Think local, former U.N. leader Kofi Annan tells Miami forum

In the Ritz-Carlton ballroom in Coconut Grove on Monday, Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, addressed a crowd of well-dressed world savers to open the Continuity Forum of the Americas Business Council (abc*). In a speech that touched on the environment, the Arab awakening, democracy in Latin America, the spiraling conflict in Syria, nuclear war and resource scarcity, Annan encouraged attendees to address these and other problems by thinking local.

“People ask me all the time, ‘what should one do to become a global citizen?’ I tell them, get involved with your community, your city, your town, your village,” Annan said.

For abc*, a think tank dedicated to “people, planet and philanthropy” in the Americas, Miami is the center of that community. Smack dab in the middle of the hemisphere, for two years Miami has hosted the annual Continuity Forum that attracts more than 300 people from all over North and South America. Rebecca Mandelman, senior director of the abc* based in Miami Beach, said she has recently seen more and more of these would-be world changers coming to Miami to stay.

“There’s this intellectual thirst in Miami that brings a lot of these forces together,” Mandelman said. Referring to the co-sponsoring organizations — many of them local, like the Knight Foundation, Univision, PODER magazine and technology company Ico Group — she said, “Miami is like the fulcrum, the center for people in our community.”

The three-day conference, which sold tickets in advance, features a full roster of impressive speakers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. But the main focus is the competition between 32 “social entrepreneurs” who will present their projects to be judged by the five chairman of abc* and the foundation’s 23 fellows. The best three projects will receive $100,000 grants, media support and business connections for two years.

“We evaluate them by their potential to make the greatest impact,” said Mario Scarpetta, director of Colombian cement and energy company Inversiones Argos and co-chairman of abc*. To evaluate their effectiveness, he said abc* would review each project’s “strategic business plans and economic models of their impact.”

The projects range from a museum of sacred Peruvian plants and an indigenous tourism agency in Mexico to a Nicaraguan organization dedicated to fighting cancer and a “green roof” sustainable building company. The presentations, videos and question-and-answer sessions took place in English and Spanish, and Mandelman said she hoped the casual conversations between sessions would lead to future ideas and organizations.

Even entrepreneurs whose projects are not chosen for the abc* grant have the opportunity this week to interact with investors and leaders of the industries they seek to influence. Pati Ruiz of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda in Mexico said her alliance of five conservation organizations is already active in central Mexico, but if awarded the grant she would use it to expand to the rest of the country and into South America.

“The strength of our project is that it’s already up and running,” Ruiz said in Spanish after her presentation. “We have the tools to expand and reproduce what we’re doing.”

Although most of the conference attendees were excited about the ideas, some expressed frustration with the lack of avenues for individuals to get involved.

“I think that’s the problem with a lot of these conferences: There are no action items, nothing you can really do if you’re not a big-time donor,” said one attendee who didn’t want to be named because he works for one of the co-sponsors of the conference. “We come, watch, applaud and leave.”

Still, abc* continues to connect some of the most creative innovators in a younger generation to current political and business leaders who have the resources to give their ideas wings, Mandelman said, and the rest of the Continuity Forum promises to help make this happen.

“We believe that collective engagement can advance the Americas,” she said.

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Appeals court: Miami judge should step off murder case for critical comments from bench

A Miami-Dade judge should step down from a murder case after publicly criticizing relatives of the slain victim, an appeals court says.

The unusual ruling comes less than a month after Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch, while on the bench, said relatives of Oscar Padilla showed “gross disrespect” for him when they appeared on a Spanish-language television news program to complain about one his rulings.

Hirsch was presiding over the murder case against Emin Rosales Ramirez, who is accused in the August killing of Oscar Padilla. After the judge’s remarks, prosecutors complained to the Third District Court of Appeal.

The appeals court, in a ruling Friday, said that Hirsch’s comments “would place a reasonably prudent person in fear of not receiving a fair and impartial trial.”

