Tamera Mowry
The proud first-time mom just gave birth to son Aden John on November 12, 2012. Foregoing the magazine cover route, Tamera debuted her newborn on Twitter, captioning the photo, "Chillin with my grandma Darlene today! She hooked me up with a cool outfit!"
DALLAS, Pa. — The man long suspected in the 1979 disappearance of a New York City boy was ordered to stand trial Thursday for allegedly misleading police about where he planned to live after his release from prison on child molestation charges.
Jose Antonio Ramos, sporting a long white beard and ponytail, said nothing as he was led into a district judge's office in northeastern Pennsylvania a day after another man was charged with kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
Ramos, 69, was the prime suspect in Patz's disappearance until earlier this year, when a New Jersey man told police he'd choked the boy to death in the basement below a convenience store. Ramos was even declared legally responsible for the boy's death by a civil court in 2004.
Christopher Sadowski
Jose Ramos
Brian O'Dwyer, who represents Patz's family in their civil suit against Ramos, said he remains convinced of Ramos' guilt.
"Nothing has changed my mind that Jose Ramos is responsible for the abduction and murder of Etan Patz," O'Dwyer said in a statement Thursday.
Ramos completed a 27-year sentence last week but was immediately arrested upon his release from the State Correctional Institution at Dallas because authorities said he had given them a fake address for where he'd be living.
When New York City police checked out the Bronx address he provided on his Megan's Law registration form, they found no one living there who knew Ramos. And when police tracked down the cousin whose name Ramos had listed, she told them she hadn't had any contact with him in 35 years and did not plan to allow him to live with her, New York police Detective James Menton testified Thursday.
Ramos actually was making other arrangements, authorities said.
Letters intercepted by prison officials indicate that Ramos was planning to stay in a New York City hotel with a woman and her grandson, then head to Florida or Brazil, according to testimony.
"He had no intention whatsoever of even going to that building," Pennsylvania State police Trooper Martin Connors testified, adding that Megan's Law required Ramos to "have the ability to live at the address he provides."
In a strange twist, police also found no evidence the grandson claimed by Ramos' pen pal even existed.
Ramos' relationship with the woman, Janet Hicks, was unclear, and authorities aren't sure why she falsely claimed to Ramos that she would bring a boy to live with them. Hicks didn't return a phone message left by The Associated Press.
Police "really looked into that because they wanted to make sure that no other kid would be harmed by this man," but "we weren't able to establish that there was a grandson," Luzerne County prosecutor Lexie Falvello said outside court. "I think one can infer that he had questionable intentions, if he was making arrangements with a woman and requesting that she bring her grandson along with her, especially given his history."
Ramos' public defender, Jonathan Blum, argued for a dismissal of the felony charge, saying that Ramos could have headed to the address he gave police, found out he wasn't permitted to live there, then given police another address and still be in compliance with Megan's Law. But Judge James Tupper said Ramos' jailhouse letters provided evidence of criminal intent to mislead authorities.
After Tupper ordered Ramos to stand trial, Blum tried for a bail reduction — and provided a post office box in Reno, Nev., as the address Ramos would use should he make bail. Tupper kept bail at $75,000 and told Blum he would need to ask the trial court for a reduction.
Around the time of Ramos' hearing, the man now charged in Patz's death appeared in a New York City courtroom. Pedro Hernandez's attorney said his client is mentally ill and made a false confession.
Two cruise industry groups announced a slew of new safety policies Thursday, the latest measures to come out of a major review launched after the Costa Concordia shipwreck in January.
The new policies, announced by the Cruise Lines International Association and European Cruise Council, focus on lifejacket storage, stability of heavy objects and operating procedures in the bridge area.
A significant change, which applies only to new cruise ships for which a contract is placed on or after July 1, 2013, requires lifejackets to be stowed near muster stations or lifeboats so they would be easily accessible in case of emergency. CLIA public affairs director David Peikin said most cruise lines have kept lifejackets in passenger rooms in the past.
Cruise lines must also ensure there is a way to secure heavy items such as pianos, treadmills or televisions at all times, when they’re not being used or in case of severe weather to guard against injury. Most ships had elements of the policy in place, Peikin said.
Finally, the industry has adopted a policy of putting into place consistent operating procedures on the bridge between ships on different brands owned by the same company. For example, a bridge team member rotating from Holland America Line to Princess Cruises, both owned by Carnival Corp., should find consistent bridge procedures on the two brands.
