A small, ultralight airplane made an emergency landing onto an open cow pasture in Southwest Ranches on Friday. No one was injured, Broward Sheriff’s Office reported, and the airplane did not suffer any significant damage.
Two people were aboard the plane, said Dani Moschella, a BSO spokeswoman. An investigation into the cause of the emergency landing will be conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The plane went down in the area of Griffin and Hancock roads.
LONDON (Reuters) – A former senior trader at UBS, sacked for failing to prevent colleague Kweku Adoboli from perpetrating the biggest fraud in British history, has set up a gambling website.
In a decision likely to be seized upon by critics who say traders have often made casino-style bets, John Hughes started his gambling firm even though his website said his old job had “removed all sense of optimism from his character”.
Adoboli, his former subordinate now serving seven years in jail for running up losses of $ 2.3 billion, argued during his trial that his own behavior was the result of a risky trading culture encouraged by senior colleagues, and his lawyers alleged that Hughes had played a major role in “off-book” trading.
Hughes admitted he had known of Adoboli’s scheme to hide his giant losses and that he had booked several fictitious trades himself, but denied knowledge of some of Adoboli’s biggest multi-billion dollar trades.
Hughes said he had chosen to call his new gambling website ‘BetsofMates’, a play on the expression “Best of Mates”.
That may grate with Adoboli who complained that his colleagues, including Hughes, had “sold me down the river” after a meeting at which he said it was decided he alone would carry the can for the huge losses.
Hughes and the others said they had no memory of such a meeting.
“We’re not a standard bookie,” Hughes said of his new website, which enables users to play against each other in leagues, with each player placing bets of between two and 200 pounds.
“We facilitate competition. The emphasis is a lot more on competition than yield enhancement,” he told Reuters on Thursday.
The former senior trader on the Exchange Traded Funds desk at UBS in London said Adoboli’s conviction was “just incredibly sad”. He declined to comment further.
Despite a large salary and bonus, Adoboli was himself an avid gambler and lost 123,000 pounds ($ 200,000) on spread-betting in the year before his arrest.
One prosecutor accused him of being addicted to gambling to which Adoboli countered that spread-betting was common among City traders “like a taxi driver driving his own taxi home”.
Hughes’ profile on his new firm’s website says that “seven years in the City (had) removed all sense of optimism from his character, and made him absurdly superstitious.”
He told Reuters such feelings had arisen “sitting there watching the markets for seven years and watching different news hit the tapes and obviously the last seven years haven’t been the easiest in the financial markets.”
Britain’s Gambling Commission granted a license to his pool betting company ‘Bets of Mates Limited’, which is registered to an East London address, in September 2012, two months before Adoboli was convicted.
(Editing by Andrew Osborn)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
The Pirelli Calendar is one of the most exclusive calendars in publication, featuring well-known photographers and even more famous models, and we have behind-the-scenes footage from shoots for the upcoming issue.
RELATED: Kate Moss Denies Drug & Anorexia Claims
The calendar -- famous for its limited availability -- has featured legendary models like Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell as well as Oscar-winning actresses like Penelope Cruz and Hilary Swank. But it's not just those in front of the camera that draw attention to the trade calendar. It also enlists the highly trained eye of notable fashion luminaries such as photographer Mario Sorrenti and designer/photographer Karl Lagerfeld.
The calendar is only given as a corporate gift to a restricted number of important Pirelli customers and celebrity VIPs, so an appearance in the calendar has become a mark of distinction for everyone chosen to collaborate on the project.
When the 2013 calendar releases in Rio de Janeiro, ET's Chris Jacobs will be there to cover the event and chat up the stars.
Stocks rallied in an abbreviated session on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones industrial average shot up 172 points to 13,009. That's the first close above 13,000 for the Dow since Election Day.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 18 points to 1,409. The S&P also racked up its biggest weekly point gain of the year. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 40 to 2,966.
Traders were encouraged by economic signals out of Germany and China. It's also the first day of the traditional holiday shopping season.
Trading on Wall Street was thin, about 1.4 billion shares, in a holiday-shortened session. Advancing stocks beat decliners 5-to-1.
REUTERS
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange today as a little girl watches.
