ET has your exclusive sneak peek at PSY's next big project!
Video: Stars Party Gangnam Style Backstage at AMAs
The Korean superstar will launch an out-of-this-world Super Bowl commercial Sunday, January 3, and we have your first look behind the scenes of the top-secret shoot this Wednesday.
Also tomorrow, inside Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey's American Idol feud! Plus, the deleted scene deemed too sexy for Twilight.
A son of the late Robert F. Kennedy who was acquitted of criminal charges in a maternity-ward scuffle is suing two nurses who said on TV that he hurt them.
Douglas Kennedy alleges defamation and malicious prosecution stemming from a legal battle with the pair, who said he physically harassed them after his son’s birth.
The suit, filed in White Plains, doesn’t specify damages.
These days, smartphones are almost all drawing from the same bag of tricks, and it can be hard to tell one from the next. If the average smartphone will do all the basic things you want it to, what does it take to be special? Here are four smartphones with unusual features that really make them stand out.
Nokia Lumia 920
Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (Excellent)
The good: This phone forges new Windows Phone ground with wireless-charging support and a highly sensitive screen you can use with gloves. Moreover, Nokia helps fill in Windows Phone OS gaps with a few missing features.
The bad: A thick, heavy build and slippery finish for some colors make the Lumia 920 harder to hold and carry, and the phone’s overhyped camera doesn’t have enough settings.
The cost: $99.99
The bottom line: Nokia’s Lumia 920 is heavy and thick, but if you want the most powerful, feature-rich Windows Phone smartphone available, this is it.
Samsung Galaxy Note 2
Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (Excellent)
The good: Oodles of screen real estate make this terrific for videos, games, and reading, and its improved stylus aids productivity. A blazing quad-core processor, a great camera and strong battery life round out the advantages of this Android 4.1 phone.
The bad: The huge display makes it unwieldy to carry, and hiccups in the S Pen stylus and apps can slow you down. The pricey Note 2 isn’t a suitable tablet replacement across all categories.
The cost: $149.99 to $309.99
The bottom line: Samsung delivers a powerful, boundary-pushing device that gets a lot right. Yet its complicated features and high price raise questions about its purpose.
Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD
Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (Excellent)
The good: This Droid (Verizon) offers fast performance, a big, eye-popping screen and luxurious design. It also has great call quality, lots of storage, 4G data speeds, and unbeatable battery life.
The bad: The major weakness is a camera that produces subpar images. The phone is filled with Verizon bloatware as well.
The cost: $149.99 to $299.99
The bottom line: Motorola’s fast, stylish Droid Razr Maxx HD offers outstanding battery life, but its camera captures unimpressive images.
Samsung Galaxy Beam
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5 (Very good)
The good: An integrated pico projector, as well as a dual-core processor, 720p video capture and a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen.
The bad: The projection software needs some work, the 5-megapixel camera sometimes blurs indoor shots, and the Beam is thicker and heavier than many phones.
The cost: $474.49 to $839.99
The bottom line: Despite weak software, the Galaxy Beam’s bright projector pushes boundaries, and strong smartphone features make it a worthy standalone device.
Twice in the past year, state health administrators cut the number of hours caregivers assisted Alex Perez’s severely disabled son at his Westchester home. Both times, the child’s pediatrician was left wondering why the state had reduced the care he had prescribed for the boy.
On Monday, state Rep. Katie Edwards asked Perez if she had been “misled or misinformed” when state healthcare bosses told her that the company that reviews such prescriptions always speaks with family doctors to find a way to help parents.
“Yes,” Perez told Edwards at a town hall meeting in Sunrise for parents of disabled and medically fragile children Monday night.
Perez, whose 13-year-old son, Christian, suffers from cerebral palsy and failure to thrive, was one of a dozen parents and advocates who spoke to several lawmakers and other community leaders Monday night at the meeting called to address the needs of Florida children with severe disabilities and life-threatening medical conditions.
As Perez looked on, Edwards, the meeting’s chairwoman, called a spokesman for the state Agency for Health Care Administration to the podium. AHCA legislative director Chris Chaney said it was common for the private company, eQHealth Solutions, to speak with family doctors to “reach a consensus” over the care for children like Christian.
“Not happening,” several parents shouted from the audience.
“You need to correct this,” Edwards said, speaking to Chaney.
Edwards, a Democrat from Sunrise who was recently elected to the House, called Monday’s meeting at the Sunrise Senior Center following several stories in The Miami Herald about the state’s cutting of in-home nursing care to medically fragile children, which has forced some parents to place their children in geriatric nursing homes. Edwards said she became aware of children like Christian while volunteering at, and raising money for, a Homestead daycare center for children with complex medical conditions.
“They keep finding new reasons to deny services,” Perez told the group about eQHealth, a private company under contract with the state at the center of the controversy. “It’s a very combative atmosphere.”