Peikin said cruise lines are in the process now of implementing the bridge procedure and heavy object policies.
As Diego Hurtado gently toyed with his dog’s ear, he recalled jumping out of a plane at 2,000 feet, then freefalling when his parachute failed to open.
He tightly held the dog’s ear in his palm as he recalled the mid-air collision of two aircraft at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, that spilled fuel and debris on the base, killing 24 fellow paratroopers and injuring countless others.
Hurtado’s dog Rex, a nearly 80-pound yellow Labrador-golden retriever mix, may seem like any other four-legged canine.
But Rex, 3, is also a service dog trained to help Hurtado cope with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as with the service-related physical injuries.
“With Rex I have been able to reduce my anti-depressants by more than half,” said Hurtado, 51, a sergeant first class who served in the Army for 20 years. “I am able to go to a lot of places I was not able to go to at all.”
Like many other veterans who struggle with PTSD and physical injuries, Hurtado turned to man’s best friend for help. Nonprofit organizations across the country provide dogs to veterans to help servicemen and servicewomen cope with their injuries, both physical and emotional.
Kendall resident Jose Moran received his German shepherd, Jana, from the same organization as Hurtado: New York-based America’s VetDogs.
Coral Springs resident and Iraq war veteran Moises Castro turned to Florida-based Dogs 4 Disabled Veterans for his pit-boxer mix, Salsa.
Both organizations train the dogs to match the personality and needs of each veteran and provide the dogs for free.
Castro, 47, served in Kuwait during the Iraq War as a U.S. Navy petty officer second-class. Once he came back, his anxiety, due to PTSD, was high, especially when he would go into crowds. To add to that, in 2010 he had a brain tumor removed, leaving him with sporadic seizures.
For two years, he barely left his home.
Then along came 2-year-old Salsa with white paws.
She has been trained to sense when Castro is about to get a seizure.
“She just knows it before I do,” he said, adding that during a seizure she licks his face to comfort him.
And when the two enter a big crowd that may induce anxiety, she veers him away.
“Then she keeps looking at me to make sure everything is OK,” said Castro. “She has given my freedom back to me.”
During Moran’s service in the U.S. Army as a sergeant first class, his vehicle ran over an explosive device in Sadr City, Iraq, a suburb of Baghdad The impact crushed one of the disks in his spine and his left knee.
“I don’t really remember too much,” said Moran, 45. “I heard a pop and I was out.”
After returning to South Florida, it was not easy to return to civilian life. Sometimes he did not eat for a week because his PTSD caused him so much anxiety in crowds that he avoided going to the grocery store.
“It got pretty bad there for awhile,” he said. “As bad as you can get without crossing the line.”
Three years ago he got Jana, who has been trained to sense Moran’s anxiety levels and knows when the two are about to walk into an uncomfortable situation.
“She can tell if someone is going to annoy me,” said Moran.
On a recent visit to the Miami VA, a man got in the elevator with the two. He “was just loud” and asked a lot of question about Jana, Moran said.
Did Lindsay Lohan lie about her mother having an alleged cocaine problem? Dina Lohan sets the record straight for ET's Christina McLarty.
Pics: Time and Time Again -- Lindsay Lohan Court Timeline
"Absolutely lied. We were having an argument, it escalated," explains Dina of their October altercation which was recorded by her father, Michael Lohan. "She just wanted to hurt me at that moment. You know, mothers [and] daughters, we fight."
Dina tells Christina that it pained her to see that private family moment "go public and viral." As for accusations that she uses cocaine, Dina replies, "I hate cocaine. I don't do cocaine."
Lindsay Lohan Shocks in Tawdry 'Canyons' Trailer
After Lindsay proclaimed that she was not being truthful about her accusations against her mother about cocaine use, Dina says, "I'm so proud of her for telling the truth because it destroyed me. I mean, I cried for weeks. It just hurt me so bad and she knew how horrible that was, and she came clean and told the truth that she lied. I'm very proud of her for that, which is very difficult to have to do."
Dina adds, "There's so much more to the story than the public sees, and it takes its toll on my children and myself, and we're just trying to move forward."
Watch ET for more with our exclusive Dina Lohan interview.
Hurricane Sandy may have claimed another victim — the city's long-awaited bike-share program.
