The Cooler

There's some craziness in the news this morning. See for yourself in this morning's Cooler.

A- HuffPo: What a mess.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — After nearly two years, the NCAA has finally announced some of the wrongdoing discovered during the investigation of Miami's athletic compliance practices.

The alleged rule-breakers: former NCAA employees.

NCAA President Mark Emmert revealed Wednesday that the Miami investigation is on hold after the governing body for college sports in this country discovered "a very severe issue of improper conduct" – specifically that the attorney for former booster and convicted Ponzi scheme architect Nevin Shapiro was used to "to improperly obtain information ... through a bankruptcy proceeding that did not involve the NCAA."

B- Palm Beach Post: The most amazing thing about this story is that we now know that AT&T has a "chief medical officer.".

INDIANAPOLIS — AT&T's chief medical officer is warning that cellphones can easily spread the flu because they're one of the few devices that regularly come in close contact with the face.

Dr. Geeta (GEE'-ta) Nayyar (NY'-ar) is urging people to clean and disinfect their phones regularly, use hands-free headsets and avoid taking out their phones in restrooms.

She says cellphones make a convenient delivery device for viruses because of how often people shake hands, turn doorknobs and use railings before touching their phone.

C- Palm Beach Post: Speaking of AT&T.

WEST PALM BEACH — ATT U-verse customers reported today that an outage that began Monday, affecting Florida and at least 14 other states, is still not resolved.

Some customers were told this morning that the problem will not be fixed for at least 24 hours.

“ATT customers in some of our markets are experiencing issues with U-verse service. This issue currently affects less than 1 percent of our U-verse subscribers, but that is too many and we are working hard to fix this,” ATT spokeswoman Kelly Starling said in an email today.

D- South Florida Business Journal: Might want to rethink that lunch at Tony Roma's in Doral.

Tony Roma's restaurant in Miami was closed for nearly a day after state regulators noticed roaches during a routine inspection.

The issue at the restaurant was immediately addressed by removing the wall in the kitchen, repairing, drying the moisture and replacing the structure, said Monique Yeager, director of marketing for Tony Roma's. The restaurant opened the next day, she said.

E- NBC Miami: Huh?

President Obama has a lot on his plate at the start of his second term. With deficit reduction, gun control, and immigration reform legislation on his agenda, Obama has been requested to do something about one of South Florida's most notorious sports figures: Jeffrey Loria.

"Please force Marlins owner Jeff Loria to sell," a petition at whitehouse.gov reads. "He has lied to the people of Miami and used tax funded money." The petition was created on Tuesday.

The petitioners are exercising their First Amendment rights to petition the federal government, though the Constitutionality of the president forcing Jeffrey Loria to sell the Marlins is questionable at best.

"Please help force Marlins owner Jeff Loria to sell the team," the petition continues. "He has lied to the people of Miami to get tax funded dollars to build a stadium and promised to put a team on the field with a payroll avg. The Payroll for the Marlins is about 35 million [sic] when it was around 90 last year. He has traded every player away with a high salary after just signing to long term deals last off season."

F- WPLG: Now I know why the traffic lights aren't synchronized in Broward County.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -The U.S. Attorney’s Office has charged a former Broward County traffic director with bribery, fraud and extortion in a case that allegedly ripped off taxpayers of millions of dollars.

Former traffic director Jihad El Eid stands accused of accepting at least $150,000 in bribes from the owner of utilities company that was contracting with the county to provide fiber optic cable for the county’s traffic signal program. Also charged was his brother, Wael El Eid, who also once worked for the county.

In exchange for the cash and a job for a relative, the government alleges El Eid rigged the system to improperly increase the Southeast Underground Utilities' contract from $6.6 million to over $21 million without bids; orchestrated massive overpayments from the county to the company; and shifted at least $3 million in savings meant for taxpayers to the company.

G- WSVN: Video, Military exercises over downtown Miami.




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