North Korea conducts third controversial nuke test, using smallest A-bomb yet

REUTERS

A monitor at the Japan Meteorological Agency's earthquake and tsunami observations division shows ground motion data from the nuclear test in North Korea.

PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea conducted a nuclear test at an underground site in the remote northeast Tuesday, taking an important step toward its goal of building a bomb small enough to be fitted on a missile that could reach United States.

North Korea made clear that the explosion of its third atomic device — which it claimed was smaller than the ones in its previous two tests — was a warning to what it considers a hostile United States. Its actions drew immediate condemnation from Washington, the U.N. and others. Even its only major ally, China, voiced opposition.

"The test was conducted in a safe and perfect way on a high level, with the use of a smaller and light A-bomb, unlike the previous ones, yet with great explosive power," North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.

It was a defiant response to U.N. orders to shut down atomic activity or face more sanctions and international isolation, as well as a direct message from young leader Kim Jong Un to the United States, Pyongyang's No. 1 enemy since the 1950-53 Korean War.

KCNA said the test is aimed at coping with "the ferocious hostile act of the U.S." That's a reference to what Pyongyang said was Washington's attempts to block its right to launch satellites. North Korea was punished by U.N. sanctions after a December launch of a rocket that the U.N. and Washington called a cover for a banned missile test. Pyongyang said it was a peaceful satellite launch.

The timing was significant. The test in an underground tunnel came hours before President Barack Obama was scheduled to give his State of the Union speech, a major, nationally televised address.

Obama said in a statement Tuesday that the test is "a highly provocative act" and promised to "continue to take steps necessary to defend ourselves and our allies."

The test also comes only days before the Saturday birthday of Kim Jong Un's father, late leader Kim Jong Il, whose memory North Korean propaganda has repeatedly linked to the country's nuclear ambitions. This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, and in late February South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye will be inaugurated.

North Korea is estimated to have enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight bombs, according to American nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker.

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Green cards for sale at a South Beach hotel: Competition is on for EB5 investment visas

If David Hart gets his way, South Beach’s 42-room Astor Hotel will be on a hiring spree this year as it adds concierge service, a roof-top pool, an all-night diner, spa and private-car service available 24 hours a day.

New hires will be crucial to Hart’s business plan, since foreign investors have agreed to pay about $50,000 for each job created by the Art Deco boutique.

The Miami immigration lawyer specializes in arranging visas for wealthy foreign citizens under a special program that trades green cards for investment dollars. Businesses get the money and must use it to boost payroll. The minimum investment is $500,000 to add at least 10 jobs to the economy. That puts the pressure on Hart and his partners at the Astor to beef up payroll dramatically, with plans to take a hotel with roughly 20 employees to one with as many as 100 workers.

“My primary responsibility is to make something happen here over the next two years that will create the jobs we need,’’ Hart said a few steps away from a nearly empty restaurant on a recent weekday morning. “It’s all going to be transformed.”

Though established in the 1990s, the “EB5” visas soared in popularity during the recession as developers sought foreign cash to replace dried-up credit markets in the United States.

Chinese investors dominate the transactions, accounting for about 65 percent of the nearly 9,000 EB5 visas granted since 2006. South Korea finishes a distant second at 12 percent and the United Kingdom holds the third-place slot at 3 percent. If Latin America and the Caribbean were one country, they would rank No. 4 on the list, with 231 EB5 visas granted, or about 3 percent of the total.

Competition has gotten stiffer for the deep-pocketed foreign investors willing to pay for green cards. The University of Miami’s bio-science research park near the Jackson hospital system raised $20 million from 40 foreign investors under the EB5 program, most of them from Asia. The money went into the park’s first building; visa brokers are waiting to see if the second building will proceed so they can offer a new pool of potential green-card sales.

In Hollywood, the stalled $131 million Margaritaville resort had hoped to raise about $75 million from EB5 investors before ditching that plan last year to pursue more traditional financing. A retail complex by developer Jeff Berkowitz in Coral Gables also launched a program to raise $50 million in EB5 money for the project, Gables Station. Hart worked with other EB5 investors to back pizza restaurants in Miami and South Beach. A limestone mine in Martin County also was backed by EB5 dollars.