Bikes and electronic docking components for the program are being stored in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which took on four to six feet of water during the storm surge two weeks ago.
Officials at the Transportation Department say they are now "assessing" the damage.
They won't say if the first of 10,000 street bikes that were supposed to hit the streets starting in March will be rolled out on schedule.
The program was originally supposed to start last September, but was derailed by computer programming problems.
Dan Brinzac
The Citibank-sponsored bike share program
Officials said the company running the operation , Alta, has insurance to cover possible losses.
They insisted that city would not be picking up any part of the tab.
The delay has already raised financial issues for the company.
To deal with them, Alta is receiving speeded-up payments from Citibank, the chief sponsor.
The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald announced Wednesday that free unlimited access to stories online will soon be a thing of the past.
With the new digital subscription package, the papers join several other publications owned by The McClatchy Co., including The Sacramento Bee, The Modesto Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga. and the Sun Herald in Biloxi that previously instituted “metered paywalls.’’
As part of the “Miami Herald Plus +” program, packages will includes digital and print subscriptions as well as digital-only options, which include mobile apps. Readers who visit www.miamiherald.com and www.elnuevoherald.com will have free access to a limited number of stories a month. Subscribers who already get the paper at home will be able to read online for free; when their subscription renews, they will be rolled into the print and digital package.
In a press release announcing the company’s third-quarter earnings last month, McClatchy President and CEO Pat Talamantes hinted at the expansion of digital subscriptions, saying the company intended to roll out the program in other markets starting in November.
“We believe the new subscription revenues will begin to make a more significant impact in the fourth quarter,” Talamantes said in the statement. “In 2013, we believe the new Plus program could add more than $20 million depending on a number of factors, including how quickly we complete our company-wide rollout.”
McClatchy reported profits of $5.1 million for the quarter ending Sept. 23, down from $9.4 million during the same time last year. Revenues dropped 4.2 percent to $287.5 million.
The woes of Broward County’s largest HIV center, Broward House, continued Tuesday as members of the County Commission — which is a significant funder — expressed outrage that an accused pedophile had been put in charge of an agency that cares for children.
Broward County contributes $400,000 in general revenue dollars to Broward House, unrestricted funds over which the county has direct control, said Commissioner Lois Wexler, a former school board member who requested the discussion at a regular commission meeting Tuesday morning.
“Not only have I lost confidence” in Broward House, Wexler said, “but many folks in the community have lost confidence...A cloud hangs over you that needs to move,” Wexler added.
The controversy began on Nov. 3, when The Miami Herald reported that members of the Broward House board had twice promoted Michael McGuigan — naming him chief executive officer in September — long after McGuigan had repeatedly been linked to allegations he sexually abused or made improper advances toward children. Earlier this year, a Broward judge stripped McGuigan of parental rights over a 6-year-old he adopted, after McGuigan agreed not to fight the accusations of state child welfare authorities.
Last week, Ron Book, one of the state’s most powerful lobbyists, whose now-adult daughter is a survivor of childhood sex abuse, called on Broward House funders and children’s advocates to demand that McGuigan be suspended or removed.
On Friday, the Broward House board of directors met at an undisclosed private home to discuss McGuigan’s future, and accepted his immediate resignation. But shortly after the private meeting ended, board President Mark Budwig expressed sympathy for McGuigan, calling McGuigan’s ouster “unfortunate” and telling a Miami Herald reporter the CEO did “not deserve to have to resign.”
Book called Budwig’s comments “an outrage” at Tuesday’s meeting, and asked board members to use their power of the purse strings to force changes at the county’s oldest and largest HIV service agency, which employs 100 people.
“That’s a problem,” Book said. “It ought to be a problem for you, and it ought to be a problem for the community. You’re a funder.”
The vice president of Broward House’s board, who is the agency’s founder, apparently agreed. Susan Telli spoke on behalf of the group, which serves about 6,000 people with HIV or substance abuse problems, and mostly apologized.
“I admit we made a terrible mistake,” Telli said. “It’s been resolved; we resolved it on Friday.”
Telli agreed to the commission’s demand that board members hold a “retreat” or meeting to, as Wexler put it, “develop a strategy to make sure these things don’t happen again.”
As Budwig did five days earlier, Telli blamed the scandal on the Broward House CEO whose departure led to McGuigan’s promotion: Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo. Telli said Castillo had told her in confidence about the allegations swirling around McGuigan, but he also assured her “there was no problem; the allegations were unfounded.”
