Needle reaches the inner groove for Spec’s




















In the end, even the almighty Adele and Taylor Swift could not hold back the inevitable.

Spec’s, one of the last great record stores, will close its flagship location in Coral Gables on U.S.1, thus joining once-favored chains like Virgin, Tower and Peaches, locally and abroad, that have withered from Internet shopping.

With the closing, sometime in January after the merchandise is liquidated, 64 years of history becomes memory for countless people who discovered a love of music in the home Martin “Mike” Spector built in 1948 when U.S.1 was but a two-lane road.





The original store, which sold cameras alongside 78-rpm records, was a few blocks south on the highway in South Miami and is now an Einstein’s bagel spot. The present location, opened in 1953 in Coral Gables, lived through the bobby sox era, Beatlemania, disco, punk, hip hop/rap, grunge, electronic dance music and all the format changes including 12-inch vinyl, 45-rpm, reel to reel, 8-track, cassette, compact disc and mp3.

After the first music industry recession in the late 1970s, Spec’s still managed to double in size by breaking through the walls of two restaurants in 1980 on its north side. The original room on the south side of the building would house, first, Spec’s’ VHS movie rentals and sales — Saturday Night at Spec’s! — and, later, one of the most expansive collections of classical music in town.

“It’s the soundtrack of our lives,” said store manager Lennie Rohrbacher, who spent 23 years of his life working at Spec’s, from Clearwater to Coral Gables

Music sales

At its peak, the Spec’s chain grew to some 80 stores in Florida and Puerto Rico. In 1993, annual sales exceeded $70 million. Spec’s went public in 1985 and, in 1998, the Spectors sold to Camelot Music Group, which was acquired by Trans World Entertainment Corp.

Trans World, which did not return several telephone messages, shrewdly kept the Spec’s name attached to the flagship store as goodwill even though, technically, it operated under the company’s retail subsidiary, F.Y.E. (For Your Entertainment).

But those are the cold, hard business facts.

Spec’s was “not like another Eckerd’s,” a drug store chain that also slipped into oblivion amid changing times, said Rohrbacher. “This was part of the community, part of my life. It’s not another store going under.”

Indeed, Spec’s was, first and foremost, a community gathering spot to share a love of music. In the ‘70s and ‘80s Spec’s resembled a makeshift camp site where people would sleep overnight in the parking lot to get the best shot at concert tickets in a pre-Internet world. Spec’s, a hop-skip from the University of Miami’s music school, served as its own music education outlet thanks to a knowledgeable sales staff.

Music education

“The proximity to the UM is prime real estate. Not to have it there will really be different. Even if they didn’t have what I was looking for, the staff was knowledgeable and you were sort of tapping into this knowledge base of people who could turn you on to new music. That’s what I’ll miss about it and the community around the store,” said Margot Winick, an employee at the Coral Gables Spec’s in the mid-1980s when she was a freshman at the UM.





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Prosecutors: Miami Police sergeant on trial did “wrong instead of right’’




















Miami Police Sgt. Raul Iglesias chose to do “wrong instead of right” in 2010 when he took over an undercover squad fighting drug dealing in the inner-city, a prosecutor said during opening statements of a federal trial Thursday.

Iglesias planted cocaine on a suspect and stole drugs and money from street dealers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ricardo Del Toro told a 12-person jury. He also lied to FBI agents when they questioned him.

“He abused his badge and his authority and he committed crimes,” Del Toro told jurors.





Iglesias, 40, was indicted in July on nine counts, including violating suspects’ civil rights, conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute, obstruction of justice and making false statements between January and May 2010. Iglesias, who was relieved of duty with pay in 2010, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

The two-week trial is expected to be tricky for prosecutors, who plan to put on the stand several undercover detectives who worked in Iglesias’ street unit to testify against the 18-year veteran cop. Moreover, it was apparent from the opening statements of Iglesias’s attorney, Rick Diaz, that he plans to put on a vigorous defense by attacking the government’s portrayal of his client as a corrupt supervisor.

Diaz said Iglesias was actually striving to clean up a dirty Crime Suppression Unit, and that several undercover officers turned against him because they didn’t want to play by his rules.

Some of the CSU officers reported Iglesias’s alleged misconduct to the Miami Police Department’s internal affairs section, which notified the FBI.

