MIAMI BEACH — This small city is accustomed to big events. But every Urban Beach Week, residents and businesses take in a collective deep breath and do not exhale until it’s over.

Since 2001, hundreds of thousands of young hip-hop devotees from around the country have descended on the South Beach neighborhood for Memorial Dayweekend to hear some of country’s leading artists and D.J.’s. As the visitors converge, a reverse migration ensues: Rresidents, beaten down by the traffic and chaos of the event, hop in their cars en masse and head to the mainland for a few days.

“There is no other weekend of group activity that causes the mayhem that this weekend causes,” said Scott Diffenderfer, a Miami Beach resident and real estate broker.

During its best-behaved years, Memorial Day weekend goes relatively smoothly here; 200,000 to 300,000 visitors pour into private clubs to hear performers like Flo Rida and Twista and gather on the streets to hang out.

On its worst years, fights break out, punctuated by bursts of gunfire and stampedes. Last year, the police fired more than 100 bullets at the driver of a car they claimed was armed, killing him and injuring four bystanders. By weekend’s end, 431 people had been arrested, 56 more than in 2010.

Billed by promoters and social media as a weekend of hip-hop revelry, the loosely organized event draws a mostly black crowd. The city does not sponsor the event and there is no one organizer; instead, it is a weekend of rolling performances in private venues that make events difficult to control.

After last year’s shooting and the outrage that followed, leaders toyed with the idea of cutting back drinking hours or imposing a curfew; both were deemed unworkable. Plans to make it a city-sanctioned organized event fizzled.

Instead, the city and the Police Department are stepping up law enforcement this year and taking a tougher stance on minor infractions. The police are putting up more watch towers to observe Ocean Drive, closing lanes on the causeways leading to Miami Beach and using license plate readers to check for outstanding warrants, stolen cars and suspended licenses. The idea is to stop the offenders before they arrive on South Beach. Nearly 600 officers will be working; plans call for one on every corner.

“This year we can’t give many breaks to people because we can’t let the problem get bigger” said Sgt. Bobby Hernandez, spokesman for the Miami Beach police.

City leaders said that the violence is not fueled by race but by the size of the crowd, its youth, and a contingent of South Florida criminals who make a yearly pilgrimage. The police said that most of the arrests are of local men who drive in, not fly. Their presence spurs others to bring guns for protection. But Ed Tobin, a Miami Beach city commissioner, said that “90 percent of the people are coming here to have fun.”

Luther Campbell, a record label owner and a columnist for Miami New Times who grew up on Miami Beach and is critical of the event, said the city should change the reputation of the weekend by creating a festival with food tastings and performers like Mary J. Blige. Instead, he said, they take in the revenue from the 300,000 who come to watch gangsta rappers perform in clubs that can accommodate only a tiny slice of the visitors and then must “create a police state” to deal with the crowd. The mayor of Miami Beach and several city commissioners did not return phone calls to comment.

With the exception of several nightclubs and limousine companies, many business owners on South Beach gird themselves for the event. A few are shutting down altogether this year; others are making changes.

Jerry’s Famous Deli, a 24-hour restaurant, is opening only at night, with a limited menu and a cover charge for alcohol. This will bring in enough money to pay for security. Last year a melee broke out, and employees hustled out the knife-wielding brawlers. The restaurant then shut down for two days.

“We had a small riot,” said Jason Starkman, the owner. “I can’t take that risk anymore with my staff.”

A few blocks away at Mango’s Tropical Cafe on Ocean Drive, a popular club and cabaret, David Wallack, the owner, said that after last year’s event his staff voted overwhelmingly to close this weekend. Mango’s decided to remain open but Mr. Wallack has removed the sidewalk cafe to protect customers; a shuttle bus will ferry employees to their cars because last year several were robbed of their tips.

Worse still, Mr. Wallack said the event chased away other customers and was a financial loss for the cafe.

“The statement that ‘Oh, but look at all the money it brings into the city’ is simply not true,” he added.

A few of hip-hop's brightest stars will party it up tonight when MTV2's "Hip Hop Squares" premieres at 11 p.m. ET/PT. Expect to catch personalities like 2 Chainz, Common, Mac Miller, Machine Gun Kelly and DJ Khaled on the new show. 'Hip Hop Squares,' I ain't gonna lie, it's gonna be the best game show," DJ Khaled told MTV News when he gave us a tour of the set. "Especially because it's representing hip-hop, but it's real exciting. If I wasn't even on it, I'd be watching it myself."
If "Squares" looks familiar to you, then you may remember its predecessor, the iconic tic-tac-toe game show "Hollywood Squares." In the new remixed version of the show, rap personalities like Mac Miller, Fat Joe, Ghostface Killah and 2 Chainz all answer trivia questions helping contestants win cash prizes.
"Tic-tac-toe, answering questions — I think it's a cool game, especially to incorporate hip-hop in it," 2 Chainz told MTV News.
Asher Roth remembers the original show well. In fact, it was those childhood memories that factored into his decision to participate in this new incarnation. "When I was younger, yeah, I definitely used to check out the 'Hollywood Squares.' It was just fun," he said. "I think that was the thing that attracted me to 'Hip Hop Squares'... it's just laid-back, it's chill. I mean I get to sip on a beer while I answer questions right."
"Just getting to experience it was a lot of fun," Common added.
Fat Joe believes the new show, which is hosted by New York radio DJ Peter Rosenberg, helps solidify rap's place in American pop culture. "Doing hip-hop trivia, this just pushes it one step further for hip-hop to be solidified as American culture," he said. "This is the first time throughout my whole career when I seen my name, I said, 'Wow I made it.' "

China, Russia, Brazil, India and other UN members are backing a proposal to hand over regulation of the internet to the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The House of Representatives will vote on the measure this week. It is reported that the legislation faces an uphill battle.

The proposal would give the United Nations control over cybersecurity, data privacy, technical standards and the web address system. The present system is operated by a “multi-stakeholder” approach that gives control to nonprofits instead of governments.

Larry Strickling, who heads up the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, told The Hill the measure would impose “top-down regulation where it’s really the governments that are at the table, but the rest of the stakeholders aren’t.”

Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio said earlier this month that China and Russia are “not exactly bastions of Internet freedom.” Mitt Romney is considering Rubio as his vice president choice.

Google helped China build an internet firewall that censors what goes in and out of the country. Russia has imposed laws requiring ISPs to implement technology that identifies, tracks and punishes dissidents.

In 2011, then-Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin announced his support for an internet takeover by the United Nations and backed the International Telecommunication Union, at the time a little known organization. It is a specialized agency of the United Nations, an extension of the International Telegraph Union established in 1865.

Following Putin’s announcement, a number of authoritarian countries created a document entitled “The International Code of Conduct for Information Security” and submitted it to the United Nations in September 2011.

In April, H.R. 628 was introduced in response to the ITU. The bill states that “it is the sense of the House of Representatives that if a resolution calling for endorsement of the proposed international code of conduct for information security or a resolution inconsistent with the principles above comes up for a vote in the United Nations General Assembly or other international organization, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations or the United States representative to such other international organization should oppose such a resolution.”

The resolution was referred to committee on April 19, 2012, and has a 28% of passage, according to Govtrack.us, a website that posts information on bills introduced to Congress.