It’s a whodunit as Internet feed from Pakistan dies in Miami terrorism trial

On Tuesday morning, the Internet connection linking a suspected Taliban soldier who was testifying in a video call from Pakistan to a Miami federal courtroom suddenly went dead.

Was it a communications glitch at the Islamabad hotel? Or did the Pakistani government kill the feed because of the witness’s alleged Taliban ties?

The 12 jurors were left in the dark, as U.S. District Judge Robert Scola excused them after saying, “We have lost our transmission.”

Perhaps the most befuddled in the bunch: Miami imam Hafiz Khan, 77, who is standing trial on charges of sending thousands of dollars to the Taliban terrorist organization, sworn enemies of the U.S. and Pakistan governments. Khan was the leader of the Flagler Mosque, 7350 NW Third St.

Despite safety concerns, the judge had allowed Khan’s defense attorney to travel to Pakistan to take live testimony from 11 witnesses so the defendant could receive a fair trial. Prosecutors opposed allowing the testimony and refused to make the trip.

Everything seemed to be going pretty well until about 11:20 a.m., or 9:20 p.m. Tuesday in Islamabad — with 8,000 miles separating the two cities. The flat-screen televisions and video monitors in front of the judge, lawyers and jurors suddenly lost signal and flashed “disconnected.”

Khan’s defense attorney, Khurrum Wahid, explained to the judge by phone that there was “absolutely no problem” until a prosecutor in Miami mentioned the name of the Serena Hotel, where the testimony was being taken, during cross-examination. He noted the hotel staff said “there were some intelligence operatives in the business center here, and they were taking pictures of us and our witnesses.”

Added Wahid: “I’ve been told by the hotel staff that it’s from outside the building and that ... the IP address has been blacklisted by the Interior Ministry, I’m sorry, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.”

Scola was not amused. He reminded Wahid that he allowed him to travel to Pakistan to take the live testimony of defense witnesses — including three defendants who had been indicted along with Khan — as long as he obtained the approval of the Pakistan government. Wahid told the judge that he had received verbal approval, but the government refused to put it in writing.

“They’re supposed to know about it,” the judge told Wahid. “The whole purpose of this was that I wanted it to be open and notorious. I didn’t want to do something behind the back of the Pakistani government.”

The judge wondered aloud about possible solutions: If the problem is purely technical, it could be fixed and testimony could resume Wednesday morning. If it’s an “intentional act by the government of Pakistan,” there probably wouldn’t be any more live testimony from Islamabad.

Then, Wahid suggested that Skype might work as an alternative to the Internet video-conference feed.

Scola seemed flabbergasted: “I’m not going to do that. I’m not creating some kind of international incident. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid.”

Then, Wahid pointed a finger of blame at the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami for killing the Internet connection: “I’m of the belief at this point that our government, through the prosecutors, is attempting to derail this process.”

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Project Runway Exclusive Clip Bette Midler

Bette Midler makes her Project Runway debut on Thursday's all-new episode and ETonline scored an exclusive clip!

In the fourth episode of Lifetime's design competition show, the contestants are tasked to create clothes from hard and soft materials -- which brings them to the hardware store!

And as Midler comments in the clip, "I've never seen anything like that in my hardware store!" Check out our exclusive sneak peek and see if you agree!

Project Runway airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Lifetime.

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Gangemi challenging Adams for Brooklyn borough president

State Sen. Eric Adams won’t have a clear path to becoming Brooklyn's next borough president after all.

John Gangemi Sr., a lawyer and former at-large City Councilman during the 1970s, confirmed today he plans to make a political comeback by challenging Adams in this year’s Democratic primary.

“I miss politics,” said Gangemi, 73, of Dyker Heights, who plans to formally announce his candidacy as early as Thursday.

Gangemi said term-limited Beep Marty Markowitz has done “a fantastic job” promoting the borough, but if elected, he’d rely his 48 years of experience as a lawyer and former prosecutor to boost Brooklyn.

“I’d be less about ribbon cuttings and be more of an advocate for Brooklyn” by pushing legislation and new development to benefit the borough, said Gangemi, an at-large councilman from 1971 to 1976.

