SunPass coming to Rickenbacker, Venetian causeways in 2014

The introduction of SunPass on two Miami-Dade causeways is the latest in a series of initiatives to expand use of Florida’s electronic toll-collection system beyond state highways.

“We are hoping that a year from now, in 2014, the new system will be in place on both the Rickenbacker and then the Venetian Causeway,” said Michael R. Bauman, chief of the Miami-Dade public works and waste management department’s causeways division.

Originally, the county had planned to activate SunPass on the causeways in 2012, but the project was delayed because of contractor issues and efforts by all Florida tolling agencies to centralize back-office operations that include billing and other customer services, Bauman said.

Conversion of causeways’ C-Pass system to SunPass transponders will be one of the most significant changes in the history of the storied roads that carry tens of thousands of commuters every day to and from the mainland.

The 5.4-mile Rickenbacker, the longer of the two causeways, is also the newest. It opened in 1947. The 2.8-mile Venetian opened in 1925.

Tolls have been charged on both causeways for decades. The Rickenbacker was the first to adopt electronic tolling in 1997 with the C-Pass system, followed by the Venetian shortly after.

Both causeways still take cash at some toll plaza lanes.

While the plan is to eliminate cash tolls, Bauman said details are more advanced for the Rickenbacker than for the Venetian.

As a result, he said in an interview, details of how SunPass will operate on the Venetian remain undecided.

On the Rickenbacker, however, he said the toll plaza will be removed and its eight lanes will be reconfigured into four lanes with electronic gantries. Cash will no longer be accepted.

In both cases, said Bauman, lower annual tolls paid by residents and commuters served by the Rickenbacker and Venetian will be preserved under the SunPass arrangement.

The vehicles of residents and commuters already registered with causeway systems will be recognized by SunPass, and no additional toll charges will be made, Bauman said.

The current cash toll price on both causeways is $1.50. Whether that rate will remain once SunPass kicks in is still under discussion, Bauman said.

On the Rickenbacker and Venetian, residents with C-Pass transponders pay a flat $24 per year. Nonresidents who drive the Rickenbacker pay $60 per year and Venetian commuters pay $90.

Registration will continue, but it will be done online.

Drivers who don’t have SunPass will still be allowed to use the causeways. They will be billed later via Toll-by-Plate, Bauman said.

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Iowa man, sister reunite thanks to boy, Facebook

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man and his sister have reunited 65 years after being separated in foster care thanks to a 7-year-old friend’s Facebook search.

Clifford Boyson of Davenport met his sibling, Betty Billadeau, in person Saturday. Billadeau drove up from her home in Florissant, Mo., with her daughter and granddaughter for the reunion at a hotel in Davenport.

Boyson, 66, and Billadeau, 70, both tried to find each other for years without success. They were placed in different foster homes in Chicago when they were children.

Then 7-year-old Eddie Hanzelin, who is the son of Boyson‘s landlord, got involved.

Eddie managed to find Billadeau by searching his mom’s Facebook account with Billadeau’s maiden name. He recognized the family resemblance when he saw her picture.

“Oh, my God,” Boyson said when he saw and hugged Billadeau.

“You do have a sister,” Billadeau said.

“You’re about the same height Mom was,” Boyson said.

Billadeau’s daughter, Sarah Billadeau, 42, and granddaughter, Megan Billadeau, 27, both wiped away tears and smiled during the reunion.

“He didn’t have any women in his life,” Sarah said. “We’re going to get that straightened out real fast.”

Boyson said he’s looking forward to visiting Billadeau near St. Louis and meeting more family.

“I’m hoping I can go and spend a week or two,” he said. “I want to meet the whole congregation. I never knew I had a big family.”

Eddie, who enjoys messing around with his family’s iPad, said he’s glad he was able to assist in making the reunion happen and that he learned about helping others at school.

“Clifford did not have any family, and family’s important,” the boy said.

Near the end of their tearful reunion Boyson and Billadeau presented Eddie with a $ 125 check in appreciation of his detective work.

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70th Annual Golden Globes Show Recap

Universal/ Warner Bros.

Some big surprises and lots of humor kept the 70th Annual Golden Globes fun, interesting and fast-moving Sunday night in Hollywood. On the film side, Argo was named Best Picture of the Year - Drama, while Les Miserables was named Best Picture of the Year - Comedy or Musical, with Daniel Day-Lewis, Hugh Jackman, Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway among the stars taking home trophies. On the TV side, Showtime's Homeland scored big and so did HBO's Girls, with Lena Dunham, Claire Danes and Damien Lewis among those recognized.

