Senior-level hires and promotions for the week of Feb. 8, 2021

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Senior-level hires and promotions for the week of Feb. 8, 2021

Angel Doval

ADVERTISING

Jeff Siwak has been named director of client accounts at The Weinbach Group in Miami. He is an adjunct professor at St. Louis University’s College of Public Health and Social Justice. Before joining The Weinbach Group, he worked at BJC Healthcare in Missouri.

LAW

JoLinda Herring, a shareholder in the Miami office of Brant, Miller, Olive (BMO) was named the new CEO and managing shareholder of the firm. She joined BMO as a law clerk in 1994. She began as a practicing attorney with the firm in 1996. Most recently, she served as co-chair of BMO’s Public Finance Group, and as chair of the firm’s board of directors. Her practice areas are in public finance, specializing in state and local government law.

Chad Mizelle has joined Jones Day’s Government Regulation Practice as Of Counsel after serving as the acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security. Before that, he was associate counsel to the president at the White House. Before that, he served at the Department of Justice, as counsel to the deputy attorney general. He will be based in the firm’s Miami and Washington offices.

Sandra M. Ferrera has joined the Day Pitney law firm as a lateral partner in its Coral Gables office. She specializes in real estate law. She started her own law firm in 2015.

Mike Ryan, mayor of the City of Sunrise, has been named a partner in the Fort Lauderdale law firm Freedland Harwin Valori Ryan. He was a partner at Krupnick Campbell Malone Buser Slama Hancock in Fort Lauderdale. In 2010, Ryan was elected mayor of Sunrise and reelected in 2012, 2016 and 2020.

Marlon A. Hill has been named Of Counsel at Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman in Miami. He focuses his practice in the hospitality, tourism, arts and entertainment and technology sectors. Hill serves as U.S. counsel to the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association, the Jamaica Tourist Board, and multinational food manufacturer, GraceKennedy. He was a partner at the law firm of Hamilton, Miller & Birthisel.

HOSPITAL

Helenemarie Blake has been named vice president and chief compliance and privacy officer at Nicklaus Children’s Health System in Miami. She was data privacy officer and chief privacy and data integrity officer for the University of Miami Health System.

REAL ESTATE

David Purisch has been promoted from associate director to senior director of capital markets at Marcus & Millichap Capital Corp., a commercial real estate financing firm in Fort Lauderdale. Before joining Marcus & Millichap, he was an asset manager at Bayview Financial.

Saglo Development Corporation, a commercial real estate development firm in Miami, has named Zack Barron chief financial officer. He most recently served as vice president of budgeting and reporting at Mack Property Management.

Victor Santana has been promoted to senior vice president at Urban-X Group in Miami. He had been the firm’s vice president of design. Before joining Urban-X in 2018, he was principal at VMS Architecture & Development.

Latest Stories

  • Don Jr complains about Super Bowl ads, calling them ‘woketopia’ after first commercial

    Twitter users advised that he should turn off his TV if he was 'triggered'

  • Trump administration’s handling of the Covid ‘even more dire than we thought’, says Biden

    Joe Biden rounded on his predecessor’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, saying “it was even more dire than we thought”. In his first major interview since becoming president, Mr Biden told CBS news anchor, Norah O’Donnell, the country faced a challenge to reach herd immunity before the end of the summer. The US president said the rate of vaccination had to be accelerated to meet the target of 75 per cent of Americans getting the jab set by infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. Mr Biden said his administration had been led to believe there was far more vaccine available than turned out. “So that’s why we’ve ramped up every way we can,” he added. The new administration is using the Defence Production Act to get companies to boost production of vaccine and protective equipment.

  • Democrats to unveil $3,000 direct cash payments to families with children

    Democrats will introduce a proposal attached to the next stimulus package that would provide $3,000-per-child direct payments in certain households.Why it matters: The new legislation, led by Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), comes shortly after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) introduced a similar proposal, lending bipartisan support to expanding cash benefits for families with children.Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.The Biden Administration has reviewed and supports the proposal, according to the Washington Post who first reported the plan. The legislative proposal, reviewed by Axios, will be revealed Monday along with other Ways and Means provisions. The IRS would begin depositing payments into bank accounts July 1.The payments would come in monthly installments.Qualifying household incomes would be based on the previous year with lower payouts for individuals making $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for those filing jointly.Eligible households with children 17 to 6 could receive payments of $3,000 for each child and $3,600 for children under 6.What they're saying: “The pandemic is driving families deeper and deeper into poverty, and it’s devastating, Rep. Ritchie Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. "We are making the Child Tax Credit more generous, more accessible, and by paying it out monthly, this money is going to be the difference in a roof over someone’s head or food on their table," he said.Be smart: sign up FREE for the most influential newsletter in America.

