Instagram diverts attention from botched policy change with another new filter

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Guns in our households: protecting or killing us?

The Issue: America’s gun-control laws and the commercial availability of military-like weapons.

***

When our forefathers wrote our right to bear arms into the Constitution, the arms they referred to fired one bullet at a time and took a while to reload (“Adam Lanza’s Weapons,” Editorial, Dec. 18).

Our country was in its infancy and laws and civility were still being formed. In addition to personal protection, guns were used to hunt.

Protecting our constitutional rights is important, but common sense should prevail. The sale of these killing machines either legally or illegally needs to be addressed.

EPA

Anti-gun group Credo at Capitol Hill after Sandy Hook.

The need for anyone outside of the military or law enforcement to possess one is senseless.

Joseph Canevari

Lake Grove

We will use this horrific incident as a platform for a political argument, the resolution of which would, at best, be many months away.

We need immediate action to protect our children. Arguments won’t stop, God forbid, another murderer from firing bullets at our children.

An executive order that bypasses Congress banning everything from tanks to sling shots would not stop anyone from repeating this horrible incident.

It would be too logical to propose armed defense of schools. Let’s just engage in rhetoric for months on end and allow another Sandy Hook to take place, God please forbid.Barney Rinaldi

North Kingstown, RI

When the Second Amendment was written the modern weapon at that time, the musket, could fire maybe two rounds in one minute.

Now that we have weapons like the AR-15 that can fire over 400 rounds per minute, might it be time to stop hiding behind the right to bear arms and have a real discussion on gun control?Brian Rathjen

Rockville Centre

Schools are gun-free zones, which make them targets for the insane.

The only way to stop lunatics is trained, qualified citizens with concealed-carry permits afforded these rights on school grounds. The police will never arrive in time to end it, obviously.

Lou D’Agostino

Queens

We are seeing more of these large-scale shootings by sick individuals with easy access to firearms designed for warfare. It is past time for our leaders to take charge of this catastrophic situation and do something about it.

A ban on private ownership of automatic and semiautomatic weapons would be a good place to start. No one has any need to own weapons designed to kill so many people except police officers and the military.

The Second Amendment just does not apply anymore and needs to be changed or rescinded. We are not living in the 1700s. Wake up, America. Innocent people are needlessly dying.

Robin Wieder

East Rockaway

Once again, the rhetoric in the wake of another mass murder turns to political showmanship. In each one, the shooter is armed with military/law-enforcement grade weapons.

Why was a single suburban mother allowed to buy and own a Bushmaster and a Berretta?

Those weapons are designed and manufactured with one target in mind: people.

Peter Seymour

Pleasantville

I was crushed to read that the editors of The Post decided that it is they, and not the Constitution, who should decide what has “no legitimate place in American society.”

I look forward to the next editorial telling us that our government’s attempt to wipe out the Indians, slavery, and the Japanese internment weren’t really government tyranny, and we don’t ever have to worry that any of that will ever happen again.

John Dumary Jr.

Duanesburg

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Investors shuffling assets ahead of fiscal cliff

Some citizens aren’t waiting to find out if the White House and Republicans in Congress will be able to reach a last-minute deal to pull the country away from the “fiscal cliff.”

They are selling securities while capital gains tax rates are still low or transferring millions into trusts for the benefit of children and grandchildren before estate tax laws become more stringent. Others are getting out of the markets and parking money in less risky accounts.

Miami financial planner Cathy Pareta has been counseling her upper middle class clients — “the Johnsons, not the Rockefellers” — on whether to adjust investment portfolios, accelerate income or realize capital gains sooner than planned.

“Some people are going to get hit hard,” said John Bacci, a financial planner in Linthicum, Md., who has gone down his client list and run projections on what higher taxes would look like for them. He’s looking at tax-friendly alternatives for some clients, such as annuities or rental property.

At year’s end, the country will leap off the “fiscal cliff” unless politicians reach a compromise on mandated spending cuts and the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts.

For most investors, the expiring cuts will mean that the tax rate for long-term capital gains will rise from 15 percent to 20 percent. Dividends also will no longer be taxed at 15 percent but treated as ordinary income, which could mean a tax rate as high as 39.6 percent. And individuals with multimillion-dollar estates will find much more of their money subject to the federal estate tax.