Gangemi’s Bay Ridge law practice was under fire a decade ago when his son Frank, a former lawyer, pleaded guilty to grand larceny after swindling 20 elderly people out of $2 million. The elder Gangemi, who was not charged with any wrongdoing, said his son “has done his time” behind bars and doesn’t expect the matter to become a campaign issue.

Meanwhile, Gangemi, who has yet to begin raising campaign funds, needs to get to work fast. Adams’ campaign account as of last month had $373,857 in hand, records show.

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Register for our free Business Plan Bootcamp

Whether you are planning to enter the Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge or want to refine a short business plan you already have, our free Business Plan Bootcamp later this month can help.

Melissa Krinzman, a veteran Business Plan Challenge judge and managing director of Venture Architects, will be leading a panel of experts who will give you advice on crafting a short business plan aimed at grabbing the attention of investors — or judges. If you are entering the Challenge, we encourage you to bring your entry with you because the panel will critique critical sections of the short plan.

Panelists include:

•  Richard Ginsburg, co-founder of G3 Capital Partners, a mid-market and early stage investment company.

•  Steven McKean, founder and CEO of Acceller, a Miami-based tech company, and a Challenge judge.

•  Mike Tomas, CEO of Miami-based Bioheart, president of ASTRI Group and a Challenge judge.

Time, date, place: 6:30 p.m. Feb. 26, Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus Auditorium (Room 1261, Building 1, 2nd floor).

To register: It’s free, but please register here.

Parking: Free parking at the MDC garage at 500 NE 2nd Avenue. It is important to note that the entrances are on NE 5th and 6th Streets.

You do not have to enter the Challenge to attend our free boot camp, but we hope you will. The Challenge deadline is March 11.

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Melgen lawsuit a glimpse at intersection of business, love life

A politically connected South Florida eye surgeon under investigation by the FBI filed a lawsuit against his former lover in a case centered on a dispute about whether he gave her close to a million dollars for a joint business venture or, as she testified, because “he wanted me to live like royalty.”

In late January, federal agents raided the offices of West Palm Beach eye surgeon Salomon Melgen in an investigation about Medicare billing. The FBI is separately examining his relationship with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez a New Jersey Democrat, and the trips they took on Melgen’s private plane to the Dominican Republic. Through his lawyers, Melgen has denied wrongdoing.

In 2000, after his love affair with Yudehiris Dorrejo ended, Melgen filed a lawsuit on behalf of his company, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, against Dorrejo in an attempt to get his money back. A Palm Beach judge dismissed the case two years later, citing jurisdictional issues in the dispute that involved no written contract.

An attorney for Melgen, Alan Reider, told The Miami Herald in an email: “The legal dispute with Ms. Dorrejo concluded over a decade ago. Dr. Melgen believed at the time and continues to believe that he had a valid legal claim. Beyond that, it would be inappropriate to comment.”

Depositions of Melgen and Dorrejo taken in 2001 read like a trashy romantic tale gone bad, with a business twist. It’a story laced with bizarre allegations from death threats to consultations with witch doctors.

The depositions show the wealthy Melgen lavishing his girlfriend with a Mercedes-Benz , private airplane flights and a cash-stuffed bank account. Melgen testified that he gave her money to launch a clothing store together, though she testified they never had a business relationship.

Melgen said that he first met Dorrejo in 1998 through a friend in Santo Domingo, the city he’s originally from. Melgen told her that he was single, but when she found out he was married they broke up, she testified. She would have been about 28 at the time. He was in his mid 40s.

Later that year in October, she said Melgen sent for her to meet him at a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in West Palm Beach “to propose the conditions for our romantic relationship,” she testified.

Melgen proposed that they get back together and said he was divorced. “He showed me divorce papers, which were falsified, I later found out,” she said.

Melgen then set up a bank account for her for whatever she needed. “He wanted me to live like royalty, that I would have no problems of any kind,” she testified

At the time, she worked for a store in the Dominican Republic called Vestimenta that she had formed with her mother in 1996. In 1999, Vestimenta entered into a franchise or distribution agreement with the clothing store Vertigo, according to Dorrejo’s testimony. At the time of the deposition, the store operated under the Vertigo name at the Diamond Mall in Santo Domingo.

