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.
Kim Kardashian vs. Pink
Who knew Kim Kardashian and Pink had similar tastes in formal wear? Kardashian was spotted wearing a purple-blue, floor-length Catherine Deane gown in Miami this past month, while Pink chose the same style for her red-carpet appearance at the 2012 American Music Awards. Who rocked the chic style best?
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.
At least the holidays are hiring.
Temporary jobs tied to the shopping season could be the consolation prize to South Florida’s recent stretch of lackluster hiring reports. Retailers expect to hire about 600,000 seasonal workers nationwide to keep up with demand during the Christmas rush, and the temp jobs can be a trial run for landing a permanent position.
“If you do a great job, we will reward you,’’ said Tyre Sperling, a spokesman for UPS, which plans to hire about 900 temporary workers this year in the South Florida area, with most jobs starting at about $8.50 an hour.
The UPS target of 900 local holiday workers is only about 20 more workers than it hired last year, reflecting a general trend of flat seasonal hiring in 2012.
The National Retail Federation expects stores and online merchandisers to bring on between 585,000 and 625,000 temporary workers nationwide this shopping season, roughly the same as the 607,500 hired last year. In South Florida, Macy’s and sister store Bloomingdale’s plans to hire 3,600 seasonal workers, and its national goal of 80,000 workers is up slightly from last year’s tally of 78,000 holiday hires.
One reason that retailers aren’t going all-out on seasonal workers is that they have been on a hiring streak since 2010. Retail payrolls in Broward and Miami-Dade grew 7 percent in the last two years compared to 3 percent for hiring overall. And though the 2012 seasonal hiring numbers are comparable to last year, they still amount to a post-recession high as consumers return to their free-spending ways.
Landing a holiday job at UPS or with any other employer is no guarantee for a permanent position, and companies expect to keep only a small fraction of their temporary workers this winter. Target, the nation’s third-largest retailer, recently said only 30 percent of 2011’s holiday hires became full-time employees.
But managers and others noted that they are reluctant to let outstanding temporary workers go once their assignment ends, particularly at the entry-level wages that typically come with holiday work. Should holiday sales come in strong and retailers start to feel confident about 2013, stores will be more eager to hold onto their staff once the “return” season ends in January.
“This is a good time to get your foot in the door,’’ said Ellen Davis, a senior vice president of the National Retail Federation. When searching for new employees, “the first place where many retailers look is who worked for them during the holidays and did a great job.”
Adrian Rodriguez tried for a month to land a job at JC Penney, but he didn’t hear back until the holidays arrived. “I’m a student. I needed a job,’’ he said. The Miami Dade College student spent a recent morning getting a tutorial on the department store’s watch department, one of thousands of workers cramming in as much Retail 101 before Friday and the official launch of the holiday shopping season.
While retailers wanted as many jobs filled as possible before “Black Friday,’’ the holiday hiring rush continues. Many of the back-end jobs, such as warehouse workers and package handlers, will see their rush periods in the days before Christmas. To land a seasonal job, recruiters, retail experts and others offered this advice:
TALLAHASSEE --
Drivers would be banned from manually typing or reading texts, emails or other electronic messages while operating a car under legislation filed in the Senate Tuesday.
The measure (SB 52), filed by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, calls for the offense to be what is known as a “secondary offense,” meaning officers could only ticket people for texting while driving if they’ve stopped them for some other traffic violation. That is, if a police officer sees someone texting they wouldn’t be able to pull them over – but if they see someone speeding and texting, they could tack on extra charges for texting in addition to the speeding penalty.
Drivers would still be able to read navigational devices or electronic maps without incurring a penalty under the proposal. Reading weather alerts or other safety-related information would also be exempt, as would using a hands-free voice-recognition application.
Texting while driving would be a nonmoving violation, punishable by a $30 fine, under the bill.
Lawmakers will be in full session in March, but bills can be filed now and committee meetings on proposed legislation start Dec. 3. Detert’s was among the first measures in the Senate to emerge from bill drafting for the coming year.