  • House impeachment managers, Capitol riot defense lawyers, federal prosecutors agree Trump is culpable

    The House impeachment managers in former President Donald Trump's imminent Senate trial, federal prosecutors charging more than 185 people who participated in the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, and lawyers defending those suspects appear to agree that Trump bears singular responsibility for instigating the assault. If 17 Republican senators agree and vote to convict Trump of "incitement of insurrection," the former president will stand convicted and likely be barred from holding federal office again. The trial starts this week. Trump's lawyers have indicated that they plan to argue he merely "exercised his First Amendment right under the Constitution to express his belief that the election results were suspect" — an argument 144 leading First Amendment and constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum called "legally frivolous" — did not tell his supporters to violently attack the Capitol in a fiery speech right before the assault, and cannot be impeached since he is no longer in office. That last argument is popular among Senate Republicans, but top conservative constitutional lawyer Charles Cooper urged them in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed to disregard that flawed, illogical view and "judge the former president's misconduct on the merits." As far as the merits go, federal "court documents show that more than two dozen people charged in the attack specifically cited Trump and his calls to gather that day in describing on social media or in conversations with others why they decided to take action by coming to Washington," The Washington Post reports. "Some defense attorneys have echoed those arguments, saying that those who participated in the attack were doing so at the behest of Trump." "But for the president, they would not have walked down Pennsylvania Avenue," Al Watkins, defending "QAnon shaman" Jacob Chansley, told the Post. "They believed the president was going with them. They thought they were helping the president save our country." A.J. Kramer, chief of the Federal Public Defender's Office for Washington, said he expects numerous attorneys for Capitol rioters to argue that Trump "told them to march up Pennsylvania Avenue, and he'd be leading them, and he's the commander in chief of the military and the nation's top law enforcement officer." You can read more about what Trump and the Capitol insurrectionists said before and during the assault, and preview likely legal arguments, at The Washington Post. More stories from theweek.com5 brutally funny cartoons about America's bungled vaccine rolloutThe growing white supremacist threatHouse Democrats will push to include $250-300 monthly child payments in stimulus bill

  • Australian leader dismisses reports of China-built city

    The Australian prime minister on Monday dismissed as “speculative” reports that a Chinese company plans to build a new industrial island city near Australia’s porous sea border with Papua New Guinea. Hong Kong-registered WYW Holding Ltd. plans to build a $30 billion city that includes a seaport and industrial area on Daru Island in the Torres Strait, Australian media have reported. The reports cite company letters to the Papua New Guinea government from April last year.

  • German intelligence warns Capitol riot, Covid lockdown fuel right-wing extremism

    Agencies have taken a particular interest in Querdenken 711, whose name loosely translates as "thinking outside the box."

  • Teachers 'using Covid pandemic to push pay rise'

    Britain's biggest teaching union was on Sunday night accused of "hijacking" the pandemic to sneak through pay demands at the expense of education. The National Education Union (NEU) is including pay rises in "key demands" and bosses have said that any reduction in class sizes should be "long-term" - not just for social distancing. Union leaders have congratulated their members for closing down schools, claiming that it was their threats to not turn up to class, as opposed to the scientific data, which led to Boris Johnson ordering that children should stay at home last month. NEU bosses described the pandemic as a "turning point" in the power of teachers over the Government, but MPs say the union is "playing politics" and "hijacking the pandemic". NEU officials want to return to schools when it is safe, but have rejected the Government's proposals at every turn. They recently claimed that vaccinating teachers would not be enough to get back to the classroom. Since the schools have closed they have said that it is an "unrealistic expectation" for teachers to do every lesson as a livestream. But their requests go beyond health and safety and workload. In a "Covid bulletin" to reps, the NEU on Monday sets out "key demands for all workplaces". The five demands are risk assessments, an end to work assessments during the pandemic, extra time to plan, prepare and assess students' work, and an agreed pay progression. Reps are told to "secure a commitment to automatic pay progression at the end of this academic year. Where possible, win a commitment for this policy to be permanent". But Tim Loughton, former minister for children and families, said that a long-term demand for pay increases should not be included in demands.