The plight of children with complex medical needs came to light last fall when civil-rights lawyers with the U.S. Justice Department accused the state of warehousing severely disabled children in geriatric nursing homes — where the youngsters often have little contact with the outside world, and can spend their entire childhood with no social or family interaction. Hundreds of children have landed in such homes, the Justice Department wrote, because state health administrators have dramatically cut in-home and other services to children whose parents care for them at home.
Edwards said it was partly the Legislature’s “fault” that disabled children were suffering from lack of care. For too long, she said, lawmakers avoided getting involved in the details of state health and social service agencies, allowing departments to write their own rules with little legislative guidance, and offering inadequate oversight over how the state’s “limited pool of resources” is spent.
If the state is favoring nursing homes by strangling the flow of dollars to families raising disabled children at home, though, Edwards said that should stop.
SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics, the world leader in mobiles and memory chips, said it likely earned a quarterly profit of $ 8.3 billion, as it sold close to 500 handsets a minute and as demand picked up for the flat screens it makes for mobile devices, including those for rival Apple Inc products.
That run of five straight record quarters may end in January-March on weaker seasonal demand, though a strong pipeline of smartphones – the South Korean group’s biggest earner – and improving chip prices have eased concerns that earnings growth could slow this year, powering Samsung shares to record levels last week.
The stock closed down 1.3 percent on Tuesday, in a Seoul market that fell 0.7 percent.
“Investors are a bit concerned that Samsung’s momentum may slow in the first half. The smartphone market is unlikely to sustain its strong growth as advanced markets are nearing saturation despite growth in emerging countries,” said Kim Sung-soo, a fund manager at LS Asset Management.
Samsung has outpaced Apple – its biggest rival and biggest customer – despite the U.S. firm’s launch of the latest iPhone 5, with sales momentum boosted by its Galaxy Note II phone-cum-tablet, or ‘phablet’, in the fourth quarter. IPhone 5 sales were a little below expectations, analysts said.
While Apple rolled out just a single new smartphone last year globally, Samsung bombarded the market with 37 variants tweaked for regional and consumer tastes, from high-end smartphones to cheaper low-end models. By comparison, Taiwan’s HTC Corp released 18 models, Nokia 9 and LG Electronics 24.
HTC on Monday said its fourth-quarter profit slumped more than 90 percent as its sales continue to trail those of the Galaxy range and the iPhone.
Samsung, valued at close to $ 230 billion, gave its October-December earnings guidance on Tuesday, ahead of the full earnings release expected by January 25.
A HIGH NOTE
Shipments of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S III, which overtook the iPhone 4S in the third quarter to become the world’s best-selling smartphone, are likely to have slipped to around 15 million in the last quarter from 18 million in July-September, analysts estimate, but sales of around 8 million Galaxy Note II ‘phablets’ should more than make up for that – pushing overall smartphone shipments to around 63 million.
“The Note was selling well, boosting fourth-quarter profit, while iPhone 5 sales were less than expected,” said Song Myung-sub, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.
“Samsung’s profit will drop in the current quarter because of decreased phone profits. It will launch the Galaxy S IV only in March or April so, without new models, phone sales prices will fall this quarter. For the whole year, Samsung will launch new models faster than Apple and have the upper hand in the smartphone market.”
The new Galaxy, widely expected to be released within months, may have an unbreakable screen and full high-definition quality resolution boasting 440 pixels per inch, as well as a better camera and a more powerful processor.
“Samsung’s smartphone shipments are likely to grow even in a seasonally weak first quarter. The early launch of the Galaxy S IV would drive second-quarter growth momentum,” said BNP Paribas Securities analyst Peter Yu, who predicts Samsung’s 2013 operating profit will grow 25 percent to almost $ 35 billion.
Samsung is expected to increase its smartphone sales by more than a third this year, and widen its lead over Apple as it offers a broader range of mobile devices, said Neil Mawston, executive director at market researcher Strategy Analytics, which forecasts Samsung will sell 290 million smartphones this year, up from a projected 215 million in 2012.
Kim Sung-in, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, sees Samsung shipping 320 million smartphones this year and doubling sales of its tablets to 32 million.
STRONG NUMBERS
Samsung said its October-December operating profit jumped 89 percent to 8.8 trillion won from a year ago, just ahead of a forecast for 8.7 trillion won by 16 analysts surveyed by Reuters. That is 8.6 percent higher than its previous record of 8.1 trillion won in July-September.
Analysts expect profits from the mobile division to more than double from last year and increase slightly from the previous quarter, to around 5.8 trillion won. A recovery in chip prices and flat screens should also boost component earnings, helped by booming sales of mobiles carrying Samsung’s chips, micro-processors and flat screens.
