JACKSONVILLE — The Australia Day Challenge rugby league match Jan. 26 at the University of North Florida is shaping up to be the biggest and most unique international sporting event hosted here.

The South Sydney (Australia) Rabbitohs, partly owned by Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe, will face the Leeds (U.K.) Rhinos, champions of the engage Super League, at 1 p.m. in the first meeting of British and Australian teams in the United States.

The novelty of rugby league here, international attention from passionate fans across two oceans and the star power of a Hollywood icon have contributed to a growing buzz and sense that the event’s significance is greater than the 10,000 spectators expected in Hodges Stadium would suggest.

“It’s just grown by leaps and bounds,” said Michael Bouda, manager of sports and entertainment for the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. “An event of this magnitude with the quality of the teams opens us up to other teams that maybe didn’t think about coming here to play.”

Besides the teams, the New South Wales government sees the event as a way to reach a desirable market, said Kristina Keneally, a member of the New South Wales Parliament sent to Jacksonville as Sydney’s ambassador. The Web site SydneyAustralia.com is sponsoring the Rabbitohs and is on the front of the players’ jerseys. Besides tourism, Sydney hopes people will visit the site to learn about international business opportunities.

“We’re sending a message that Sydney is a great place for investment, particularly in technology and financial services,” said Keneally, who is the only U.S.-born woman ever elected to the state Parliament and will flip the coin before the match. “We see Florida as a great market to promote our brand, our message and our city.”

Visit Jacksonville President John Reyes said that for an organization whose budget doesn’t permit much overseas marketing, “this is more than we could ever wish or hope for getting our message out to the U.K. or Australia.”

For a sports town, the event “broadens our horizons on what we can host here,” Mayor John Peyton said. “It’s an opportunity to put us on the map with Australia and England.”

People from 41 states and nine countries have bought tickets to the Australia Day Challenge, including friends Carol Stevens and Lois Bachynski from Ontario, Canada.

“We’re loving it,” said Stevens, a Crowe fan whose affection for the actor spilled over to his team. “We’re here for a week and we’re making a vacation of it.”

Source:  Jacksonville Business Journal

I believe the tickets were $10 each.  I’d love to go if there are any still available.

Amid the worst food shortages in Venezuela in decades, the government of President Hugo Chávez has put aside its anti-American rhetoric and bought tons of products from U.S. food companies.

A food supply plan launched this week by Chávez includes rice from Texas and Arkansas, black beans from Idaho, and cooking oil from Tennessee and Iowa.

During the launch of the plan, dubbed Food Combo, Chávez acknowledged that the shortages ”are hurting half the world” in Venezuela and said his government will spend $800 million to buy about 150 tons of food around the world, including the United States.

Food production in Venezuela dropped after Chávez froze most prices, saying he wanted to make more food available to the country’s poor.

The government runs a string of subsidized markets, which must import 70 percent of their products.

The Combo — the name refers to a basket of foodstuffs that will be offered — will include a liter of vegetable cooking oil bought from the Houston-based Cal Western Packaging Co.

The company is one of the biggest U.S. distributors of vegetable cooking oil, co-owner Ron Phelps told El Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview.

Several tons of black beans, a staple of the Venezuelan diet, were bought from the Trinidad Benham Corp. in Denver, the largest U.S. distributor of grains and rice.

The rice comes from Gulf Pacific, also based in Houston, which has processing plants in Arkansas and Texas.

The government also said it plans to import other foodstuffs such as eggs, milk products, beef, and chicken.

”Everyone is looking like crazy for containers of powdered milk and chicken to take to Venezuela,” said a South Florida businesswoman who is negotiating contracts with U.S. suppliers.

Chávez has said the Combo plan aims to supply about one-third of the national consumption — about 300,000 tons per month, to be sold through neighborhood shops and councils.

Source:  Miami Herald

How’s that deal on forcing farmers/shopkeepers to grow and sell food for under the price of production going again? 

A Venezuelan lawyer who got a call from his government’s spy agency last summer to coordinate a coverup of an $800,000 campaign contribution to Argentina’s new president admitted Friday to being an illegal foreign agent in the United States.

Moises Maionica, 36, pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to charges of conspiring and acting as an unregistered agent for the Venezuelan government.

