South Florida housing recovery on track

South Florida’s housing recovery remained on track last month.

Sales of existing single-family homes in Miami-Dade County jumped 16.4 percent in December 2012 from a year earlier, making 2012 a record year for sales, the Miami Association of Realtors said.

In Miami-Dade, the median price for a single-family home jumped 18.9 percent to $214,060 while that of an existing condominium soared 25.4 percent to $163,000 in December 2012 from a year earlier, marking 13 consecutive months of year-over-year gains. Miami-Dade condo sales climbed 9.8 percent to 1,395 units in December.

Broward County’s housing market is showing similar strong demand and rising prices.

In Broward, the median price of an existing single-family home surged 21.1 percent to $230,000 in December from a year earlier, according to the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors.

The median price of an existing condo or townhouse in Broward jumped 24.7 percent to $95,100 year over year, the group said.

Sales of single-family homes in Broward climbed 14.9 percent in December from a year earlier while the volume of condo and townhouse closings increased 4.7 percent over the period.

Sellers have gained the upper hand amid a tight inventory of properties for sale and often are able to choose between competing offers, according to Realtors.

The number of single-family homes on the market in Miami-Dade fell 27.5 percent in December to 5,000, while the number of condos declined 20.8 percent to 7,844 units, the Miami Realtors said.

Cash remains king, especially for condo transactions, a segment where foreign investors play a huge role. In December 2012, 76 percent of Miami-Dade condo sales were all cash transactions, as were 49 percent of single-family home deals.

“Buyers are quite surprised there is not more inventory after everything they have been hearing,’’ said Eyvonne Kafourus, an agent with Prudential Florida Realty in Fort Lauderdale. “I see a lot of people coming in from other states, for job transfers and retirement.’’

The inventory of single-family homes in Broward fell 35.5 percent in December from a year earlier; the inventory of condos and townhomes for sale declined 25.2 percent year over year, the Fort Lauderdale group said.

“Buyers are getting aggravated, because they are losing deals,’’ said Charles Bonfiglio, who recently assumed office as president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Realtors. “Eighty to 90 percent [of sales] are multiple offer situations. They’ve got to move quickly.’’

Bonfiglio said offers over asking price are common, although appraisals frequently do not follow suit.

The housing market in South Florida has continued to make gains despite a huge overhang of distressed properties that are a headwind on prices.

In Miami-Dade, distressed properties accounted for 41 percent of total sales in December, down from 54.4 percent a year earlier.

Demand is robust for bank-owned properties and short sales, agents say, and many would-be buyers find themselves outflanked by cash-rich professional investors.

“They don’t last long,’’ Kafourus said of foreclosures. “You have to be really on top of the market and searching every day. If you are looking to get a mortgage, you’re at a disadvantage to the cash buyers.’’

The median days on the market for a single-family home in Broward dropped to 37 days in December from 56 days a year earlier, the Realtors group said.

Florida has been seeing a flow of new arrivals after a period of exodus during the downturn.

“We’ve obviously turned the corner. We’ve noticed inventory tightening up,’’ said Philip Vias, a broker associate with Prudential in Fort Lauderdale.

Vias said more buyers seem to be coming in from the Northeast. “What’s held things up is homes weren’t selling up north. North it’s starting to trickle down.’’

Statewide in Florida, single-family home sales climbed 15.8 percent in December from a year earlier as the median price increased 14.1 percent to $154,000.

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Gov. Rick Scott's ex-dog Reagan bit mansion employee, records show

TALLAHASSEE --
Reagan, the now famous dog that once belonged to Gov. Rick Scott, was banished from the Governor’s Mansion after biting an employee who moved his water bowl.

“The governor and first lady love dogs and they had to make a hard decision when it was clear that Reagan was very anxious around lots of different people,’’ Scott spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said.

The dog bite occurred while the governor was in Orlando on Jan 7, 2011, just three days after Scott took office, according to an incident report released by Scott’s office late last week. Mansion grounds employee Jennifer Kinsey was arranging flowers in the mansion when Reagan bit her on the right hand, according to an incident report made by her supervisor for the Department of Management Services. The report noted that the injury was not serious and required no medical treatment.

Scott introduced the yellow Labrador to Facebook readers on Sept. 7, 2010, shortly after he won the Republican nomination and before his election in November 2010. Facebook friends chose the name Reagan from a list of three choices suggested by the campaign and applauded the candidate’s decision to adopt a rescue dog.

