Needle reaches the inner groove for Spec’s




















In the end, even the almighty Adele and Taylor Swift could not hold back the inevitable.

Spec’s, one of the last great record stores, will close its flagship location in Coral Gables on U.S.1, thus joining once-favored chains like Virgin, Tower and Peaches, locally and abroad, that have withered from Internet shopping.

With the closing, sometime in January after the merchandise is liquidated, 64 years of history becomes memory for countless people who discovered a love of music in the home Martin “Mike” Spector built in 1948 when U.S.1 was but a two-lane road.





The original store, which sold cameras alongside 78-rpm records, was a few blocks south on the highway in South Miami and is now an Einstein’s bagel spot. The present location, opened in 1953 in Coral Gables, lived through the bobby sox era, Beatlemania, disco, punk, hip hop/rap, grunge, electronic dance music and all the format changes including 12-inch vinyl, 45-rpm, reel to reel, 8-track, cassette, compact disc and mp3.

After the first music industry recession in the late 1970s, Spec’s still managed to double in size by breaking through the walls of two restaurants in 1980 on its north side. The original room on the south side of the building would house, first, Spec’s’ VHS movie rentals and sales — Saturday Night at Spec’s! — and, later, one of the most expansive collections of classical music in town.

“It’s the soundtrack of our lives,” said store manager Lennie Rohrbacher, who spent 23 years of his life working at Spec’s, from Clearwater to Coral Gables

Music sales

At its peak, the Spec’s chain grew to some 80 stores in Florida and Puerto Rico. In 1993, annual sales exceeded $70 million. Spec’s went public in 1985 and, in 1998, the Spectors sold to Camelot Music Group, which was acquired by Trans World Entertainment Corp.

Trans World, which did not return several telephone messages, shrewdly kept the Spec’s name attached to the flagship store as goodwill even though, technically, it operated under the company’s retail subsidiary, F.Y.E. (For Your Entertainment).

But those are the cold, hard business facts.

Spec’s was “not like another Eckerd’s,” a drug store chain that also slipped into oblivion amid changing times, said Rohrbacher. “This was part of the community, part of my life. It’s not another store going under.”

Indeed, Spec’s was, first and foremost, a community gathering spot to share a love of music. In the ‘70s and ‘80s Spec’s resembled a makeshift camp site where people would sleep overnight in the parking lot to get the best shot at concert tickets in a pre-Internet world. Spec’s, a hop-skip from the University of Miami’s music school, served as its own music education outlet thanks to a knowledgeable sales staff.

Music education

“The proximity to the UM is prime real estate. Not to have it there will really be different. Even if they didn’t have what I was looking for, the staff was knowledgeable and you were sort of tapping into this knowledge base of people who could turn you on to new music. That’s what I’ll miss about it and the community around the store,” said Margot Winick, an employee at the Coral Gables Spec’s in the mid-1980s when she was a freshman at the UM.





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America’s Next Top Model brings its fierce style to Lauderdale




















South Florida’s fiercest braved the rain Saturday for a chance to become America’s Next Top Model.

The CW network reality TV show hosted auditions at the Fort Lauderdale Art Institute, and for the first time welcomed male models to try out.

Miami Gardens resident Gregory Boudreaux, 24, was there with his best asset: his hair. His 6-inch afro sticks straight up into pointy peaks.





“I usually get casted because of my hair,” said Boudreaux, who works in a retail store setting up displays and has walked in some Miami Beach fashion shows.

Even the makeup artist took notice of his ‘do as she dabbed foundation under Boudreaux’s eyes.

“Your hair, oh my God,” said makeup artist Jude Andam. “It’s so angular. It looks... not real.”

More than 300 gorgeous guys and gals auditioned in Fort Lauderdale with the goal to land a spot on the show, created and hosted by supermodel Tyra Banks. On the show, in its 20th cycle, supermodel wanna-bes live together and compete through photo shoots in exotic locations. Past contestants have lived in New York and Los Angeles, and have traveled as far as China, Brazil and Italy for photo shoots.

One by one, models get booted off the show while the rest move closer to top prize: a modeling feature, $100,000 and partnerships with fashion companies to help launch a top-notch modeling career.

Judges on Saturday were looking for models between the ages 18 to 27. Women under 5’7” and men under 5’10” were cautioned to not apply.

A panel of industry experts will pick their local favorites and recommend them to the casting director. Viewers can also pick their favorite by voting online starting Jan. 7-14. The judges’ and viewers’ picks will be revealed in a spot inside the premiere of TV show Carrie Diaries 8 p.m. on Jan. 14 on SFL-TV, The CW.

Jeslie Mergal got her picture snapped for the viewer’s choice contest. Her nerves began to bubble up as she got closer to her short appearance in front of judges.

“Standing in line, it’s not that bad. But as you get closer, it gets worse and worse,” she admitted.

Mergal grew up in Hialeah but moved to Orlando in elementary school. She made the drive down to Fort Lauderdale with her father for two reasons: to audition for the show, and to celebrate her birthday with her grandmother in Hialeah Gardens. The nursing student turned 21 the same day.

The only thing standing in the way of a carefree birthday lunch with her family was a nerve-wracking stint in front of the judges.

Mergal took to the short, wooden platform that served as a catwalk, and introduced herself.

“Why do you want to be on America’s Next Top Model?” a judge asked.

It’s the same question every contestant gets — Mergal knew that. But up until moment before, she admitted she wasn’t sure how’d she answer.

“I know if you put me on the show, I’m going to win,” she answered to the judges. “I will make it: whether it’s here or somewhere else.”

Then she strutted up and down the short catwalk, and ended with a smile and her hands on her hips.

The whole ordeal — from signing up, to orientation, to hair and makeup, and finally, the audition — took about two hours.

“I can’t wait to get my callback,” Mergal said.

Follow @Cveiga on Twitter.





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We Salute the First Baby Senator






We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:


RELATED: Claire McCaskill and How to Attack the Opponent You’re Rooting For






Here’s our suggestion to improve the (already pretty hilarious) swearing-in process for U.S. Senators: Each new member of Congress must bring a cute baby.


RELATED: Rand Paul Doesn’t Want You to Go to Jail for Smoking Pot


RELATED: Larry David’s Two-Minute Guide to Etiquette


Apparently the BBC has decided to market a line of lunch boxes specifically made for hungry polar bears. They are still working out the kinks: 


RELATED: Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark


RELATED: Bo Obama Stays On Message; Sarah Palin Can See HBO in Her House


The Golden Globes will be bittersweet this year. Don’t get us wrong — we’re really excited to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey entertain us. But we’ll also be also really sad when this thing is over because it means the end of these promos:


And finally, it’s Friday. And it’s time to dance. Enjoy your weekend. 


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Cher Signs Development Deal with Logo

Logo just announced at The Television Critics Association in Pasadena, CA that the network has signed a development deal with the ultimate gay icon, Cher.


AUDIO - Listen to Cher's New Song

The show, which is in its earliest stages of development, would mark Cher's first regular TV gig since The Sonny and Cher Show ended in 1977.

While this could change before the show hits the air (if it actually does), Cher's Logo show is set to revolve around Hollywood in the 1960s. It's unknown what Cher's on-screen participation will be like at this time. 

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100 years of Grand Central








Grand Central Terminal has been the gateway to the city since it opened to great fanfare at 12:01 Feb. 2, 1913 and the first train left the station — the Boston Express No. 2 — a century ago.

As journalist Sam Roberts explains in his new book, “Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America” (Grand Central Publishing), everything about the terminal is massive, starting from the entrance on 42nd Street. A 13-foot-wide clock, bedecked with the world’s largest display of Tiffany glass, is surrounded by a stunning 48-foot-high limestone sculpture of three mythological figures, Minerva, Mercury and Hercules.





Helayne Seidman



The two most frequently asked questions are: “How do I get out of the building?” and “Where is the bathroom?”






Once inside, a visitor is awed by the 38,000-square-foot concourse, under a celestial ceiling of stars. It is an urban cathedral, New York City’s front door, where, in its first days, red carpets literally were rolled out for train passengers.

