Ex-cop & killer Christopher Dorner 'did his homework' cops say

Rogue former cop Christopher Jordan Dorner “did his homework,” stalking potential targets, before he was named a murder suspect and went on the run, police said today.

Dorner killed four people during a 12-day terror spree that ended when who blew his brains out last week as cops cornered him in a burning mountain cabin.

The disgraced former officer killed the daughter of a former cop and her fiance on Feb. 3, before he was named a suspect on Feb. 6. But before Dorner’s name went public, he apparently checked out homes and neighborhoods of potential victims.

“We believe based on our investigation, Dorner did his homework," LAPD chief Charlie Beck said.

The LAPD fired Dorner in 2008 after concluding that he made up brutality allegations against a supervisor.

The termination sent Dorner into a tailspin. He wrote a lengthy manifesto, railing on racism within the LAPD and naming enemies.

Dorner was headed to one of his potential targets in the early hours of of Feb. 7 in Corona, Calif., where he was met by cops guarding the would-be victims.

Dorner survived a shootout before killing a defenseless Riverside city cop, who was stopped at a traffic light, moments later.

Before committing suicide on Thursday, Dorner killed a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy during his last stand.

"We hear threats all the time, but rarely so specifically, and that someone has already carried out in the most cowardly way," said LAPD Capt. Phil Tingirides, who along with his cop wife were under armed protection during Dorner’s bloody spree.

Capt. Tingirides was on the internal review board that fired Dorner.

Dorner’s first victim, Cal State Fullerton assistant women’s basketball coach Monica Quan, is the daughter of a cop-turned-lawyer who represented him during that review.

Sgt. Emada Tingirides said her family struggled to keep the threat off their minds as, cops stood constant guard in the family’s backyard during Dorner’s time on the lam.

"We shut the TV off after the first day," said Sgt. Tingirides, who is black. Capt. Tingirides is white.

Dorner died five days after the city of Los Angeles offered a $1 million reward for any tips that led to his capture and conviction.

Since Dorner was never captured or convicted, it wasn’t clear if anyone would get the money.

Chief Beck said donors -- including the city of LA, police support groups, private contributors and other local government agencies -- are huddling come up with a fair solution.

“It is my desire that the reward money be used," Beck said. "It isn't as easy as me coming out with a big check two days later.”

Several people could be in line for at least a cut of the seven-digit award.

Dorner was holed up inside a Big Bear Lake cabin when its owners walked in on him. He tied them up and stole their car, but they freed themselves to call police.

Moments before his last stand, Dorner carjacked a 61-year-old camp caretaker, who also called cops and directed them to the gunman’s direction.

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Best photo apps for Android devices

Whether you want to slap a simple filter on your photo or get granular and change attributes like color levels and saturation, we’ve got a list of the Android apps you’ll want to use.

Snapseed

The good: With its unique gesture-based interface, this offers an incredible level of control over its effects and filters.

The bad: The tools and interface aren’t intuitive, so it could take a while to get familiarized. Also, the lack of a zoom function makes it difficult to see finer adjustments.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: If you’re a serious mobile photographer looking for an app with which to fine-tune your photos, Snapseed is your best choice.

Pixlr Express

The good: Offers more than 600 effects that all work well and are easy to use. Auto Fix and Focal Blur (tilt-shift) are particularly effective.

The bad: The app doesn’t warn you before backing out, which can result in lost work. A Recent Files picker upon launch would be nice.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: One of the most powerful Android apps in its category. Despite its minor flaws, it should be your go-to mobile photo editor.

Instagram

The good: An excellent way to turn mundane images into cool-looking photos you can share with friends. Mapping features mean people can easily browse all your geotagged shots.

The bad: Photo Map features default to showing all your geotagged shots, which could be dangerous under some circumstances.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: If you like taking retro-looking shots and sharing them, Instagram is tough to beat. Mapping features and frequent updates to the app mean your pictures will have a longer browsing life span.

Photo Grid

The good: Offers a huge menu of grid templates and a dead-simple interface for combining photos into framed collages.

The bad: The app unfortunately doesn’t let you customize the thickness of collage borders or the level of curvature on rounded panels.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: Even though it’s missing a couple of nifty customization tools other collage apps have, Photo Grid’s simple interface and outstanding menu of predesigned grids make it the best collage app on the market.