Rosales is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Padilla, 62, and wounding his wife, Iris Colindres, 51. Authorities say Rosales, looking to kill Colindres’ two adult sons, shot the couple as they drove in Brownsville on Aug. 12.

Miami-Dade police detectives say Rosales’ target was Colindres’ sons. The reason: He believed they spray-painted his truck with the Spanish word “ cornudo,” or cuckold — an insult that suggested Rosales’ girlfriend was cheating on him.

After an extended bond hearing in October, Hirsch signaled that he didn’t think prosecutors proved Rosales was a danger to the community. Afterward, Padilla’s relatives complained publicly during a segment on Miami’s Telemundo television.

Then, at a later hearing, a prosecutor told Hirsch that the Padilla family feared for their lives. Hirsch shot back that the argument was hard to make because of the relatives’ appearance on television to criticize him.

“They are entitled to their First Amendment rights but as Justice Jackson says, ‘The Constitution affords the good citizens more rights than he and his sense of duty will exercise,’ ” Hirsch said. “They can say anything they want, but words have consequences.”

At that hearing, the judge granted Rosales a $100,000 bond and house arrest pending trial. However, Rosales is still in custody because immigration authorities have targeted him for possible deportation to his native Honduras.

Hirsch, who was elected to the bench in 2010, is not shy about making controversial legal decisions.

Last month, he curtailed long-accepted expert testimony about fingerprints, a ruling that prosecutors are expected to appeal. Last year, when a Tampa federal judge ruled that Florida’s drug law was unconstitutional, Hirsch was the only local state judge to follow suit. He tossed out more than two dozen cases, but Miami’s appeals court later reversed Hirsch’s decision.

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Political Polling After the End of the Phone

With over a third of U.S. households forgoing the land-line and people using their phones less and less for talking, the phone call is no longer the best way for pollsters to reach the people they need to speak with. With that changing trend, this election season polling places like Gallup worked cell-phone calls into its repertoire to get a better reflection of society, Gallup spokesperson Frank Newport told Wired‘s Mat Honan. And, logically, as more people replace landlines for cell phones, polling would increasingly throw cell-phones into the mix. But, it doesn’t look like that’s really the next frontier in polling. For one, it’s expensive. A 1996 Federal regulation requires that calls to cell phones be hand-dialed, rather than computer generated, which costs more money because employing people (rather than machines) takes dollars, notes Bits Blog’s Quentin Hardy. Plus, because of caller-ID, guilting cell phone users into taking a poll proves harder than haranguing an unsuspecting land-line answerer. (Of course, many land-line owners have caller-ID, too.) So, if the annoying, always disruptive at the worst time, pollster phone call is on the outs, then what does the future of political polling hold?

RELATED: More Than Half of America Likes Obama Again

Survey Monkey

RELATED: Poll: Rick Perry Bests Mitt Romney Among Tea Partiers

For real. The amateur-looking website conducted a series of polls throughout this election period, at times with better accuracy than the over-the-phone guys. In an explanatory post on the site, the company explains it had 96 percent accuracy with its methods. Over 60,000 people took one of the site’s surveys the day before election day alone, SurveyMonkey’s vice president, Philip Garland, told Hardy. 

RELATED: Poll: GOP Race Now Between Newt, Sarah, Mitt and Everyone Else

Though some have questioned the accuracy of the online poll because of its newness to the field. Nate Silver, whose words on all things polling we should now consider law, confirmed that many of the most accurate polling came from online surveys. “When people are asked questions by a person, they feel like they should make a choice,” Garland added. People are more candid on the Internet, which is not at all surprising. 

RELATED: Rick Perry Is Still Leading Despite Some Bad Debates

Text Messages

RELATED: Less Than Half of America Knows What GOP Stands For

Though a new survey says that text messaging is on the decline, Gallup is already experimenting with it as a polling technique in Central and South America, notes Honan. Though it doesn’t sound that different than screening a phone call, text messages are a lot less invasive and they don’t require an answer right away. Also, increasingly, it is how people do much of their communicating. 

