Senator Marco Rubio swears in Miami-Dade commissioner Rebeca Sosa on Friday

Miami-Dade Commissioners Rebeca Sosa becomes Miami-Dade commission’s first Hispanic chairwoman when she is sworn in on Friday by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

Also being sworn in is fellow commissioner Lynda Bell, who is now the vice chair. Miami-Dade County Judge Gladys Perez will swear in Bell

The installation ceremony will be at 11:30 a.m. ceremony at the commission chambers at the Stephen Clark Center, 111 NW First St.

Elected in 2001, Sosa represents District 6, which includes areas of Miami, Coral Gables, West Miami, Hialeah and Miami Springs, as well as unincorporated zones.

Sosa’s office explained the Florida Senator is doing the honors at the historic swearing in because the two are long-time friends.

Bell who was elected in 2010 represents District 8, which encompasses a significant area of southeastern Miami-Dade, including the municipalities of Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay and Homestead with portions of Kendall an the Redlands.

Sosa and Bell were elected to two-year terms in November.

The installation ceremony is open to the public.

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Ex-Red Sox pitcher Schilling puts bloody sock up for auction after video game company collapse

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling — whose video game company underwent a spectacular collapse into bankruptcy last year — is selling the blood-stained sock he wore during the 2004 World Series.

Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions, says online bidding begins around Feb. 4. Live bidding will take place Feb. 23.

The sock previously had been on loan to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It has been at Heritage’s Dallas headquarters for several weeks and will be displayed at the auction house’s Manhattan office before it is sold, according to Ivy.

He said the sock is expected to fetch at least $ 100,000, though he described that as a conservative estimate.

“I do expect the bidding to be very spirited,” Ivy said.

Schilling’s company, 38 Studios, was lured to Providence, R.I., from Massachusetts with a $ 75 million loan guarantee in 2010. In May, it laid off all its employees and it filed for bankruptcy in June. The state is now likely responsible for some $ 100 million related to the deal, including interest.

Schilling also had personally guaranteed loans to the company and listed the sock as bank collateral in a September filing with the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office.

Messages left for his publicist were not immediately returned.

The bloody sock is one of two that sent Schilling into the annals of baseball lore in 2004.

The other was from Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, when Schilling pitched against the New York Yankees with an injured ankle. That sock is said to have been discarded in the trash at Yankees Stadium.

The one being sold is from the second game of the World Series, which the Red Sox won that year for the first time in 86 years.

Schilling has said he invested as much as $ 50 million in 38 Studios and has lost all his baseball earnings. He told WEEI-AM in Boston last year that possibly having to sell the sock was part of “having to pay for your mistakes.”

“I’m obligated to try and make amends and, unfortunately, this is one of the byproducts of that,” he told the station.

Brad Horn, a spokesman for the hall of fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., said the loaned sock was returned in December under the terms of the hall’s agreement with Schilling. The hall had had it since 2004.

The Feb. 23 live bidding will be held at the Fletcher-Sinclair mansion in New York City, now home to the Ukrainian Institute of America. The auction will feature other “five- and six-figure items,” including a jersey and cap worn by New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, Ivy said.

Heritage last May auctioned off the so-called “Bill Buckner ball,” which rolled through the legs of the Red Sox first baseman in the 1986 World Series. Ivy said that item, like Schilling’s sock, was listed at the time as being expected to bring in “$ 100,000-plus,” but it was sold to an anonymous bidder for $ 418,000.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Undercover Boss Gets Chastised by Pushy Manager

A verbally abusive manager is bound to get his comeuppance on the next Undercover Boss.

PICS: Celebrity Dream Jobs

President of Moe's Southwest Grill, Paul Damico, gets a rude awakening while going through employee training at one of the restaurant's branches. Under the alias Marc, Paul is chastised by a store manager on a power trip.

"Tito's a little flippant with me," Paul says, who felt the atmosphere was less than professional. "As the leader of the brand, I don't like to see managers run a shift like this."

Paul grows more irritated as he realizes that Tito has been treating all of the associates with the same lack of respect.

"I'm not okay with what is happening in front of the guests," says Paul.

Click the video for more. Watch an all-new Undercover Boss Friday at 8/7c on CBS.

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Re-evaluating Andrew

Striking bus drivers are making it hard for kids to get to school, even resorting to thuggery to stop them — but why even go, when they’re bound to find lousy teachers waiting for them when they get there?