Get the complete list of winners HERE.

The Best in Movies

In addition to Best Pictures Argo and Les Mis, Amour was named Best Foreign Language Film (Austria) and Disney-Pixar's Brave was named Best Animated Feature Film. A shocked Ben Affleck was named Best Director for Argo, quite the vindication after being snubbed for a Best Directing Oscar nom, and a very jovial Quentin Tarantino got the Best Screenplay award for Django Unchained.

Daniel Day-Lewis picked up the Best Actor - Drama award for his turn as Lincoln, and was quick to credit the other actors in the room: "Such beautiful performances this year; I'm very proud to be one amongst you." He also singled out director Steven Spielberg, "a humble master with a quicksilver imagination. ... You've given me an experience that I will treasure until the end of my life." Day-Lewis beat out Richard Gere, John Hawkes, Joaquin Phoenix and Denzel Washington.

Hugh Jackman was named Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical for Les Mis, beating out Jack Black, Bradley Cooper, Ewan McGregor and Bill Murray. Thanking the "most amazing cast in the world" and his "visionary director," he also singled out his wife for "talking him off the cliff" when he doubted his singing abilities during rehearsals.

Related: ETonline's Complete Golden Globes Coverage

Jessica Chastain was named Best Actress - Drama for her role as a tenacious CIA analyst in Zero Dark Thirty. Calling her win a dream come true, the emotional and proud actress she pointed out that she's "been on the sidelines for years, and to be here at this moment, it's a beautiful feeling to receive this encouragement and support." She also told her director Kathryn Bigelow, "You've done more for women in cinema than you've taken credit for." Chastain bested Marion Cotillard, Helen Mirren, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz.

Silver Linings Playbook star Jennifer Lawrence was named Best Actress - Comedy or Musical over tough competition Emily Blunt, Judy Dench, Maggie Smith and Meryl Streep. Joking, "Oh, what does [the statuette] say? I beat Meryl!" She went on to thank her co-star Bradley Cooper, "who made me better every day," and surprisingly started to choke up while thanking her family.

Les Mis star Anne Hathaway was named Best Supporting Actress, and practically had to pinch herself to see if the moment was real. She excitedly said, "Thank you for this lovely blunt object I will forevermore use as a weapon against self-doubt," and gave a shout-out to the "great and gutsy actresses" (Amy Adams, Helen Hunt, Sally Field, Nicole Kidman) in her category as well as her "fearless" cast and director.

Christoph Waltz owes a lot of gold to Quentin Tarantino: He was named Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Django Unchained, his second nom and win following his audacious Inglourious Basterds introduction to the mainstream film world. The Austrian actor told his director, "My gratitude knows no words," and concluded, "This journey was incredible. To borrow a sentence from my character … The North Star is that one. Ta-da." Waltz bested co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Arkin, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tommy Lee Jones.

Pics: Golden Globes Red Carpet Fashion

The Best in TV

Homeland hit a major home run Sunday night, winning Best Television Series – Drama and beating out Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, The Newsroom and Mad Men, while seeing its two stars, Damian Lewis and Claire Danes, win Best Actor and Actress in the category. Calling the statuette a true "perk" to have picked up along the way, Lewis dedicated the win, "To my mom, who I know is out there looking down on me, bursting with pride and telling everyone how well her son is doing acting." For Danes, it was her fourth Globe win, and she thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press for being "so insanely generous for so many years now. I was up here when I was 15." She lauded the women in her category, saying, "I'm very proud to be working in this medium, in this moment, in this company," and thanked her co-workers for accommodating her pregnancy during the production of the show.

Girls was named Best TV Series - Comedy or Musical, and its star and executive producer Lena Dunham upset the competition to win Best Actress – Comedy or Musical. Besting Zooey Deshanel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, she declared "I worship them" before sharing her award with "every woman who felt there wasn't a space for her; this show made a space for me."

Other Awards of the Night

HBO's Game Change also hit a triple, named Best Motion Picture Made for Television, with its star Julianne Moore landing Best Actress in the same category for her portrayal of Sarah Palin, and Ed Harris winning the Best Supporting Actor prize for his portrayal of presidential hopeful John McCain; Hatfields & McCoys star Kevin Costner was named Best Actor in a Mini-Series Made for Television; Don Cheadle was named Best Actor in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical for his performance in House of Lies, while Maggie Smith was singled out for her Best Supporting Actress in a Series for her performance in Downton Abbey.