Estate planning lawyers say the demand is so intense that they are putting in grueling hours to set up trusts.

“It’s very stressful. We are working day and night,” said Diana Zeydel, an estate planning lawyer with Greenberg Traurig in Miami. “Were doing three times what we normally do for end-of-the-year planning.”

Zeydel said many of her clients waited until after the elections in November to gauge how the political tide would affect their future finances. This gave them little more than a month to make major decisions about their wealth.

Most observing the political jousting in Washington expect taxes will go up even if the political leaders reach a deal — they’re just not sure how much. Many aren’t taking any chances.

Jim Ludwick, a financial planner in Odenton, Md., said one client in his late 50s cashed out stock and bond funds totaling $1.7 million not long after the election and stashed the proceeds in a money market fund.

The client, anticipating a market plunge due to the “fiscal cliff” and other issues, said he spent his entire working life building up a nest egg and wouldn’t have time to wait for his portfolio to recover, according to Ludwick. The client fears it won’t be safe to re-enter the stock market for another year.

“We have a number of clients who are taking capital gains this year, expecting that if they wait until next year, they will have to pay higher taxes on those same gains,” said Daniel McHugh, president of Lombard Securities in Baltimore. Some of those clients are realizing six-figure gains but are still willing to take the tax hit now, he said.

Of course, the downside is that the stock market could take off, and these investors will miss out on even higher gains, McHugh said. But, he added: “Given the state the economy is in, that’s a very small risk.”

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Bay of Pigs invasion veterans mark 50 years since release

In the days before Christmas 50 years ago this weekend, 1,113 Bay of Pigs fighters captured by Fidel Castro’s forces and imprisoned for 20 months were finally released to a heroes’ welcome in Miami.

The first planeload of POWs arrived at Homestead Air Force Base on Dec. 23, 1962. Gaunt and feeling betrayed by the John F. Kennedy administration, members of the proud Brigade 2506 were bused to Miami’s Dinner Key Auditorium, where waiting relatives engulfed them with hugs at a massive reunion that made front-page news. Five days later, JFK and his wife Jackie would be at the Orange Bowl to welcome them, too.

On Saturday, the 50th anniversary of those pivotal days will be observed as surviving brigade members — now in their 70s and 80s — hold a and 11 a.m. Mass and reunion at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Little Havana.

The release of the men was the one bright spot in the disastrous April 1961 CIA-backed invasion to overthrow the two-year old Castro government. Yet the fighters’ return also sent the somber message that exiles would not reclaim Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis that October had set the course of U.S.-Cuba relations until today.

Back then, it was sinking in: The Cuban exile community was in Miami to stay.

A defeated Jose Andreu, now 76, the first brigade member to sign up for the invasion, was among those who arrived home that bittersweet day.

“My wife to-be was there to meet me, along with my sister and my father,” Andreu said. “I remember hugging and crying. After leaving the auditorium, I remember being so hungry I went to a Royal Castle and my girlfriend bought me, I think, 18 small cheeseburgers.”

Among the young people waiting at the auditorium that day in 1962 was a teen-aged Ninoska Perez Castellon, there with her family to welcome her brothers and uncle, all brigade members.

“I remember being in that packed auditorium ... I can truly say as a child I viewed those men as my first heroes. I still do,” said Perez-Castellon, who grew up to become one of Miami’s most influential radio personalities.

Perez and her family still have black-and-white snapshots of the joyful reunion, showing her late grandmother proudly hugging her son.

The behind-the-scenes negotiations that finally led to the release of the brigadistas 50 years ago this week were the stuff of Hollywood movies. They involved months of haggling with Castro by everyone from a former first lady to a high-profile diplomatic negotiator who led the group that finally succeeded — a group of the prisoners’ mothers, wives and fathers who made up the Cuban Families Committee.

Their effort resulted in a now-forgotten 7,857 exodus of Cuban refugees, many relatives of the brigadistas, who arrived in cargo ships at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale from December 1962 to July 1963.

Two women in the committee played key roles — one in Cuba, motivated by a mother’s love; the other in Miami, seeking to free her husband.