But Diaz warned jurors: “Perception is sometimes not reality,” saying that the prosecutor “sees it one way and I see it the other.” Diaz declared he will show his client “is not guilty of each and every” count in the indictment, adding that the government’s case was largely built on the “word of convicted felons.”

The indictment cited at least four dates when Iglesias allegedly stole or planted drugs, or lied to investigators.

On Jan. 27, 2010 — his first day on the job as the CSU supervisor — Iglesias allegedly ordered two of his officers to search a man identified in court documents only as “R.H.” He was identified in court Thursday as Rafael Hernandez, who has a criminal history.

When cocaine was not found on him, Iglesias allegedly asked his officers, Luis Valdes and Suberto Hernandez, for some “throw-down dope” to plant on the suspect. But Valdes and Hernandez, who are scheduled to testify Friday for the prosecution, refused to carry out Iglesias’s order, Del Toro said.

A third officer from a gang unit, identified only as “R.M.,” gave Iglesias some cocaine to plant on the suspect, according to the indictment. That officer was identified in court as Ricardo Martinez. In 2011, he pleaded guilty in a separate federal case to helping fence a shipment of about 10,000 stolen Bluetooth headsets with plans to sell them on the black market.

“This was the first day [on the job] to see if his officers were going to play ball,” Del Toro said.

But Diaz said that account was not true. The defense attorney said Valdes and Chalumeau “missed” the drugs during the search, and Iglesias later found them on the suspect before making the arrest.

On April 8, 2010, Iglesias also allegedly stole “money and property” from someone identified as “C.R.,” according to the indictment. His name is Carlos Rivera, who also has a criminal record.

But Diaz said he plans to call Rivera as a witness, and asserted he will testify that “nobody took money from him that day.”

Then on May 5, 2010, Iglesias and another CSU officer allegedly stole marijuana and cocaine from a drug dealer who operated out of an Allapattah window-tinting shop.

One of Iglesias’s detectives, Roberto Asanza, pointed the finger at his boss after FBI agents detained the officer, seizing 10 bags of cocaine and two bags of marijuana stolen from the tinting shop.

According to court documents, Asanza told agents that he and Iglesias used some of the stolen cocaine to pay off a confidential informant, identified as David Altoro in court records. Altoro had tipped them off to the drugs at the tint shop, which led to the arrest of a dealer, Luis Roman.

“Asanza admitted that he knew it was wrong to give drugs to the [informant], but that he was trying to build a rapport with the” informant, according to the criminal complaint for his arrest.

Asanza pleaded guilty last February to a minor drug charge of possessing a controlled substance, and was sentenced to one year of probation, court records show. The ex-Marine also gave up his law-enforcement certification. He is expected to testify for the government.

Twenty days after the May 5 bust at the tint shop, Iglesias allegedly lied when he told FBI agents that he did not know how much money was stashed in a shoebox seized that day as well.





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Did Microsoft Just Announce the Next Xbox with a Countdown? Probably.






Go countdowns, saving marketing departments untold piles of cash! Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, colloquially known by his Xbox LIVE handle “Major Nelson,” just threw one up on his blog, and it’s causing precisely the sort of speculative stir the company doubtless intended.


“And it’s on…” reads the ultra-austere post, followed by a simple Flash-based timer titled “Counting down to E3 2013″ (cribbed from a generic countdown-building site).






“O rly?” as a certain memetic predator might say.


I won’t speculate past the probability of the new console itself — everything I’ve noticed about specs and pricing amounts to echo chamber gossip. If you’d rather just goof around, hop on over to NeoGAF, where gamers go mostly to make fun of each other (and everything between), and you’ll find a rollicking thread full of cracks, quips, the usual goofy/creepy animated GIFs and occasional chants of “Let’s go, Durango” (“Durango” is supposedly what the next Xbox’s development kits are codenamed).


Could the countdown be to anything but the next Xbox? At this point, much as I’d like to see Microsoft wait another year or two before introducing new hardware to give developers more time to do amazing things with the Xbox 360′s more than competent internals, and as gimmicky as countdowns are, this one’s punchline feels inexorable.