Melgen testified that he had pitched the business idea one day when they were “in bed just talking” at the Ritz-Carlton.

“And I said why don’t you ask for the franchise of Vertigo and we go into a joint venture....” he said. He had hoped to establish an absolute right to Vertigo in the Dominican Republic, he said.

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Maroon 5 and Warner Music Group Grammy Party

The Grammys represent music's biggest night, so it's only fitting that music's biggest stars would party like the rock stars that they are after the show. ET's Rocsi Diaz caught up with Adam Levine and James Valentine of Maroon 5 at their big Grammy Party at Soho House in West Hollywood, and then we're on the red carpet at Chateau Marmont for the equally happening Warner Music Group party. Watch the video highlights!

Pics: Grammy Award Candids -- What You Didn't See On TV

"We decided we needed a tradition, and so hopefully this will be a tradition that will last a lifetime," says Adam of their party, joking that the band sat down "in a strategic meeting" with music industry icon Clive Davis to take notes on how to throw the ultimate party, "and then I did all those things." The boys also weigh in on the outrageous Grammy fashions...

Related: Mumford & More Rock Music-Filled Grammys

Keep watching the video for Grammy show reactions and shots of such stars as Sting, Neil Patrick Harris, Hunter Hayes, Fun. and more at the Warner Music Group party.

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Lindsey Vonn mending after surgery on right knee

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FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The doctor who operated on Lindsey Vonn's injured right knee thinks the four-time overall World Cup champion just might return to the circuit as soon as November.

That's the goal, anyway, with Vonn being back in top form by the Sochi Games, where she will try to defend her Olympic downhill title.

Dr. Bill Sterett, a surgeon for the U.S. Ski Team, examined Vonn on Monday and was optimistic about what he saw: Less swelling around the knee and an increased range of motion a day after a procedure to repair two torn ligaments.

Vonn was hurt during a crash last week at the world championships in Schladming, Austria.

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Green cards for sale at a South Beach hotel: Competition is on for EB5 investment visas

If David Hart gets his way, South Beach’s 42-room Astor Hotel will be on a hiring spree this year as it adds concierge service, a roof-top pool, an all-night diner, spa and private-car service available 24 hours a day.

New hires will be crucial to Hart’s business plan, since foreign investors have agreed to pay about $50,000 for each job created by the Art Deco boutique.

The Miami immigration lawyer specializes in arranging visas for wealthy foreign citizens under a special program that trades green cards for investment dollars. Businesses get the money and must use it to boost payroll. The minimum investment is $500,000 to add at least 10 jobs to the economy. That puts the pressure on Hart and his partners at the Astor to beef up payroll dramatically, with plans to take a hotel with roughly 20 employees to one with as many as 100 workers.

“My primary responsibility is to make something happen here over the next two years that will create the jobs we need,’’ Hart said a few steps away from a nearly empty restaurant on a recent weekday morning. “It’s all going to be transformed.”

Though established in the 1990s, the “EB5” visas soared in popularity during the recession as developers sought foreign cash to replace dried-up credit markets in the United States.

Chinese investors dominate the transactions, accounting for about 65 percent of the nearly 9,000 EB5 visas granted since 2006. South Korea finishes a distant second at 12 percent and the United Kingdom holds the third-place slot at 3 percent. If Latin America and the Caribbean were one country, they would rank No. 4 on the list, with 231 EB5 visas granted, or about 3 percent of the total.

Competition has gotten stiffer for the deep-pocketed foreign investors willing to pay for green cards. The University of Miami’s bio-science research park near the Jackson hospital system raised $20 million from 40 foreign investors under the EB5 program, most of them from Asia. The money went into the park’s first building; visa brokers are waiting to see if the second building will proceed so they can offer a new pool of potential green-card sales.

In Hollywood, the stalled $131 million Margaritaville resort had hoped to raise about $75 million from EB5 investors before ditching that plan last year to pursue more traditional financing. A retail complex by developer Jeff Berkowitz in Coral Gables also launched a program to raise $50 million in EB5 money for the project, Gables Station. Hart worked with other EB5 investors to back pizza restaurants in Miami and South Beach. A limestone mine in Martin County also was backed by EB5 dollars.