And it keeps growing. In 1947, some 65 million passengers arrived and departed from Grand Central, more commonly known as Grand Central Station even though it is a terminus. By 2011, its ridership surpassed 82 million, with Metro-North as the nation’s busiest commuter rail line.

On its hundredth birthday, it is heading toward 100 million commuters.

It took 10 years to build this sprawling 48-acre hub, at the cost of $2 billion in today’s dollar. To lay 67 tracks and build 44 platforms, 3 million cubic yards of earth and rocks had to be excavated.

It’s been ranked by Travel and Leisure magazine as sixth among the world’s most visited attractions.

But its much more than a pretty ediface. The terminal has been the site of ransom demands, mail train robberies and Nazi saboteurs. In “Grand Central,” Roberts explains some of the Terminal’s stories and hidden wonders. A selection:

Let there be light

There are 4,000 bare light bulbs illuminating public areas of the station. When Grand Central opened, most of the city was still lit by gaslight, but the Vanderbilt’s the shipping and railroad magnates who built the station, wanted to boast that it had been wired for electricity. Leaving the bulbs bare was a way to impress the public of its modernity. In 2008, it took six people to switch all the incandescent bulbs to fluorescent.

Nuts!

There are acorns everywhere in the terminal, carved into archways and walls. Because the Vanderbilts had no official family crest, they adopted the acorn as their own, with the motto, “From the little acorn a mighty oak grows.”

A celestial mistake

Gazing up at the station’s ceiling of stars may be heavenly, but upon a closer look the constellations are backwards. An amateur astronomer commuting from New Rochelle in 1913 noticed the stars were in reverse. It’s concave 128-floor high ceiling created a view of the heavens from Aquarius to Cancer in an October sky of 2,500 stars, 59 of them illuminated. Red-faced officials quickly explained that while no mortal had even seen the stars from this vantage point, it actually represented God’s view. Actually, the painters mistakenly looked at the diagram on the floor and copied it from there, rather than holding diagram up at the ceiling.



Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!










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College championship won’t be easy money again




















South Florida hotels should count their blessings from this weekend’s football bookings. The championship crowds won’t come this easily again.

With Notre Dame playing for its first national title in more than 20 years, demand is unusually high for both hotel rooms and tickets for Monday’s championship game against Alabama. The teams have two of the largest fan bases in the country, making this BCS game the biggest sports draw since the 2010 Super Bowl was held in Miami Gardens.

But if this game means an enviable match-up for the tourism industry, it also marks the end of South Florida’s automatic dibs on the championship every four years.





Next year will be the last time that college’s football championship rotates among the four cities that host major bowl games. In its place, college conferences will open up hosting duties to any community willing to bid on the championship game — a process bound to pit South Florida against larger subsidies and better stadiums offered by hungry rivals

“There are a lot of communities in the country that would love to host this event, like the Final Four and like the Super Bowl, ” said Michael Saks, COO of the Orange Bowl Committee, which organizes the BCS game when it comes to Miami Gardens.

This weekend’s BCS turnout should offer a tempting target for cities eager to wrest the game from its rotation among Pasadena, Calif. ( home to the Rose Bowl); Scottsdale, Arizona (Fiesta Bowl); New Orleans (Sugar Bowl); and Miami Gardens.

Turnout for Notre Dame alumni is so strong that organizers have set up a special hospitality tent off South Beach’s Ocean Drive. Notre Dame boosters have about 85 busses ready to bring in fans from as far away as Boca Raton for a 7 p.m. pep rally. “They’re thinking it could be 50,000 people,’’ said Graham Winick, of Miami Beach’s special-events division. “We’ve had multiple phone conversations.”

Alabama has its own pep rally at 4 p.m., but Winick wasn’t worried about that event. With Alabama playing for its third championship in four years, organizers are expecting a strong turn-out from the Crimson Tide but not a swarm.

Tickets for Monday’s game start at about $1,000, but sitting on the Notre Dame side of Sun Life Stadium costs about $500 more, said Michael Lipman, owner of the Tickets of America brokerage in Miami.

“The least expensive seats are being bought up by Alabama,’’ he said. “The lower bowl is going to have more Notre Dame fans, and the upper bowl is going to have more Alabama fans.”

Stubhub.com, the top ticket reselling site, said the BCS game is its best-selling event ever in terms of total sales volume. The average BCS ticket was going for $1,800 on the site midweek, up from the $1,200 price tag for the last two BCS games in 2012 and 2011, spokeswoman Shannon Barbara said.

At the Loews hotel in Miami Beach, all but a few of the 790 rooms are booked this weekend. The hotel’s eight poolside cabanas were also booked up at about $600 a day, giving guests access to the two-story apartments with showers, televisions and the option to order some fan-themed indulgences.

Fighting Irish supporters can drink a Pickled Irishman (Jameson’s Irish whisky and pickle juice) and eat Irish Nachos (waffle fries topped with Guinness-braised short ribs.) Fans of the Crimson Tide can order an Alabama Slammer (Southern Comfort, peach schnapps and sour mix) and Roll Tide ribs (soaked in “moonshine sauce.”)





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Lamberti praises agency’s work to reduce hate crimes in last news conference as Broward sheriff




















In his last news conference as Broward’s top cop, Sheriff Al Lamberti praised his agency’s efforts to reduce hate crimes in the county — a finding reflected in the 2011 Hate Crimes in Florida report issued by the state attorney general’s office this week.

But Lamberti, one of the most visible Republican elected officials in Broward, declined to say if he would ever run for office again, or to divulge many details about his plans once he steps down next week.

“Effective Tuesday, I’m going to be back where I was when I started: a citizen of Broward County,’’ said Lamberti, who was first elected sheriff in 2008 but lost to Democratic challenger Scott Israel by about 45,000 votes in November’s general election.





“I sacrificed ... a lot of time with my wife and my son,’’ he said. “So, I’m looking forward to catching up on lost time.’’

A 35-year veteran of the Broward Sheriff’s Office who began his law enforcement career working in the county jail, Lamberti rose through the ranks to be appointed sheriff by then-Gov. Charlie Crist in September 2007.

Broward voters elected Lamberti for an additional four years in 2008, choosing him over Israel, who is a former Fort Lauderdale police officer and North Bay Village police chief.

Lamberti took office at a time when the agency was in desperate need of stability after former Sheriff Ken Jenne went to prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

“I think we steadied the ship and got it going in the right direction,’’ Lamberti said, “and we accomplished a lot.’’

During Lamberti’s tenure, the sheriff took on Broward’s rampant pill mills and pushed to have lawmakers make attacking the homeless a hate crime — an accomplishment for which Lamberti expressed particular pride.

Flanked by local representatives of organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Pride Center and the Broward Coalition for the Homeless, Lamberti spoke Friday of the potent partnerships his agency forged with these groups and elected officials such as former Florida Rep. Ari Porth — who also was in attendance — to enact legislation in 2010 that made attacking the homeless a hate crime.

Lamberti said one of the first things he did as sheriff was to create a Hate Crimes Task Force, in response to annual state reports that found Broward led all Florida counties in hate crimes for several years.

“It has worked wonders,’’ Lamberti said of the task force, which is led by Capt. Richard Wierzbicki, who will be leaving the agency as well.

Ron Gunzburger, who has been named general counsel and senior advisor to the sheriff-elect, said BSO will continue to make it a priority to fight hate crimes.

“Sheriff Israel intends to keep the task force,’’ Gunzburger wrote in an email. “The sheriff sees hate crimes as serious incidents requiring prompt arrests and appropriate prosecutions.’’

Holding copies of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s latest hate crimes report, and another issued by the National Coalition for the Homeless citing Broward as a national leader in preventing hate crimes against the homeless, Lamberti presented them as evidence of the task force’s effectiveness.





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The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault






So there’s a reading gadget and a reading gadget with Angry Birds Star Wars. Which do you pick? Well, you, cultured person that you are, would select the dedicated e-reader, of course, just like you would rather watch Frontline instead of Honey Boo Boo, or pick up Vanity Fair instead of Us Weekly on the checkout line. Or at least that’s what the ideal version of yourself would do. But as Amazon and Barnes & Noble are quickly discovering this year, the highbrow ideal all too often gives way to the mass-market realities. Sales of the Kindle and especially the Nook fell this holiday season, despite lower prices than more fully functioning tablets, which are distinctly on the rise. And market researchers estimate that these divergent paths will continue — The Wall Street Journal reports that e-readers sales will be cut in half, from 14.9 million per year to just 7.8 million, by 2015. But the death of the e-reader has less to do with the iPad than what’s inside of it: from tablets to TV shows and everything in between, the most high-minded of ideas for cultural consumption always seem to devolve toward mindless entertainment.