Maionica, who works as a corporate lawyer, is cooperating with the federal investigation, which has implicated four others in a plot to cover up the Venezuela government’s role in the highly controversial election donation to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

News of the donation spread soon after a suitcase stuffed with the cash was confiscated by Argentine authorities from a passenger on a chartered plane that had flown from Caracas to Buenos Aires on Aug. 4.

A hemispheric political scandal escalated when U.S. authorities charged Maionica and four other men in December with plotting to silence the passenger, a Key Biscayne businessman named Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, who is wanted on related customs charges in Argentina.

Prosecutors have since stirred up intrigue with these allegations:

• The governments of Argentina and Venezuela collaborated in the coverup.

• The cash-filled suitcase was meant for Fernández, who was then campaigning for president.

• The cash belonged to national oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela, which chartered the flight.

According to a new court document, Maionica received a call from the director of the Venezuelan intelligence agency known as DISIP to join the conspiracy after the cash was seized from Antonini by customs officials in Argentina.

On Aug. 23, Maionica met with two other accused conspirators, Franklin Duran and Carlos Kaufman, and Antonini at Jackson’s Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale.

Antonini, who reached out to the FBI after he was released in Argentina, was wearing a wire.

”During the meeting, Duran told Antonini that foreign government authorities would pursue Antonini if Antonini said that the seized funds did not belong to him,” according to the court record, which accompanied Maionica’s plea agreement.

”During the meeting Maionica further advised Antonini that Petróleos de Venezuela would pay for all the expenses and financial penalties that Antonini might incur as a result of the seizure of the $800,000,” the document said.

Maionica continued to play a central role in the alleged coverup in other meetings and phone calls with Antonini through December.

Miami attorney Ruben Oliva, who is representing Maionica, said his client got the call from the Venezuelan intelligence director to join the conspiracy just before he and his family were going on a Disney cruise last August.

After Friday’s hearing, Oliva said his client did not realize he was breaking the law, though added that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

The others charged in the case: Kauffmann, 35, and Duran, 40, both of Venezuela, and Uruguayan Rodolfo Edgardo Wanseele Paciello, 40, who lives in Miami. They were arrested last month. A fifth defendant, Antonio Jose Canchica Gomez, 37, of Venezuela, is still at large.

Each is charged with being unregistered agents of the Venezuelan government. A trial date is set for March 17 before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard. Maionica, who faces up to 10 years in prison, will be sentenced April 4.

According to the federal indictment, the coverup was orchestrated by the director of Venezuela’s intelligence service, who used the code name “Alvero.”

Maionica coordinated a call in which ”Alvero” contacted the Key Biscayne businessman in November to address concerns about Antonini’s role in the plot.

On Friday, Mulvihill said Antonini was carrying the suitcase at the request of one of the other seven passengers aboard the chartered plane.

”Mr. Antonini was unaware that the $800,000 was in the suitcase, as the suitcase belonged to one of the other passengers,” Mulvihill said.

He said the suitcase containing the cash was taken on the plane by an assistant to a ”high level official” of Petróleas de Venezuela.

Source:

Maybe it would be easier to just register the people in south Florida who are NOT agents of a foreign government.

Disney is looking for a chief magic official for its amusement parks.

Couples Resorts employs a chief romance officer.

BankAtlantic has a manager of a department entitled “Office of Wow!”

What’s going on with corporate titles? Doesn’t anybody want to be a plain vice president, anymore?

“We laugh about it all the time,” says Mick Lasher, who heads the executive search firm Lasher Associates in Weston. “It’s just ludicrous. We’ve gone so far to be team-oriented. We’re so afraid to put meaningful titles on people.”

Job titles can be creative as long as they fit a job and are clear, experts say. But employees with less traditional titles risk losing credibility in looking for that next job. Unusual titles also may be missing “key words” recruiters and potential employers search for in resumes online.

Some nouveau job titles are not understandable to the lay person, says Kim Kerrigan, president of Corporate Classrooms, a Fort Lauderdale-based employee training firm. He uses the example of the traditional “vice president of engineering” compared with a New Age title of “tech support engineer level II.”

“I would wonder what that is,” Kerrigan says. “A title should reflect what you do and what your major responsibility is.”