Reflecting the strong outlook, shares in Asia’s most valuable technology stock last week hit a life high of 1.584 million won ($ 1,500). The stock gained 44 percent last year, topping Apple’s 31 percent increase and easily outpacing a 9 percent rise on the broader Korean market.
Samsung, led by founding family member and chairman Lee Kun-hee, is embroiled in a patent legal battle with Apple globally. Apple won a $ 1.05 billion verdict against Samsung in August, but has failed to win a permanent sales ban on several, mostly older Samsung models.
(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Narae Kim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
David R. Ellis, former Hollywood stuntman and film director, passed away today at the age of 60 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was preparing to direct the upcoming film Kite.
Born in Hollywood, Ellis began working in the film industry as a stuntman in his late teens. He was promoted as stunt coordinator in the 1981 and worked on over 70 films in a 20-year span, including Scarface, Lethal Weapon, and Fatal Attraction.
After working his way up to becoming an assistant director, Ellis then directed his first film in 1996 with Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco.
Following his directorial debut, Ellis segued into the thriller genre, churning out two Final Destination sequels and most notably, the 2006 film Snakes on a Plane starring Samuel L. Jackson.
Growing up in the water as a junior pro surfer, his most recent project was the underwater horror film Shark Night. Amongst a slew of his upcoming unreleased thriller films, Ellis directed the sports drama The Hail Mary, which is based on a true story of an NFL quarterback.
Jackson, who was working with Ellis again on Kite after their Snakes on a Plane collaboration, expressed his condolences via Twitter, writing, "So sad to hear of David R Ellis passing! So talented, so kind, such a Good Friend. He'll be missed. Gone too soon!"
The cause of Ellis' death has yet to be determined.
William Miller
Two pedestrians were struck Monday night by a Brooklyn-bound Fung Wah line bus just as it was pulling onto the Manhattan Bridge.
The accident happened at around 11 p.m. in the crosswalk at Canal Street and Bowery, across the street from the Chinatown bus company’s office, cops said.The victims are in stable condition. The driver of the bus is not expected to be charged, cops said.
It is unclear if the bus was carrying passengers at the time of the accident.
The accident snagged traffic across Canal Street for at least two hours, holding up a fleet of massive high-end yachts fresh from the New York Boat Show at the Javits Center.
"You have to have an even temper driving these huge, oversized trucks through New York City, but I can tell you, the first thing I thought about was the poor guy driving that bus,” said Brian Christensen, 51, of Florida, who was towing an $800,000, 50 foot-Prestige 500 yacht to Staten Island. “It’s crazy driving down here. People just jump right out."
Additional reporting by Natasha Velez
William Miller
Anchors a-wait: The accident left yachts from a boat show stuck in traffic near the Manhattan Bridge.
More than 4,000 miles from its home base in Doral, Energy International is helping keep the lights on and the power grid humming in Gibraltar, the British territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.
Energy International, a global provider of power plants and energy solutions, sent a temporary plant that will provide power for at least the next two years while a more permanent fix is sought for the territory’s erratic and aging electrical system.
The Doral company was founded 14 years ago as MCA Power Systems and its initial goal was to pursue energy contracts in Latin America. It began 2000 with a name change and in recent years its focus has become global.
“The world needs energy,’’ said Brett Hall, EI’s vice president of finance.
While the 2007-2008 recession curtailed the growth of worldwide energy demand, the U.S. Energy Information Agency has projected that global demand for electricity will increase by 2.3 percent annually from 2008 to 2035.
The potential is especially strong in developing nations. The International Energy Agency estimated that in 2009, 21 percent of the world’s population — 1.4 billion people — didn’t have access to electricity. In sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage of people without power rises to 69 percent.
Energy International has expanded sales from Latin America and the Caribbean to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, boosting revenue from $100 million annually in 2009 to more than $300 million today, Hall said. This year, EI is anticipating revenue of $350 million to $375 million.
In the next seven years the company, which is privately owned by American shareholders and affiliated with Gecolsa — the Caterpillar dealership in Colombia — hopes revenue will top $1 billion, he said.
Even though Energy International is based in the United States, it does little work domestically. Its sweet spot is emerging economies and contracts of $100 million or less.
“Our focus is to do whatever makes the most economic sense for a particular market,’’ said Hall.
“We’re not going to be building a nuclear power plant,’’ he said. But EI will accommodate its solutions to local fuel supplies whether it’s biofuel, natural gas or heavy fuels that are more prevalent.
When it comes to the type of temporary power solution needed by Gibraltar, which had been plagued by a string of power outages at its archaic electrical facilities, EI can have a temporary plant up and running in 30 to 40 days, supplying the engineering, rental turbines and other equipment and doing the installation.
“We were able to support Gibraltar’s power needs on short notice,’’ said Andres Molano, EI’s vice president of sales. “Some of their equipment required major maintenance and they needed to stop their plants.’’