RELATED: Gordon Brown Predicts the Future; Cormac McCarthy Doesn’t Tweet






Take Bravo, the once completely enlightened — and completely failing — network that, like Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel before they became A&E and TLC, once devoted itself to being a slightly less boring knockoff of PBS. In 1985, five years after its founding, The New York Times‘s Steve Schneider described Bravo’s success, measured then by its 350,000 subscribers, as follows: 



What has kept things afloat for the past five years has been an evolving mix of cultural programming. Nowadays, a spokesman said, approximately 70 percent of the premium service’s schedule is devoted to films, nearly all of which are either from abroad, from the fringes of American production or from times past. The remainder of the schedule is given over to the performing arts -jazz concerts, ballet, opera, modern dance and the like. From Woody Allen films to documentaries about Latin America to performances by the Pina Bausch dance troupe, the offerings range from the challenging to the downright esoteric.



All that changed when NBC bought Bravo in 2002 and gave it a makeover almost completely motivated by ratings. It started with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which in its first year delivered 3.3 million viewers per episode. Then came the much acclaimed era of Top Chef and Project Runway, which are still considered highbrow in their own way, but only in the context of their fellow reality shows like The Real Housewives. And let’s face it: Bravo is pretty much all Housewives all the time. Well, that and a show about Silicon Valley that features no computer programming at all.


RELATED: Barnes & Noble CEO Is Done with Books; 43 Famous Writers Walk into a Cafe


And remember The Learning Channel? It was founded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, along with NASA. Really! Then in came Discovery as the new boss, and with it American Chopper and, eventually, TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, which birthed Honey Boo Boo — not to mention major ratings. Arts & Entertainment has long been a corporate entity, but it gave way from highbrow post-Nickelodeon fare and devolved into, you know, Dog the Bounty Hunter and whatever Gene Simmons is up to these days.


RELATED: The New Kindles We’ll Probably See at Today’s Amazon Event


It’s all a little reminiscent of the days when Us magazine was actually a glossy movie magazine that Hollywood stars loved to pose for. The New York Times started it! Then came a partnership with Disney, and J.Lo, and on and on to the supermarket tabloid you now know as Us Weekly, one of the most successful print publications on Earth.


RELATED: Ebook Juggernaut John Locke Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You


7ba1e  4f7ed729ad329699a488dd5c719abb6c 330x371 The Death of E Readers Is All Your FaultSo, in the slowly dwindling technological world of the e-reader and its advanced brethren, Amazon‘s Kindle is like old-school TLC and the B&N Nook is maybe a little younger and cooler, like Bravo, but still failing; the iPad, however, has Here Comes Honey Boo Boo written all over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with what Amazon and Barnes & Noble were trying to do — a small audience might enjoy a device that has novels and long biographies and maybe some newspapers and little more. But the majority of people these days want to spend their downtime with HBO Go and Netflix apps, with games and email and other ways to relax their entire brains… not just the fancy parts of it. With tablet prices falling to more affordable levels — Amazon sells a Kindle Fire for $ 159 and a Kindle Paperwhite for $ 119 — of course today’s readers are going to choose the thing that helps them go beyond boring old reading. It might not have that easy-on-the eyes screen, but the majority of time spent on tablets isn’t spent reading books but answering emails, reading the news (a shorter reading experience than an entire book), and playing games, according to Pew. Plus, the iPad has its own Kindle app, for those times when you do, after all, feel like indulging in something a bit more highbrow. Because people do, still read a lot of books. They just like doing everything else a lot more. If the death of the e-reader is nigh, maybe the age of the straight-and-narrow, undistracted smartypants isn’t far from ending, either.


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Rare Photo Of Teenage Princess Diana

A never-before-seen photograph featuring the late Princess Diana has been made public in the weeks before the rare pic is set to go up for auction.

The black-and-white snapshot displaying a "not to be published" marking shows a teenage Diana lounging next to an until-now mystery pal, reportedly dating back to 1981.

Pics: Remembering Diana 15 Years After Her Death

"The young man was Adam Russell, the great-grandson of former prime minister Stanley Baldwin," Andrew Morton, Diana's biographer, revealed to the U.K.'s Guardian. Through his investigation, the writer discovered the context of the photograph was not intimate, as it appears at first glance. Apparently the twosome had been injured while skiing and simply kept each other company for the afternoon.

Now that's not to say the young man didn't escape Diana's charms.

Related: Naomi Watts Talks Princess Diana Movie - Exclusive

"Adam was somewhat smitten," adds Morton. "But absolutely nothing happened."

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Cops shoot B'klyn man toting gun








Cops shot a gun-toting man tonight in Brooklyn, police sources said.

The incident occurred at the Cypress Hills housing project in East New York at about 7 p.m., sources added.

The man was struck in the buttocks, the sources said.

The man was taken to Brookdale Hospital and is expected to live, the sources added.











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The return of the cranes: Miami-Dade construction projects on the horizon in 2013




















The cranes are coming back to Miami.

The battered construction industry is going higher in the new year after showing strong signs of life in 2012. Will Miami feel more like Manhattan in a few years? It just might.

So far, there has been more talk than action, fewer shovels in the ground than grand announcements. Even so, construction is underway on a dozen new condominiums in Miami-Dade County — something that seemed beyond the realm of possibility not so long ago.





Commercial building is picking up, too, particularly in Miami’s hot new urban core.

The construction sector, which posted 62 consecutive months of job losses in Miami-Dade as of November 2012, is expected to finally begin adding jobs in 2013.

By far the centerpiece project to date is Brickell CityCentre, a $1.05 billion shopping and mixed-use project that broke ground in June 2012 and will span three blocks just west of Brickell Avenue to the south of the Miami River.

The 5-million-square-foot mega-project by developer Swire Properties will include a department store, luxury shops, restaurants, a hotel, office towers and condominiums. It is expected to be connected with bridges and covered walkways and to cement downtown Miami’s emerging image as a trendy place to work, live and play.

In Brickell alone, three new condominium projects already are under construction: Jorge Perez’s Related Group is building Millecento, a 42-story tower with 382 units, and MyBrickell, a smaller project with 28 stories and 192 units shoehorned onto a 0.4-acre site. Newgard Development Group is building BrickellHouse, a 46-story, 374-unit project.

More building, much more, is coming.

“We’re going to see a lot of cranes popping up in the first and second quarter, and a year from now, we’re going to see cranes all over the skyline,” said Tom Murphy Jr., chairman and CEO of Coastal Construction, a large Miami builder that is involved in various projects, from hotels to condominiums. “I believe we as a community — South Florida, especially Miami — will build more in the next 10 years than we did in the last 15.”

Among a long roster of projects, Coastal was tapped by developer DACRA for a major renovation project in the Design District, which in 2012 marked the arrival of luxury fashion retailers such as Cartier, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Celine, Christian Dior and Prada, adding a new dimension to an area already known for home furnishings and restaurants.

DACRA president and CEO Craig Robins has a broader plan to bring in 40 to 50 luxury brands to the Design District by 2014. The area will have a pedestrian promenade, rooftop gardens and public plazas, in keeping with Miami’s emerging urban scene.

The focus on commercial development in Miami’s urban core, is all about providing more services to cater to the new residents who want everything within walking distance.

Spanish developer Espacio USA will break ground in 2013 on the first phase of a $412 million mixed-use project at 1400 Biscayne Boulevard. Starting with one 103,000-square foot office tower, the project will eventually include retail shops and residential units.

“It’s becoming much more of a New York lifestyle, and we’ll continue to see that,” said Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors in Coral Gables.





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Miami-Dade Marine freed from Mexico jail says inmates threatened to behead him




















Only days after U.S. Marine veteran Jon Hammar was thrown into a Mexican prison for carrying an antique shotgun into the country, gangsters in the jail warned him of his likely fate — beheading.