When Brett Smith rented a condo at Axis Brickell last year, there were still sweet deals to be found, but when the lease came up for renewal last month, he got a sour note: The rent was spiking 15 percent.
The three-bedroom, three-bath condo would cost $3,800 a month, up from $3,300.
“We actually looked around at other places, and most looked to be around the same price range,” said Smith, a 25-year-old construction project manager who shares the apartment with two friends. “We decided with the cost of moving, we would just stay.”
Smith, who loves the urban lifestyle — “It’s great, and it’s getting better,” he says — has lots of company.
In greater downtown Miami and Brickell, residential rental rates per square foot jumped 10 percent in the first nine months of 2012 from a year earlier, according to a study conducted for Miami Downtown Development Authority by Coral Gables-based Focus Real Estate Advisors.
Rents for the sizzling Brickell neighborhood leaped even more sharply. The average monthly rental rate for Brickell jumped 17 percent to $2,242 in the first nine months of 2012 from the same period in 2010, while the rent per square foot spiked 28 percent over that period, according to additional data from Focus Real Estate Advisors and MLxchange.
Fueling the price increases: Strong demand for rental units and the growing popularity of the downtown and Brickell areas as new restaurants and entertainment spots help mold an urban core that is attractive to young professionals and students but also to an increasingly diverse crowd.
“It’s become like a restaurant Mecca in Brickell,” said Denise Sicuso, sales manager for Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realty’s Brickell downtown office, which handles lots of condo rentals and sales in the area.
With Brickell CitiCentre, a massive $1.05-billion mixed-use complex with retail, entertainment, office and residential, going up at 701 South Miami Avenue, “the interest in the neighborhood is only increasing,” Sicuso added. “When we get rental listings, they’re gone within a week.”
More than 95 percent of rental units in the greater downtown Miami area are occupied, according to the Downtown Development Authority study.
Demand for rental units is strong for many reasons: Tough lending standards for mortgages are making it difficult for many people to buy a home. Coming out of the recession and housing meltdown, many people have credit histories that exclude them from becoming buyers. Others simply don’t want to own.
At the same time, a steady influx of foreigners and others relocating to Miami is bolstering rental demand, as is the gradually improving economy that is enabling some young people who had moved back to the nest with their parents to get their own place.
“There is pent-up demand for rentals, not unique to the downtown or Brickell area,” said Craig Werley, president of Focus Real Estate.
Another factor: Many of the professionally managed rental apartment buildings in South Florida were converted into condominiums before the real-estate market crashed.
Professionally managed apartment buildings account for just 10 percent of Miami’s rental market, down from 20 percent in 2000, according to Werley.
While there is a major push by developers and institutional investors to build more multifamily rental units in South Florida (and around the country), the lag time before new rental units would come to market means supply will be tight for some time.
Thursday is Thanksgiving. Here is a list of what’s open and closed for the holiday on Thursday and Friday.
Federal offices: Closed Thursday
State offices: Closed Thursday and Friday
Miami-Dade and Broward county offices: Closed Thursday and Friday
Miami-Dade and Broward courts: Closed Thursday and Friday
Public schools: Closed Thursday and Friday
Post offices: Closed Thursday
Stock markets: Closed Thursday, closing early Friday
Banks: Closed Thursday
Tri-Rail: Will run a weekend schedule Thursday
Miami-Dade and Broward transit: Will run a Sunday schedule on Thursday
Garbage collection: Normal schedule in most cities
Malls: Closed Thursday, many opening very early Friday
Click here to view this gallery.
[More from Mashable: Apple Now Owns the iMessage Name]
Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?
If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.
[More from Mashable: 9 Black Friday Deals For iPhone Owners]
That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.
All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.
The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.
Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen
If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).
Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).
I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.
Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.
The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.
The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)
As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.
Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.
The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.
Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.
Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.
Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.
Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.
There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.
Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.
Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).
Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).
In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.
At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”
The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.
Review continues after FreeTime Gallery
Click here to view this gallery.
Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.
Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.
Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.
Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.
For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Dwayne Johnson takes on a ruthless drug cartel in the gritty action-thriller Snitch, and we have a first look at the hard-driving trailer!