Besides, imagine the disappointment in five months if it turned out to be simply a new franchise, the next Halo or heaven forbid, a standalone “Kinect 2.”


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Smash Season One Exclusive DVD Clip

The competition to be cast on NBC's Smash was just as cut-throat as the competition to be cast in Bombshell, the musical at the heart of NBC's Smash.


VIDEO - First Trailer: Smash Season Two

For producers, tapping Katharine McPhee to play Karen was a no-brainer once the triple-threat walked into the room. "Kat seems to be the beginning of a youthful star in the making," creator Theresa Rebeck says in ETonline's exclusive sneak peek clip off the upcoming DVD. "She captures that aspect of Marilyn's innocence and beauty and raw sexuality."


PHOTOS - Smash Stars Strip Down

For McPhee, her connection to Karen was immediate and deeply personal. "I could just so relate to this girl. I know what that feels like to just have this drive and this dream and have disappointments and frustration for things not happening as quickly as you want to."

Check out ETonline's exclusive clip off Smash: The Complete First Season, on DVD January 8. Click here to pre-order.

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Drunk passenger taped to seat during JFK-bound flight after ranting plane was 'going to crash'








Passenger Andy Ellwood was taped to his seat after ranting the Iceland-to-JFK flight was "going to crash."

Andy Ellwood via Tumblr

Passenger Andy Ellwood was taped to his seat after ranting the Iceland-to-JFK flight was "going to crash."



An unruly passenger who got drunk and belligerent on a Kennedy Airport-bound intercontinental flight yesterday was subdued by passengers and taped to his seat the rest of the way, according to witness reports.

The passenger, who was on a flight from Iceland, “drank all of his duty-free liquor on the flight,” tried to “choke the woman next to him” and was “screaming the plane was going to crash,” according to passenger Andy Ellwood, who snapped the man’s photo and posted it to his blog.




The meltdown — in which the man also spat on several passengers — began when there were about two hours left on the flight, according to Icelandic news outlet Mbl.is.

The man, whose name has not been released, was arrested at JFK.

Meanwhile, a pilot scheduled to helm a flight from Minneapolis to LaGuardia today was yanked before takeoff on suspicion of being drunk, a report says.

A pilot was removed from New York-bound American Eagle Flight 4590 and taken into custody at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol.

Airport spokesman Pat Hogan confirms MSP Airport police took the pilot into custody at 7:19 a.m. ET.

The pilot failed a breathalyzer at the scene, but was taken to Fairview Southdale hospital to test for blood alcohol content.

"American Eagle has a well-established substance abuse policy that is designed to put the safety of our customers and employees first," the airline said in a statement. "We are cooperating with authorities and conducting a full internal investigation. The pilot will be withheld from service pending the outcome of the investigation."

The plane was delayed for about three hours before leaving for New York at about 8:50 a.m. It was estimated to arrive shortly after noon.

To read more, go to MyFoxNY.com.










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New Florida bill would speed up the foreclosure process




















A “faster foreclosures” proposal that sparked consumer outcry and protest last year has resurfaced in a more moderate form, with a new bill filed this week by Rep. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples.

The bill, HB 87, offers a slew of changes to the civil procedures governing foreclosures in Florida, where home repossessions are on the rise again.

Most of the provisions are aimed at speeding up and cleaning up the foreclosure process, which currently takes more 600 days to run its course in Florida.





“We need to make the sure the process is as efficient as possible while at the same time giving the borrower their due process rights,” said Passidomo. “Unfortunately, if you don’t have an income or you can’t afford to pay anything, the property can’t just sit in limbo forever.”

The bill — which proposes strict paperwork requirements for lenders, fast-track foreclosure procedures and a shield against some thorny legal scenarios — comes at a time when banks are beginning to rev up their foreclosure machines again after a two-year lull.

Foreclosure filings in Florida jumped 20 percent in the last year, and the Sunshine State now has the nation’s highest foreclosure rate. And even though the housing market is improving, there are plenty of foreclosures still set to take place in the coming years. One in five mortgages in the state are currently delinquent, and more than half of those have not yet entered the foreclosure process, according to Lender Processing Services.

Lenders spent two years cooling down their home repossession machines after news surfaced in 2010 that bank employees had been rapidly filling out foreclosure paperwork without properly reviewing it. The “robo-signing” scandal led to a landmark $25 billion national settlement between states and five major banks last year, clearing the way for a more streamlined foreclosure process.

