Fox & Friends” host Gretchen Carlson told DePrimo.

Little was known about the man to whom DePrimo gave the boots. He is said to be a veteran who was at one time homeless and was placed in veterans’ housing sometime in the past year, according to NBC 4 New York.

DePrimo’s story has been particularly appealing because most pictures and video civilians take of police officers expose cruelty, not generosity, said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In contrast, “everything about this feels good and right and worthy,” Clark said, adding that the way the story came to the media’s attention contributed to its poignancy.

Squeezed into the spotlight was Jennifer Foster, the tourist who quietly snapped the photo of DePrimo that was posted to the New York Police Department’s Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon. She was flown to New York from Arizona for a Friday morning appearance on “Today” with DePrimo – meeting him for the first time.

“We decided that we were best friends now,” Foster said on the program.

Back in Times Square, television trucks and their crews swarmed the Skechers store where DePrimo bought the boots with the help of a worker who rang up the purchase with his employee discount. Even the small kindness of the discount triggered a wave of thank you calls and emails to the store, including from a retired detective from Arizona, said assistant manager Holli Barton.

(Reporting by Peter Rudegeair; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Leslie Adler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Barbara Hershey Talks Once Upon A Time Season Two Winter Finale

In 2010, Barbara Hershey presented a tragic portrait of a stage mother in the Academy Award winning thriller Black Swan. And, believe it or not, many of the emotions that drove Erica Sayers to demand Swan Queen perfection from Nina (played by Natalie Portman) are once again bubbling to the surface on ABC's Once Upon A Time.

As Cora, former Queen of fairytale land and mother to Regina, Hershey revealed to ETonline that she believes a mother's love is what has fueled all of Cora's less-than-lovely behavior. With Once Upon A Time's winter finale unfolding this Sunday, we caught up with the Oscar-nominated actress to find out what fans can expect from the 2012 swan song!

ETonline: What attracted you to Once Upon A Time?

Barbara Hershey: I've always loved fables and fairytales. I've always thought the reason they endure is because they fill a need that we have as human animals. There is something so satisfying about them because at the root of fairytales is a story about the human condition -- of course it's magnified and fantasized, but it really is about us and I enjoy it on that level. Any TV series is a grab bag for an actor, but particularly with this one because you never know what world you're going to be in next week!

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ETonline: Actors can never view their characters as "the villain" of a show, so where does her perceived evil come from in your mind?

Barbara: Her love for her daughter. Even though how she loves and what she's doing in the name of it seems a little insane, it comes from a soft place inside of her. It's the one softness inside her. She's just very twisted and warped and unhealthy about it. There are a lot of parents who think they're doing well for their kids, but are really pushing them in a direction they want. Cora is doing that. She thinks everything she's done is in her daughter's best interest, but it's not. She's quite amazing to play.

ETonline: Given that, how much of Cora's motivation in getting to Storybrooke is revenge-based?

Barbara: None of it. I think she truly is a mother trying to reconnect with her daughter. Again, she's just so warped in her emotions and in a bubble of her own making, that her own version of love is so different from what mine would be. But Cora just wants to reconnect with her daughter and live their lives together.

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ETonline: Should Cora get to Storybrooke, which character would you like to work with?

Barbara: I've had a lot of scenes with Hook, which has been fun. Colin [O'Donoghue] is just wonderful. Of course I'm looking forward to a Rumpelstiltskin confrontation, but I'm wide open. I'm fond of all the characters; it's such a grab bag of amazing options.

ETonline: Looking ahead, what are you excited for the fans to see as the season wears on?

Hershey: What's fun for me is that there are a lot of surprises with Cora in the winter finale. I was blown away on almost every page. I'm excited for the audience to feel that too. You'll see as we go into the future episodes, it gets really, really interesting.

Once Upon A Time airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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'Macho' Camacho gets big sendoff in East Harlem

Bolivar Arellano

Christian Camacho, 20, with his 14 year old brother Stanley Camacho both sons of deceased boxing Champion Hector 'Macho' Camacho. Here they were riding through the streets of East Harlem where their father was born and raised.

It was a goodbye fit for a king of the ring.

Boxing legend Hector “Macho” Camacho was given a royal sendoff today as his casket was paraded through the streets of East Harlem in a horse-drawn carriage as thousands of mourners wished him farewell.

The procession began at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church on East 106th Street, went up First Avenue, cut across East 116th Street, traveled down Fifth Avenue and returned along East 106th Street, winding back to the church.

Revelers joined in along the way, marching behind the carriage and procession of vehicles carrying grieving family members and friends.

People were spotted hanging out car windows and sunroofs while wildly waving Puerto Rican flags and clutching pictures of Camacho in his fighting prime.

When the casket, draped in a Puerto Rican flag, arrived at St. Cecilia’s, a mob of people standing behind police barricades chanted, “Macho. Macho.”

“I love you guys,” Camacho’s mother, Maria Matias, shouted back while pumping her fist in the air. The line of people waiting to get inside and pay thier respects was several blocks long.

“I fought hard to bring my son here, where he belongs,” she told The Post.

“He fought here, he was raised here and now he is being buried here. Look at all these supporters here, it is amazing.

“They are telling me that Camacho is alive today. His spirit is not dead. He is a champion. I will always carry him in my heart.”

She recalled how Camacho started learning to box at the age of 7 and bought her a home with his career winnings.

“My son had a good heart... and took care of me.”

Camacho was shot Nov. 20 while sitting in a parked car in his hometown, Bavamon. He was 50.

Matias lashed out at her son’s killers.