Too often, that’s the case in this city; ineffective teachers can’t easily be fired. Yesterday, the United Federation of Teachers froze that sorry status quo by nixing any reasonable system for rating teachers and firing those who can’t cut it.

Not even the lure of $450 million in state and federal funds, which Gov. Cuomo assured folks would seal the deal, could buy the union’s cooperation.

AP

Gov. Cuomo

We refer the governor to our words from one year ago: “As long as Cuomo leaves the union with a veto over reforms,” we said, “there’ll never be any — even if districts lose state aid.”

Alas, he ignored our warning and left the unions veto power. Sure enough, yesterday our prediction bore out, sad as it is to note. New York’s kids will pay the price.

At the time, recall, Cuomo was trying to fix a 2010 teacher-evaluation law that he rightly called “unworkable by design.”

The law, he said, “protected the teachers union at the expense of the students.”

Yet then he pushed a new law that is just as unworkable.The failure of the city and the UFT to come to terms by yesterday — Cuomo’s deadline — shows just how flawed it is.

Of course, the UFT was ready to accept a sham evaluation system. For example, it wanted any plan to be scrapped after two years. The catch: It takes at least that long to get rid of poor teachers, so no teacher could’ve been removed in time. Great.

Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for rejecting the charade, even if it cost nearly half a billion in state and local funds.

It’s futile to blame the UFT. After all, the union isn’t in business to serve students; its job is to protect teachers, even the bad ones. The real culprit here is the law.

We have two questions. First: Will Cuomo heed our warning now, and push legislation that holds teachers accountable, even over union objections?

Second: Will Bloomberg’s successor stand as firmly he has? (UFT boss Michael Mulgrew says, ominously, that he’s only too happy to wait for the next administration to take office “in 11 months.”)

Meanwhile, 1.1 million city schoolkids will be counting on Cuomo & Co. — that is, if the kids can manage to make it to school.

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Prices for Miami Beach luxury condos soar to records

Ultra-luxury condominiums on South Beach are fetching nosebleed prices.

On Tuesday, a penthouse at the Setai Resort at 2001 Collins Avenue closed for $27 million — the highest price ever for a South Florida condominium, according to real estate agents.

“We’re definitely seeing the market turning upward,” said Jeff Miller, of Zilbert International Realty in Miami, who represented the buyer in the sale of the palatial 7,100-square-foot condominium. “We’re seeing buyers come in from all over the globe.”

Just a few weeks ago, Ohio coal mining businessman Wayne Boich Jr. completed the sale of his Icon South Beach penthouse at 450 Alton Road in the uber-trendy South of Fifth neighborhood for just under $21 million.

The 6-bedroom, 7 1/2-bath Icon condo sparked a bidding war that drove the sale $2 million above the listing price — a level that is three times the $7 million Boich paid in July 2007 in the depths of the bust. It was a record price for a Miami Beach bayside condo.

“The luxury market is on fire in South Beach — especially the South of Fifth neighborhood,” said Dora Puig, principal of PuigWerner Real Estate Services, who was the listing broker for the Icon unit. “It’s moving Miami to totally different pricing points.”

The Setai’s record may not reign for long.

Penthouse 2 in the decade-old Continuum South tower at 100 South Pointe Drive in the South of Fifth neighborhood is on the market for $39 million.

That is a record listing price for a Miami-Dade condominium, according to Puig, who also snagged that listing.

Amid the market sizzle, Puig bumped up the asking price late last summer from $35 million.

The penthouse, which has 11,000 square feet of interior space, belongs to Manhattan real estate developer Ian Bruce Eichner, who built the Continuum project at the tip of South Beach and kept the trophy for himself.

The Continuum penthouse, which has 6,000 square feet of deck and a rooftop heated pool, boasts sweeping 13 1/2-foot ceilings that give the feel of a single-family home. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls offer a 360-degree view of the Atlantic Ocean, Biscayne Bay, downtown Miami and Miami Beach from 40 stories up.

“It looks down on Fisher Island, way down,” Puig said with a smile.

The unit has a private interior elevator, of course, and stretches over two indoor levels and two largely exterior levels.

One big plus: It has a gated entrance and sits on an expansive enclave of rolling lawns and gardens adjacent to a city park at the tip of the island.

The unit comes with an additional 874-square-foot guest quarters that would delight most mortals. “The guest unit is intended for professional quarters: the maid, the nanny, the chef, the pilot,” Puig explained.

Also included is a snazzy cabana on the beach.