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At Miami Children’s Hospital, a heartwarming reunion: cardiac surgeons and patients

After several hours operating on the smallest of hearts, Dr. Redmond Burke threw on a blue suit coat over his green scrubs and hustled out to the courtyard at Miami Children’s Hospital. He and his comrade-in-sutures, Dr. Robert Hannan, had important guests to attend to: dozens of kids whose lives they saved over the years.

It was an, ahem, heartwarming scene as, amid handshakes, handslaps and hugs, Burke and Hannan posed for photos and videos with former patients and their forever-grateful parents. They came together under a tent for the hospital’s annual President’s Day reunion of cardiac patients and their surgeons, nurses and ICU docs.

“This doctor is the best and he’s a great human being, also,’’ said Janet Cuervo, who choked back tears as she embraced Burke and recalled the delicate operation eight years ago in which he closed a hole in her daughter Camila’s heart.

Now 14, Camila is a cheerleader and eighth-grader at Mater Gardens Academy in Miami Gardens and leads a fully normal teenage life. Like many of the now older kids at the reunion, she said she barely recalls the life-saving but traumatic surgery, probably not a bad thing.

For every one of the parents, though, it was something they cannot forget.

“This man is going to hold your child’s heart in his hands,’’ said Nancy Lasater, who said she researched Burke thoroughly before concluding he was the best for the job of repairing her daughter Kelsey’s congenital heart defect a decade ago — not just because of his expertise, but because he was warm and approachable and, as a windsurfer and father of three girls, personally well-rounded. “You could tell he was special. He put you at ease. He’s saved so many children’s lives, it’s incredible.’’

After driving down from home in Palm Beach Gardens, Lasater, Kelsey and her two brothers joined a long line of people waiting happily to spend a few minutes with Burke, who eagerly knelt down to greet kids and pose for pictures. Kelsey, now 15, gave Burke an envelope with a thank-you note inside.

“Isn’t this nice?’’ Burke, the hospital’s director of pediatric cardiovascular surgery, said to another young one-time patient. “Everybody’s smiling. There’s no stress.’’

Burke, well known in the field for minimizing trauma to children by devising instruments and procedures that allow complex operations with minimal invasiveness, said the reunion is part of the hospital’s continuum of care.

“Once the parents trust their kids to us, we feel responsible for the duration of their lifetimes,’’ Burke said. “It’s a real touchstone in their lives. We want to reduce that lifelong trauma, and not just for the patients but for their parents and their brothers and sisters. We want them to know we will be here for them.’’

In fact, some young cardiac patients will require lifelong follow-up, including those with artificial heart valves, which must be replaced as the child grows, and last only 10 years. The hospital has opened an adult cardiac surgical unit to follow those patients for life.

A few feet away, Litzandra Hernandez waited with her grandparents, Lydia and Tomas Cabrera, for Dr. Hannan to come out of surgery. Though she’s 20, Hernandez is a very recent Hannan patient.

She was a “blue baby,’’ born in Cuba with a rare confluence of heart malformations — a ventricular hole, a blocked valve and transposed arteries — that interfered with blood circulation, kept her blood oxygen levels low and gave her skin a tell-tale purple tinge. But she went untreated, severely limited in what she could do and at constant risk of heart failure, until she left Cuba in August to join her mother in Miami. Doctors in Cuba said she would live only a few more years without surgery they could not perform, the Cabreras said.

Because hers was a birth defect and she is medically and legally still a child, her adult cardiologist at Aventura Hospital, Robert Cubeddu, referred her to Hannan. In January, she had a risky surgery that’s usually performed on infants to create a bypass that allows blood to flow normally.

On Monday, an ebullient Hernandez, her skin a healthy hue, along with her grandparents, surrounded a smiling Hannan.

“He said he would treat me like his daughter, and he did,’’ she said. “And now I am super well.’’

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Spartacus War of the Damned Exclusive clip

It's hard not to look at every episode of Spartacus: War of the Damned as one step closer to the series finale, but when every installment leaves you breathless, it's hard to think about anything other than the insanity that just unfolded in front of your eyes.

RELATED - TV's Saddest Deaths

That will inevitably be the case this Friday as the fourth episode, titled Decimation, is unleashed upon the world -- and you can get an early sneak peek, only with ETonline!

RELATED - Manu Bennett: From Spartacus to Arrow

In this exclusive clip, Crassus tries to school his son in the art of war but quickly gleams that he's taught Tiberius well ... perhaps too well.