Video: Women Go Crazy for Dwayne Johnson's 'Pec Pop'
Based on a true story, Snitch finds Johnson as a concerned father faced with a dramatic choice after his teenage son is wrongly accused of a drug distribution crime. With his boy facing a minimum prison sentence of 10 years, the desperate and determined Johnson makes a deal with the U.S. attorney to work as an undercover informant and infiltrate a dangerous drug cartel (whose key player is played by Benjamin Bratt). Willing to risk everything to free his son, can Johnson make it out alive?
Video: Dwayne Johnson's 'Million-Dollar Smile'
Also starring Susan Sarandon and Barry Pepper and directed by former stunt master Ric Roman Waugh, Snitch hits theaters in 2013.
AP
A man walks on the beach as a rollercoaster that once sat on the Funtown Pier in Seaside Heights, NJ rests in the ocean.
SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ — The remains of a roller coaster that was knocked off a New Jersey amusement pier by Superstorm Sandy and partially submerged in the Atlantic Ocean may be left there as a tourist attraction.
Seaside Heights Mayor Bill Akers tells WNBC-TV in New York that officials have not made a decision on whether to tear down the coaster. But the mayor says he's working with the Coast Guard to see if the coaster is stable enough to leave it alone, because he believes it would make "a great tourist attraction."
Meanwhile, efforts to rebuild the storm-ravaged town are continuing.
Demolition crews have removed the resort's damaged boardwalk. And Akers says construction on a new boardwalk should begin in January and be ready by Memorial Day.
Marling Sequeira has her Thanksgiving all planned: turkey, trimmings and pumpkin pie at her boyfriend’s in Miami, then a moonlit drive to Walmart to snag a 72-inch Samsung TV on sale for $800.
“It’s more exciting at midnight,” said Sequeira, 22, a medical assistant who is moving into a new Brickell-area apartment with her boyfriend on Friday. “Besides that, the specials are more convenient.”
All over South Florida on Thursday, bargain-hungry shoppers will be gobbling down their Thanksgiving meals with an eye on heading to the mall.
Thursday is becoming the new Black Thursday, as the old-fashioned kickoff day of the holiday, Black Friday, creeps into Thanksgiving dessert.
“Retailers are now commercializing Thanksgiving, giving the opportunity to the consumer who doesn’t want to watch 12 hours of football,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at the NPD Group, a consumer and retail market research firm based in Port Washington, N.Y.
The stores’ goal, he said, is to compete more vigorously with online sites for those valuable early holiday dollars.
And retailers have learned that if they open their doors and offer deals, shoppers will come. Last year those who extended their hours saw sales rise up to 22 percent for the Black Friday weekend, while those retailers that did not lost up to 8 percent, Cohen said.
The result: this year, more than ever, shopping is seeping into Thanksgiving festivities.
Kmart is opening at 6 a.m. and Bass Pro Shops at 8 a.m. on Thursday. Sears and Toys”R”Us are opening at 8 p.m. Target is opening at 9 p.m. Loads of stores, including Macy’s, The Gap, Old Navy and Best Buy are opening at midnight. Best Buy is promising deals on such items as TVs, laptop computers, digital cameras and more.
Walmart is open 24 hours, so it will stay open all day on Thanksgiving, with specials offered at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Thursday and 5 a.m. on Friday.
“Whether you want to stay up late on Thursday night or get up early on Friday, at Walmart we have a Black Friday event for you,” said spokesman Steve Restivo. Walmart is offering price guarantees to shoppers who are inside a store between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., on three hot-selling items, an Apple iPad2, an Emerson 32-inch LCD TV and an LG Blu-ray player.
In South Florida, even entire malls will open on Thanksgiving. Dolphin Mall in Sweetwater and Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise will be first, each opening at 9 p.m., and staying open until 10 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., respectively, on Black Friday.
Dadeland Mall and Miami International Mall will open at midnight Thursday.
“We’re very excited to open at midnight and give our shoppers a head start to the holiday season,” said Sara Valega, director of marketing for Miami International Mall, which will stay open until 11 p.m. on Friday.
Nationwide, 17 percent of consumers, or 41 million people are expected to shop on Thanksgiving, according to the latest consumer holiday tracking survey, released Tuesday by The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs.
With stores opening earlier and earlier, and some retailers launching pre-Thanksgiving sales, the retail industry has officially crossed the traditional Black Friday barrier — with no end in sight, said Kimberly Taylor, associate professor of marketing at Florida International University.
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