“They threw every threat in the book at me,” Hammar said Thursday in his first public remarks since his release Dec. 21 after more than four months in prison.

“They’d cut my head off, they told my family,” he said.





The gangsters demanded money to let Hammar, 27, remain alive, and the beheading threat was a scare tactic that harkened back to his tours of duty as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.

Mexican authorities arrested Hammar on Aug. 13 at the Texas-Mexico border when he crossed into Mexico in a motor home with a vintage shotgun that once belonged to his great-grandfather. Authorities slapped weapons charges on him. A traveling companion went free.

Hammar’s ordeal, first brought to light in a McClatchy story on Dec. 6, sparked outrage in the United States, where fellow Marines demanded his release and members of Congress called for a boycott of Mexican tourism.

The outpouring has left Hammar feeling grateful.

“In America, we have people who care,” he said in a telephone interview from his family home in Palmetto Bay.

“I’m really grateful. But at the same time I kind of expected that from Marines,” he said. “Marines don’t just throw each other under the bus. They look after each other.”

Despite his release just days before Christmas, Hammar only now is recovering from a stomach virus and dehydration that required hospitalization that he blames on the conditions he encountered during his incarceration.

When his father received him at the Texas border, the two began the 22-hour drive to Florida to join his mother for the holidays.

Once they got to Lafayette, La., Jon Hammar began developing a fever, and they spent much of a day in a hospital there. He was hospitalized further shortly after arriving in South Florida.

“I think it was just an accumulation, just not being in a good environment,” Hammar said.

After Hammar’s parents complained to the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros of the gangster threats against their son, the younger Hammar was moved out of the general prison population to a loosely guarded cage, where he spent months with his ankle handcuffed to a bed frame.

Once physically separated from the gangster inmates, the threatening phone calls to Hammar’s parents stopped, he said.

The prison where Hammar was kept in Matamoros is notorious for being under the control of the dreaded Los Zetas criminal gang, which has used beheadings and mass killings to instill fear in rivals and protect their drug trafficking and criminal activities.

Hammar said prison inmates controlled the facility, not the guards.

“There was a tattoo artist in there, and he said to me, ‘You can die in this place for nothing,’ ” Hammar said.

Prisoners are “full-blown” mobsters, he said, some of them serving up to triple life sentences.

“I knew not to go around picking fights with anybody,” he said.

Compared to prison guards and judicial employees, however, the gangsters struck Hammar as efficient.

“To me, they were acting more professional than the officials in Mexico. If I needed a translator, and the cartel was talking to me, I had three. But when I’d go to court, they laughed at me when I asked for a translator,” he said.





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Google emerges from FTC probe relatively unscathed






SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has settled a U.S. government probe into its business practices without making any major concessions on how the company runs its Internet search engine, the world’s most influential gateway to digital information and commerce.


Thursday’s agreement with the Federal Trade Commission covers only some of the issues raised in a wide-ranging antitrust investigation that could have culminated in a regulatory crackdown that re-shapes Internet search, advertising and mobile computing.






But the FTC didn’t find any reason to impose radical changes, to the relief of Google and technology trade groups worried about overzealous regulation discouraging future innovation. The resolution disappointed consumer rights groups and Google rivals such as Microsoft Corp., which had lodged complaints with regulators in hopes of legal action that would split up or at least hobble the Internet’s most powerful company.


Google is still trying to settle a similar antitrust probe in Europe. A resolution to that case is expected to come within the next few weeks.


After a 19-month investigation, Google Inc. placated the FTC by agreeing to a consent decree that will require the company to charge “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” prices to license hundreds of patents deemed essential to the operations of mobile phones, tablet computers, laptops and video game players.


The requirement is meant to ensure that Google doesn’t use patents acquired in last year’s $ 12.4 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility to thwart competition from mobile devices running on software other than Google‘s Android system. The products vying against Android include Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Microsoft‘s Windows software.


Google also promised to exclude, upon request, snippets copied from other websites in capsules of key information shown in response to search requests. The company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Nonetheless, even before the settlement, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or “scraping,” of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation in 2011.


In another concession, Google pledged to adjust the online advertising system that generates most of its revenue so marketing campaigns can be more easily managed on rival networks.


Google, though, prevailed in the pivotal part of the investigation, which delved into complaints that the Internet search leader has been highlighting its own services on its influential results page while burying links to competing sites. For instance, requests for directions may turn up Google Maps first, queries for video might point to the company’s own site, YouTube, and searches for merchandise might route users to Google Shopping.


Although the FTC said it uncovered some obvious instances of bias in Google‘s results during the investigation, the agency’s five commissioners unanimously concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to take legal action.


“Undoubtedly, Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers,” said Beth Wilkinson, a former federal prosecutor that the FTC hired to help steer the investigation. “However, the FTC’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors.”


Two consumer rights groups lashed out at the FTC for letting Google off too easily.


“The FTC had a long list of grievances against Google to choose from when deciding if they unfairly used their dominance to crush their competitors, yet they failed to use their authority for the betterment of the marketplace,” said Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute.


John Simpson of frequent Google critic Consumer Watchdog asserted: “The FTC rolled over for Google.”


David Wales, who was the FTC’s antitrust enforcement chief in 2008 and early 2009, said the agency had to balance its desire to prevent a powerful company from trampling the competition against the difficulty of proving wrongdoing in a rapidly changing Internet search market.


“This is a product of the FTC wanting to push the envelope of antitrust enforcement without risking the danger of losing a case in in court,” said Wales, who wasn’t involved with the case and is now a partner at the law firm Jones Day.


FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the outcome “is good for consumers, it is good for competition, it is good for innovation and it is the right thing to do.” Before reaching its conclusion, the FTC reviewed more than 9 million pages of documents submitted by Google and its rivals and grilled top Internet industry executives during sworn depositions.


The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a technology trade group, applauded the FTC for its handling of the high-profile case.


“This was a prudent decision by the FTC that shows that antitrust enforcement, in the hands of responsible regulators, is sufficiently adaptable to the realities of the Internet age,” said Ed Black, the group’s president.


The FTC has previously been criticized for not doing more to curb Google‘s power. Most notably, the FTC signed off on Google‘s $ 3.2 billion purchase of online advertising service DoubleClick in 2008 and its $ 681 million acquisition of mobile ad service AdMob in 2010. Google critics contend those deals gave the company too much control over the pricing of digital ads, which account for the bulk of Google‘s revenue.


If Google breaks any part of the agreement, Leibowitz said the FTC can fine the company up to $ 16,000 per violation. Last year, the FTC determined that Google broke an agreement governing Internet privacy, resulting in a $ 22.5 million fine, though the company didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing.


Google‘s ability to protect its search recipe from government-imposed changes represents a major victory for a company that has always tried to portray itself as force for good. The Mountain View, Calif., company has portrayed its dominant search engine as a free service that is constantly tweaking its formula so that people get the information they desire more quickly and concisely.


“The conclusion is clear: Google‘s services are good for users and good for competition,” David Drummond, Google‘s top lawyer, wrote in a Thursday blog post.


Google‘s tactics also have been extremely lucrative. Although Google has branched into smartphones and many other fields since its founding in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998, Internet search and advertising remains its financial backbone. The intertwined services still generate more than 90 percent of Google‘s revenue, which now exceeds $ 50 billion annually.


Throughout the FTC investigation, Google executives also sought to debunk the notion that the company’s recommendations are the final word on the Internet. They pointed out that consumers easily could go to Microsoft‘s Bing, Yahoo or other services to search for information. “Competition is just a click away,” became as much of a Google mantra as the company’s official motto: “Don’t be evil.”


Microsoft cast the FTC’s investigation as a missed opportunity.


“The FTC’s overall resolution of this matter is weak and — frankly —unusual,” Dave Heiner, Microsoft‘s deputy general counsel, wrote on the company’s blog. “We are concerned that the FTC may not have obtained adequate relief even on the few subjects that Google has agreed to address.”


FairSearch, a group whose membership includes Microsoft, called the FTC’s settlement “disappointing and premature,” given that European regulators might be able to force Google to make more extensive changes.


“The FTC’s inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators,” FairSearch asserted.