Eichner has used it as a vacation home and once rented it to Tom Cruise for a couple of months while he was in Miami to film Rock of Ages.

On Thursday, Puig hosted Miami’s power brokers for a look at the Continuum penthouse over champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Next week, she plans to spend three days in New York touting the property to high-end brokers.

Such palatial properties typically are paid for in cash. But what would a monthly payment be?

With a 20 percent down payment of $7.8 million, the buyer would have to finance $31.2 million.

“I don’t know that I’d be able to find anybody willing to go that high on one unit,” warned Steve Schneider, a mortgage broker who is owner and president of Abacus Lending Group in South Miami.

If a buyer could line up a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at 3.5 percent, the monthly payment for principal and interest would be $223,043.35.

“I’d hate to see the tax bill,” said Schneider.

According to Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser records, the 2012 property tax bill on the Continuum penthouse was $264,896.17. That was based on an assessed value of just $9.5 million, less than half what the Property Appraiser listed as the market value of $19.3 million. The tax break came as a result of the state law that caps increases in assessed values on non-homesteaded property at 10 percent a year.

The condo maintenance fee for Eichner’s unit runs $7,624 a month. “I think that’s low for what you get,” said Puig.

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Scott supports review of state gun laws: ‘I want people to feel safe’

LARGO --
Gov. Rick Scott voiced his support for a broad review of Florida’s controversial gun laws by state lawmakers Wednesday, saying the state’s vital tourist economy depends on visitors being able to “feel safe” amid an increasingly well-armed population.

“We have a legislative session coming up,” Scott said during a visit to the Honeywell Aerospace plant in Largo, where he was touting his new plan to boost state manufacturing. “I think the right thing to do is go back and look at our laws.”

The father of a teacher, Scott said he would particularly support looking at ways to make schools safer. But he did not specify which other areas of existing state law might deserve scrutiny, refusing to respond to questions about universal background checks for firearm sales and a ban on assault weapons.

“I want people to feel safe in our state,” he said.

His remarks came in response to reporters’ questions on gun control, as the nation awaited an announcement from the White House on proposals to reform federal firearm regulations. President Barack Obama called on Congress Tuesday to enact bans on assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines, and expand background checks for gun purchasers.

Scott’s statements about a review of state gun laws were a rare — if still vague — foray into the debate over gun control in the wake of the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 children and six adults by a gunman at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

In previous public remarks, he has emphasized his sympathy for the victims’ families, rather than a legislative response. Scott skipped a conference call held by Vice President Joe Biden last week in which Biden solicited views on gun violence.

Scott’s press secretary, Jackie Schutz, later said she wanted to clarify that the governor’s support for a review of existing gun legislation doesn’t detract from his backing for citizens’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms. She said his remarks were not a “call to action” for specific legislation or reforms.

“Gov. Scott, as he has continued to say, is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Schutz said. “He’s open to having a conversation, and he wants people to feel safe.”

Florida’s patchwork gun laws have subjected the state to criticism from gun-control advocates across the country. The state received a grade of “D-” in a recent review of state firearm laws by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a San Francisco-based nonprofit.

In addition to its hotly debated “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law, Florida does not require background checks for private sales of weapons and places no limit on the number of guns a person can buy at one time. The state has issued more than a million permits to carry a concealed handgun.

Top Republicans in Tallahassee have so far balked at the prospect of adjusting those laws, though they have signaled some openness to increasing funding for school-security measures after the Newtown shooting.

Senate President Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican, told the Orlando Sentinel this month that regulating gun access is “not something I think the Legislature will get involved in, other than peripherally.”

Asked to clarify the governor’s position on which state laws should be examined, Schutz said she could not offer specifics.

“Generally, he wants to take the [legislative] session to look at them, like he said,” Schutz said. “He wants to look at any ideas.”

Schutz declined to offer details about the governor’s ideas on school safety, or the possibility — advocated by the National Rifle Association — of placing armed guards in every elementary school.

“The safety of our schools — the teachers, the students, the people who work in the schools — is incredibly important,” she said.

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Commentary: Background Checks? Yes, but Leave Video Games Alone

COMMENTARY | I have mixed feelings toward the White House‘s gun violence response. I agree that background checks should be required before people are allowed to buy a firearm and that an assault weapon ban should be reinstated into law. While limiting the number of bullets in a weapon’s magazine will decrease the number of deaths in a mass shooting, the public does not need high-capacity magazines. Therefore any weapon using high-capacity magazines should be banned from public use, not just capping the magazines to 10 bullets.