Havana socialite, Berta Barreto, whose oldest son, Alberto Oms Barreto, had been captured during the invasion, made the initial contact with Castro and promised that the ransom he had set for the men would be paid. Years later, her second son, Pablo Perez-Cisneros Barreto, wrote the definitive book on the negotiations called After the Bay of Pigs, soon to be published in Spanish. “What my mother and the others managed to do, with no experience in high-level negotiating, was extraordinary,” Perez-Cisneros Barreto said.

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North Korean Video Game Has Western Ties

Video games represent a true luxury for most North Koreans living in a country where even the elite have only hours of electricity each day. That has not stopped a Western company in the capital city of Pyonyang from creating what may be the first North Korean game widely available online.

The game, called “Pyongyang Racer,” is a simple Web browser game that allows players to drive a car around North Korea’s capitol city of Pyongyang, according to Beijing Cream. Players must avoid hitting cars and collect gasoline in the form of petrol barrels to keep their run going as long as possible — all while getting warnings from one of Pyongyang’s famously picturesque traffic girls.

“Pyongyang Racer” has an unusual development history as a video game. The North Korean programmers who made the game work for Nosotek, a Western company that describes itself as the “first western IT venture” in North Korea.

Nosotek’s North Korean programmers previously made mobile-phone games based on the Hollywood films “The Big Lebowski” and “Men in Black.” Those games ended up getting published through a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp (owner of Fox News), according to Bloomberg News.

Nosotek claims to have “attracted the cream of local talent as the only company in Pyongyang offering Western working conditions and Internet access.” That would likely be true in North Korea, given the nuclear-armed country’s pariah status among Western countries and businesses.

The Nosotek website also praises the advantages of working in North Korea because “IP secrecy and minimum employee churn rate are structurally guaranteed.” Translation: North Korean programmers would likely never leave Nosotek with the company’s intellectual property secrets because they have practically no other employment options.

Nosotek built the game for Koryo Tours, a company based in Beijing, China, to distribute “Pyongyang Racer” through the Koryo Tours website. Koryo Tours is currently the leading company that runs tours of secretive North Korea for Westerners and other foreigners.

“This game was developed in 2012 and is not intended to be a high-end technological wonder hit game of the 21st century, but more a fun race game (arcade style) where you drive around in Pyongyang and learn more about the sites and get a glimpse of Pyongyang,” Koryo Tours said on the game’s website.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. You can follow TechNewsDaily Senior Writer Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @jeremyhsu. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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B’Berry users decline for first time, to 79M

Research in Motion shed BlackBerry users for the first time ever last quarter, the company reported yesterday.

The number of BlackBerry users dipped to 79 million in the three months ended Dec. 1 from 80 million the previous quarter, it said.

Despite losing an average of 11,000 users a day in the period, the Waterloo, Ont.0, company’s results topped analyst forecasts and it expanded its cash holdings, staying on stable footing ahead of the launch of new BlackBerry 10 devices early next year.

“RIM continued to execute on its product road map plans and to deliver on key financial metrics as it gets set for the global launch of BlackBerry 10,” Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said in a statement after the market closed.

RIM shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, to $12.95, after rising 3.6 percent during normal trading hours.

Wall Street has poured back into RIM’s stock in the past three months ahead of the launch its new phones, seeing a silver-lining of potential for the revamped platform.

In the past three months, RIM shares are up more than 100 percent — while the stock of rival Apple, which devastated the BlackBerry with its iPhone — are down more than 25 percent.

In the latest quarter, Wall Street expected a 32 cents loss per share, but RIM posted an adjusted loss of 22 cents compared with a profit of $265 million in the same period a year ago.

Without counting onetime costs related to restructuring, RIM posted a profit of $9 million in the latest quarter.

Revenue of $2.73 billion also topped analyst estimates of $2.7 billion.

RIM’s business has struggled to maintain customers who are leaving the BlackBerry’s for more advanced Apple and Google platforms.

Its subscriber base has held up better than most analysts expected, and only started seeing its first user losses this quarter, its last before launching its next-generation BlackBerry 10 phones.