After the bite report, Sellers said Scott flew Reagan back to Naples on his private jet and returned the dog to All Pets Grooming and Boarding, a Collier County groomer. Owner Kelly Normand has refused to comment. Last week WTSP-Channel 10 said she told them that Reagan’s name has now been changed to Pluto and he lives on a horse ranch in Collier County, but no one at the grooming business would confirm the report.

“The family decided that the best decision for the dog and all those who visit (the Governor’s Mansion) would be to have the grooming business find Reagan a more appropriate home with less people and activity,’’ Sellers said. “It was a hard choice that sometimes pet owners have to make.”

The Scotts have since adopted Tallee, a calmer, gentler 7-year-old yellow Lab.

Earlier this month when first asked about the disappearance of Reagan and the appearance of Tallee, the governor’s current and former staff repeatedly refused to respond. When directly asked about it a few days later, Scott said he returned the dog to prior owners because it barked a lot and frightened mansion staffers, including photographer Eric Tournay. He said the dog never bit anyone. Sellers said Scott was out of town and did not recall the incident when he talked to reporters.

Tournay has since denied being frightened by Reagan, noting that he has owned several pit bulls.

Sellers, communications director for the governor since September, was not working for Scott during the campaign or the state when Reagan was adopted and returned. She said she was not aware of the dog’s return until the Tampa Bay Times reported it. She then asked First Lady Ann Scott about the dog.

A Times story about the dog sparked an outcry from animal lovers, who were critical of Scott for promoting the adoption during the campaign and getting rid of Reagan as soon as he was elected.

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Putin orders Russian computers to be protected after spy attacks

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian authorities to protect state computers from hacking attacks, the Kremlin said on Monday, after an Internet security firm said a spy network had infiltrated government and embassy computers across the former Soviet bloc.

Dubbed Red October, the network used phishing attacks – or unsolicited emails to intended targets – to infect the computers of embassies and other state institutions with a program designed to harvest intelligence and send it back to a server.

Putin signed a decree on January 15 empowering the Federal Security Service (FSB) to “create a state system for the detection, prevention and liquidation of the effects of computer attacks on the information resources of the Russian Federation”.

State computer and telecommunications networks protected by the cyber security system should include those inside Russia and at its embassies and consulates abroad, according to the decree, which was published on a Kremlin website on Monday.

The Russian Internet security firm Kaspersky Labs said last week that the computer espionage network, discovered last October, had been seeking intelligence from Eastern European and ex-Soviet states including Russia since 2007. (http://r.reuters.com/mag45t )

Many of the systems infected belonged to diplomatic missions, Vitaly Kamluk, an expert in computer viruses at Kaspersky Labs, said last week. He declined to name specific countries.

Kamluk said last week that the network was still active, and that law enforcement agencies in several European countries were investigating it.

Kaspersky Labs said the infiltrators had created more than 60 domain names, mostly in Russia and Germany, that worked as proxies to hide the location of their real server.

The FSB declined immediate comment last week when asked whether Russia had taken action to bring any suspected members of the espionage network to justice, or acted to improve Internet security in light of the discovery.

The FSB – the main successor agency of the Soviet KGB – requested a written query, to which it has not yet responded. The Kremlin declined immediate comment on Monday when asked whether Putin’s decree was linked to Red October.

(Reporting by Steve Gutterman and Thomas Grove; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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Chris Hardwick Mandroid Nerdist Interview

Chris Hardwick is kind of like a Nerd Ambassador – he brings enthusiasm and excitement to every topic he covers, whether it's as host of AMC's The Talking Dead (the live discussion follow-up show to The Walking Dead); in his Nerdist.com podcast, where he asks the questions that everyone really wants to hear to such stars as Tom Hanks, Timothy Olyphant or Walking star Andrew Lincoln; or during his stand-up shows to sold-out crowds (his first Comedy Central stand-up special, Mandroid, hits DVD this week).

Pics: Stars Keep It Real

"I wasn't ashamed of the stuff I was into, but I was nervous about being open about it; when you're young you don't want people to tell you you're weird, but everything I was into was [considered] a little weird," the 41-year-old Chris tells ETonline. Back in the '70s, being a nerd was something that you could get beat up for, but now an entire generation wears the moniker like a badge of honor: "Traditionally nerd-based culture is now a big sector of pop culture. … It's not niche anymore, so [with Nerdist] we can actually kind of try to blow it up even more."