  • 9 dead, 140 missing after glacier breaks and triggers flooding in India

    At least nine people are dead and 140 missing after part of a glacier in the Himalayas broke off on Sunday, causing water, debris, boulders, and mud to surge down into villages in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. More than 2,000 people are part of the search and rescue effort, trying to get to villagers who are under the debris. A hydroelectric plant was destroyed while another that was under construction was damaged; authorities said 12 workers at the site have been rescued and 30 remain trapped. Dinesh Negi lives in the village of Raini, and told The Associated Press that when a piece of the Nanda Devi glacier snapped off on Sunday morning, "We heard a bang, which shook our village. We knew something wrong had happened. We could see the fury of the river." Water trapped inside the glacier was released when it cracked open. Anjal Prakash, research director and adjunct professor at the Indian School of Business, has worked with the United Nations to study global warming, and told AP this "looks very much like a climate change event as the glaciers are melting due to global warming." More stories from theweek.com5 brutally funny cartoons about America's bungled vaccine rolloutThe growing white supremacist threatHouse Democrats will push to include $250-300 monthly child payments in stimulus bill

  • U.S. Treasury's Yellen: Americans earning $60,000 should get stimulus checks

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday that American workers who earn $60,000 per year should receive stimulus checks as part of the White House's proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. "The exact details of how it should be targeted are to be determined, but struggling middle class families need help," Yellen said on CNN’s "State of the Union." The White House has said it is open to negotiation on who should be eligible to receive the proposed $1,400 checks, and has declined to specify where it thinks the income cutoff should be.

  • Uttarakhand glacier disaster: Eighteen dead after India glacier bursts dam

    A piece of a Himalayan glacier had fallen into a river, bursting open a dam in northern India.

  • Middle-aged people who put on weight may live longer than those who stay 'normal' weight

    Middle-aged people who put on weight live longer than those who remain in healthy shape throughout their lives, according to a new study. Scientists say that while people who remain obese from childhood into adulthood were most at risk of dying, modest weight gains throughout a lifespan can increase the "probability of survival”. Experts said individuals who put on weight in later life often lived longer than those who remained trim. The findings were made following a study based on two generations of Americans followed over nearly seven decades. Obesity campaigners cautioned the results should not be seen as a green light to "let yourself go" when reaching middle-age but added there was evidence gaining weight can be useful in protecting against fatal diseases. Prof Hui Zheng, a sociologist at The Ohio State University, said: "The main message is for those who start at a normal weight in early adulthood, gaining a modest amount of weight throughout life and entering the overweight category in later adulthood can actually increase the probability of survival.” Prof Zheng and colleagues analysed 8,329 participants in the Framingham Heart Study - 4,576 parents and 3,753 of their children. Residents of the Massachusetts town have been tracked since 1948. The parents were followed until 2010 and the children from 1971 until 2014.

  • Trump’s Tax Cuts Made the Tax Code More Progressive

    Leading Democratic politicians such as Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and President Joe Biden have frequently complained that the Trump tax cuts were nothing more than a giveaway to the 1 percent, further rigging the tax code for those at the top. But the biggest unreported fact about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is that it actually made the tax code more progressive. Indeed, recent data published from the Internal Revenue Service find that the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent of filers increased under the first year of the TCJA, while the share of taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of filers decreased. These findings come straight from an IRS report that breaks down the tax share of income earners for tax-year 2018 — the first year of taxes filed under the new provisions. Among its changes, the TCJA lowered tax rates, nearly doubled the standard deduction, and expanded the child tax credit. The IRS data show that the top 1 percent of filers, those with adjusted gross income of $540,009 or higher, paid 40.1 percent of all income taxes. This amount is nearly twice as much as their income share. Despite the rate reductions under the TCJA, the tax share of the top 1 percent increased compared to 2017. In fact, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation has compiled historical IRS data tracking the distribution of the federal income tax burden back to 1980, and 2018 was the highest share recorded over that period. The top 10 percent of filers, those with adjusted gross income of $151,935 or higher, paid over 71 percent of all income taxes. This was also the highest share recorded in the data available since 1980. The lower half of earners, with adjusted gross incomes of less than $43,614, owed 2.9 percent of all taxes. This was a decrease from the 3.1 percent recorded in 2017. The lowest share was recorded in 2010, during the recession, at 2.4 percent. Similarly, between 2017 and 2018 the number of filers with no income-tax liability increased by 2.6 percent to 34.7 percent. The number of nontaxable returns is often related to the economy: As employment decreases and income falls, the number of filers facing no income taxes tends to increase, and vice versa. While 2018 saw a strong economy that would ordinarily increase the number of individuals with income-tax burdens, the TCJA removed additional people from income-tax rolls by increasing the standard deduction and expanding refundable credits. We now have a tax code that increasingly shields low-income earners from any income-tax liability and requires that individuals pay an increasing share of taxes as they move up the income ladder. To illustrate just how much the progressivity of the tax code has increased over the past 40 years, consider that in 1980 the top 1 percent of earners bore 19 percent of income taxes, the top 10 percent of earners bore nearly half of income taxes, and the bottom 50 percent paid 7 percent. That’s twice as much as today. Nevertheless, various politicians and pundits continue to assail the tax-reform law as a regressive giveaway to those who “aren’t paying their fair share.” But again, under the TCJA, the wealthy are paying a larger share of income taxes than at any point over the past four decades, even though the top marginal rate dropped from 70 percent in 1980 to 37 percent in 2018. The distribution of income taxes will doubtless be at the center of debates over tax policy in the new year. While campaigning, Joe Biden released a tax plan that would increase the top rate back to 39.6 percent and hike corporate tax rates, capital gains, and payroll taxes. Other Democrats such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) advocate a top income tax rate of 70 percent or more. This new IRS data make clear that the TCJA ushered in a significant overall reduction in tax burdens that in fact made the code more progressive, not less. Congress would be wise to remember that when discussing future tax-reform efforts.