Yelp also criticized the FTC’s handling of the case, calling “it a missed opportunity to protect innovation in the Internet economy, and the consumers and businesses that rely upon it.”


Investors had already been anticipating Google would emerge from the inquiry relatively unscathed.


Google‘s stock rose 42 cents Thursday to close at $ 723.67. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., shed 37 cents, or 1.3 percent, to finish at $ 27.25.


In a research note Thursday, Macquarie Securities analyst Benjamin Schachter described the settlement as “the best possible outcome” for Google. “We believe that the terms of the agreement will have very limited negative financial or strategic implications for the company.” Schachter wrote.


___


AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this story.


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Celebrities Who Had Babies Before Marriage

Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson are just some of the stars bucking tradition and having children before they say "I do."

Video- Kim K. Exclusive: Pregnancy is Hard

Tomorrow on ET, we break down the celebrity couples who set to welcome their bundles of joy prior to making it official with their main squeeze.

Also Friday, the world's thinnest woman shares her heartbreaking story.

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Conservatives gone wild









headshot

John Podhoretz





The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.

But in the realm of philosophy, “conservatism” from Thomas Hobbes onward is a worldview dedicated to order and tradition and the proposition that disorder is dangerous and deadly.

Thus, it is the opposite of “conservative” to embrace chaos instead of order. It is the opposite of “conservative” to embrace crisis rather than accept unpleasant realities.





Who’d want his job? John Boehner has an emotional moment after being re-elected as House speaker yesteday.

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Who’d want his job? John Boehner has an emotional moment after being re-elected as House speaker yesteday.





And yet, over the past week, that is exactly what many conservatives have done. They have violated fundamental conservative precepts.

In so doing, they have turned on other conservatives — people who agree with them on substance — and accused them of impurity and corruption for refusing to march their party and their movement over a political cliff.

It wasn’t House Speaker John Boehner who was responsible for a bill raising taxes on individuals and small businesses who earned $400,000 a year or more. That was the doing of President Obama and the Democrats, who had the stronger hand to play.

Boehner agrees with his fellow conservatives that the Obama approach is the wrong one. So does Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But unless they found some kind of common ground to stand on with Democrats, taxes were automatically going to go up on everyone.

They were in a thankless position, and they did their thankless job — and for it they got, you guessed it, no thanks. “Am I in some kind of nightmare, or what?” Boehner said on the House floor as the tax bill was being voted on. Those are not the words of a happy man.

And yet you’d think, from the conduct and rhetoric of many conservatives in the House and outside the House and Senate, that Boehner and McConnell had “caved” willingly.

No, they caved because they had no choice.

What they did was what leaders do — or rather, what leaders of those who are in a losing position do. The best they could.

The problem is that conservatives seem to think there were other choices, other ways, other possibilities — when all those choices, ways and possibilities had been exhausted.

And so many of them are literally embracing chaos. Though they oppose raising taxes, by voting against the tax bill on Tuesday night they effectively voted to raise taxes on 98 percent of Americans.

(To be fair, it’s not just righties who are acting out: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, for one, went way over the edge this week, freaking out at a potential two-week delay in passage of the Sandy relief bills.)

Then came talk that Boehner should be fired as speaker of the House when the time came to vote in the new speaker yesterday afternoon. Yet none of the insurgents was brave enough to stand against him; instead, a bunch of them cast nonsense votes for someone else or refused to vote at all.

In so doing, they came close to handing Boehner a humiliating and entirely destructive defeat — forcing a second ballot and leaving their own party leader critically injured. They seemed to crave disorder.

This is how people who are more comfortable on the margins than in the middle of things behave. This is cannibalism, not political combat. This is unreason, not reason. This is temper, not temperament.

This is anarchism, not conservatism.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com



Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!










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Portion of Macy’s Flagler Street property in downtown Miami sold




















A New York firm bought part of the Macy’s building in downtown Miami and is expected to acquire the rest. The next priority is negotiating a new lease to keep Macy’s as a tenant.

In a deal that could have implications for the future of downtown Miami’s anchor retail tenant, a New York real estate investment firm paid $15.55 million to acquire more than half the property that now houses Macy’s Flagler Street store.

The acquisition by Aetna Realty Group includes the 48,000 square feet of land that was leased to R.W. Burdine in 1917. Until the recent sale, the property was owned by 23 heirs of Richard and Harriet Ashby, who signed the initial 99-year lease with Burdine. The lease expires in 2016.





The Ashby family began taking steps to prepare the property at the intersection of Miami Avenue and Flagler Street for sale nearly four years ago, said Lewis R. Cohen, a GrayRobinson lawyer who represented the Ashby family in the transaction that closed on New Year’s Eve.

Over the years, Macy’s and its predecessor, Burdines, grew the site’s downtown presence well beyond the Ashby land, and the current building now extends another 30,000 square feet of land. Aetna has also made a commitment to purchase the remaining portion of the building, that is currently owned by Macy’s, Cohen said. But that deal hasn’t closed yet.

“That deal is a sure thing,” Cohen said. “They could not have closed with us without having an agreement with Macy’s completely nailed down.”

When Macy’s decided not to purchase the Ashby land itself, the owners soughta third-party that could control both pieces. The reason: Improvements made to the store over the years straddled both properties, such as elevators and escalators starting on one parcel and ending on another.

“Between the engineering difficulties of severing the properties and the legal issues involved, it would have been somewhere between extremely expensive and impossible” for different entities to share control, Cohen said.

Aetna was one of three bidders interested in the site, Cohen said. One of the other players was the Barlington Group, a Miami developer that in 2011 signed a deal with Macy’s to sub-lease 20,000 square feet of empty ground-floor space for a mix of restaurants and cafes.

Macy’s spokesman Jim Sluzewski said this transaction doesn’t impact Macy’s current lease. He declined to comment on any other pending transaction regarding the property the retailer owns in downtown Miami.

“It’s business as usual,” said Sluzewski, who also would not discuss Macy’s long-term plans for downtown Miami beyond the expiration of its lease. The company’s roots in downtown Miami date to 1898, when the first Burdines opened in a nearby downtown location.

Aetna and its local attorneys did not respond to calls Wednesday for comments.

But Cohen said Macy’s is in the process of finalizing a short-term deal with the new owners.

“They intend to stay for at least the foreseeable future,” Cohen said. “For a minimum of five years they’ll be there and possibly longer.”

Downtown scene

Macy’s long-term future on Flagler Street has been in doubt since 2007, when Macy’s Florida then-Chairwoman Julie Greiner took city leaders to task for the deplorable conditions in downtown and threatened that the retailer might leave.





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Heroin deaths creep up statewide as other opiates become too expensive




















Every time her son, Tod, relapsed, Maureen Barrett sat with him all day at a rehab facility, hoping she could save him.

Tod died last spring, after years of abusing opiates — everything from heroin to oxycodone. His death left Barrett, of Davie, to mourn the third child she lost to drugs.

Years earlier, Palm Beach County resident Karen Perry sent her son off to college, not knowing he’d gotten hooked first on oxycodone, and then something cheaper and stronger: heroin.





“At some point, it became expensive to buy prescription pills, so he started buying heroin,” she said, reflecting on her son’s fatal overdose.

Following a statewide war against prescription drug abuse, there are early signs of growing heroin use as an alternative to opiate pills, which are becoming harder and more expensive to get.

In an analysis of drug-related deaths for 2011, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement flagged heroin as one of the year’s most harmful drugs. Heroin deaths statewide increased by 18.8 percent to 62.

Fifteen of those heroin-related deaths happened in Miami — the second-highest number in the state, according to the FDLE report. Orlando was the first with 18 deaths. Fort Lauderdale had three.

Historically, heroin deaths statewide are lower than they have been in the past two decades. Deaths from the drug have been declining since a high of roughly 270 in 2001, according to FDLE data.

Still, experts say the recent increase is worrisome. Miami-Dade drug rehabilitation experts said they have seen a small but definite increase in patients who have switched from oxycodone or other prescription drugs to heroin within the past year.

“When I ask my patients, they say, ‘Yeah, I couldn’t get oxycodone, and now I’m using heroin, four or five bags,’ ” said Dr. Patricia Junquera, a University of Miami assistant professor of psychiatry and a doctor at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s detox unit. “I think more people are switching to heroin.’’