Best Original Score – Motion Picture went to Mychael Danna for Life of Pi, and Adele's stirring Skyfall was named Best Original Song – Motion Picture. The new mom and multiple Grammy winner exclaimed, "Oh my God!!!!" when she hit the stage and candidly said that this was really just a fun night out with her friend, also a new mom: "We've been pissing ourselves laughing over there." She also thanked her "lovely Simon."

Related: Best Golden Globe Award Zingers

Show Highlights

Co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler kept the proceedings full of laughs, with their opening monologue especially putting the celebrity audiences in stitches. Throughout the show, the pair also slipped into the audience, wearing goofy disguises as actors looking to accept faux nominations; Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell played clueless presenters who saw none of the movies in the Best Actress category -- but tried to fake it anyway when describing the performances; Tony Mendes, the real-life CIA agent behind the true story of Argo, took the stage with John Goodman to present Argo, and Bill Clinton also surprised the audiences to introduce Lincoln; Sacha Baron Coen roasted his Les Mis co-stars; and Francesca Eastwood, daughter of Clint Eastwood and Frances Fisher, and Sam Fox, son of Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, were presented as Mr. and Miss Golden Globes.

And there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Jodie Foster was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award by good friend Robert Downey Jr. Starting with plenty of self-effacing comedy ("I'm 50! You know, I was going to bring my walker tonight, but it just didn't go with the cleavage."), Foster turned the podium into a confessional and half-joked about giving a big "coming out speech" before turning the focus to how important privacy truly is as a celebrity ("If you had been a public figure since the time that you'd been a toddler, you too would value privacy above all else.") and declaring how proud she is of her "modern family." Getting emotional, she concluded, "This feels like the end of one era and the beginning of something else."

Watch ET for complete coverage of the 70th Annual Golden Globes.

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Duck, goose! Another JFK wing ding

A Caribbean-bound JetBlue flight was struck by a bird yesterday for the second day in a row after lifting off from JFK Airport, officials said.

In the most recent incident, JetBlue Flight 721 struck the fowl “on departure” around 10 a.m., according to the FAA.

“It was not a direct hit,” said JetBlue spokeswoman Tamara Bentham, but the plane nonetheless returned to JFK as a precaution.

The jet, an Airbus 320 with 125 people on board, hit a “pretty large bird” between 500 to 700 feet above ground and the feathered fiend “probably fell onto the runway,” Aviation Week reported.

After an inspection, the plane departed again without incident about 90 minutes later.

On Saturday, a Dominican Republic-bound flight had to go back to the airport after the pilot reported a bird strike to the plane’s nose.

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of the city’s most famous bird strike — the “Miracle on the Hudson” incident in which Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed his disabled US Airways plane on the river.

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Miami Dolphins worry Marlins stand between them and a tax-funded redo for Sun Life Stadium

The Miami Dolphins are reviving their failed bid to win tax dollars for a football stadium. But team executives want no comparisons to a successful bid to win tax dollars for a baseball stadium.

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has called a press conference for Monday to unveil a plan for an improved Sun Life Stadium. Sources say the plan will include asking state and local governments to help pay for a $400 million renovation of the 1987 facility.

State lawmakers in recent years rebuffed the Dolphins when the team asked for help on a less-expensive renovation. And while the economy and state finances are more favorable this time around, Dolphin executives see a bigger challenge now from lingering backlash against the $639 million ballpark taxpayers built for the Miami Marlins in order to move the baseball team from their old home in Sun Life. .

“It can’t be anything close to what the Marlins did,’’ said state Sen. Oscar Braynon, a Democrat whose Miami Gardens district includes Sun Life Stadium and who sponsored a 2011 bill to raise hotel taxes to fund the Dolphins renovation plan. “Unless you do something totally counter to what the Marlins did, nobody is going to vote for it.”

Both the Marlins and the Dolphins declined to comment for this story. The Dolphins have not released details of how they want to pay for the renovation, or what they want to do the stadium. But sources close to the team describe an extensive renovation of Sun Life, including adding a partial roof, a redesign of the seating configuration to improve views of the field, and shifting capacity from the low-priced seats in the upper deck to the more expensive seating closer to the sidelines. Without the space demands of a baseball field, the front row will move 18 feet closer to the field, according to a person briefed on the plans.