Emails, Unfortunately

Though that sounds logical since so many Americans are accessible by email, it turns out it is too hard to get a good sample using email, since many people have multiple email addresses, and it’s hard to account for that difference. Also, isn’t it just so easy to click delete without opening? However, that hasn’t stopped certain organizations from using it, as Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Peter Coy explains. Some firms use email lists that aren’t representative of the general population, he notes. 

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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STREAMING: Soundgarden Live on Letterman

Soundgarden is the latest band to headline the Live on Letterman concert series, streaming now!

RELATED: New Music Tuesday!

The Grammy Award-winning rockers are performing at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City preceding the release of King Animal, their first album in 16 years. Former acts to appear on the live concert series include Adele, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood and more.

Late Show with David Letterman airs weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on CBS. King Animal drops tomorrow, November 13.

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Judge orders hearing to determine if cop killer competent enough for death penalty

They say he’s too dumb to die for his heinous crimes.

A federal judge has scheduled a series of special hearings later this month to hear testimony about whether a man convicted of the execution-style murder of two undercover NYPD officers is mentally competent to face the death penalty — again.

Ronell Wilson has already been convicted of the point-blank shooting death of detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin during a 2003 undercover gun buy-and-bust operation on Staten Island.

And Wilson was condemned to death after his conviction, but in 2010 a federal appeals court overturned that sentence because of a procedural misstep.

But Wilson’s defense attorneys insist that he should not be eligible for the death penalty again because they say he has a low-functioning intellect.

They’re hoping that the convicted cop-killer may be spared under the terms of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that bars execution of the mentally incompetent.

Brooklyn federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis will preside over the special hearings and listen as medical experts, specialists in mental retardation, and others weigh in on the issue.

The hearings - expected to span two weeks - are scheduled to begin later this month and stretch into December.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors do not believe that Wilson is mentally impaired and are expected to call witnesses that buttress their position.

If the court deems Wilson to be mentally fit, the judge will then schedule a new penalty-phase trial, where jurors will determine whether Willson should be executed by lethal injection or sentenced to life in prison.

mmaddux@nypost.com

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Noven’s niche: The Miami company is key producer of transdermal patches

At the Noven Pharmaceuticals plant in southwest Miami, scientists and technicians use highly specialized machinery to blend prescription medications and adhesives to make layered transdermal patches that release precise quantities of drugs over time after being applied to a patient’s skin.

Noven, a subsidiary of Japan’s Hisamitsu Pharmaceutical, has about 700 employees nationwide and ranks as a relatively small player among pharma giants. Nonetheless, the company, a leading research and development center for medicinal patches, produces a line of specialty pharmaceuticals and is the U.S. market leader in sales of estrogen patches for women.

“By industry standards, Noven is a small company,” said Jeffrey F. Eisenberg, Noven’s Miami-based president and CEO. “But we have a line of specialized products that competes successfully in the U.S. and overseas. We are experts in developing transdermal patches and produce other pharmaceutical products.”

In one key market — estrogen patches for women — Noven holds about a 68 percent share, he added. And the company has a robust research and development department in Miami at work on a variety of new drugs.

Medications may be delivered to patients orally, via injection or through transdermal patches, which can administer drugs slowly over an extended period of time. While Noven makes products other than medicinal patches, it devotes an important share of resources to transdermal patch technology.

“We have a talented group of scientists who are at the forefront of this specialty,” Eisenberg said. “We have M.D.s, PhDs in biology and chemistry and chemical engineers who specialize in pressure-sensitive adhesives and polymer chemistry.”

Noven has won more than 30 U.S. and 100 international patents and is developing several new drugs. The company recently announced it is making progress on studies to evaluate a new, amphetamine-based transdermal patch for treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents. Currently, there is no such patch approved for use with ADHD, the company said.

Noven also has applied to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for approval of a new oral, non-hormonal medication to treat menopausal hot flashes.