The change could mean big problems for Miami-Dade, which some doctors say is desperately lacking in detoxification facilities for the rich and poor alike.

There are only a handful of facilities in Miami-Dade County that provide detox services, both inpatient and outpatient, said Dr. Juan Oms, medical director of Miami Outpatient Detox, and the need is growing.

“I think it’s desperate at this point,’’ Oms said. “There is so much opiates and heroin out there.”

The trend is the result of changes to state law and crackdowns by law enforcement in recent years, in an effort to rid South Florida of its status as the pill-mill capital of America.

After the Florida Legislature realized the state was the focal point of a national prescription drug abuse epidemic, Gov. Rick Scott signed HB 7095 in June 2011, which put strict restrictions on prescription drug distribution.

The bill drastically cut back on who could dispense narcotics and expanded penalties for pill-mill operators.

If Florida was the focus of the pill-mill problem, Broward County was epicenter.

In 2007, the county had four pill mills. By 2009, that count had jumped to 130, Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti said. BSO mounted an effort to get rid of the pill mills, and three years later there were about 50 left, Lamberti said.

With some suppliers run out of business and laws preventing new mills from opening up, the price of pills jumped. Oms said the price of 30 milligrams of oxycodone jumped from about $10 to about $30 in 2012.

Some types of heroin are as cheap as $10 a hit, and addicts are going to pick the cheaper option without worrying about the painful detox process, said John Schmidt, founder of the Miami-based drug rehabilitation clinic Marvin’s Corner.

Dr. Paul Adams, attending emergency physician at Jackson Memorial Hospital, said drug trends are all about economics.

“When there’s no supply,” he said, “then all of the sudden you will fall back to other drugs, heroin being the standby.”

JMH detox specialist Junquera said she saw the number of heroin patients increase by about 50 percent at her clinic during the first six months or so of 2012. She said she sees about 25 people a week for inpatient heroin detox.

Schmidt said he has seen a steadily increasing stream of heroin addicts at his center. He expects the problem, growing slowly now, to “avalanche” into a large-scale drug problem much like the nationwide prescription drug abuse epidemic.

For Barrett, she hopes people will take notice so addicts can get help before it’s too late, as it was for her two sons and daughter-in-law.

“The need for help for the addicts, in terms of detox and recovery, has just risen tremendously, and of course we don’t have the funds,” she said. “I tried everything. Everything. I can’t tell you how many times my kids were in detox and rehab.”





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Judge rejects part of Apple App Store suit vs Amazon






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday rejected part of Apple Inc‘s lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc‘s use of the term App Store, ruling Apple cannot bring a false advertising claim against the online retailer.


U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, granted Amazon‘s motion for partial summary judgment, which only challenged Apple’s false advertising allegations. Apple leveled other claims against Amazon, including trademark infringement.






An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, and an Amazon representative could not be reached immediately.


Amazon has stepped up competition against Apple in recent years, launching its cheaper Kindle tablet computer to go after the dominant iPad and trying to lure mobile application developers to its Kindle platform.


One of the first public clashes in their tussle was Apple’s 2011 lawsuit.


Apple accused Amazon of misusing what it calls its APP STORE to solicit developers for a mobile software download service. However, Amazon said its so-called Appstore has become so generic that its use could not constitute false advertising.


In a legal filing last year, Amazon added that even Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and his predecessor, Steve Jobs, used the term to discuss rivals. Cook commented on “the number of app stores out there” and Jobs referred to the “four app stores on Android.”


In her ruling on Wednesday, Hamilton wrote that the mere use of “Appstore” by Amazon cannot be taken as a representation that its service is the same as Apple’s.


“Apple has failed to establish that Amazon made any false statement (express or implied) of fact that actually deceived or had the tendency to deceive a substantial segment of its audience,” Hamilton wrote.


A trial on Apple’s remaining claims is scheduled for August.


The case is Apple Inc v. Amazon.com Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 11-01327.


(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Jeffrey Benkoe)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Adam Lambert Criticizes Les Miserables Russell Crowe Responds

Adam Lambert was one of the Americans who forked over millions ($66 million, to be exact) to see Les Miserables over the Christmas holiday and his 9 Tweet review of the film garnered a lot of attention over the weekend.

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"Les Mis: Visually impressive w great Emotional performances. But the score suffered massively with great actors PRETENDING to be singers," Lambert wrote on December 30. "It's an opera. Hollywoods movie musicals treat the singing as the last priority. (Dreamgirls was good). Anne Hathaway as Fantine and Enjolras were the exceptions for me. Helena B Carter and Sasha B Cohen were great too. And I do think it was cool they were singing live- but with that cast, they should have studio recorded and sweetened the vocals. I felt like I should ignore the vocals and focus on the emotional subtext- but the singing was so distracting at times it pulled me out. The industry will say 'these actors were so brave to attempt singing this score live' but why not cast actors who could actually sound good? Sorry for being so harsh but it's so True!"

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Now, an unexpected ally has taken Lambert's side in this debate: Les Miserables star Russell Crowe!

Last night, @BrunetteMom123 Tweeted at Crowe, "Not sure if you saw @adamlambert's comments about Les Miserables. He was pretty opinionated."

The Oscar-winner responded, "I don't disagree with Adam, sure it could have been sweetened, [Les Miserables director Tom] Hooper wanted it raw and real, that's how it is."

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On Wednesday, the singer took back to Twitter to once again talk about the movie.

"My movie review has gone viral. U can spend a whole year praising artists for inspiring work, but one critique gets all the attention. Funny," Lambert tweeted, continuing, "Those raw and real moments when characters broke down or were expressing the ugliness of the human condition were superb. However... My personal opinion: there were times when the vocals weren't able to convey the power, beauty and grace that the score ALSO calls for."

Lambert then shouted out to the original Broadway cast, "I guess I'm a purist for the original LIVE broadway recording when the actors sang the f*ck outta those songs. JUST an opinion... "

And that's when Lambert decided to put the whole thing to rest, "I should prob stop fanning the flames on this one..but i love a good debate- couldnt help myself," adding finally, "One last thing though: Anne Hathaway was so good- had me tearing up. Oscar worthy performance for sure! Ok. #donediscussinglesmiz."

No response yet from Crowe or the cast.

What do you think? Was Adam Lambert right, or was the live singing part of the film's charm? Weigh in below!

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Just sold!








Manhattan

EAST HARLEM $400,000

333 E. 109th St.

One-bedroom, one-bath condo, 675 square feet, with Italian kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and Caesarstone counters and backsplash, tiled-and-teak bath with soaking tub and rainfall shower, washer/dryer and floor-to-ceiling windows; building features gym, courtyard, Jacuzzi, half-basketball court, BBQ, fireplace and lounge with flat-screen TV. Common charges $318, taxes $15. Asking price $430,000, on market 63 weeks. Brokers: Sahar Ziy, Douglas Elliman and Grace Chan, The Corcoran Group

LINCOLN SQUARE $830,000




161 W. 61st St.

One-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath condo, 915 square feet, with foyer, renovated pass-through kitchen, dining alcove, en-suite bath and washer/dryer; building features doorman, garage, gym with pool, sauna and hot tub, garden, storage and bike room. Common charges $1,195, taxes $891. Asking price $850,000, on market 16 weeks. Broker: Monica Manalo, Halstead Property

Long Island

PORT WASHINGTON $368,000

73 Carlton Ave.

Two-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath duplex condo, 1,228 square feet, with eat-in kitchen with dishwasher, dining room, wall-to-wall carpeting and deck; building features parking, laundry, storage and bike room. Common charges $394, taxes $275. Asking price $399,000, on market three weeks. Brokers: Kathleen Christie, Laffey Fine Homes and Heidi Karagianis, Accents on Real Estate










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Housing, jobs key to lifting S&P toward record




















With it appearing that Washington lawmakers are working their way past the “fiscal cliff,” many analysts say that the outlook for stocks in 2013 is good, as a recovering housing market and an improving jobs outlook helps the economy maintain a slow, but steady recovery.

Reasonable returns in 2013 would send the S&P 500 toward, and possibly past, its record close of 1,565 reached in October 2007.