But nearly a year after the settlement was announced, foreclosures continue to slog slowly through the court system in Florida.

Passidomo’s bill aims to speed things up. It requires mortgage lenders to certify that they have the correct paperwork proving they have the right to foreclose.

The measure also gives condominium associations the ability to speed up the foreclosure process when a bank is moving too slowly. Condo associations have been forced to shoulder significant maintenance costs while banks carry out foreclosures. Banks have been accused of purposefully slowing down the process in order to limit their costs.

For their part, banks get a bit of a gift in the bill as well. Currently, if a lender forecloses on a home and later is sued for doing so wrongfully, the lender can only be forced to pay monetary damages. That means the homeowner can’t get his or her house back — a proposition that could be especially difficult if the bank has sold the home to an unsuspecting third party. Passidomo’s bill would eliminate that awkward scenario, and free the bank from having to recoup a house it sold to another party after a faulty foreclosure.

Some consumer advocates are already speaking out against the bill. It’s the third attempt by lawmakers in the last three years to push for foreclosure reform — and each has led to consumer outcry, including a march on the state Capitol last year.

“Might be a good time to start contacting your Florida state representatives in the state House and Senate on this issue,” Lisa Epstein, a West Palm Beach foreclosure activist, wrote in an email to her followers. “The more Floridians who oppose this bill and the earlier they oppose it, the better.”

The bill sheds some of the controversial provisions of the 2012 proposal, which passed the Florida House but died in the Senate last year.

A provision that would have allowed for faster foreclosures on homes that appear to be abandoned has been scrapped from the new bill. The “apparently-abandoned property” measure faced backlash from consumer advocates who said people would be thrown out of their homes without proper notice.

The measure includes a provision that consumer activists supported last year to limit banks’ ability to go after homeowners for additional debt after a foreclosure.

Banks currently have five years to pursue a so-called “deficiency judgment” against a homeowner. The bill reduces that time-period to one-year.

“The bill has far more borrower protections than what is current,” said Passidomo.

Toluse Olorunnipa can be reached at tolorunnipa@MiamiHerald.com or on Twitter at @ToluseO.





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UM medical school names new COO




















Amid roiling faculty anger, the University of Miami announced the number two executive at the Miller School of Medicine, Jack Lord, is “stepping down,” to be replaced temporarily by Joe Natoli, UM’s chief financial officer.

The change, announced by Dean Pascal Goldschmidt, comes as a petition circulates among tenured medical school faculty expressing no confidence in both Goldschmit and Lord.

Goldschmidt said in a letter to faculty, obtained by The Herald late Wednesday that he extended his “deepest gratitude” to Lord for his leadership in helping to restructure the medical school’s finances, which showed a surplus of about $9 million for the first six months of this fiscal year -- compared to a $24 million loss for the first six months of the previous fiscal year.





Lord, a physician who had been chief innovation officer at Humana, became the medical school’s chief operating officer last March. He was deeply involved in a series of drastic changes, including laying off about 900 full-time and part-time employees in the spring.

Many faculty members, who had spent decades at the medical school without seeing mass layoffs, were angry that the cuts were made without consulting them. A report by a faculty senate committee said medical school professors described the layoffs as “unprofessional,” “graceless” and “”heartless.”

The report said faculty “fear is widespread within the school. They cited instances in which someone suffered retribution for criticizing the school’s administration. ... Faculty with alternatives are leaving.”

UM did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Last May, President Donna Shalala, a veteran administrator at several universities, said tradition-bound faculty often complained when tough changes needed to be made.

Associate Professor Sam Terilli, head of the committee that wrote the interim report in late August, said last week a follow-up report is being prepared, but said it was too soon to offer details of what it would say.

Meanwhile, several anonymous sources have sent The Herald a copy of a petition being circulated among school faculty members who “wish to express, in the strongest possible terms, the concern we feel for the future for our school of medicine.” The petition blamed “the failed leadership of Pascal Goldschmidt and Jack Lord. ... We want to make clear that the faculty has lost confidence in the ability of these men to lead the school.”

