If the size of the diamond is any indication of Hugh Hefner's love for bride-to-be Crystal Harris, it's a safe bet to say that he's head over heels.
RELATED: Hugh Hefner Gets Marriage License?
Harris revealed her engagement ring on Tuesday, via her Twitter feed.
"My beautiful ring from [Hugh Hefner]," Crystal posted along with photos of the giant sparkler.
The couple is reportedly planning to wed on New Year's Eve.
Yahoo! rolled out new versions of its popular Web e-mail yesterday, the first major product make-over since Chief Executive Marissa Mayer took the helm of the struggling Internet company five months ago.
Yahoo! released new versions of its Yahoo! Mail product for smartphones and tablets — in keeping with Mayer’s focus on mobile devices — and a revamped version of its Web-based mail product for PC users.
The new PC version of Yahoo! Mail features fewer ads, primarily by doing away with pass-through Web pages that users previously encountered before they could access their inbox and which also appeared after a user sent an e-mail.
As part of yesterday’s makeover announcement, Yahoo! also unveiled an update to its mobile e-mail app for smartphones that are based on the Android operating system, as well as Yahoo!’s first stand-alone app for the iPhone from apple.
Yahoo! closed yesterday at $19.52, up 0.5 percent.
Q. Recently I’ve been unable to send emails from my home email address. In addition, my incoming email contains several notices of undeliverable emails that I didn’t send that are addressed to people I don’t know. I suspect that my computer is infected by some malicious software and is being used to send spam email — and that those that are undeliverable are being returned. What should I do?
Joseph Campbell Burnsville, Minn.
I agree that your PC has been taken over by hackers and is being used to send spam.
The fact that you aren’t able to send emails from your home account supports this theory, since it indicates that your Internet service provider believes you are spamming and has temporarily blocked your ability to send email to anyone.
I suggest you download and run the free version of security program Malwarebytes (go to www.tinyurl.com/cwbd73f and click “free download.”) If that doesn’t work, try Windows System Restore to eliminate recently installed software (see www.tinyurl.com/y9q9apj and www.tinyurl.com/ykgps6.) Then call your Internet service provider; explain what happened and what you’ve done to fix it. If your PC is clean, you’ll be allowed to send email again.Q. I’ve recently received a lot of spam, including some that appear to be from people I know — except that the messages come from the wrong email address. How does a spammer use a familiar name with a fake email address and send it to me?
Also, is there a way to find out the identity of the people who send spam emails? I’ve read that the email address of the sender is not always accurate.
Ginger Bramlett Rockwall, Texas
The bogus email that appeared to be from your friend, but came from the wrong email address, is from a spammer who is trying to trick you into opening the email.
Why did this happen? Your friend’s email may have been hacked and his or her address book stolen, providing the spammer with a host of addresses where an email bearing your friend’s name might be opened by the recipient.
It’s hard to find out who actually sent spam, because originating email addresses are easy to fake.
I suggest you send these emails to your spam filter so that you and others may be spared at least some spam in the future. In addition, your Internet service provider allows you to block spam that comes from a specific domain name — the part of the email address that follows the symbol, such as Yahoo.com. See www.tinyurl.com/cxmq4m7.
WASHINGTON --
Don’t expect South Florida’s congressional delegation to stray too far from party lines when it comes to dancing on the edge of the fiscal cliff, the end-of-the-year spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect if Congress and the president don’t address them.
Democrats are firmly with President Barack Obama, whose proposal seeks to raise $600 billion over a decade by eliminating tax deductions and $960 billion over the same period by raising tax rates for the top 2 percent of income earners. Many Democrats sounded as though the highly charged presidential campaign was still under way.
Republicans are just as committed to their party.
There’s been "no evidence thus far" that Republicans are truly interested in the middle class, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Weston, who the president just asked again to head the Democratic National Committee.
"We need to continue to focus on rebuilding our economy from the middle class out," she said during an appearance on MSNBC.
"President Obama talked eloquently and passionately during the campaign about making sure that we can get a handle on this deficit, that we can rebuild our economy from the middle class out, that we can focus on creating jobs and getting the economy turned around," she added.
Equally firm: South Florida Democratic Reps. Alcee Hastings, of Miramar and Frederica Wilson, of Miami. Both are members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which released a statement of principles this week calling for the Bush-era tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans.
Social Security should be completely off the table, the caucus warned, and it said it would oppose any plans that change the eligibility for Medicare or cut Medicaid, the statement said.
Some Democrats made conciliatory moves, however. Sen. Bill Nelson said that during his campaign, voters told him they want consensus and an end to partisan gridlock.
"They want bipartisanship," he said in a video message. "They want to stop the ideological rigidity."