A mid-year rally in 2012 pushed stocks to their highest in more than four years. Both the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Dow Jones industrial average posted strong gains in 2012. Those advances came despite uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election and bouts of turmoil from Europe, where policy makers finally appear to be getting a grip on the region’s debt crisis.





“As you remove little bits of uncertainty, investors can then once again return to focusing on the fundamentals,” says Joseph Tanious, a global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds. “Corporate America is actually doing quite well.”

Although earnings growth of S&P 500 listed companies dipped as low as 0.8 percent in the summer, analysts are predicting that it will rebound to average 9.5 percent for 2013, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. Companies have also been hoarding cash. The amount of cash and cash-equivalents being held by companies listed in the S&P 500 climbed to an all-time high $1 trillion at the end of September, 65 percent more than five years ago, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Assuming a budget deal is reached in a reasonable amount of time, investors will be more comfortable owning stocks in 2013, allowing valuations to rise, says Tanious.

Stocks in the S&P 500 index are currently trading on a price-to-earnings multiple of about 13.5, compared with the average of 17.9 since 1988, according to S&P Capital IQ data. The ratio rises when investors are willing to pay more for a stock’s future earnings potential.

The stock market will also likely face less drag from the European debt crisis this year, said Steven Bulko, the chief investment officer at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. While policy makers in Europe have yet to come up with a comprehensive solution to the region’s woes, they appear to have a better handle on the region’s problems than they have for quite some time.

Stocks fell in the second quarter of 2012 as investors fretted that the euro region’s government debt crisis was about to engulf Spain and possibly Italy, increasing the chances of a dramatic slowdown in global economic growth.

“There is still some heavy lifting that needs to be done in Europe,” said Bulko. Now, though, “we are dealing with much more manageable risk than we have had in the past few years.”

Next year may also see an increase in mergers and acquisitions as companies seeks to make use of the cash on their balance sheets, says Jarred Kessler, global head of equities at broker Cantor Fitzgerald.

While the number of M&A deals has gradually crept higher in the past four years, the dollar value of the deals remains well short of the total reached five years ago. U.S. targeted acquisitions totaled $964 billion through Dec. 27, according to data tracking firm Dealogic. That’s slightly down from last year’s total of $1 trillion and about 40 percent lower than in 2007, when deals worth $1.6 trillion were struck.





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Man grazed by stray bullet in Miami on New Year’s Eve




















A stray bullet fired into the air just after midnight on New Year’s Eve struck a man as he celebrated at a party in Miami, according to police.

The bullet grazed the man’s upper left shoulder. Paramedics treated him outside the Allapattah home at Northwest 25th Avenue and 32nd Street. The man, who was not identified, wasn’t taken to a hospital.

Miami police spokesman Detective Willie Moreno confirmed that the victim was struck by a stray bullet.





Homeowner Randy Ruiz said the injured man was a friend of a friend who was visiting his home on New Year’s Eve.

“We had a lot of friends and family in my yard, and fireworks were being fired off,” Ruiz said. “Just after midnight, one of the guests complained of blood on his shirt. So we quickly ran over to see what was going on and saw there was blood on his left arm.”

Neighbor Barbara Jimeno, who has three grandchildren between the ages of one and four, said she was alarmed by what happened.

“It could happen to me or my grandchildren, who live around the block,” she said.

The injury followed a series of warnings from the Miami mayor, Miami police and activists about the dangers of firing bullets into the air on New Years Eve.





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Armed robbers hit Paris Apple store






PARIS (Reuters) – Armed robbers targeted an Apple Inc store in central Paris on New Year’s Eve, taking thousands of euros (dollars) worth of goods, a police official said on Tuesday.


The robbery took place at about 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday, three hours after closing time at one of Apple‘s flagship stores behind the Paris Opera which sells products ranging from iPhones and iPads to Mac computers.






The police official declined to comment on reports the thieves walked away with about 1 million euros ($ 1.32 million) of loot, saying the company was still evaluating the loss.


Christophe Crepin from the police union UNSA told reporters four masked and armed individuals forced their way into the shop and afterwards escaped in a van.


“They were well prepared. As the majority of police were busy watching the Champs Elysees (for New Year’s Eve celebrations), the robbers took advantage of this opportunity,” he said.


($ 1 = 0.7585 euros)


(Reporting By Thierry Leveque and John Irish; Editing by Michael Roddy)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Taylor Swift Harry Styles New Years Eve Kiss

Taylor Swift and Harry Styles had equally amazing 2012's, and they kissed good-bye to the preceding 365 days together in Times Square last night.

After singing on ABC's New Year's Rocking Eve, Swift and Styles braved the crowds to watch the ball drop. And to the hordes of fans who'd gathered to count down to midnight, "Haylor's" ensuing smooch ended up being more captivating than all the twinkling lights in the sky.

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An ugly deal








Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a model of understatement yesterday when he declared: “This shouldn’t be the model for how to do things around here.”

No kidding.

With a pre-dawn vote yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a compromise package that undoes the Bush tax cuts for individuals making $400,000 a year and families making $450,000, raises several other taxes and limits personal exemptions.

But the deal was far from done late yesterday: In the House, conservative Republicans had serious misgivings with its terms, and while the expectation was that it ultimately will pass, there were no guarantees.





AP



Mitch McConnell





So, barring a GOP revolt, the so-called “fiscal cliff” has been avoided: there will be no automatic tax-rate hike for all Americans instead of just the wealthiest. But, as Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) noted, the cliffhanger has been traded in for “a journey over the fiscal mountains.”

That’s because the last-minute deal simply postponed dealing with spending cuts, entitlement reform and trimming the national debt for another two months.

Indeed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the package raises taxes by $620 billion while cutting spending by only $15 billion — a 41-1 ratio. Plus it adds $329 billion to the federal deficit in 2013, increasing it by $3.9 trillion over 10 years.

That means an even bigger battle soon. And, almost certainly, an even bigger political drama than the one America just witnessed.

This time, however, Obama will be without his biggest rhetorical weapon: his insistence on what he so misleadingly called “tax fairness.” Which, Republicans hope, means he’ll have to give more ground, provided they hold firm.

Because the fiscal-cliff package does next to nothing on the national debt and the budget deficit, at the risk of damaging the economy as it struggles to move forward.

In fact, the president’s chief goal throughout the talks was blatantly political, to portray the GOP as eager to sacrifice the middle class in order to protect the rich. (How ironic that most Democrats once vehemently opposed what they’re now staunchly defending as “tax cuts for the middle class.”)

Yet Obama — whose only contribution to the negotiations was creating ill will on both sides — made it clear that he hasn’t finished hiking taxes: Even before the House vote, the White House said that “continuing to ask the wealthy to do a little bit more” — i.e., pay even more taxes — “will be part of a balanced approach.”

In other words, he’s going to play the class-warfare card for everything it’s worth.

But the fiscal-cliff compromise actually brings in $200 billion less in tax revenue than did House Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B, which the president opposed (as, embarrassingly for Boehner, did House Republicans).

The whole idea of the “fiscal cliff” was to create a situation so precarious that Washington would have no choice but to reach a comprehensive solution.

But congressional fecklessness and presidential arrogance combined to once again avoid the unpleasant — but necessary — business of restoring the nation’s economic stability.

For all the back-patting now under way on Capitol Hill, the road ahead is sown with mines.

Take 10, America. It ain’t over.



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Florida colleges a bargain, says Kiplinger




















Though Florida’s in-state tuition costs more than double what it did only a decade ago, many of the state’s public universities are still a good value, according to the latest annual “Best Values in Public Colleges” list compiled by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Florida schools have long fared well in the magazine’s rankings, with this year being no exception. Six of Florida’s 12 state schools made the top 100, with two — the University of Florida and New College of Florida in Sarasota — keeping their place in the top 10, though both schools slipped slightly from their spots a year ago.

UF landed at No. 3 in this year’s rankings, down from No. 2 last year. New College, meanwhile, slipped two spots from No. 5 to No. 7.





In the case of both schools, Kiplinger’s praised what it described as a combination of strong academics and relative affordability. Though Florida’s price of tuition keeps rising, it is still among the lowest in the country — 40th out of 50 states, according to the College Board.