  • Fort Hood Restricts Base Access After Shooting Incident

    Army officials at Fort Hood, Texas tightened the base's gate security to restrict access after an on-base shooting early Saturday morning.

  • 117 inmates take over section of downtown St. Louis jail

    The incident began after a "defiant" inmate got into a fight with a corrections officer and other prisoners jumped in, officials said.

  • Conjoined Yemeni twins flown to Amman for surgery

    Conjoined Yemeni twins Mohamed and Ahmed took off on a UNICEF plane on Saturday to undergo a lifesaving separation surgery in Amman in Jordan.The surgery is crucial to save the lives of the newborns.Their father Yasser al-Bakheity said it could not be carried out in Yemen due to the limited resources of the country's ailing healthcare system.The twins were born on December 17, conjoined by the rib cage and stomach.Unicef's representative to Yemen is Philippe Duhamel. "When the al-Sabeen hospital and the Ministry of Health informed UNICEF about the situation and asked for assistance, we immediately started mobilizing the UNICEF network to make sure that we would identify a hospital where the children could be properly treated."Yemen has been gripped by war for 6 years between the Saudi-led alliance and Iran-aligned Houthis, creating what the U.N. calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

  • Donald Trump's campaign to overturn election cost taxpayers $500m

    Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the presidential election has left US taxpayers with a bill topping half a billion dollars. According to the Washington Post, at least $488 million has been spent by the federal government and another $28 million by states in dealing with the January 6 insurrection and stepping up security in the aftermath. The avalanche of unsuccessful court cases brought by the “Stop the Steal” campaign has also run up a legal bill exceeding $2.2 million. An estimated 25,000 troops were deployed in Washington DC after the uprising, which claimed five lives. With plans in place to maintain the security measures until mid-March, the bill is likely to increase further. Local measures were taken elsewhere in the country amid fears that Trump supporters were planning more protests. The "ring of steel" will be in place this week as the Senate embarks on Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial on Tuesday. The former president is accused of inciting insurrection. Bruce Castor, who will lead Mr Trump’s defence team, said Democrats were not blamed for rioting during the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, despite speaking in support of them. “But here, when you have the president of the United States give a speech and says that you should peacefully make your thinking known to the people in Congress, he's all of a sudden a villain," he said. Mr Trump is accused of whipping his supporters into a frenzy with claims of election fraud before they stormed the Capitol. But one of the former president’s most loyal supporters, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, said it was for history to judge Mr Trump’s role in the riots – not the Senate. "I think I'm ready to move on, I'm ready to end the impeachment trial because I think it's blatantly unconstitutional," he said on Face the Nation. "As to Donald Trump, he is the most popular figure in the Republican Party. He had a consequential presidency. January 6 was a very bad day for America, and he'll get his share of blame in history." Meanwhile Liz Cheney, the senior Republican congresswoman who was censured by her party for backing impeachment, defended her stance. “We are the party of Lincoln, we are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust-deniers or white supremacy or conspiracy theories. That's not who we are,” she said on Fox News Sunday.