The petition states: “Under the current leadership, there has been a major shift in the mission of the schools that we feel jeopardizes our educational, clinical and research enterprises. The deterioration of the relationship with Jackson Memorial Hospital fundamentally threatens both our graduate and undergraduate medical education programs without which the school of medicine cannot exist.”

A half-dozen persons closely connected to the medical school who requested anonymity told The Herald that they’ve heard that between 400 and 600 of the school’s 1,200 faculty have added their names to individual copies of the petition.

The petitions are addressed to the chair of the faculty senate, Richard L. Williamson, a law professor. Williamson said last week he would not comment on how many had signed the petition because it was “an internal matter” and may never become public. He said that the number of those who know how many have signed is “extremely small and none of them will talk.”





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More leaked BlackBerry Z10 pictures emerge along with new details









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Ex-SAC Capital hedge-fund manager Martoma pleads not guilty to insider-trading charges

A former hedge fund portfolio manager has pleaded not guilty to insider trading charges after authorities said he persuaded a medical professor to leak secret data from an Alzheimer's disease drug trial.

Mathew Martoma appeared Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. He remains free on bail.

Martoma is charged with engineering a record-setting inside trade scheme that earned more than a quarter-billion dollars in illegal profits.

He was arrested in November at his $2 million Palm Beach County, Fla., home on securities fraud and conspiracy charges.

He is a former portfolio manager at an affiliate of the Stamford, Conn.-based firm owned by Steven A. Cohen.




REUTERS



Mathew Martoma in November



Martoma is the fourth person associated with SAC Capital to be arrested on insider trading charges in the past four years.

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UM medical school names new COO




















Amid roiling faculty anger, the University of Miami announced the number two executive at the Miller School of Medicine, Jack Lord, is “stepping down,” to be replaced temporarily by Joe Natoli, UM’s chief financial officer.

The change, announced by Dean Pascal Goldschmidt, comes as a petition circulates among tenured medical school faculty expressing no confidence in both Goldschmit and Lord.

Goldschmidt said in a letter to faculty, obtained by The Herald late Wednesday that he extended his “deepest gratitude” to Lord for his leadership in helping to restructure the medical school’s finances, which showed a surplus of about $9 million for the first six months of this fiscal year -- compared to a $24 million loss for the first six months of the previous fiscal year.





Lord, a physician who had been chief innovation officer at Humana, became the medical school’s chief operating officer last March. He was deeply involved in a series of drastic changes, including laying off about 900 full-time and part-time employees in the spring.

Many faculty members, who had spent decades at the medical school without seeing mass layoffs, were angry that the cuts were made without consulting them. A report by a faculty senate committee said medical school professors described the layoffs as “unprofessional,” “graceless” and “”heartless.”

The report said faculty “fear is widespread within the school. They cited instances in which someone suffered retribution for criticizing the school’s administration. ... Faculty with alternatives are leaving.”

UM did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Last May, President Donna Shalala, a veteran administrator at several universities, said tradition-bound faculty often complained when tough changes needed to be made.

Associate Professor Sam Terilli, head of the committee that wrote the interim report in late August, said last week a follow-up report is being prepared, but said it was too soon to offer details of what it would say.

Meanwhile, several anonymous sources have sent The Herald a copy of a petition being circulated among school faculty members who “wish to express, in the strongest possible terms, the concern we feel for the future for our school of medicine.” The petition blamed “the failed leadership of Pascal Goldschmidt and Jack Lord. ... We want to make clear that the faculty has lost confidence in the ability of these men to lead the school.”

The petition states: “Under the current leadership, there has been a major shift in the mission of the schools that we feel jeopardizes our educational, clinical and research enterprises. The deterioration of the relationship with Jackson Memorial Hospital fundamentally threatens both our graduate and undergraduate medical education programs without which the school of medicine cannot exist.”

A half-dozen persons closely connected to the medical school who requested anonymity told The Herald that they’ve heard that between 400 and 600 of the school’s 1,200 faculty have added their names to individual copies of the petition.

The petitions are addressed to the chair of the faculty senate, Richard L. Williamson, a law professor. Williamson said last week he would not comment on how many had signed the petition because it was “an internal matter” and may never become public. He said that the number of those who know how many have signed is “extremely small and none of them will talk.”





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