But some South Florida executives defend their inventive titles.

Greg Dalmotte, BankAtlantic’s manager of the Office of Wow, says he faced skepticism initially, but now employees are on board with his department. “We’re responsible for driving employee engagement, creating an environment where people like coming to work.”

The Office of Wow provides employee training, recognizes workers for reaching milestones, and holds special events at the Fort Lauderdale-based bank. Managers reward employees with “wow” bucks, which allow them to buy DVD players, Coach handbags and other items.

Dalmotte, formerly in sales, takes his engagement role seriously. For a Deal or No Deal event at the bank, he shaved his head to become “Wowie Mandel,” imitating TV show host Howie Mandel.

Creative titles even have invaded human resources.

Burger King’sPete Smith, chief human resources director, recently hired Robert Perkins to be the Miami-based fast-food chain’s vice president of inclusion and talent management.

“Inclusion,” Smith says, refers to more than old-fashioned diversity. “It’s about embracing how we get our work done. It also has a global aspect.”

Perkins’ role fits Burger King’s strategy, Smith says, because “our customers are every race, creed, sex, and culture in 70-plus countries.”

Unusual titles may be most prevalent in the hospitality industry.

Kerrigan points to W Hotels, soon to open a property on Fort Lauderdale beach, which uses innovative titles for hotel service people. “If you want room service or a button sewed, you call the ‘whatever, whenever agent.’”

Meanwhile, Disney is advertising for a chief magic official, an hourly job traveling to Disney parks to create magical experiences.

“The ideal candidate must never be grumpy … have good manners, but also be able to pillage and plunder with pirates when necessary. Also required, pockets full of pixie dust … and most importantly, a belief in all things magical,” according to the job description posted on DreamCMO.com.

It’s a real job, Disney representatives say, for at least a year.

Randy Russell, chief romance officer for Couples Resorts, which operates its Jamaica resorts from an office in Miramar, came up with his own job title. The goal was to set Couples apart from other Caribbean resorts, he says, and “it has transferred to how we treat our guests in the hotel.”

Source:  South Florida Sun Sentinel

Well, my preferred job title was always “Boss Lady”, as opposed to the guys that wore the HMFIC caps.  I suppose that showed a horrible lack of imagination, and I should have worn a “Wonder Woman” T-shirt.  Carrying the magic lasso, though, probably would have gotten me investigated as a racist.

January 22, 2008

Bronson Announces ‘Farm To Fuel’ Grant Winners; Projects To Share In $25 Million To Spur Renewable Energy Industry

Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles H. Bronson today announced the recipients of $25 million in renewable energy grants.

The 12 entities chosen were among 76 vying for the awards, which were funded by the Florida Legislature last spring.  The grants are part of Bronson’s “Farm to Fuel” initiative, a program designed to get Florida’s agriculture industry to produce 25 percent of the state’s energy needs by the year 2025 in an effort to reduce Florida’s dependency on foreign oil and to keep land in agriculture.

“We believe that awards such as these are critical in triggering the development of a renewable energy industry in Florida,” Bronson said.  “With the backing of and an investment from the state, we’re hopeful that these projects will yield positive results and serve as a catalyst for major commercial investment in this industry.”

The entities chosen for the grants are investing nearly $157 million of their own resources into their renewable energy projects.

The proposals were evaluated on a number of factors, including their use of Florida-grown crops or biomass to produce energy, their potential to expand agribusiness in the state, preliminary market research and the efficiency of their use of energy and other material resources.

Last spring, the Florida Legislature authorized and Governor Charlie Crist signed into law the “Farm to Fuel” Grants Program to provide matching grants for demonstration, commercialization, and research and development projects involving bio-energy.  As part of the program, $25 million was appropriated to stimulate investment in projects that produce renewable energy from Florida-grown crops or biomass.

The winners of this year’s “Farm to Fuel” grants are:

Gulf Coast Energy of Walton LLC
Awarded $7 million, in a commercial project grant for the construction and operation of both an ethanol and biodiesel plant in a $62 million project in Mossy Head, Florida

U.S. Envirofuels LLC
Awarded $7 million, in a commercial project grant for the construction of a $47 million ethanol production plant in Highlands County.