  • Does ignoring robocalls make them stop? Here's what we learned from getting 1.5 million calls on 66,000 phone lines

    New research aims to give phone companies tools to help curb robocalls. Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty ImagesThe Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea More than 80% of robocalls come from fake numbers – and answering these calls or not has no effect on how many more you’ll get. Those are two key findings of an 11-month study into unsolicited phone calls that we conducted from February 2019 to January 2020. To better understand how these unwanted callers operate, we monitored every phone call received to over 66,000 phone lines in our telephone security lab, the Robocall Observatory at North Carolina State University. We received 1.48 million unsolicited phone calls over the course of the study. Some of these calls we answered, while others we let ring. Contrary to popular wisdom, we found that answering calls makes no difference in the number of robocalls received by a phone number. The weekly volume of robocalls remained constant throughout the study. As part of our study, we also developed the first method to identify robocalling campaigns responsible for a large number of these annoying, illegal and fraudulent robocalls. The main types of robocalling campaigns were about student loans, health insurance, Google business listings, general financial fraud, and a long-running Social Security scam. Using these techniques, we learned that more than 80% of calls from an average robocalling campaign use fake or short-lived phone numbers to place their unwanted calls. Using these phone numbers, perpetrators deceive their victims and make it much more difficult to identify and prosecute unlawful robocallers. We also saw that some fraudulent robocalling operations impersonated government agencies for many months without detection. They used messages in English and Mandarin and threatened the victims with dire consequences. These messages target vulnerable populations, including immigrants and seniors. Why it matters Providers can identify the true source of a call using a time-consuming, manual process called traceback. Today, there are too many robocalls for traceback to be a practical solution for every call. Our robocalling campaign identification technique is not just a powerful research tool. It can also be used by service providers to identify large-scale robocalling operations. Using our methods, providers need to investigate only a small number of calls for each robocalling campaign. By targeting the source of abusive robocalls, service providers can block or shut down these operations and protect their subscribers from scams and unlawful telemarketing. What still isn’t known Providers are deploying a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN, which may prevent robocallers from spoofing their phone numbers. When deployed, it will simplify traceback for calls, but it won’t work for providers who use older technology. Robocallers also quickly adapt to new situations, so they may find a way around STIR/SHAKEN. No one knows how robocallers interact with their victims and how often they change their strategies. For example, a rising number of robocalls and scammers are now using COVID-19 as a premise to defraud people. What’s next Over the coming years, we will continue our research on robocalls. We will study whether STIR/SHAKEN reduces robocalls. We’re also developing techniques to better identify, understand, and help providers and law enforcement target robocalling operations.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Sathvik Prasad, North Carolina State University and Bradley Reaves, North Carolina State University. Read more:Robocalls are unstoppable – 3 questions answered about why your phone won’t quit ringingRise and fall of the landline: 143 years of telephones becoming more accessible – and smartWhy are there so many suckers? A neuropsychologist explains Sathvik Prasad is a member of the USENIX association.Bradley Reaves receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. This research was supported by in-kind donations from Bandwidth and NomoRobo. Reaves is a member of the Communications Fraud Control Association, ACM, IEEE, and the USENIX association.

  • Midwest battered by brutal subzero temperatures as second winter storm sweeps U.S.

    Temperatures have fallen below zero, and wind chills in the Upper Plains could drop as low as minus 50 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

  • General behind Myanmar's bloodless coup plots future without Aung San Suu Kyi

    In the days after Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted in an early morning coup, the wide modern boulevards of the country’s Potemkin capital Naypyitaw remained silent and empty. A few military roadblocks and patrolling armoured vehicles were the only sign of the sudden army takeover that threatened to wipe out the country’s recent democratic progress in one audacious swoop. On Wednesday, carefully orchestrated television footage showed a diminutive figure in military uniform conducting government business from a golden, throne-like armchair. Those searching for motives behind the Monday morning putsch that imprisoned Ms Suu Kyi and plunged Myanmar back towards oppressive junta rule need look no further than the service ribbons on the chest of General Min Aung Hlaing. The authoritarian general who is accused of overseeing an ethnic cleansing operation against the Muslim Rohingya minority is now at the centre of power in the former British colony that, until recently, projected such hope in its fledgling attempts establish democracy. Experts say the timing of the coup lies in Min Aung Hlaing’s ruthless personal quest for power and the military’s deep paranoia that the popular civilian government could erode the unrivalled political dominance it has enjoyed for decades.

  • Chinese-Australian reporter accused of spreading secrets

    China has formally arrested a Chinese-born Australian journalist for CGTN, the English-language channel of China Central Television, on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas, Australia’s foreign minister said Monday. The arrest of Cheng Lei last Friday starts an official criminal investigation and came six months after she was detained. “The Australian government has raised its serious concerns about Ms. Cheng’s detention regularly at senior levels, including about her welfare and conditions of detention,” Foreign Minister Marise Payne said.