I spoke with Hardwick while he was zigzagging through the streets of Bloomington, IN, in search of his girlfriend at a local coffee shop just a few hours before a performing a set of two shows. "I'm lost in Indiana right now, trying to figure out where I'm at," he told me, apologetic for being slightly distracted. "I'm turned around – Apple Maps has been kind of a fail here in Indiana."

Asked if he was planning to include some of the Mandroid bits in his performance, the former co-host of MTV's Singled Out laughed, "No, no, you're not allowed to do that. There's no law against it, but it's just bad form as a comic to release a special and then just go on the road and do that material. People pay to see you, and they don't want to see the same jokes that they just saw for free on television, you know? [Comics] don't get the kind of leeway that a band gets, like, 'Yeah, the Stones are playing Satisfaction, sweet!' If you do a joke that's really old, then what happens is people on Reddit and Twitter just go, 'Real original, you're just doing old jokes!' But bands do it all the time."

Hardwick says he loves doing live television, that it's "a lot more organic than having a scripted show." But with producers keeping such a tight lid on all Walking Dead spoilers, there are pitfalls that Hardwick chooses to avoid: "They offer them to me, but I don't watch ahead of time – I mean, I could watch as many episodes as are completed, but I don't because, No. 1, it's a live show -- I don't want to accidentally blurt out something that I can't take back – but then also I feel like as consumers we've gotten so spoiled with just being able to watch things a season at a time, and I know that's really satisfying, but I also feel like there's a nice purity of television-watching where you get to anticipate and theorize and look forward to something at a certain time each week. There's a whole generation of people under 25, you say that to them and their eyes just glaze over. They don't understand. 'You know, there was a certain time if you missed something on television, that was it!' … There's actually kind of a communal bonding experience that you get with your friends when you watch that way."

As for his growing Nerdist empire (which has grown to be a many-headed beast), Hardwick simply states, "I'm a fan of stuff and I get excited. Look, I'm a comic and I understand being cynical, but I feel like there's such a layer of cynicism in our society right now – there's a whole sector that thinks it's not cool to just like things. The 'Hipster Nerds' like stuff because they hate it. It's like they ironically like it. What's wrong with celebrating things that you love? I think the core of everything we do at Nerdist is like, 'Hey, are you passionate about something? Then here, you should get to work around that or be around it or experience it in some way and be proud of it and celebrate it.' I think that's why we're able to get Neil Patrick Harris to do a Henson puppet show, because he loves puppets. That's kind of where we live."

Video: Is Vanessa Lachey Rooting for Hotties or Nerds?

In addition to this week's Mandroid release, next up Hardwick is hosting the Third Annual Streamy Awards, honoring excellence in original online video programming and streaming live February 17 from The Hollywood Palladium.

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UK's Prince Harry returns from Afghanistan

Getty Images

In this image released on January 21, 2013, Prince Harry, makes early morning checks as he sits on an Apache helicopter at the British controlled flight-line at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan

LONDON — Capt. Wales is coming home to be Prince Harry once again.

The Ministry of Defense revealed Monday that the 28-year-old prince is returning from a 20-week deployment in Afghanistan, where he served as an Apache helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps. It did not immediately divulge his exact whereabouts.

In interviews conducted in Afghanistan, the third in line to the British throne described feeling boredom, frustration and satisfaction during a tour that saw him kill Taliban fighters on missions in support of ground troops. He also spoke of his struggle to balance his job as an army officer with his royal role — and his relief at the chance to be "one of the guys."

"My father's always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that," said Harry, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana. "But it's very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the army. Everyone's wearing the same uniform and doing the same kind of thing."

Stationed at Camp Bastion, a sprawling British base in the southern Afghan desert, the prince — known as Capt. Wales in the military — flew scores of missions as a co-pilot gunner, sometimes firing rockets and missiles at Taliban fighters.

"Take a life to save a life. That's what we revolve around, I suppose," he said. "If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game."

Harry's second tour in Afghanistan went more smoothly than the first, in 2007-2008, which was cut short after 10 weeks when a magazine and websites disclosed details of his whereabouts. British media had agreed to a news blackout on security grounds.

This time, the media were allowed limited access to the prince in return for not reporting operational details.