This year, the city of Miami itself is expected to get into the business by setting up an EB5 program to raise foreign cash for a range of city businesses and developments. The first would be the tallest building in the city — developer Tibor Hollo’s planned 85-story apartment tower, the Panorama, in downtown Miami.

With a construction cost of about $700 million, Miami’s debut EB5 venture hopes to raise about $100 million from foreign investors, said Laura Reiff, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer in Virginia working with Miami on the EB5 effort. “This is a marquis project,’’ she said.

The arrangement is a novel one for Miami, with the city planning to help a private developer raise funds overseas for a new high-rise. And it would allow Hollo and future participants to tout the city of Miami’s endorsement when competing with other Miami-area projects for EB5 dollars. “We will have the benefit of the brand of the city of Miami,’’ said Mikki Canton, the $6,000-a-month city consultant heading Miami’s EB5 effort. “A lot of these others are privately owned and they won’t have that brand.”

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With millions at stake, tutoring lobby goes into action

Second of two parts

Every year for nearly a decade, private tutoring companies have made millions in Florida because the federal government required school districts to hire them.

That was in danger of changing last February, when the state won freedom from mandated private instruction for poor children in the state's worst schools.

But the tutoring industry wasn't letting go without a fight.

At the end of last year's legislative session, Florida became a key target as the tutoring lobby battled to retain funding.

The effort paid off in March, when state lawmakers quietly voted to keep the money flowing.

The moment marked a major victory for the tutoring industry, but, as the Tampa Bay Times reported on Sunday, it also ensured the survival of a program that is shot through with cheating, opportunism and fraud.

In tracing the new law from the agenda books of a special interest group to the pages of state statutes, the Times reviewed public records and interviewed legislators, lobbyists, education officials and advocates.

It found that the push to fund tutoring in Florida was part of a national campaign by the industry, an undertaking that failed in other places but succeeded in Tallahassee.

To save tutoring, the industry formed a nonprofit group that sold the effort as a civil rights struggle, spent $2.4 million on campaign contributions and lobbying fees and pushed legislation in states across the country.

In New York and Maryland, tutoring companies and their lobbyists battled fiercely for a law requiring funding and still made no headway.

In Florida, all it took was a phone call.

Rallying support

By the summer of 2010, midway through President Barack Obama's second year in office, tutoring companies that had thrived on government contracts knew they were in trouble.

Industry groups were expecting the administration to gut requirements for private tutoring, known as supplemental educational services, that made up a key part of President George W. Bush's education reform act, No Child Left Behind.

What the industry needed was a campaign to rally people who otherwise might not show support. The solution? Defend subsidized tutoring as a civil rights cause.

Steve Pines, head of the Education Industry Association, previewed the strategy in a PowerPoint presentation for tutoring companies in June 2010. His organization, a trade group for for-profit education businesses, would spend $1.5 million to help launch a nonprofit called Tutor Our Children.

The new organization would hire lobbyists, create a pro-tutoring website and encourage parents to flood public officials with support for mandated tutoring, all while positioning the campaign as a fight for civil rights.

It cultivated ties to the Urban League of Greater Miami and the United Farm Workers of America. In April 2011, it organized a panel discussion in Washington called "Waiving Away Education Civil Rights."

In October 2011, Tutor Our Children announced it had hired a spokeswoman, Stephanie Monroe, a Washington lobbyist who formerly served as assistant secretary of education for civil rights in the Bush administration.

About a week later, Monroe testified in a Senate hearing on the organization's behalf.

The same day, the group posted on its website a photo of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. It showed an inscription — a quote from King — that reads in part: "Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights."

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Alicia Keys on Record-Breaking Super Bowl Anthem

Alicia Keys was praised for putting her unique twist on the national anthem at Super Bowl XLVII, and she opened up about the experience to Nancy O'Dell on the Grammys red carpet.

PICS: Grammys Fashion

"It felt like a dream actually because it was such a moment and I'd never done that before and I really put a lot of beautiful time into it, so it was an incredible high," Keys gushed.

The Grammy winner's rendition of The Star Spangled Banner was recorded as the longest that the big game has ever seen, according to USA Today. The song was reportedly timed at 156.4 seconds, four seconds longer than the previous record held by Natalie Cole.