Castillo refused repeatedly to discuss McGuigan with a reporter Friday. But Saturday morning, he commented on The Herald’s website, blaming the controversy on two state agencies — the Department of Children & Families and the Agency for Health Care Administration — which, he said, told him “no action was required until and unless charges were brought, and even then, [the] proper response would depend on the nature of the charge brought.”
Both state agencies say they are looking into Castillo’s claims.
Commissioner Kristin Jacobs called Broward House’s failure to act for two years “shocking.”
Jacobs said the allegations surrounding McGuigan were a red flag that “was not just waving in your face, but draped over your head. You need to get out and do something long before he moves up the ladder.”
Particularly “alarming,” Jacobs said, was the attitude of board members that “Oh, we knew about it, but they were only allegations, and we didn’t know if they were real or not. There wasn’t even an investigation.”
One commissioner, Stacy Ritter, said commissioners did not have the authority to tell groups they fund who they can hire and fire. Though, as CEO, McGuigan had unfettered access to the HIV agency and its clients — some of whom are children — Ritter said she was unconcerned because he wasn’t a “caseworker.”
“Quite frankly,” Ritter said, “I’m not sure why we’re discussing it.”
Verizon and HTC unveiled a new device that the two hope will appeal to customers during the holiday season, while helping to reverse HTC’s floundering fortunes.
The phone, the Droid DNA, sports a 5-inch screen, putting it more in the “phablet” category with Samsung‘s Galaxy Note. It runs on Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean and includes a boatload of powerful features, including a Super LCD 3 display with 440 pixels per inch, capable of playing 1080p HD video.
HTC noted the screen rivals traditional HDTVs, while the pixel density is among the highest available on any smartphone. The iPhone 5′s Retina display, for example, is 326 pixels per inch.
The device runs on a quad-core, 1.5Ghz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, with 4G LTE integrated on the same piece of silicon as the application processor. Having one chip instead of two improves battery life.
The phone is also capable of wireless charging and full HD video chat. The device has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2.1-megapixel camera in the front. HTC noted its phone features HTC ImageSense and HTC ImageChip to create faster image processing and better quality photos, as well as a quick-launch camera option.
The Droid DNA also has Beats audio and two amplifiers, one for headphone and one for speaker. And it’s equipped with near-field communications technology to share music and other content by tapping other NFC-enabled devices.
Droid DNA goes on sale on November 21 for $ 199.99 with a two-year contract. Pre-sales begin today. The phone is available exclusively through Verizon.
The hefty specs should appeal to customers looking for alternatives to the latest gadgets from Samsung and Apple during the holiday season. For HTC, it’s pretty important that they do.
The Taiwanese handset maker really needs a hit phone. Previously the darling of the smartphone world, HTC has been having a tough time lately. Samsung and Apple are dominating the industry’s profits and market share, leaving little for HTC, Motorola, Nokia, and other handset vendors. HTC also has faced litigation, though it reached a settlement with Apple a few days ago.
The company has said it plans to go bolder with its messaging to consumers and the media, relying less on joint marketing campaigns with the carriers and standing more independently to tell the HTC story. It also has said it would try to generate buzz through social media and by seeing out influential celebrities and “superfans” for endorsements. So far, it’s unclear whether such steps are paying off.
Related stories:
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Sometimes what happens in Vegas actually does stay in Vegas -- at least for two decades. Funny girl Janeane Garofalo is claiming she's been married for 20 years, and didn't even know it!
The Reality Bites actress told the New York Post that she and Big Bang Theory producer Rob Cohen decided to wed at a Las Vegas drive-thru chapel but never thought it would stick. "Rob and I got married, for real, which we had to have a notary dissolve not 30 minutes before we got here tonight," Garofalo said at the New York Comedy Festival reunion for The Ben Stiller Show. "We were married for 20 years until this evening."
RELATED: Celebrity Weddings in 2012
Garofalo, 48, further explained, "We got married drunk in Vegas. ... We dated for a year, and we got married at a drive-through chapel in a cab. [We thought], 'You have to go down to the courthouse and sign papers and stuff.' So, who knew? We were married, and apparently now that [Rob] is getting married for real, his lawyer dug up something."
Cohen, 63, joked, "I'm gonna get all of that Reality Bites money!"
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