A member of the air corps' 662 Squadron, the prince was part of a two-man crew whose duties ranged from supporting ground troops in firefights with the Taliban to accompanying British Chinook and U.S. Black Hawk helicopters as they evacuated wounded soldiers.

He said that while sometimes it was necessary to fire on insurgents, the formidable helicopter — equipped with wing-mounted rockets, Hellfire laser-guided missiles and a 30mm machine gun — was usually an effective deterrent.

"If guys get injured, we come straight into the overhead, box off any possibility of an insurgent attack because they look at us and just go, 'Right, that's an unfair fight, we're not going to go near them,'" Harry said.

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Series for Miami’s emerging art collectors begins Thursday

For art enthusiasts interested in bring their interest home, Miami’s Bakehouse Art Complex is hosting a lecture series for emerging collectors. The first panel, slated for Thursday at 6 p.m., features arists and curators who will talk about fine tuning your taste and learning to make informed decisions. The second session, Feb. 7, is oriented to the mechanics of purchasing. The third, on Feb. 21, explores how to manage your collection.

Moderating all three panels will be Denise Gerson, independent curator who served as associate director for the Lowe Museum of Art for 24 years. Cost is $25 per session or $60 for the series. Seating is limited; reservations are recommended.

Information at 305-576-2828; www.bacfl.org.

Jane Wooldridge

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Few blacks appoint to judgeships by Gov. Rick Scott

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott is on pace to appoint fewer African-Americans to judgeships in Florida than either of his two

predecessors, Charlie Crist and Jeb Bush.

In his two years as governor, Scott has appointed 91 judges. Six are black, including the reappointments of three judges who handle only

cases involving benefits to injured workers.

Scott has appointed two African-Americans to the circuit court bench, both in Miami-Dade County, and has appointed a black county judge in Jacksonville.

In a state as diverse as Florida, racial and ethnic diversity in the court system has been a concern for decades, and it erupted anew last

week in the state Capitol.

At a roundtable meeting with black legislators, Scott defended his appointments in the face of criticism that his record is “appalling.”

“There’s a sentiment in the black legal community that we need not apply because we don’t think like you,” Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St.

Petersburg, told the governor.

Unmoved, Scott said he’s limited in his choices by the lists of finalists he gets from local judicial nominating commissions or JNCs,

which screen judicial candidates and can recommend up to six candidates for each court vacancy.

Scott said he’s trying to improve diversity on the judicial panels but also emphasized that he won’t appoint activist judges.

“If an applicant — I don’t care who they are — believes in judicial activism, I’m not going to appoint them,” Scott told the black legislators’ group.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush also opposed activist judges and sought “interpreters of law, not creators,” as he said in 2004. But one of

every 10 judges Bush appointed was African-American.

Scott’s immediate predecessor, Crist, who served one four-year term, appointed 15 black judges, five in the first half and 10 in the second

including James Perry, a justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

Statistically, 6.6 percent of Scott’s judicial choices are black at the midway point of his term, compared to 8.3 percent for the term of

Crist, governor from 2007-2011, and 10 percent for Bush, who served the previous eight years. African-Americans make up 16.5 percent of Florida’s population according to the Census.

Scott has appointed proportionally more women and Hispanics to judgeships than Crist, and about the same as Bush.

For four decades, Florida judicial vacancies have been filled through a system known as merit retention, which replaced a system in which

governors could pick the candidates of their choice. It was designed to lessen political influence and improve the caliber of legal talent

on the bench.

Scott’s new chief legal adviser, Pete Antonacci, a veteran of four decades in state legal and political circles, said nominating panels

continue to be controlled by local political forces and bar groups and that Scott is at “the end of a pipeline” dominated by local politics.

“If people are believing that the system is a politics-pure zone, they’re wrong,” Antonacci said. “It all occurs inside the bubble of

the bar.”

By law, Scott has a free hand in making five of nine appointments to each of 26 judicial nominating commissions. He must pick the other

four from lists of three names for each vacancy, submitted by the Florida Bar, which Scott can reject without explanation.

Just last week, Scott asked the Florida Bar for new names for JNC vacancies in the Pinellas-Pasco circuit and in the Gainesville area.