“He did not deserve to die. They killed an innocent man for no reason. One bullet took my son’s life.”

She said that police have three men in custody and are tring to peice together a motive behind the slaying.

“They don’t have all the evidence yet, but soon they will.”

A farewell for Camacho in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Tuesday was marred by violence after Cynthia Castillo, 28, who claims to have been the pugilist’s girlfriend, angered his sisters by kissing him inside the open casket and walking to a VIP area designated for family and close friends.

She then fought with his former girlfriend Gloria Fernandez outside the chapel, according to the newspaper El Nuevo Dia.

Police were called in to pull the ladies apart.

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Brazilian settles insider-trading charges tied to Burger King buyout

Igor Cornelsen — a 64-year-old Brazilian man who lives part time in Boca Raton and is a resident of the Bahamas — agreed to pay $5.1 million to settle insider trading charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with trading in securities of Burger King ahead of its acquisition by New York private-equity firm 3G Capital Partners Ltd.

The SEC said Cornelsen, a retired banker and customer of Wells Fargo bank, was tipped off to confidential information about the Burger King deal by his broker Waldyr da Silva Prado Neto, who worked for Wells Fargo in Miami.

“Is the sandwich deal going to happen?’’ Cornelsen asked Prado in one of several emails cited by the SEC.

Prado, 42, a Brazilian with a U.S. work visa, left the United States in September and returned to Brazil when the SEC filed charges against him, the agency said. He was working at Morgan Stanley at the time. Prado’s U.S. assets have been frozen and charges against him are pending, the SEC said.

“Cornelsen shamelessly prodded Prado for details on ‘the sandwich deal’ and Prado happily obliged to satisfy his customer’s appetite for inside information,” Daniel M. Hawke, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Market Abuse Unit, said in a statement.

Insider trading has become a high-profile priority of the SEC in recent years. In a statement, SEC attorney Sanjay Wadhwa, associate director of the agency’s New York Regional Office, said, “Foreign investors who access the U.S. capital markets must play by the rules and not rig the market in their favor, otherwise they face getting caught by the SEC and paying a hefty price as Cornelsen is here.”

According to the SEC, Cornelsen bought call options through his British Virgin Island holding company, Bainbridge Group, giving him the right to purchase Burger King stock at a certain price.

He netted more than $1.68 million in profit when Burger King’s stock price jumped on the news of the buyout by 3G Capital. Burger King went public again this year.

According to the SEC, Prado “was stealing the information from another Wells Fargo brokerage customer involved in the Burger King deal.” That person isn’t named in the court papers. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said the bank had no comment on the case.

Cornelsen’s settlement, which is subject to federal court approval in the Southern District of New York, includes forfeiting $1,681,090 in ill-gotten gains and paying a $3,362,180 penalty and $136,621 in interest, the SEC said. Cornelsen neither admitted nor denied the charges in the settlement, the SEC said.

In a statement, Cornelsen’s attorney, James Benjamin of Akin Gump in New York said: “Mr. Cornelsen is an honorable man with a distinguished career. He is pleased to resolve this unfortunate situation.”

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Friend testifies foster mom borrowed dog cage for Rilya

A dozen years ago, Geralyn Graham called a friend and asked to borrow a dog cage — where Graham planned to keep her foster child, Rilya Wilson, during the night.

Graham “said she was going to use it to keep [Rilya] from doing harm to herself,” Graham’s friend, Detra Coakley Winfield, told jurors this week in Graham’s trial on murder and child-abuse charges.

Winfield said she supplied the dog cage, but she never saw Rilya inside it.Graham, 66, is accused of killing 4-year-old Rilya sometime around Christmas 2000, when the girl disappeared from the Kendall home that Graham shared with her domestic partner, Pamela Graham. Child welfare workers — who were supposed to be monitoring the foster child — did not notice Rilya’s disappearance until April 2002. The child’s body has never been found.

Graham has maintained that Rilya was taken from her home in January 2001 by an unidentified woman who claimed to be a worker with the Department of Children and Families — a story that prosecutors have called a lie, part of a cover-up to conceal the child’s death.

Miami-Dade prosecutors began their case this week by focusing on Geralyn Graham’s treatment of Rilya, and Graham’s shifting explanations for Rilya’s absence after December 2000.

Winfield said she once saw Rilya confined in a laundry room as punishment for misbehavior. She said Rilya — born to a crack-addicted mother and later placed in foster care — often seemed “sad” during the eight months she lived at the Graham house. Winfield said Rilya appeared to have behavior problems, and she once watched the child play with feces.

“To me, she had some issues, some mental issues,” Winfield told jurors Thursday.

Around Christmas 2000, Graham told Winfield that Rilya was going to go on a trip to New York with a “Spanish lady” who had befriended the child. Winfield said she saw the woman, but never spoke to her.

Winfield said she never saw Rilya again after that.

After Rilya’s disappearance made the news in 2002, Winfield said she called Graham, who told her that the “Spanish lady” had returned Rilya — before a DCF worker came to take Rilya away again.

But during her testimony, Winfield often appeared confused about the sequence of events, and said she didn’t recall many details after all these years.

And under questioning from defense attorney Michael Matters, Winfield said that she never saw Graham strike Rilya.

But on Wednesday, another family friend, Laquica Tuff, told jurors that she saw Rilya with scratches and a gash on her forehead about two months before the girl’s disappearance. Tuff said Graham told also told her that Rilya was going on a “road trip” to New York and Disney World.

Graham “said she would be gone for awhile,” Tuff said.

Graham’s trial will resume on Tuesday.

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