February has been an especially busy month for Keys, as she is also preparing for her Set the World on Fire tour that launches March 7 in Seattle.

"This tour is going to take it to the next stratosphere," Keys said. "It's going to be a visual, emotional and sonic experience that you're not going to be able to resist."

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JoePa is innocent: kin probe

The family of the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno released the findings of their own investigation into the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal yesterday — and it exonerated Paterno while blasting an earlier report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh as “fundamentally flawed.”

More than six months after Freeh’s July 2012 report accused Paterno and others of covering up Sandusky’s child abuse, the family’s report, conducted by former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, concluded there was no conspiracy.

“Mr. Freeh irresponsibly blamed Joe Paterno in this scandal,” wrote Paterno family attorney Wick Sollers.

He accused Freeh of “offering a flawed, one-sided viewpoint” and ripped him for not interviewing Paterno.

Freeh retorted that he stood by his conclusions and specifically said Paterno refused to meet with him while still finding time to grant interviews to a newspaper reporter and his biographer before his death in January 2012 at age 85.

Freeh called the family’s report “self-serving.”

Critique of the Freeh Report by

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U.S. Century to OK details of new deal

U.S. Century Bank is expected to sign off on Monday on its letter of intent — the framework for a plan to recapitalize the bank.

Under the deal, a local group of investors, led by Jimmy Tate of Tate Capital and Sergio Rok of Rok Enterprises, will bring in fresh capital and wipe out the Doral bank’s bad loans, while allowing it to operate independently.

The investor group is expected to inject $50 million in capital into the bank, becoming majority owners. In addition, the group will pay about $90 million to buy certain loans, including all $98 million of U.S. Century’s non-performing loans, said U.S. Century President and Chief Executive Carlos J. Dávila. The deal would also provide for a negotiated amount to be paid to the federal government to repay U.S. Century’s $50.2 million in TARP funds.

A definitive agreement, based on the letter of intent, is expected next month. Pending shareholder and regulatory approval, the deal could be completed by mid-year, Dávila said.

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Miami-Dade mayor disappointed at Major League Baseball over All-Star Game

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez was swept into office in part because of his opposition to the public financing for the Marlins’ new baseball stadium.

But that doesn’t mean he was happy when Major League Baseball awarded the 2015 All-Star Game to Cincinnati. Marlins President David Samson said last year he hoped to host the game, continuing a streak of All-Star games at new ballparks. That was before the team decimated its roster and chopped its payroll after last season.

After MLB Commissioner Bud Selig made the Cincinnati announcement last month, Gimenez sent him a letter expressing his disappointment. And the mayor phoned Selig last week, according to Gimenez’s calendar.

“[N]ow that the facility is built and operating, it is my responsibility to ensure its greatest benefit to our residents,” Gimenez wrote.

“Public sentiment regarding the Stadium is at an all-time low, and now we are further disappointed by the recent announcement...[I]t is clear that Miami has been benched once again, this time by Major League Baseball.”

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Police: 4 wounded in shooting on Bourbon Street in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — Four people were shot on the French Quarter's iconic Bourbon Street, sending people running as revelers partied Saturday night amid the countdown to Mardi Gras, police and bystanders said. But the party was back in full force hours later as crowds returned afterward.

Two males and two females were wounded just before 9:30 p.m. time, New Orleans police spokesman Frank B. Robertson said. He reported that one male was in critical condition and had undergone surgery, while the other three were in stable condition. He did not release their ages.

Robertson said detectives were working to identify a suspect and determine a motive. A police statement said the shooting occurred on the French Quarter street, but did not provide the exact location where the shots were fired. He said he had no additional information immediately.

"They're just piecing together what happened," he added. Subsequent messages left with police seeking more information were not immediately returned.

The streets were crawling with bar-hopping throngs taking in the last weekend before Fat Tuesday, the enormous party that engulfs New Orleans each year with parades, gaudy floats and merrymakers tossing trinkets and beads to the crowds.

Bourbon Street street is home to strip clubs, watering holes and second-floor balconies lined by people who throw beads to revelers below each Mardi Gras season. The street often gets so crowded that officers have to control the crowds on horseback.