The National Transportation Safety Board has urged Florida and other states to ban the use of cell phones for texting or talking while driving. The NTSB said last year that distracted driving, some of it due to cell phone use, contributed to nearly 4,000 highway deaths a year, citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. About a quarter of American drivers admit they sometimes text and drive. The issue is on the NTSB’s “most wanted” list for changes in transportation safety nationwide.
According to the National Conference on State Legislatures, Florida is one of only five states without some sort of ban on texting while driving. The others are Montana, South Dakota, Arizona, and South Carolina.
Detert has sponsored the proposal in at least the past two previous years with no success, despite generally bipartisan support.
The idea has generally been met with opposition from Libertarian-leaning lawmakers from rural areas who have a philosophical aversion to government imposing additional safety laws. It has also been opposed by some minority legislators, who fear giving police additional reasons to target drivers because of concerns about racial profiling – though Detert’s bill wouldn’t allow police to proactively pull drivers over just for texting.
Two legislators who in the past have held the legislation up in committee – former Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff in the Senate and former Rep. Brad Drake in the House – are no longer in the Legislature.
Ten states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia — and the District of Columbia have banned hand-held phone use by all drivers.
Several other states, including Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Florida’s neighboring states of Alabama and Georgia, have a primary enforcement ban on texting while driving. Some states, such as Texas, have a texting ban just for younger drivers.
Detert’s bill has not yet been referred to committee.
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[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
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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
Halle Berry's ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry and her fiancé Olivier Martinez were involved in a Thanksgiving altercation that turned physical, with one man having to be transported by ambulance due to injuries, ET confirms.
Cops responded to a 9-1-1 call at 10 a.m. at Berry’s house, and one individual has been detained by police. According to People.com, the fight broke out when Aubry was dropping off his daughter with Berry, Nahla, 4, to her house for Thanksgiving.
Related: Halle Berry & Gabriel Aubry's Custody Battle Heats Up
The investigation is currently ongoing.
Related: Berry -- My Love for Olivier Was 'Gradual'
Just Wednesday afternoon, Aubry, Berry, Martinez and Nahla were all seen together attending a pre-Thanksgiving party in Los Angeles.
Halle Berry’s former husband was arrested today at her California home after he triggered a furious fight with her fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez.
Gabriel Aubry was dropping off their daughter, Nah¬la, 4, when fists started flying, TMZ reported.
Aubry, a Canadian model, blew up when Martinez, told him, “We have to move on.” Aubry, 36, swung at and pushed Martinez, 46, but wound up unconscious and pinned to the ground before cops showed up to cart him off on battery charges, law-enforcement sources said.
Berry, who broke up with Aubry in 2010, was there when “Gabriel went nuts,” sources told the Web site.
MUNAWAR HOSAIN /startraksphoto.c
Halle Berry
Both men were treated in the same emergency room about an hour apart, Aubry for a broken rib and a potentially serious head injury, Martinez for a possibly broken hand.
Berry, 46, later obtained an emergency order of protection to keep Aubry away from her, their daughter and Martinez.
Tension between the two reportedly soared after Halle tried to take Nahla to France to live with her and Martinez. Aubry went to court and got an order preventing the move.
A failure by Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center staff to properly clean colonoscopy equipment likely infected a patient with hepatitis C, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan awarded U.S. Air Force veteran Robert Metzler and his wife a combined $1.25 million in their medical malpractice case against the United States government. Metzler, 70, and his wife, Lucy Ann Metzler, had sued for a combined $30 million.
Metzler was one of more than 11,000 veterans who received colonoscopies with improperly-cleaned equipment between 2004 and 2009 at VA hospitals in Miami, Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Augusta, Ga., according to an investigation by the VA’s own Administrative Investigation Board.
The hospitals used equipment that had been rinsed after each patient rather than being sterilized by steam and chemicals as called for by the manufacturer. Investigators who took apart water tubes on some of the equipment that was supposed to be clean and ready for use instead found “discolored liquid and debris.”