Plus, RIM has not burned through money as it had in quarters past — increasing its cash $600 million this quarter to $2.9 billion.

“Looking forward to the launch of BB10, the more cash they have the better it is for them,” Neeraj Monga, an analyst with Veritas Investment Research, told Bloomberg.

gsloane@nypost.com

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John Fumagalli succeeds Sheldon Anderson at Northern Trust Florida

Northern Trust has named John Fumagalli President of Northern Trust in Florida. Fumagalli succeeds well-known banker Sheldon Anderson, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

A Northern Trust veteran, Fumagalli joined Northern Trust in Chicago in 1989. In the years since he was served as President and CEO of Northern Trust in Missouri, President and CEO for the Southwest Florida region and regional head of West Florida. In his new position, he oversees Northern Trust’s 22 offices across the state.

Anderson, who has served as Chairman and CEO of Northern Trust’s Southeast Region since 2009, will retire on December 31, 2012. He will continue in a new capacity as Chairman of Northern Trust’s Florida Advisory Board.

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Slip-N-Slide’s Ted Lucas teams up with Miami Heat’s James Jones for All-Star Holiday weekend

Record executive Ted Lucas and Miami Heat star James Jones joined forces to bring holiday cheer to Miami Gardens kids — and motivate them to achieve academically — earlier this month

The All-Star Holiday weekend started with a toy distribution at North County K-8 Center on Dec.13

Lucas and Jones, who got good grades when growing up in Miami Gardens, got some help Santa Claus and Heat mascot Burnie to distribute bicycles, iPod Nanos and gift cards to those students who did well on their FCAT scores.

Later that evening, Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones and Miami Beach Commissioner Jonah Wolfson hosted a kick-off party at W Hotel Miami Beach. Lucas and Jones each received the key to the City of Miami Beach from Wolfson. Lucas is president of Slip-N-Slide Records, located on South Beach.

The weekend’s festivities also included a DREAM reception at Mercedes-Benz of Miami that highlighted talented local youth and honored teachers and included live performances by the Miami Norland High School drumline, DJ Elle and recording artist Sebastian Mikael.

The All-Star Holiday Weekend concluded with a special community fair at Buccaneer Park in Miami Gardens. Hundreds of residents from the surrounding area attended the free celebration for a day of games, activities, music, treats and giveaways.

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Kodak in $525 million patent deal, eyes bankruptcy end

(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co agreed to sell its digital imaging patents for about $ 525 million, a key step to bringing the photography pioneer out of bankruptcy in the first half of 2013.

The deal for the 1,100 patents allows Kodak to fulfill a condition for securing $ 830 million in financing.

The patent deal was reached with a consortium led by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp, and which includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies, which will license or acquire the patents.

Those companies are Adobe Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Fujifilm, Google Inc, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Shutterfly Inc, according to court documents.

Kodak still must sell its personalized and document-imaging businesses as part of the financing package, and also has to resolve its UK pension obligation.

Kodak said the patent deal puts it on a path to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013.

“Our progress has accelerated over the past several weeks as we prepare to emerge as a strong, sustainable company,” said Antonio Perez, chairman and chief executive of the Rochester, New York-based company.

The patent portfolio was expected to be a major asset for Kodak when it filed for bankruptcy in January. An outside firm had estimated the patents could be worth as much as $ 2.6 billion.

Kodak’s patents hit the market as intellectual property values have soared and technology companies have plowed money into patent-related litigation.

For example, last year Nortel Networks sold 6,000 wireless patents in a bankruptcy auction for $ 4.5 billion and earlier this year Google spent $ 12.5 billion for patent-rich Motorola Mobility.

But Kodak’s patent auction dragged on beyond the initial expectation that it would be wrapped up in August. One patent specialist blamed those early, overly optimistic valuations, which he said encouraged Kodak’s team to set their sights too high.

“Unfortunately (Kodak management) was misled into thinking it was worth billions of dollars and it wasn’t,” said Alex Poltorak, chairman of General Patent Corp, a patent licensing firm. “I think they sold them at a very good price.”

He said after Google acquired Motorola, the search engine company no longer needed patents at any price, deflating the intellectual property market.