Scott has appointed more judges in Miami-Dade than in any other county. Of Scott’s 21 selections in the state’s largest county, 13 are white (seven women and six men), six are Hispanic and two are African-American: Rodney Smith and Eric Hendon. In four instances in Miami-Dade, Scott chose white judges to replace Hispanics.

All three of Scott’s judicial appointments in Hillsborough are white; two men and a woman.

“We have a dynamic pool of African-American attorneys in Hillsborough County,” said Tampa lawyer Cory Person, president of the George Edgecomb Bar Association, a black lawyers’ group. “Gov. Scott’s record does not suggest a real effort to attract and appoint minority candidates.”

Scott has filled six of nine seats on Hillsborough’s judicial nominating panel; none is African-American. All seven Scott appointees

to judicial panels in Miami-Dade and Broward are white or Hispanic, according to the governor’s office.

To date, Scott has not appointed any judges in the Sixth Judicial Circuit for Pinellas and Pasco counties.

Tampa Bay Times researcher Natalie Watson contributed to this report.

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Notre Dame football star says he was not in on hoax – ESPN

(Reuters) – Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o has denied ever being in on an elaborate hoax, telling ESPN he had believed his relationship with a woman who turned out to be an online fabrication was real.

The tragic story of his girlfriend and her injuries from a car accident and death from leukemia was one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports stories last year as Notre Dame made a drive toward the national championship game.

“I wasn’t faking it,” Te’o told ESPN in an off-camera interview on Friday, excerpts of which were posted on ESPN.com. “I wasn’t part of this.”

When asked whether he had made up the tale to support his chances of winning the Heisman Trophy, the highest individual honor for a college football player, Te’o replied: “Well, when they hear the facts they’ll know. They’ll know that there is no way that I could be part of this.”

The interview was Te’o's first since the sports blog Deadspin.com on Wednesday exposed the heart-wrenching tale of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, and her death as a hoax and that a friend of Te’o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was behind it.

Te’o told ESPN that Tuiasosopo called him on Wednesday and admitted he was behind the hoax and it was then Te’o was sure the woman had never existed.

“I don’t wish an ill thing to somebody,” Te’o said of Tuiasosopo, according to ESPN. “I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough.”

Outside Tuiasosopo’s home in Palmdale, California, on Thursday, a member of his family who did not identify himself told reporters they had no comment.

Te’o acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that he had never met the woman in person, though he considered her his girlfriend and said he had been duped.

In the ESPN interview, Te’o said he tried to video chat with her several times, but she could never be seen on the other end. He also said he intentionally told people stories about her in a way that would make people believe they had met in person.

“I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn’t meet,” Te’o said.

NATIONAL PROMINENCE

ESPN said the interview was held at a training facility in Florida where Te’o has been preparing for the National Football League draft. The star linebacker was expected to be a high draft pick before the hoax was revealed.

Te’o sprang to national prominence last fall when he led Notre Dame to a victory over Michigan State within days of learning his grandmother and girlfriend had both died. The grandmother’s death was real.

The story grew to become a big feature in coverage of the team, which went undefeated in the regular season and reached the national championship game. Alabama defeated Notre Dame in the title game on January 7.

Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in U.S. collegiate athletics, held a news conference within hours of the Deadspin.com article to say that Te’o had been duped.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said on Friday the Indiana university was comfortable, based on a private investigation it launched and on four years experience with Te’o, that he was the victim and encouraged Te’o to speak publicly.

(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Barbara Walters Recovering After Fall

Barbara Walters has been hospitalized after taking a tumble on Saturday night in Washington, D.C., but a rep tells ET that the 83-year-old newswoman looks to be recovering well.

"Barbara Walters fell on a stair last evening while visiting the British Ambassador's residence and the fall left her with a cut on her forehead," the rep confirmed to ET. "Out of an abundance of caution, she went to the hospital to have her cut tended to, have a full examination and remains there for observation. Barbara is alert (and telling everyone what to do), which we all take as a very positive sign."

RELATED: Barbara Walters' 'Most Fascinating People' List

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Man critically hurt in Brooklyn lab fire

A man was left in cardiac arrest and two firefighters injured after a raging inferno erupted at a Brooklyn medical lab, fire officials said.

The fire started on the third floor of the four-story building at 2:03 p.m. on the corner of Utrecht Avenue near 52 Street in Borough Park, sources said.

The critically injured man, who was found inside the burning building, was rushed to Lutheran Hospital. The two firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries, fire officials said.

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