Metzler, who received his colonoscopy in 2007, had tested negative for hepatitis C the previous year. He tested positive for the virus in 2009, days after the VA administration sent him a letter warning him of a “potential health risk” related to the endoscopic equipment used during his procedure.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, defending the VA, acknowledged the hospital “breached” a “duty of reasonable care” but denied the equipment caused the health problems.
Dr. David Nelson, a board-certified doctor in internal medicine, testified that “there is less than a 0 percent chance” Metzler contracted hepatitis through his colonoscopy, according to the ruling. But the judge, despite acknowledging that VA records “strongly suggest” Metzler couldn’t have been infected by the colonoscopy, said the veteran had no other risks associated with contracting the virus.
“I realize that the chances of acquiring hepatitis C under these circumstances is slight,” Jordan wrote. “But I find that there is nothing to preclude Mr. Metzler from being one of those two persons in a trillion or billion who do get the virus.”
Don’t want to brave the Black Friday craziness? You can get a head start on your holiday shopping, snag some deals and support local merchants by participating in Small Business Saturday.
Nestled between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday is focused on promoting small business owners nationwide. Since it was started in 2010 by American Express, the promotional effort has grown into a national movement involving thousands of businesses, chambers of commerce and economic development organizations. According to American Express, last year more than 100 million people nationwide participated.
“The one thing businesses have told us over and over again is that they need more customers. So we thought it would be great to create a day in the holiday weekend that focuses just on the small business and shopping locally in communities around the country,” said Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly, senior vice president at American Express Open.. “That’s how Small Business Saturday got its start.”
Organizations such as the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce and Coral Gables Chamber have turned Small Business Saturday into a communitywide event.
“We decided to participate because in Coral Gables we support our small businesses,” said Mark Trowbridge, president and CEO of the chamber that is participating for the second year. “Coral Gables is an economic engine and our small businesses help to drive that engine.”
American Express cardholders who sign up at shopsmall.com will get a $25 credit on their bill if they make a purchase from a participating business on Small Business Saturday. Participating businesses get free marketing support from American Express via a toolkit on its website.
On Saturday, the Coral Gables Chamber, along with American Express, the Village of Merrick Park and Books & Books will host a day of activities, including a $100 Startup Competition, inspired by the best-selling book by Chris Guillebeau. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to bring their most innovative ideas for a business that can be launched with just $100 (register at http://100dollarstartup.co). Finalists will pitch their startup ideas to the public at the 4 p.m. event, held at Books & Books in Coral Gables; a panel of judges will select the winners.
More than 30 Coral Gables merchants will take part in the day; many will feature discounts. At Klara Chavarria Contemporary Art, for instance, patrons can take advantage of free delivery and installation of any artwork purchased Saturday.
The free toolkit has proven an invaluable resource to business people like Michael Nucci, the marketing associate for Fort Lauderdale-based Bluewater Books and Charts, which sells nautical books to recreational cruisers. “We decided to participate last year and again this year because we thought it would give us an advantage on the sale season,” said Nucci, who will be offering a 15 percent discount on most items he sells on Small Business Saturday. “We got started and used the toolkit to get free posters made and to send out e-mail and social media promotions to attract customers. It’s a great thing for small businesses in this economy.”
In Kendall, the Recycled Closet, a consignment shop for teens, is offering 20 percent off its already discounted clothing. “I’m so glad to see American Express and communities around the nation working to help by dedicating a day to the small business owner,” said owner Jennifer Kaloti.
In Miami Beach, small businesses are embracing Small Business Saturday, said Ana Cecilia Velasco, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. “As we are a tourist destination and get heavy traffic specifically for shopping during this time, it is a natural for us to highlight the event. Small Business Saturday makes sense to us as well because Miami Beach is known for its boutique shops.”
To survive the craziness of the season, consumers may want to treat themselves, too. At Pure Therapy, in the W Hotel on South Beach, customers get a $25 gift card with purchases of $100 or more and items from local designers will be 10 percent off on Saturday. In Bal Harbour, Gee Beauty, one of the only independently owned small businesses in the Bal Harbour Shops, will treat customers to a complimentary Gee Beauty Brow shaping with a purchase of $100 or more.
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