This year, the city of Miami itself is expected to get into the business by setting up an EB5 program to raise foreign cash for a range of city businesses and developments. The first would be the tallest building in the city — developer Tibor Hollo’s planned 85-story apartment tower, the Panorama, in downtown Miami.

With a construction cost of about $700 million, Miami’s debut EB5 venture hopes to raise about $100 million from foreign investors, said Laura Reiff, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer in Virginia working with Miami on the EB5 effort. “This is a marquis project,’’ she said.

The arrangement is a novel one for Miami, with the city planning to help a private developer raise funds overseas for a new high-rise. And it would allow Hollo and future participants to tout the city of Miami’s endorsement when competing with other Miami-area projects for EB5 dollars. “We will have the benefit of the brand of the city of Miami,’’ said Mikki Canton, the $6,000-a-month city consultant heading Miami’s EB5 effort. “A lot of these others are privately owned and they won’t have that brand.”

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Everglades python haul low, but scientists envision wealth of new data

The numbers are relatively benign, and they didn’t change much in last weekend of the Florida Everglades great python hunt, but event sponsors are calling it nothing short of a great success.

Reports as of Friday were that 50 Burmese pythons had been captured during the month-long chase that ended at midnight Sunday, and Sunday evening, Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino said he wasn’t aware whether the total had increased.

Still, he called ridding the Everglades of any of the hugely invasive predators that have caused havoc with the ecosystem, and which have been seen challenging top-of-the-food-chain alligators for supremacy, nothing short of fantastic.

“We’ll have a better handle on the exact numbers by late Monday or Tuesday,” Pino said. “But undoubtedly for us, it’s a complete success. You can argue it’s not a huge number, but its 50 pythons not in the ecosystem causing havoc.”

Hunters had to register with the wildlife commission, take a quick online course, and follow specific humane rules the commission determined were best fit to kill the Southeast Asian native monsters that can grow to close to 20 feet long. The pythons can be legally killed only by a gunshot to the head or by beheading with a machete.

Hunters have until 5 p.m. Monday to turn in what they have captured. They can keep the skins to do with as they wish. Prizes of up to $1,500 for the most pythons caught, and $1,000 for largest python captured, will be awarded at Zoo Miami on Saturday.

No one knows exactly how the Burmese python made its way to South Florida, but it has been around for decades, and multiplying at an alarming rate. It’s not uncommon to find females carrying dozens upon dozens of eggs. The largest python caught to date was 17.5 feet long and weighed 164 pounds, though six to nine feet is more typical in the Everglades.

Scientists estimate there are now tens of thousands of slithery reptiles — that used to be common as pets — in the wild. Though they are large, they are extremely difficult to spot, often hiding among weeds or in dark water.

Last year the Obama administration banned the importation of four species of constrictor, including the Burmese pythons. It is also illegal to keep them as pets unless you can produce paperwork showing you had the creature prior to July 2010.

Pino said by Monday night his agency should have a better feel for the totals, but, he said, that really doesn’t matter.

“The data we’ll get will be unbelievable,” he said.

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Carly Rae Jepsen Interview 'Call Me Maybe'

I can officially check singing Call Me Maybe with Carly Rae Jepsen off my bucket list... (be jealous). 

Carly Rae was at The Grove signing covers of her March issue of Seventeen magazine and I got the chance to talk to her about being the cover girl, her two Grammy noms, and her favorite songs on the radio...  oh, and don’t forget, I also did a duet with her!

PICS: Star Sightings

Carly is behind, what I consider to be, the song of the century, Call Me Maybe, and has been on a whirlwind adventure ever since Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Ashley Tisdale and company released a choreographed/lip-synced version of the song in February 2012.  Shortly thereafter, she became a household name with people of all ages catching on to her upbeat tune, including the Recording Academy.

The singer is nominated for two Grammy Awards in the coveted categories Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance, for Call Me Maybe. Carly told me she did a kitchen dance when she found out about her nominations and that her family was on the phone immediately afterwards hearing the good news! Carly also told me about her plans on Grammy day -- from kissing her glam team members to eating granola and yogurt.

VIDEO: Carly Rae Jepsen on How She Joined Team Bieber

Check out the video to see my once in a lifetime duet moment with Carly Rae Jepsen!

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