It’s the only way to rebuild the economy and reduce the federal deficit, while preserving Social Security and Medicare, he said. He called on people of both political parties "to reach across the aisle and work together so America doesn’t go over the cliff."
That’s unlikely to come from his Republican counterpart, Sen. Marco Rubio, who along with former vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was featured in a speech this week in Washington.
Rubio blamed the "complicated and uncertain tax code" for "hindering the creation of middle-class jobs." He gave no hint he would be interested in supporting the president’s tax proposal on the wealthiest Americans.
"You can’t open or grow a business if your taxes are too high or too uncertain. And that’s why I personally oppose the president’s plan to raise taxes," Rubio said. "This isn’t about a pledge. It isn’t about protecting millionaires and billionaires. For me, it’s about the fact that the tax increases he wants would fail to make even a small dent in the debt but it would hurt middle-class businesses and the people who work for them."
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Miami, was one of the few Republicans from South Florida to suggest she’d be open to tax reform, saying there needs to be a review of the tax code "to remove special interest tax loopholes used by the wealthy."
But she warned that the country’s debt exists "not because tax rates are too low, but because government spends too much."
Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, also of Miami, said he was less optimistic about a resolution now than he was right after the election.
He said he feels as though Republicans have moved closer to the president without getting credit for it.
"I’m very disappointed with the president’s response," he said in an interview.
"The speaker put forward a proposal, and whether you agree with it or not, there are a couple of things beyond debate: He’s gotten closer to the president’s position."
Even those on their way out of Congress made no move to cross party lines. Republican Rep. Allen West, of Plantation, who was ousted by Democrat Patrick Murphy, warned constituents in a letter that he didn’t think there was a true plan to reduce spending.
Rep. David Rivera, a Republican who lost his re-election bid and who will be replaced by Democrat Joe Garcia, did not respond to a request for comment.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Several Google Inc Web products, including the popular Gmail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents on Monday.
Google confirmed that “service disruptions” had affected Gmail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google’s Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both consumers and businesses.
By 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time (1.10 p.m. EST), Google’s Apps Dashboard monitoring service reported that Gmail and Drive service had resumed. The company did not specify how many users were affected, or where, but the outage prompted widespread complaints on social media on both coasts in the U.S. and other major markets, from the United Kingdom to Brazil.
Some users additionally reported that the outage had affected Google Docs, the company’s word-processing and spreadsheet programs, while Chrome, Google’s Internet browser, also crashed unexpectedly.
“We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services,” Google spokeswoman Andrea Freund said in a statement. “For everyone who is affected, we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing.”
Firmly entrenched in the consumer market, Gmail is one of Google’s most popular and important product offerings. The search giant, which has been pushing a corporate version of the email service and its Apps suite to businesses to compete with Microsoft, said this month that the package will no longer be free to business customers.
(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Andrew Hay and Nick Zieminski)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Will Smith and his son Jaden haven't shared the big screen since 2006's The Pursuit of Happyness. Now the father-son duo pair up once more for M. Night Shyamalan's post-apocalyptic thriller After Earth, and we're showing you the new trailer.
RELATED: Will Smith Surprises Jada on The Talk
In the film, opening June 7, 2013, a father and son crash land on a now-abandoned Earth. While the father, General Cypher Raige lies dying after the accident, his 13-year-old son Kitai must play the soldier, searching for the rescue beacon -- their only chance to be saved.
Watch the video for more.
Jamie Dimon is betting his bank can profit from catering to hedge funds and asset management firms bracing for a wave of new financial regulations.
The JPMorgan boss placed 26-year veteran Carlos Hernandez in charge of a new investor-services group, part of so-called prime brokerage services, which focuses on hedge funds, pensions, endowments and other financial firms that are facing a number of new rules.
Some of the provisions are set to go into effect as soon as Dec. 31. With deadlines looming, money managers are scrambling to be in compliance.
Reuters
JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon is adding new muscle in an effort to boost its hedge fund business.
Under the new rules, for instance, asset managers will be forced to post cash or cash equivalents as collateral on so-called over-the-counter derivatives trades.
Demanding that collateral be posted on every trade for hedge funds, insurance companies and other asset managers such as pensions and endowments is a new requirement under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.
The sweeping legislation passed in the wake of the financial meltdown has some money managers griping about rules that they say are much more complicated than they were in the past.
The new edicts are expected to place heavier administrative and financial burdens on these firms, challenging their ability to operate and turn a profit in the new regulatory environment.
That’s where JPMorgan and other custodial banks, including Bank of New York Mellon, have been hoping to step in and forge new client relationships.
“The goal is to help our clients optimize their businesses,” Hernandez told The Post during a telephone interview.
Hernandez, 52, who formerly ran JPMorgan’s equity division, was named in September to run the investor-services unit, which the bank has been attempting to build up.