But violent video games and other media images and scenes real-life violence? These media do not kill people. The shooters kill the people. Those who are mentally unstable may not understand that violent video games are not real life and should not be duplicated in real life. As long as gamers understand the difference between video games and real life, that shouldn’t be touched.

– Edmond, Okla.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kirstie Alley's Cheers Reunion

It's been nearly two decades since Cheers went off the air, but the onscreen chemistry hasn't changed between Kirstie Alley and Rhea Perlman, as seen in Kirstie's new TV Land pilot, Giant Baby.

On the show, Kirstie plays a Broadway diva whose life gets up-ended.

VIDEO: Kirstie Alley Celebrates 62nd Birthday with ET

"You know, we were planning this when we were doing Cheers," Kirstie said of reuniting with Rhea. "We said when Cheers isn't on the air anymore we'll do a show together."

Rhea plays Kirstie's best friend on Giant Baby, but she's also been a close friend to the Golden Globe winner in real-life, as Kirstie mentions in her New York Times bestseller, The Art of Men.

Kirstie's book, detailing her sexual exploits and struggles with drug addiction, has had so much success that it's attracted readers that Kirstie never thought would buy it.

"It never dawned on me that my dad would read my book," Kirstie said. "I didn't give it to him!"

Click the video for more.

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Give us your drives

The Securities and Exchange Commission has become more aggressive in seeking full hard drives from the companies and individuals it investigates, startling defense lawyers who question whether the agency is allowed to obtain such information.

It is part of a larger effort by enforcement authorities, both criminal and civil, to use bolder and more sophisticated tools to nab fraudsters who themselves are becoming savvier in their techniques.

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Miami Dolphins bill would bring state money to aging stadiums

A bill drafted by the Miami Dolphins would give Florida sports teams $3 million a year in state money to improve older stadiums, provided the owner pays for at least half the cost of a major renovation.

Under the law, the stadium would need to be 20 years old and the team willing to put in at least $125 million for a $250 million renovation. That’s less than the $400 million redo of Sun Life Stadium that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross proposed this week, which he hopes will win state approval thanks to his offer to fund at least $200 million of the effort to modernize the 1987 facility.

Miami-Dade and Florida would fund the rest through a mix of county hotel taxes and state general funds set aside for stadiums. Sun Life currently receives $2 million a year through the program, and the Dolphins want to create a new category that would give them an additional $3 million.

While the Miami Marlins and Miami Heat both play in stadiums subsidized by county hotel taxes, the Dolphins receive no local dollars. The bill would change that by allowing Miami-Dade to increase the tax charged at mainland hotels to 7 percent from 6 percent, and eliminate the current rule that limits the money to publicly owned stadiums. Sun Life Stadium, in Miami Gardens, is privately owned but sits on county land.

The bill pits enthusiasm for one of Florida’s most popular sports teams against a lean budget climate and lingering backlash against the 2009 deal that had Miami and Miami-Dade borrow about $485 million to build a new ballpark for the Marlins. Ross also must navigate a Republican-led Legislature that has twice rebuffed his requests for public dollars.

“I would be surprised if that bill even got a hearing in committee,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican representative from the Tampa area and a critic of tax-funded sports deals. “I’m a big Dolphin fan, and have been for years. But with all due respect, we’ve got people who are struggling throughout this state right now . .. The last thing we should be doing is giving a professional sports team or facility additional tax dollars.”

While the bill would open up the $3 million subsidy to other the teams, the Dolphins see it as unlikely that another owner would be willing to put up as much money for renovations as Ross, a billionaire real estate developer.

If the bill were enacted today, any stadium opened before 1993 would be eligible for the money, provided it could show the proposed renovation would generate an additional $3 million in sales taxes.

Ross and his backers are pitching the renovation as a boon to tourism, with Sun Life a magnet for the Super Bowl, national college football games and other major events. The National Football League is considering South Florida and San Francisco for the 2016 Super Bowl, and the Dolphins say approval of renovation funding is crucial to winning the bid.

Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, who sponsored the Senate bill, said the funding makes sense because when Sun Life hosts a Super Bowl, the entire state benefits from both tourism dollars and publicity.

“It’s a small price to pay for economic development, and for all the shine we get from major sporting events,” said Braynon, whose district includes Sun Life. Rep. Eduardo “Eddy” Gonzalez, R-Hialeah, is the sponsor on the House side.

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