Patrick Clay, 21, an LSU student, told The Times-Picayune he was standing on the corner of Bourbon Street when suddenly he saw a crowd running and people screaming that there was a shooting.

"Everyone immediately started running and the cops immediately started running toward where people were running from," Clay said. "I was with a group of about seven people and at that point we all just kind of grasped hands and made our way through the crowd as soon as possible."

Afterward, police moved in to investigate. Many revelers said they stayed hunkered down in bars and other establishments until police cleared them to move freely.

WWL-TV reported that police had obtained surveillance video from one of the establishments as part of the investigation.

"We don't know what happened but they shut down the entire block for an hour," Peter Manabani, an employee at the Rat's Hole bar, told AP as loud music thumped in the background. He said the block reopened shortly before midnight and his establishment was again thronged entering the early hours.

Early Sunday there were no signs a shooting had occurred, as revelers had returned to party mode, packing the block anew amid a heavy police presence. Many milled about, wearing beads, drinking and carousing.

"It's scary. We heard about the shooting in the cab ride down here and almost turned around but it's our first Mardi Gras and we wanted to be here," said Ashley Holleran, 19, of Allendale, N.J., visiting with a friend from New York.

Laura Gonzalez, 21, of Baytown, Texas, said it was also her first Mardi Gras and she spent some time in the Fat Catz Bar nearby as police investigated the shooting. She said the bar quickly locked its doors soon after the shooting and wouldn't let anyone in or out while police kept the crime scene clear of throngs.

Asked if it was frightening, she responded: "Not really. We were just locked in a bar and we weren't going to let this one incident wreck our party."

Parades rolled all day Saturday but none on Bourbon Street because the streets are too narrow. One of the biggest Mardi Gras parades, the Krewe of Endymion, rolled down Canal Street and just skirted Bourbon Street a few hours before the shooting. Typically, once the parades end, partygoers head to the French Quarter.

The lifeblood tourism trade is vital to New Orleans and Mardis Gras is one of the city's signature events, along with Jazz Fest and major sporting events such as the recent Super Bowl. Yet decades-old problems persist and New Orleans remains plagued by violent crime, including gun violence that soared after Hurricane Katrina clobbered the city in 2005.

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Mega mansion frenzy: Buyer snaps up Pat Riley’s $16M home to level it, rebuild

Miami Heat President Pat Riley sold his spectacular bayfront mansion in gated Gables Estates for $16.8 million last March.

The 12,856-square-foot Mediterranean-style dream house at 180 Arvida Parkway has a theater, wine cellar, library, and a sprawling pool with waterfalls and an aqua bar.

But that’s all coming down.

Turns out the lure was the lot: a rare fingertip of prime land, nearly two acres, jutting into the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay.

In December, the buyer — listed as 180 Arvida LLC represented by Miami attorney Mark Hasner — presented the city of Coral Gables with plans to tear down the home, built in 1991, and erect an even grander estate along the 900 linear feet of bayfront.

“Most people would move in and be perfectly happy, but clients are looking for perfection — really good stuff,” said Jorge Uribe, a senior vice president at One Sotheby’s International Realty, who wasn’t involved but sold an even bigger trophy property last year: a $39.4 million estate at 14 Indian Creek Dr., on Indian Creek Island in Miami Beach, dubbed “Miami’s Billionaire Bunker” by Forbes magazine.

“The trend in the last several years is a demand for very high-quality product. People are looking for really good locations, really good materials, and they’re willing to pay for it,” Uribe said.

Miami’s ultra-luxury market is on fire. Prices for the fanciest single-family homes and condominiums have soared to levels never before seen in the area, fueled by strong foreign demand and renewed interest from New Yorkers and others in the Northeast.

With Miami’s global image burnished by Art Basel Miami Beach and the debut of other cultural and entertainment venues, the city is emerging as an even greater magnet for the world’s super-rich.

In January, a penthouse at the Setai Resort & Residences on Miami Beach fetched $27 million, a new high for a Miami-Dade condominium. “Every building we do business in is at its highest price of all time,” said Mark Zilbert, president of Zilbert International Realty, which represented the buyer in the Setai deal.