Such investor-services units may be one of the few growing areas for big banks, which are facing head-count reductions by the thousands in the rapidly changing Wall Street landscape.
mark.decambre@nypost.com
Despite an agonizingly slow economic recovery, the country’s largest auto retailer, Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation, is thriving again as demand for vehicles expands.
The company, one of Florida’s largest, is posting increasingly strong profits and revenues. Just last week, in a sign of confidence, Autonation announced a major acquisition — buying six large auto stores in Texas — that will add about 700 employees to its national payroll of 19,400.
In announcing the deal Tuesday, which is expected to provide AutoNation with $575 million in additional revenues next year, the company’s CEO and chairman, Mike Jackson, expressed optimism about the prospects for continued growth in vehicle sales.
“You want to know what I’m thinking, look at what I do,” Jackson told viewers on CNBC’s Squawk Box program.
No information was released on the cost of the transactions, but in recent years auto dealerships sometimes sold for three to five times revenue, which would represent a significant investment for the company.
Tough times
To be sure, AutoNation has struggled through some tough times. It was battered by the Great Recession, which depressed sales and pushed the company into a $1.2 billion loss four years ago. As sales began to improve in 2010 and 2011, it was blindsided by a shortage of Japanese-made cars last year after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 shut down Japanese manufacturers of some essential components.
Since then, however, AutoNation has rebounded. Unit sales, revenues and profits all performed well in the first three quarters of this year, and the company expects new vehicle sales to continue their recovery nationwide, rising to the mid-14 million units this year, up from about 12.7 million in 2011. In the third quarter of 2012, AutoNation’s new car unit sales grew by 21 percent over the same period in 2011, doing better than an estimated 15 percent increase industry wide. November’s sales of new vehicles increased by 21 percent over November 2011 .
The big dealerships acquired sell Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen and Chrysler products in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth markets. They are expected to sell 14,000 new and used autos this year, and will add substantially to AutoNation’s future sales.
“We are in the right industry at the right time,” Jackson said during an interview. “The recovery in new vehicle sales is being driven by replacement demand,” added Jackson, who has 42 years of experience in the auto business. “The average age of the light vehicle fleet in the country has increased to 11 years, and even though cars and trucks last longer today, they can’t go on forever. About 12 to 13 million vehicles are scrapped every year and need to be replaced.”
Other factors are contributing to stronger demand for vehicles. “The population is growing, interest rates are low, there is ample credit available and manufacturers are producing a wide range of new models that offer attractive styling, power and greatly improved gas mileage,” said Jackson, who took over as AutoNation’s CEO in 1999. “Auto financing is more available than it has been in recent years. A little known fact is that people are more likely to default on a mortgage than on a vehicle loan.”
The suspect arrested in connection with Friday’s chase through the streets of Miami-Dade in a rental U-Haul truck appeared in front of judge Sunday morning.
Darrell Conyers, 45, made his first appearance in bond court.
Conyers faces a number of charges including grand theft, fraud and resisting arrest with violence.
During the hearing, the judge noted that the only charge before her was driving with a suspended license. For that she set bond at $2,000. Conyers will return to bond court at a later time for the additional charges.
Conyers was scheduled to appear in court on Saturday but was unable to do so because he was still in the hospital being treated for injuries he sustained at the end of the chase which apparently started as an attempted robbery at a tool shop on South Dixie Highway.
For 45-minutes the U-Haul truck weaved in and out of city streets, jumping on and off the Palmetto Expressway and headed in different directions along Southwest Eighth Street and Flagler Street.
The chase finally came to an end 12:45 p.m. next to Miami Senior High in Little Havana on Flagler Street and 26th Avenue.
When officers moved in to apprehend the driver, an unidentified Miami-Dade Police officer was injured when he was pinned between the U-Haul truck and a police vehicle. He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital where he was treated for a broken leg.
Another Miami officer cut his hand from broken glass. Police say that happened when officers had to break the glass on the U-Haul truck to get the suspect out of it.
Police said Conyers has had previous run-ins with the law and has convictions for firearm violations, fleeing police and carjacking.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp, Japan‘s struggling maker of Viera brand TVs, owns more than 10 million square meters of office and factory space, dormitories for its workers and sports facilities for its rugby, baseball and women’s athletics teams.
As it battles for Christmas shoppers’ wallets in the year-end holiday season, the sprawling electronics conglomerate is also seeking buyers for some of those properties to trim its fixed costs and improve cashflow at a time of intense competition, particularly from South Korean rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co.
Japan’s other troubled TV makers, Sony Corp and Sharp Corp, are also selling buildings and businesses in a giant ‘garage sale’ that could raise a combined $ 3 billion.