Liberty Industries
Awarded $4 million, in a commercial project grant for the construction and operation of a $38 million Liberty County facility that will produce ethanol and electricity using primarily forest waste products.

Agri-Source Fuels
Awarded $4 million, in a commercial project grant for the construction of a $21 million biodiesel plant in Pensacola.

University of Florida
Awarded $500,000, in a research and development grant to develop a catalytic chemical reactor system to convert woody biomass to biodiesel.
 
Southeast Biofuels LLC
Awarded $500,000, in a demonstration grant to build a nearly $6 million pilot plant in Auburndale to produce ethanol from citrus peels.

Sigarca Inc.
Awarded $499,500, in a research and demonstration project involving the construction of a 3,000-square-foot bioenergy plant on the grounds of the Southeastern Livestock Pavilion in Ocala to process horse waste into renewable energy.

University of Central Florida
Awarded $498,000, in a research and development grant to demonstrate the viability and cost effectiveness of technology developed at the university to convert farm and animal waste into renewable energy.

Florida Institute of Technology
Awarded $415,520, in a research and development grant to cultivate and research various strains of Microalgae capable of producing biodiesel.

Applied Research Associates Inc.
Awarded $203,130, in a research and development grant involving converting cellulosic materials such as sugarcane byproducts to fermentable sugars for a more cost-effective way of producing ethanol.

Applied Research Associates Inc.
Awarded $182,832, in a research and development grant to demonstrate a new technology in converting crop oils into biodiesel.

Neptune Industries Inc.
Awarded $158,270, in a research and development project that would create a pilot-scale floating algae production system in quarry lakes in South Florida to produce algae capable of being converted into biodiesel.

For more information:
Terence McElroy
(850) 488-3022
mcelrot@doacs.state.fl.us

Looks like I missed out on the Florida sheep shit to fuel grant yet again.

JACKSONVILLE, FL — The target may be high-tech, but the emotion involved is as old as humanity. Spite, anger, and revenge. Police say that’s what filled a woman’s heart after she picked up the classified ads.When Marie Cooley came across a job that looked like hers in the classifieds, she admits she was certain she was about to be fired. So police say late Sunday night, she crept into the Mandarin office where she worked at Steven E. Hutchins Architects.

There may be a moral there somewhere about the danger of leaping to conclusions without supporting evidence. Meanwhile, the lady has gone from valued employee to unemployed woman likely to spend several years in prison.Business owners, too, may want to think about how trustworthy their trusted employees really are.

JACKSONVILLE, FL — Workers are building the largest airplane hangar in the US Navy at NAS Jax. Once it’s done, it should keep the air station off the list in any future rounds of base closings.

Grey beams criss-cross the air above Naval Air Station Jacksonville — but the pilots don’t mind. Those pilots’ planes, called P-3 Orions, will be the ones moving into the massive hangar when it’s finished.

And after a decision in the last round of base realignment hearings, every P-3 plane on the East Coast will be coming here and calling this place home.

“The airplanes are very large, so we’ve gotta get six of them in there at each time for each squadron to have their own space to work in. So that’s why the project is so big,” said Ensign Russell Dotson, the construction manager at the site.

You want big? At 275,000 square feet, it’s the biggest commercial construction project in Jacksonville. It will be the biggest hangar in the US Navy when it’s done.

How long is the hangar? Maurice Jones-Drew could run end zone to end zone for a touchdown and still have room to do it two more times.

When the Navy makes an investment this big, the consensus is, if there were another round of base closings in the future, this hangar would not be part of them.

“Being able to get this project here is a big win for Jacksonville, and the Navy’s presence here in Jacksonville,” said Commander Chuck Lewis, who oversees public works and large-scale planning on the base.

The propeller-powered P-3s will be replaced by new jets during the next decade. The new hangar will easily convert to handle them, too. “This is a very long term commitment,” Ensign Dotson said.

The new planes coming here mean 1,600 new jobs on the First Coast. And jobs also come from just getting the project finished and ready for its first planes 15 months from now.

Another encouraging sign for the future of NAS Jax is this stat: in all, the government’s working on more than $360 million in upgrades on the base.

Source:

Hopefully this will mean good things for the future of NAS but just because the government invests hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t mean that the government will not turn around and shut it down if they get a wild hair.