Polls showed Miami and Miami-Dade’s 2009 votes to build the baseball stadium with 75 percent public money were never popular. But the Marlins’ recent stripping of star players from their payroll has made the new Little Havana park Topic A when it comes to plotting a Dolphins’ victory for winning tax dollars themselves.

Dolphins executives plan to pursue two funding sources from state and local government, according to several people familiar with the team’s plans. For the first funding stream, the Dolphins plan to ask Miami-Dade to raise taxes charged mainland hotels from 6 percent to 7 percent and earmark the extra money for the stadium. The Dolphins also plan to ask Florida for an additional $2 million rebate on sales taxes on top of the $2 million the stadium already receives from the state each year under a special subsidy for professional sports teams.

Ross is expected to pledge a significant amount of the renovation money himself. Sources who have been briefed on the Dolphins’ proposal say the total pricetag for the project is $400 million. That’s almost double the renovation budget the Dolphins proposed when the team last went to the Legislature for money in 2011.

Staying competitive

At the time, the Dolphins unveiled a $225 million redo of Sun Life with expanded sideline seating, high-definition lighting and a partial roof that would both shade seats during hot games and shield spectators from the kind of downpour that drenched the stands during the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami Gardens. The Dolphins, top executives at the NFL and some community leaders have warned that without upgrades to Sun Life, South Florida risks losing its standing as one of the nation’s top venues for the Super Bowl and college football championships.

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Newark mayor to headline Broward Democrats’ fundraiser

Rising Democratic star and Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker will be the keynote speaker at the Broward Democrats’ annual fundraiser March 23.

“He is clearly part of next generation of Democratic leaders,” local party chairman Mitch Ceasar said.

Booker, an African-American Rhodes scholar and Yale University law grad, became mayor at age 37 in 2006. He turned down a job offer from President Barack Obama after his first win. In 2012, Booker spoke at the Democratic National Convention and recently confirmed he is exploring running for U.S. Senate.

The Unity Dinner is the main fundraiser for Broward Democrats, who are preparing for the 2014 elections — most notably, a challenge to Gov. Rick Scott.

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Rovio has more monthly active users than Twitter

Rovio announced today it hit 263 million monthly active users in December 2012. This happened precisely three years after the first Angry Birds game debuted at the end of 2009. Incidentally, the somewhat better-known Twitter hit the 200 million monthly active user mark in December 2012. And since Twitter was launched in the summer of 2006, Rovio’s user growth has been notably brisker.

[More from BGR: Samsung cancels Windows RT plans in U.S.]

Rovio has recently been able to demonstrate it is a tad more than a flash in the pan. Angry Birds Star Wars has now remained the #1 paid iPhone app in America for 65 days. Angry Birds Space still clings to #6 slot nearly 300 days after its debut. And Bad Piggies is at #9 more than three months after the game was launched.

[More from BGR: LG reportedly halts Nexus 4 production to make way for new Nexus device]

Rovio thus holds three of the top 10 positions in the United States iPhone chart. Disney’s hottest title, the heavily promoted Where’s My Water has slumped to #24 after having a strong year in 2012. Three years in, Rovio has pulled off a remarkable fete: It’s been able to avoid boring consumers even as it saturation-bombs them with cutesy animals.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis Engaged

Olivia Wilde, 28, and Saturday Night Live star Jason Sudeikis, 38, are engaged, ET can confirm.

The pair, who went public in December of 2011, moved in together last year and have been seemingly inseparable since.

Related: Olivia Wilde Divorces Italian Royal

According to People, Sudeikis proposed to the Tron: Legacy star shortly after the holidays.

"They are so excited," says a source. "And very, very happy."

No word yet on a wedding date.

Video: Olivia Wilde Steams Up the Screen

This will be the second wedding for Wilde, whose divorce to Italian royal Tao Ruspoli was finalized in late September of 2011.

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Finally! City to tackle unwed-mom epidemic

Michael Goodwin

It’s my favorite single-question pop quiz: What is the out-of-wedlock birth rate in The Bronx?

The answers I get from New Yorkers who should know better usually top out at 50 percent. Only occasionally does anyone come close to the correct answer: 70 percent.

You read it right — seven out of 10 babies born in The Bronx in 2010 were born to unmarried parents. The state recorded 22,386 live births in the borough that year, with 15,539 born to single mothers. More than 2,100 of those mothers were teens, some as young as 15.