Panasonic plans to raise $ 1.34 billion from offloading property and shares in other Japanese companies by end-March, the group’s chief financial officer Hideaki Kawai told Reuters.
“We have a lot of land and buildings in Japan and overseas,” he said in an interview at the company’s head office in Osaka, in western Japan. He declined to list which properties would go on the block, but said most are in Japan.
Included is a 24-storey central Tokyo block – built in 2003 with more than 47,300 square meters and housing 2,000 Panasonic workers – a source familiar with the plan told Reuters.
Kawai added that Panasonic would raise about a quarter of the sell-off funds by getting rid of shares it owns in other companies – a common practice of cross-shareholdings in Japan.
The proceeds would help bolster free cashflow to 200 billion yen ($ 2.43 billion) for the business year to March, Kawai said, and allow Panasonic to reduce its debt and maintain its crucial research and development effort as it revamps its business portfolio.
It will sell more assets in the year starting in April if cashflow dips below 200 billion yen, Kawai added. Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga has promised to shut or sell businesses operating at below a 5 percent margin. Those sales could start as soon as April.
Panasonic’s fixed assets of $ 21 billion are around 30 percent more than those of Apple Inc, and are almost double the company’s market value. The company, founded almost a century ago as a small electrical extension socket maker, trades at around half its book value – which includes intangible assets such as patents. Sony trades at 39 percent of book, Sharp at 30 percent.
The fixed assets – buildings, land and machinery – of the three companies that were not so long ago a byword for innovation in household gadgetry total around $ 42 billion, while their combined market value is $ 24 billion.
CASHFLOW IS KING
The three firms have been downgraded by credit ratings agencies, making it tougher to raise funding on capital markets, and making asset sales more urgent.
Selling assets “is good in terms of their credit ratings because, for all three, it will lower fixed costs and they can reduce their capex requirements. Eventually, this could improve operating margins and, more importantly, cashflow,” said Alvin Lim, an analyst at Fitch Ratings in Seoul.
Fitch, which makes its ratings without input from company management, last month cut Panasonic to BB and Sony to BB minus, the first time one of the major agencies has relegated either company to junk status. Sharp is ranked B minus, adding to its borrowing costs.
“We rate Panasonic as investment grade, and it should have various funding options. Selling assets it can do without, to avoid raising additional borrowing, can be an option,” said Osamu Kobayashi, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
While Korean rivals have also benefited from a weaker local currency, data from the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association shows that Japanese production of consumer electronic equipment fell to just above $ 15 billion last year from more than $ 19 billion a decade ago. Output in September was just $ 980 million, half last year’s level.
“The gap with Korean makers seems to be widening. It’s going to be very difficult for them to regain their top-tier position,” said Fitch’s Lim.
As the three Japanese firms, all under new leadership, have sketched out restructuring plans, the cost of insuring their debt against defaulting in 5 years has dropped from spikes just a month ago. Credit default swaps for Sharp and Sony are down to levels last seen 3 months ago, while Panasonic’s have dropped 40 percent in the past month.
THREE PATHS
While Panasonic is looking to revamp its business around batteries, auto parts and household appliances, Sony is doubling down on smartphones, gaming and cameras. Sharp, meanwhile, is focusing on display screens and is forging alliances with the likes of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry and U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc.
Sony may also take the real estate sale route to raise much-needed cash, with a possible sale of its 37-storey New York headquarters, dubbed by New Yorkers as the ‘Chippendale’ because of its design that is reminiscent of the period English furniture. Selling that jewel could raise $ 1 billion, media have reported.
The maker of Vaio laptops, PlayStation gaming consoles and Bravia TVs may also sell its battery business, which makes lithium ion power packs for tablets, PCs and mobile phones. The company has been approached by investment banks offering to sell the unit, which employs 2,700 people and has three factories in Japan and two overseas assembly plants. Sony values the business’s fixed assets at $ 636 million.
Potential buyers could include BYD Co Ltd, a Chinese carmaker backed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and Taiwan’s Hon Hai – which part owns Sharp’s advanced LCD panel plant in Sakai, western Japan, and is in talks to buy TV assembly plants in China, Malaysia and Mexico for $ 667 million, Japan’s Sankei newspaper has reported.
Sharp has mortgaged nearly all its properties to secure a $ 4.6 billion bailout from Japanese banks and so has few assets to offer in a grand garage sale.
Instead, it’s selling part of the garage.
Qualcomm has agreed to buy a 5 percent stake in Sharp, making it the largest shareholder. Hon Hai, which earlier this year agreed to invest in Sharp – before its stock slumped in the wake of record losses – has said it remains interested in taking a stake.
“Whatever they can get to get through this fiscal period by scaling down their operation is a critical step for them to remain afloat,” said Fitch’s Lim.
($ 1 = 82.4700 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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