Last August, a sleek, new home, built on spec at 3 Indian Creek Dr., sold for $47 million, a record high for a Miami-Dade residence. The buyer, whose identity has not been revealed, is Russian.

“People are realizing how valuable the bay waterfront is,” said Oren Alexander, co-founder of the Alexander Group at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who co-listed the 3 Indian Creek property with The Jills team at Coldwell Banker and represented the buyer for the home. His father, Shlomy Alexander, developed the property with partner Felix Cohen.

Shlomy Alexander is working on two more extravagant spec homes — one at 30 Indian Creek Dr. and a second that is set to break ground shortly at 252 Bal Bay Dr. in Bal Harbour, his son said. Plans envision a tropical modern-style project that fuses the indoors and outdoors — a concept popular in Brazil.

The elder Alexander recently traveled to Italy to shop for exclusive stone for the projects, said the son.

“It’s really trending to the ultra-luxury. All sorts of exotic materials — exotic woods, exotic marbles, exotic stones,” said Sean Murphy, an executive vice president at Coastal Construction, a major builder of luxury hotels and condominiums that also has erected some of the most extravagant mansions in the region. “Everything is so exotic.”

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Miami-Dade police officer convicted in lewdness case

A Miami-Dade police officer, who routinely stopped women drivers without cause and engaged in lewd conversations, was convicted in federal court Friday.

Prabhainjana Dwivedi, a seven-year veteran, was found guilty on six of seven counts of depriving people of their civil rights. He was found not guilty on the seventh count involving an undercover police officer.

Following the ruling, U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez immediately remanded Dwivedi back into custody pending sentencing scheduled for sometime in April, according to prosecutor Karen Gilbert. The trial began Monday.

Dwivedi faces up to a year in prison for each count.

A grand jury indicted Dwivedi after he was arrested by FBI agents Sept. 5 at Miami-Dade police headquarters.

Dwivedi, 33, was charged after an investigation into complaints filed for stops made in May and June of 2011 in which he detained “numerous women” for “unreasonable” length of time “without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or other lawful authority to conduct a stop,” a criminal complaint said.

None of the questionable stops were ever listed on his daily reports or called into dispatch.

According to the complaint, Dwivedi who worked overnight patrolling an area from Key Biscayne to Jackson Memorial Hospital, stopped a 24-year-old bartender who was driving from South Beach to Broward County on her way home from work at about 5:30 a.m. on June 25, 2011, in the area of the Golden Glades interchange.

The bartender, identified as M.F., was accused by Dwivedi of driving under the influence. Pleading her innocence, she requested to have a sobriety test performed. Her request was refused.

Noticing a child’s safety seat in the back seat, Dwivedi threatened M.F. that she would lose custody of her son if she were to be arrested on DUI charges, the criminal complaint said. Then the conversation turned sexual.

According to the complaint, Dwivedi, began to inquire about her surgically enhanced breasts and asked “if she had any scars or incisions from the surgery.”

Dwivedi then asked to see the scars. M.F. obeyed, lifting her shirt and exposing her breasts.

According to the complaint written by FBI special agent Susan Funk, “M.F. stated that Dwivedi did not touch her breast.”

, Dwivedi then allowed her to drive home, but said he would follow her to make sure she got safely home. Once at M.F.’s residence, Dwivedi said he was thirsty and asked for a glass of water. Once inside her home, he lingered for an hour speaking of his personal life.

In the end, Dwivedi left without ever reporting anything to dispatch or making any notes of the stop in his daily reports, the criminal complaint said.

A month earlier, Dwivedi made another questionable stop.

According to the complaint, Dwivedi stopped a19-year-old woman at 2:20 a.m. on May 27, 2011, on her way home from a nightclub with two friends. The woman, identified, as A.R., was informed the traffic stop was a result of a failure to turn on her headlights.

Dwivedi also claimed she was driving under the influence, but A.R. disputed the accusation.

A.R. was instructed to sit in the back seat of his marked cruiser and then Dwivedi “instructed A.R. to lower the zipper on the front of her dress down past her breasts to her mid-stomach” according to the complaint.

An hour and 20 minutes later, A.R. was on her way home without any citation and Dwivedi again made no mention or note of the stop, the complaint said.

Miami Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.

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