Spartacus: War of the Damned airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on Starz.

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NFL lineman busted with loaded pistol at JFK

A muscle-bound NFL lineman was busted at LaGuardia Airport today for packing a loaded .40 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol.

Da’Quan Bowers - a second-year defensive end for the Tampa bay Buccaneers - was arrested at 11 a.m. at a US Air ticket counter as he was about to board a plane for North Carolina.

Sources believe Bowers arrived in New York with the gun on Friday, and was carrying the piece and a clip with eight rounds in a carry-on bag.

“The two of them were in the same bag, under the law it’s considered a loaded gun,” the source said.

Bowers, a Tampa resident, was boarding a flight to North Carolina, with his unidentified girlfriend, who lives in Raleigh.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Da'Quan Bowers at practice for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The former Clemson All-American was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and was awaiting arraignment.

Bowers, 22, a South Carolina native, just completed his second NFL season in 2012.

For his career he has 38 tackles and 4.5 quarterback sacks.

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Open English expands across Latin America

Back in 2008, Open English, a company run from Miami that uses online courses to teach English in Latin America, had just a handful of students in Venezuela and three employees. Today the company has more than 50,000 students in 22 Latin American countries and some 2,000 employees.

To fund this meteoric expansion, the founders of Open English — Venezuelans Andrés Moreno and Wilmer Sarmiento and Moreno’s American wife, Nicolette — began with $700. Over the last six years, the partners have raised more than $55 million, mostly from private investment and venture capital firms.

Their formula for success? The founders rejected traditional English teaching methods in physical classrooms and developed a system that allows students to tune into live classes every hour of the day from their computers at home, in the office or at school, and learn from native English-speaking teachers who may be based anywhere. Courses stress practical conversations online and the company guarantees fluency after a one-year course, offering six additional months free if students fail to become fluent.

“We wanted to change the way people learn English,” said Andrés Moreno, the 30-year-old co-founder and CEO, who halted his training as a mechanical engineer and worked full-time at developing the company with his partners. “And we want students to achieve fluency. Traditionally, students have to drive to an English academy, waste time in traffic, and try to learn from a teacher who is not an native English speaker in a class with 20 students.”

Using the Internet, Open English offers classes usually with two or three students and a teacher, interactive videos, other learning aids and personal attention from coaches who phone students regularly to see how they are progressing.

Courses cost an average of $750 per year and students can opt for monthly payments. This is about one-fifth to one-third of what traditional schools charge for small classes or individual instructors, Andrés noted.

“We work at building confidence with our students and encourage them to practice speaking English as much as possible during classes,” said Nicolette Moreno, co-founder and chief product officer, who met Andrés in Venezuela while she was working there on a service project. “Students are taught to actively participate in conversations like a job interview, traveling and talking on a conference call,” said Nicolette, who previously lived in Los Angles, worked with non-profits to create environmentally friendly products and fight poverty in emerging markets, and was head equity trader at an asset management firm. “Students need to speak English in our classes, even though it is sometimes difficult. They learn through immersion.”

Open English has successfully tapped into an enormous, underserved market. Millions of people in Latin America want to learn English to advance in their jobs, work at multinational companies, travel or work overseas and understand the popular music, movies and TV shows they constantly hear in English. Many of them take English courses at public and private schools and learn little if any useful conversational English. While students at private schools for the upper middle class and wealthy often learn foreign languages extremely well from native English-speaking teachers, most people can’t afford these schools or courses designed for one or two students.

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President Obama, Tiger Woods play golf in Florida

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — That was a big-time ringer in President Barack Obama's golfing group Sunday in Florida.

Famous pro golfer Tiger Woods joined the president at the Floridian, a secluded yacht and golf club on the state's Treasure Coast.

The White House says the group also included Jim Crane, the Houston businessman who owns the resort and baseball's Houston Astros and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

Obama is spending the long President's Day weekend at the Floridian and is expected to return to Washington on Monday.

First lady Michelle Obama and daughters, Malia and Sasha, are on an annual ski vacation out West.

On Saturday, Obama received some instruction and played a few holes with Butch Harmon, Woods' former swing coach.

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A Good Day to Die Hard Bruce Willis Takes Over Box Office

Audiences agreed that it was a good weekend to die hard, as the fifth installment of the Die Hard franchise opened strong.