This is an interesting article, and you do not have to sign in to read the overview. One of the parts that I thought was most interesting was this:

In one quarter or more of patients with influenza A (H5N1) virus infection, the source of exposure is unclear, and environment-to-human transmission remains possible. For some patients, the only identified risk factor was visiting a live-poultry market. Plausible transmission routes include contact with virus-contaminated fomites or with fertilizer containing poultry feces, followed by self-inoculation of the respiratory tract or inhalation of aerosolized infectious excreta. It is unknown whether influenza A (H5N1) virus infection can begin in the human gastrointestinal tract. In several patients, diarrheal disease preceded respiratory symptoms, and virus has been detected in feces. Acquisition of influenza A (H5N1) virus infection in the gastrointestinal tract has been implicated in other mammals. Drinking potable water and eating properly cooked foods are not considered to be risk factors, but ingestion of virus-contaminated products or swimming or bathing in virus-contaminated water might pose a risk. (Please see complete article for footnotes.)

I was aware that in 25% (or more) of the cases the method of exposure was unknown. It took commentor Wilfried Soddemann posting in the avian flu article below in reference to the likelihood of infection from contaminated water that made me realize that most of the news articles I had read mentioned contact with poultry as a source of infection, limited cluster of infection among closely-related people (one or more of whom had contact with poultry), or that the infected person had no known contact with poultry. Alternative avenues of infection are, in general, not mentioned, although they are surely known.

I’m not sure if this is because the people writing the articles were not sufficiently curious about alternative means of infection to ask questions about other possible means of contraction, or whether the information about other possible means of exposure is not published to allay fears of contracting a virus that has, so far, infected only a few.

BY CASTO OCANDO

El Nuevo Herald

Venezuela’s controversial President Hugo Chávez has revealed that he regularly consumes coca — the source of cocaine — raising questions about the legality of his actions.

Chávez’s comments on coca initially went almost unnoticed, coming amid a four-hour speech to the National Assembly during which he made international headlines by calling on other countries to stop branding two leftist Colombian guerrilla groups as terrorists and instead recognize them as “armies.”

”I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am,” he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience.

Chávez, who does not drink alcohol, added that just as Fidel Castro ‘’sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,” Bolivian President Evo Morales “sends me coca paste . . . I recommend it to you.”

It was not clear what Chávez meant. Indigenous Bolivians and Peruvians can legally chew coca leaves as a mild stimulant and to kill hunger. But coca paste is a semi-refined product — between leaves and cocaine — considered highly addictive and often smoked as basuco or pitillo.

”It is another symptom that [Chávez] has totally lost the concept of limits,” said Aníbal Romero, a political scientist with the Caracas Metropolitan University. “It shows Chávez is a man out of control.”

More seriously, Venezuelan and Bolivian analysts said Chávez’s comments amount to a dangerous endorsement of a substance controlled around the world, and perhaps even an illegal act by a very public head of state.

”If he is affirming that he consumes coca paste, he is admitting that he is consuming a substance that is illegal in Bolivia as well as Venezuela,” said Hernán Maldonado, a Bolivian analyst living in Miami. ”Plus, it’s an accusation that Evo Morales is a narco-trafficker” for sending him the paste.

Morales is the longtime head of a Bolivian coca-growers’ union and is known to chew coca in public, even during cabinet meetings, since he took office. Bolivia limits the coca acreage in an effort to control supplies of coca leaf that wind up being refined into cocaine.

Most likely, however, it seems Chávez was referring to chewing coca leaves, a traditional and legal practice among indigenous groups in the high Andes mountains but illegal in Venezuela, according to experts.

”Venezuela signed the Vienna Convention of 1961, which regulates everything that has to do with narcotics,” said Mildred Camero, former president of the government’s main counter-narcotics agency, the National Council Against the Illicit Use of Drugs. “On the list . . . the coca leaf was prohibited.”

For the rest of the story, go here:

I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised given Hugo’s deranged handling of the Venezuelan economy and exaggerated sense of his importance on the world stage.  Why indeed would he believe that laws that bind his countrymen similarly apply to him?

Also read Hugo Chavez:  Latin America’s Money Man.  Hugo’s ambitions do not stop at the Venezuelan border.