Making patches is a complex process that requires the design and development of an ideal combination of drug, adhesive and backing, Eisenberg said. Patches must be formulated so that they will deliver a safe and effective dose of medication over a period of time and adhere to the skin as required.

At the Noven patch facility, which has the capacity for making 500 million patches per year, active drug compounds are mixed with custom adhesives in large, specialized kettles. The mix of drug and adhesive is then applied to sheets of release liner material under very precise tolerances. Noven removes a blending solvent from the compound and applies the backing material, making a three-layer patch. Laminate rolls subsequently are sent to punching, pouching and packing machines (Patches are punched into different sizes.). All of this occurs under strict quality control procedures and is not open to the public.

Noven was founded in 1987 by Steven Sablotsky, a chemical engineer, who had worked for another pharmaceutical firm and was an expert in transdermal patches. Noven went public in 1988 and operated as a publicly-traded company until it was taken over in 2009 by Hisamitsu, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that also manufactures and markets transdermal patches. (Salonpas, an over-the-counter analgesic patch widely advertised in South Florida, is made by Hisamitsu.)

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Spending by blind services agencies receive scrutiny

TALLAHASSEE --
Looking for a lesson in how government outsourcing is working in Florida?

Try this: Organizations that win business with the little-known state Division of Blind Services can bill taxpayers $58 an hour for travel time to meet with a blind person. The same organizations can charge taxpayers $2,000 or more to place one phone call.

If the deal sounds good for the groups that win the no-bid state contracts, it’s because it is.

Why? Because the private third-party vendors largely dictate the terms and receive little oversight, former Division of Blind Services employees say.

The state agency with a $52 million budget has largely privatized its support programs as a way to save money and better serve a group of 11,000 Floridians in need, state officials say.

But the results are mixed, at best.

Employee complaints about the Division of Blind Services have spawned at least three government investigations and four whistleblower lawsuits, all alleging waste on some scale.

Blind Services Director Joyce Hildreth, who worked at a group that received state contracts before joining the state in 2008, defends the state division. Under her leadership, she says, the division has repaired fragmented relationships with vendors while implementing stricter penalties for non-performing providers. Hildreth, 65, earns $119,000.

“My expectation of both (the vendors) and the division staff is that they will work together to the benefit of the client,” she said.

The record, however, isn’t so clear cut.

An annual summer meeting between the state and 16 Division of Blind Services providers offers a window into the uneven influence the groups have over an agency that is supposed to oversee them.

Their joint mission is to line up ways to help blind Floridians manage their disability from infancy to old age. The division and its outsourced vendors train blind people for everyday tasks from using a cane to pouring water without spilling. The division also operates a program to help blind people find jobs.

At the meeting, state workers and the vendors appear to be business partners, according to several current and former employees who have attended. But the vendors decide the performance criteria and penalties.

“I tried to get (the vendors) to suggest how we could get a mechanism in place so we don’t feed their coffers and have poor service,” said Jerry Edwards, a former contract manager who was fired in 2010 after he criticized the “lack of meat” in the contracts. “The attitude, from Joyce and from (the vendors) of not wanting to go there, was a real problem.”

Signs of waste are everywhere, former employees Edwards, Julius Kimmie, Robert Irons and Mary Ellen Ottman said in separate interviews.

Although the law requires state workers to monitor all 16 providers through yearly unscheduled visits, the state only visited one vendor last year, documents show. Hildreth said the agency monitors the vendors by phone.

Loosely written contracts also allow vendors to make big money by taking advantage of loopholes, the former employees say.

Providers, for example, are paid from about $2,000 to $9,000 per month for each person it plans to serve. The state pays the money no matter how — or how many times — a provider helps a client.

So whether a provider makes 10 in-house visits, or just one phone call, the money comes in the all the same.

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Malaysian charged with Facebook insult of sultan; sister says he’ll file police complaint

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – The sister of a Malaysian man who has been charged with insulting a state sultan on Facebook says he is innocent and plans to lodge a complaint over his detention.