Kiplinger’s also noted UF’s strong retention rate.

“Students stick around, with only 5 percent leaving after freshman year,” the magazine wrote. “And although Florida is a big school — with 16 colleges, more than 150 research centers and institutes, and the largest undergraduate enrollment in our top 10 — it’s still selective, with a 43 percent admittance rate.”

New College is the complete opposite of UF in terms of size (it enrolls less than 850 students) but Kiplinger’s found it also offers “solid academics” along with the lowest total cost of attendance — $16,181 — of any of the top 10 schools. That figure combines the $6,783 annual tuition and fees with other college expenses such as room and board.

Lower in the Kiplinger’s rankings, four other Florida schools were also recognized. Florida State University came in at No. 26, the University of Central Florida landed at No. 42, the University of South Florida was No. 57 and the University of North Florida was No. 64.

Braulio Colón, executive director of the Florida College Access Network, said Florida families looking for a tuition bargain shouldn’t limit their search to state universities. Florida’s community colleges, Colón said, are high-quality, cost about half as much as state universities, and boast a guaranteed-transfer agreement that is the envy of many other parts of the country. Students who earn an associate in arts degree from a Florida community college are guaranteed admission to a state university, though it may not be to the student’s preferred school.

Long term, Colón said, Florida must overhaul its student financial aid system if it wants to maintain college affordability. The state’s largest college aid program is Bright Futures scholarships — some of which are awarded to affluent families who could afford to pay for college on their own. Helping students with demonstrated need must become more of a priority, Colón said, or college costs could eventually spiral out of reach for some families.

“We are at a turning point, right now, as a state,” Colón said.

To see the Kiplinger list go to: http://www.kiplinger.com/reports/best-college-values/





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Peeping tom suspect nabbed at Forever21 store at Sawgrass Mills mall




















A suspected “peeping tom” was arrested Sunday after he was caught with video of women trying on clothes at the Forever21 store at the Sawgrass Mills mall.

Andre Clements, 30, has been charged with video voyeurism and disorderly conduct, Sunrise police said.

A manager at the store became suspicious when Clements, 30, was caught loitering in the dressing rooms. Customers also complained about Clements.





The manager alerted mall security, who called Sunrise police. When police arrived, the manager found several large slits in the curtain which separated the fitting room Clements was in and the adjoining fitting room.

In Clements possession police found a Sony camcorder with videos of young women changing clothes.

Clements admitted taping the women just before police had arrived.





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Movers roundup: Facebook, Best Buy






Among the stock activity stories for Monday, Dec. 31, from AP Business News:


— Shares of Facebook Inc. rose after an analyst said advertising spending was picking up on the Internet social network and raised his rating on its stock.






— Shares of Best Buy Co. rose on light volume as the struggling electronics retailer closed out a rocky year.


— Shares of Duff & Phelps Corp. rose on news that the company had agreed to be acquired.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Here Come the Crazies








Here’s some scary news: The Cuomo administration is preparing to shove thousands of mentally ill New Yorkers out of supervised settings — where they can be forced to take their medication — into far less restrictive, far more dangerous “community housing.”

This, despite two recent cases of people being fatally shoved from subway platforms — both allegedly by crazy people.

Albany, under pressure from the Obama administration, recently ordered psychiatric facilities not to place any discharged patients in adult homes, where staff can ensure they take their meds.





AP



Andrew Cuomo





Instead, they’ll be placed in “community housing,” without full-time supervision.

This is part of the state’s plan to essentially empty adult homes into community-based “supportive” apartments, leaving up to 6,000 people — including those with schizophrenia — to live on their own, with minimal supervision.

“People with disabilities should have access to community-based services, accessible housing with appropriate supports and employment opportunities,” said Cuomo in an executive order in November.

But as Pat Webdale — whose daughter Kendra was shoved to her death in 1999 by a schizophrenic who’d stopped taking his meds — has warned, “It would be just like deinstitutionalization, the same as putting people on the street.”

And that’s precisely what led to the massive homeless crisis of the 1970s and ’80s.

Indeed, one of those who lives in just such housing — and allegedly receives a whole array of social services — is Jeffrey Hillman, the “homeless” man who roams Midtown and was famously photographed being given a pair of boots by a city cop.

Similarly, according to state Sen. Martin Golden, of 15 residents of Surfside Manor in Far Rockaway who were put in supportive housing, six went back to the adult home, three wound up in a psychiatric hospital, two died and one is homeless.

Yet the Cuomo administration wants to basically empty adult homes, limiting the mentally ill population living there to 25 percent of total residents.

Granted, the move isn’t entirely voluntary: The Obama administration has made clear in numerous states — including New York — that it wants to shut adult homes entirely, saying they illegally segregate the mentally ill. It’s prepared to sue to make that happen.

And if Albany doesn’t move, it could find itself back in front of none other than the imperious federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who in 2011 effectively ordered the immediate dismantling of the adult-home system — summarily rejecting every effort by Albany to reach a compromise.

We understand that Cuomo is stuck between a rock and a hard place. And his spokesman insists that the state intends to “ensure that those who need housing will receive the support they need.”

But history teaches — repeatedly — that moving the mentally ill into situations with reduced supervision invites disaster.

As Assemblyman Philip Goldfeder warns, “My biggest fear is that they rush into something in the name of helping people and ultimately hurt them.”

Not to mention endangering the general public.



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South Florida’s biggest business stories of 2012




















For South Florida’s economy, 2012 centered on one main question: Would the recovery continue?

The answer: Yes, and slowly.

Housing values continue to climb, unemployment rates shrink, hiring grows and spending strengthens. And yet 2012 ends on the same general theme as 2011: Things are getting better, but at a slow enough pace that South Florida will have to wait at least another year for a healthy recovery to begin.





Behind the broad economic tide, news crashed onto the scene. And now it falls on Business Monday to rank their significance.

We do this each year December as a way to put the year’s business news in perspective. For the rankings, we use three criteria.

First, how important was the news for South Florida’s economy? We only have 10 slots to fill, so the news needs to be big.

Second, how unique was the news to South Florida? National events can have major impacts in South Florida, but we’re looking for news that’s particularly noteworthy to the region.

Third, how unique was the news to this year? Long-term trends can impact an economy for years, but we’re looking for stories clearly linked to 2012.

On to the rankings...

10: One Community One Goal plan released

Miami-Dade’s economic development agency, the Beacon Council, spent more than a year drawing up what’s supposed to be a blueprint for the county’s economic future. We won’t know for years whether the One Community One Goal plan will actually guide leaders’ decisions as they decide on education priorities and corporate-recruitment targets. The authors of this report boasted that they were determined not to have the latest version seen as obsolete the way the 1996 version was. But with hundreds of people involved in the forums that led to the report, One Community One Goal is sure to be cited in debates and discussion about Miami-Dade’s economy for years to come.

9. Ryder gets a new CEO

It was a tumultuous year for the Miami-Dade trucking giant, which spent the summer backing off early predictions of strong recovery for clients. In July, Ryder CEO Gregory Swienton announced companywide cost cuts to combat flat sales in a year he had originally seen as going well. That move included 60 job cuts at Ryder’s headquarters in western Miami-Dade, out of 450 across the country The end of 2012 brought another big announcement: Swienton was retiring in two weeks, and handing over the top job to his longtime deputy, Ryder COO Robert Sanchez.

Swienton, 63, said he was looking forward to getting back to Texas, where most of his grandchildren live. The board praised Swienton’s 13-year tenure, which saw Ryder stock rise from $17 a share to $50 a share.

Sanchez, 47, is only the company’s fifth CEO since its founding in the Great Depression. A Miami native, he becomes one of only three CEOs of a Fortune 500 company headquartered south of Palm Beach County. The other: AutoNation’s Mike Jackson and World Fuel Services’ Michael Kasbar.

8. Miami Marlins Buyers Remorse

The debut season of Miami’s first official Major League Baseball team brought a string of disappointments on and off the field. Promises of a revitalized Little Havana retail scene around the tax-funded stadium instead brought vacant storefronts. Attendance, a big part of the economic argument for the $635 million stadium, ended up being the worst for a new ballpark in 30 years.





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