RELATED: New Blu-ray & DVD Releases

A Good Day to Die Hard is expected to pull in $28.2 million over the four-day holiday, beating out last weekend's winner, Identity Thief ($27.6 million), and Safe Haven ($25.4 million.

This weekend is on pace to be the biggest international opening in the history of the 25-year-old Die Hard franchise, as it held the top box office spot in many of the 63 markets where it's been released.

Escape from Planet Earth had a harder time getting off the ground, garnering $20.5 million. Warm Bodies dropped to fifth place with $10.9 million.

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Club cad bloodies Rihanna in bottle attack, after yelling something about Chris Brown: report

Startraksphotos / Splash

Rihanna leaves a London nightclub worse for wear after bottle attack.

Bloody hell: Some lout in London crashed Rihanna's party.

The sultry singer was bloodied after a man threw a bottle at her during a night out at nightclub The Box, apparently enraged because of her decision to get back together with abusive ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, MediaTakeOut.com reported.

Rihanna stumbled and fell into a grate, slicing open her leg. Her assailant yelled something about Brown before hurling the bottle of soft drink Lucozade at the star, the site reported.

Brown infamously beat up Rihanna in 2009, and fans have never forgiven him. Apparently some of that anger has spilled over to Rihanna, after her decision to get back together with the hothead last month.

Brown and Rihanna raised eyebrows at last Sunday's Grammys when they smiled and snuggled throughout the ceremony, four years and a day after he sent her to the hospital on Feb. 8, 2009.

Earlier this month, Brown was accused of faking his way through the community service he got for the attack.

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Small business lending rebounds in South Florida

For years, Pablo Oliveira dreamed of buying a property to house his high-end linen and furniture rental company, Nuage Designs, which has created settings for such glamorous events as the weddings of Carrie Underwood and Chelsea Clinton.

A few months ago, that dream came true, when Oliveira purchased a warehouse across the street from his current Miami location. He is now renovating the loft-like space with the help of a $2.1 million, 25-year small business loan.

“It allows me to own my own space as opposed to renting, and that will decrease my costs for infrastructure and allow me to build equity with time,” said Oliveira, who secured a U.S. Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan from Wells Fargo.

For small businesses like Oliveira’s, a loan can be the critical key to growing a business, as well as the kindling to ignite an operation.

Take Harold Scott’s fledgling Great Scott Security, which manufactures window guards in Hollywood that can open quickly in case of need.

When he was 13, Scott’s stepfather perished in a Georgia house fire because he couldn’t escape through heavy window bars. Scott made it his mission to fix the problem.

“I promised myself I would dedicate all my time to working on a solution,” said Scott, 60.

Now retired from a 23-year career in the U.S. Justice Department, Scott recently secured a $7,500 microloan from Partners for Self Employment. He used it to buy a computer and pay for marketing and other business expenses for his quick-release window guards, which have met national, state and Miami-Dade County fire safety codes.

During the depths of the recession, business owners often griped that gaining access to capital was their biggest hurdle. Saddled with bad loans, many banks were wary of making new ones. At the same time, both the value of collateral and the creditworthiness of many borrowers tumbled.

Now, at last, banks are starting to open their pocketbooks again, experts say, though lending is still not on par with pre-recession levels.

“There is no question that small business borrowing declined as a result of the recession and has yet to recover to pre-crisis levels,” said Richard Brown, chief economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., via email. “According to the Federal Reserve, total loans to noncorporate businesses and farms stood at just under $3.8 trillion in September, which remains below the peak of about $4.1 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2008.”

Signs of Growth

In South Florida, more businesses are applying for loans and getting approvals from banks, according to lenders, officials at government agencies and leaders of organizations that help small business owners secure loans.

“Lenders are expressing a greater interest than they have in the past few years in terms of meeting the needs of the small business community,” said Marjorie Weber, Miami-Dade Chapter Chair of SCORE, which helps business owners put loan packages together and refers them to bankers.

Loan figures are indeed rising. During the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2012, SBA-guaranteed loans were up in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties, according to the SBA. In fiscal 2012, 449 loans were approved in Miami-Dade, totaling $213.3 million, up from 426 loans for $154.4 million in 2011. In Broward, 262 loans for $91.4 million were approved in fiscal 2012, compared to 257 loans for $102.4 million in 2011.

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