Anisa Abdul Jalil, sister of Ahmad Abdul Jalil, says her brother was charged Thursday with making offensive postings on Facebook last month.

She says the charges are ridiculous because there is no evidence linking Ahmad to the posts in question, which were made by someone using the name “Zul Yahaya.”

Ahmad was freed on bail Thursday after six days of detention. Anisa says he will file a complaint with police for unlawful detention and intimidation.

Nine Malaysian states have sultans and other royal figures. Though their roles are largely ceremonial, acts provoking hatred against them are considered seditious.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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2-year-old boy drowns in pond on Long Island

HUNTINGTON — A 2-year-old boy has drowned in a pond on Long Island.

Suffolk County police say the child fell into the pond in Hecksher Park at around 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

When police arrived at the scene, a good Samaritan was administering CPR. But the boy was later pronounced dead at Huntington Hospital.

The boy was at the park with his father. Their names were not immediately released.

Police said the death appeared to be accidental.

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Gov. Rick Scott may shift stance on health reform law

With the reelection of President Barack Obama, Florida’s Republican leaders are reconsidering their fervent opposition to federal healthcare reform, triggering a discussion that could have huge repercussions for South Florida.

At stake is more than $6 billion in federal funding for Miami-Dade and Broward over the next decade and the possibility of health insurance for a large percentage of the 1.4 million people in the two counties who now lack coverage.

After the defeat of Mitt Romney, who vowed to halt Obama’s healthcare overhaul, the Republican leaders of the Florida House and Senate quickly said the Legislature needed to reexamine the federal act. On Friday evening, Gov. Rick Scott said he agreed there needed to be a discussion.

“Just saying ‘no’ is not an answer,” Scott said in a statement that repeated exactly what Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Destin, the incoming Senate president, told The Miami Herald on Thursday.

“I don’t like this law,” Gaetz also said, “but this is the law, and I believe I have a constitutional obligation to carry it out.” He added that he thinks “there needs to be some adult debate between Republicans and Democrats” on finding ways to make the law work.

Still, Gaetz, Scott and others in the Republican leadership, which controls both the Florida House and Senate, have many criticisms of what both parties now call “Obamacare.” Some are searching for compromises on how it is carried out in the state. What this means for patients and the healthcare industry in Florida — particularly South Florida — remains an enormous question mark.

Time is running short for decisions as the once-distant consequences of the Affordable Care Act are scheduled to kick in during the next 14 months.

The first deadline is Friday. That’s when states must tell Washington whether they plan to set up exchanges — marketplaces where individuals can purchase insurance at discounted group rates and cannot be denied because of pre-existing conditions.

Florida’s political leaders acknowledge they won’t make the deadline. The exchanges are scheduled to start Jan. 1, 2014, and if a state doesn’t set up an exchange, its residents can participate in a federal exchange.

The next provision starts Jan. 1 with an increase in Medicaid fees for primary care physicians. Primary care physicians, who have long complained about low rates for Medicaid, which provides coverage for the poor, are scheduled to be paid at considerably higher Medicare rates — with the feds picking up all of the added cost. But such a pay hike can only happen with the approval of the governor and Legislature, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.

The following year, on Jan. 1, 2014, the biggest changes are slated to start, including a major expansion of people covered by Medicaid. An analysis from the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida shows that if the state doesn’t expand coverage, Florida will lose $27.9 billion in federal funds over 10 years.

That breaks down to a $4.5 billion loss for Miami-Dade during that time, and a $2.3 billion loss for Broward, according to the alliance’s analysis.

Under the law, Washington will pay all Medicaid expansion costs for the first three years, but then the states would have to pay up to 10 percent of the costs in following years — an expense that the Safety Net Alliance calculates will come to $1.7 billion over 10 years in Florida. The expansion could provide coverage to an additional million-plus Floridians. Reform supporters say the expansion would provide cheaper basic care that would help prevent serious illnesses that lead to expensive hospital stays.

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