Kodak traces its roots to the 19th century and invented the handheld camera. But it has been unable to successfully shift to digital imaging.

It will likely be a different company when it exits bankruptcy, out of the consumer business and focused instead on providing products and services to the commercial imaging market.

The patent sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

The Kodak bankruptcy case is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Nick Zieminski,; John Wallace and Peter Galloway)

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Tappan Zee mystery

Nicole Gelinas

In the runup to Christmas, Gov. Cuomo just presented a great bargain for New York “shoppers”: The state Thruway Authority will build the new Tappan Zee Bridge by 2018 for $3.1 billion, plus $500 million to $800 million in a reserve for financing and unexpected costs — when the pricetag as recently as this summer was at least $5.3 billion.

But as with everything else in Albany, what could trip Cuomo up is where, when and how to get the cash.

The governor deserves huge credit for announcing this cost underrun — unusual even at this early stage for a mega-project. If (and only if) he sticks to time and budget, it could be a model for other projects in New York and around the country.

A bargain, but: The winning proposal for a new Tappan Zee Bridge carries a surprisingly cheap pricetag — but there’s still no cash to pay for it.

Why the savings?

Technical reasons, partly: A lighter structure made of steel, not concrete, will require less dredging and thus take less time (without costing more down the road).

And workers will assemble much of the steel off-site, allowing them to work longer hours without disrupting commutes and nearby residents’ sleep. That, too, saves time and money.

Plus, the governor got Albany to pass new legislation governing construction contracts. The winning contractors — American Bridge Co. and Fluor — will be financially responsible for constructing the project they’ve drawn up themselves.

That’s a departure from normal New York practice: Usually, one architectural firm produces a design, then the state hires other contractors to build the thing.

That disconnect can cause huge cost overruns. Just think: If the designers who came up with the “soaring” Calatrava PATH station downtown knew they actually had to build it, they’d have stuck to basics in their drawings.

(Of course, no contracting structure can completely control for government incompetence. If the governor decides to change the bridge specs halfway through, taxpayers would still have to pay for the overruns.)

Most important, though, is that Cuomo (unlike his three predecessors) made clear to everyone — Thruway honchos and bidders included — that he cares about getting the Tappan Zee done.

Putting political capital behind the project reduced the political risk that the bidders had to take — that is, the risk that he’d suddenly cancel it.

That encouraged three separate bidders to submit thoughtful proposals, without having to worry that they were wasting their money. Competition is (almost) always good for costs.

Good so far — so let’s see if it works on the ground.

Now the bad news: Behind the mockups of a shiny new bridge, there are already some seriously rusty finances.

Even at the low end, $3.6 billion is a lot of money. Assume the Thruway can borrow at around 4.5 percent for 30 years, and that the state gets a federal loan for the project. The debt then would cost about $200 million a year, plus a little extra to keep bond analysts happy.

But the Tappan Zee — with its current $4.75 round-trip toll — only takes in about $130 million a year. Yes, expenses may fall on the new bridge. Still, raking in close to $200 million more would require more than doubling the toll, bringing it to $11 or so.

So you’d think the governor would be easing some toll hikes in now, to build up some cash and avoid an abrupt hike. Instead, Cuomo said clearly over the summer that he doesn’t want bridge tolls going up much — and he didn’t say much at all on the subject this week.

In fact, on the rest of the Thruway system, the governor is going in the wrong direction. Monday, the Thruway announced “a new cost-saving plan that does not include any toll hike.”

Doing more for less, part of the governor’s plan, is fine. But a big reason the Thruway won’t hike tolls this year is that Cuomo has decided to give the public authority some money out of the general state budget.

The state will start reimbursing the Thruway for state-police costs as well as other operating costs, totaling $85 million a year. That’s not a real “savings,” though — it’s just hoping that taxpayers won’t notice the cost and scream, where tollpayers would have.

The governor’s stand on Tappan Zee tolls shows one thing: Nobody ever likes to raise tolls — and that probably won’t change in the next few years.

But we’re still waiting to see what legerdemain he’ll come up with to pay for the new Tappan Zee. Expect the financial engineering on the bridge to be far more complicated than the actual engineering.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s
City Journal.

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