Yet it is how most people react to hearing the correct answer that I find especially troubling. They are shocked it’s so high, but then shrug and mutter something like, “Well, I’m not surprised.”

That world-weary cynicism illustrates the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s meaning of “defining deviancy down.” His point was that a declining society accepts as normal bad things that are not normal. Numbness leads to inertia.

So it is with out-of-wedlock birth. As the proportion climbed and climbed, from single digits to 41 percent nationally, and 45 percent in the city, our political leaders responded with . . . silence. Even Mayor Bloomberg once said to me that “you know it’s something we can’t touch,” presumably because of the racial implications. Nationally, 73 percent of black children are born to single mothers.

That chat was about six months ago — but I am happy to report that Bloomy’s response could be outdated. City Hall is now getting ready to smash the taboo on confronting out-of-wedlock birth. Heart be still.

The effort is in the planning stage but likely will involve a public-service-style campaign, suggests Robert Doar, Bloomberg’s determined Human Resources commissioner. It will focus on “the outcome of the child,” meaning it will warn potential parents about the hard lives of children if the parents aren’t married.

Doar cites unstable homes, poverty, lower educational achievement and higher odds of criminal behavior as the fate of many children raised without a father. He also has a suggestion for journalists fond of tear-jerker stories about poor, single mothers. Ask them, he urges, “Where’s the father?”

Doar made the comments in a thoughtful speech last week when he won the Manhattan Institute’s Urban Innovator Award for fostering upward mobility instead of dependency among welfare recipients. He outlined Bloomberg’s philosophy that combines conservative principles of “work first” with the liberal instinct for government help, including Medicaid, food stamps and tax credits.

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After rough year, Carnival hopes for calmer waters

After boarding the latest addition to the Carnival Cruise Lines family, Josh Beaver sampled lasagna at the new onboard Italian restaurant, downed some drinks with his traveling companions and hit the water slides while the afternoon was still young.

“So far, from what I’ve seen, there’s lots to do,” said Beaver, 33, of Holden Beach, N.C.

The Carnival Breeze hadn’t even left PortMiami yet on a recent Saturday, and already it buzzed with vacationers exploring all there was to do: nosh on a Pig Patty from the new Guy’s Burger Bar, make friends with bartenders at the new RedFrog Pub or check out a novel and a glass of the grape at the new Library Bar.

Here aboard one of the largest ships in the biggest brand of the Number One cruise ship company in the world, there was little hint that the last year was one of the toughest in the 41-year history of parent company Carnival Corp. & plc.

Last year got off to a catastrophic start when Costa Concordia, owned by Carnival unit Costa Cruises, struck rocks in Italian waters as the captain steered the ship on an unauthorized route. The massive liner listed to one side, and 32 people died in the chaos that followed.

“When you lose lives, it’s heartbreaking,” said Carnival Corp. Vice Chairman and COO Howard Frank, who devoted much of his time last winter handling the aftermath with Costa leaders. “And so I think in terms of our emotional reaction to it, it’s been the toughest year we’ve had.”

Carnival Corp. Chairman and CEO Micky Arison took criticism for not going to Italy following the wreck, but said he believes the company did the right thing and doesn’t second-guess his actions.

Financially, the company took a hit as well, starting with discounts that were necessary to drum up business after the accident. Costa’s future bookings plunged, but picked up after the operator slashed prices. As of mid-December, prices at Costa remained lower than they were a year earlier, though the company expects that to change once the anniversary of the accident passes.

“I think we’ve been consistent in saying the recovery at Costa is not a one-year issue,” Arison said during the December earnings call with analysts. “It’s going to be multiple years, and we are forecasting a recovery of about half the yield deterioration.”

The ship remains on its side off the island of Giglio; it’s expected to be removed by the end of summer.

A flurry of civil lawsuits have been filed, but none have reached trial yet; the company has reached compensation agreements with 70 percent of the more than 3,000 passengers who were not physically injured and 60 percent of injured passengers and families of those who died.

As the company and broader industry focused anew on safety, the summer months presented a fresh set of problems when the European economy weakened just as cruise lines were stationing more ships in the Mediterranean. While North America was immune to those concerns, the run-up to the Presidential election and the fiscal cliff debates prompted Carnival to worry about a slowdown in business at home.

Last month, Carnival forecast 2013 earnings that were lower than expectations and said advance bookings for the year were behind what they were a year earlier at lower prices. Many analysts believe the projections were conservative, though, and executives said they were hopeful that January would bring more robust business.

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