EI, one of the world’s largest suppliers of interim energy solutions, signed a $12 million contract with the government of Gibraltar in November and the plant was operational by Dec. 21. The agreement includes an option for a three-year extension.
The equipment now in use in Gibraltar is considered part of EI’s fleet and will move on to other energy emergencies when its service in the territory famed for the Rock of Gibraltar is complete.
But when it comes to its permanent power plants, EI will build a facility for a client looking to generate its own power or construct a plant, run it and sell power directly to the final user.
“We can do all the work ourselves. We have all the skills in house — finance, design, operations, maintenance, building and the equipment,’’ said Hall.
Energy International has moved into the Middle East, completing projects in Oman and Yemen and establishing a subsidiary in Dubai in 2012 to pursue business in Africa and the Middle East, said Molano.
“Africa is new to us, but we believe there are opportunities there,’’ he said.
The company also is looking for continued growth in Latin America, especially in Colombia, which is now attracting foreign investors who previously had been spooked by violence.
Remote areas of the Amazon where temporary power solutions are needed also represent opportunity for the company.
“EI is very fortunate to be in a position in which we have more excellent opportunities than capital.’’ said Hall, so this year it will be concentrating on raising equity to finance growth.
“One of our biggest challenges in 2013,’’ Hall said, “will be to find investors or joint venture partners to provide capital that will enable EI to perform these projects so our aggressive revenue growth targets can be achieved.’’
On Tuesday, Broward Sheriff-elect Scott Israel will take over the most powerful elected post in the county, overseeing about 5,500 employees and a $670 million budget.
Past Broward sheriffs have generated colorful and political headlines. Nick Navarro, elected in 1984, ordered deputies to cook crack cocaine to use in drug stings, and ordered the arrest of the rap group 2 Live Crew for obscenity. Ken Jenne, a former state senator, plastered his name on everything from pencils to Frisbees to rugs before he pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2007 and landed in federal prison.
Then Gov. Charlie Crist appointed longtime BSO official Al Lamberti as sheriff. On Election Day a year later, Lamberti won as a Republican in Florida’s most Democratic county. Tens of thousands of voters who turned out to elect President Barack Obama skipped the sheriff’s race, helping Lamberti defeat Israel, a Democrat.
But in 2012, fewer voters skipped the sheriff’s race on their ballot and Israel — with the help of key political allies — ousted Lamberti.
Israel set to work changing BSO immediately. In December, his transition team sent emails to 28 high-ranking employees telling them they would be out once Israel took over. Many top officials had already announced they would be leaving, including BSO spokesman Jim Leljedal, attorney Judith Levine and Undersheriff Tom Wheeler.
After 35 years at BSO, Lamberti said Friday that he has not applied for any jobs and doesn’t plan to open a security firm. (He has been joking about the fact that there is an opening at the CIA.)
Bob Butterworth, a former Broward sheriff and Florida attorney general, calls the sheriff’s job the “most challenging office” in Broward.
“If you can deal with the issues of substance abuse and mental health — and a sheriff can if they wish to do that — I think you can reduce crime in this community by a lot and also reduce the jail population,” Butterworth said.
Beyond staff changes, it is not yet clear how Israel, a 56-year-old former Fort Lauderdale police captain and North Bay Village police chief — will change BSO.
But emails from Israel’s transition team to BSO show that Israel has sought information about every aspect of the agency, including budget forecasts, contracts for everything from garbage collection to lobbying, statistics about the race of employees and even about the protocol for military casket arrivals.
Israel’s senior command staff includes many who played key roles in his campaign, including his new general counsel, Ron Gunzburger, son of County Commissioner Sue Gunzburger, and Lisa Castillo, who worked on Israel’s campaign. The name of her husband, Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo, is also being bandied about as having a role in the Israel administration.
Israel, who lives with his wife, Susan, and teenage triplets in Parkland, will be sworn in at a public ceremony by Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes at 11 a.m. Tuesday at The Faith Center in Sunrise.
The Miami Herald spoke to Israel recently about his views on gun control, politics and other topics.
Q. The Broward sheriff is often described as the most powerful elected post in Broward. Your predecessor, Al Lamberti, tried to define himself as a law enforcement professional — not a politician. Do you view yourself as a politician?
Rusty Foster discovered he was dead last week, at least according to Facebook. He had been locked out of his account, which had been turned into a “memorial page,” because someone had reported the Maine man as deceased to the social media site.
He tweeted Thursday, “Facebook thinks I’m dead. I’m tempted to just let it,” then “Did you know that you can report any of your Facebook friends dead & Facebook will lock them out of their account with no evidence needed?”
As one of Foster’s friends discovered, it doesn’t take much to convince Facebook that somebody is dead. By simply going to the ” Memorialization Request” page and filling out a form, including a link to an obituary, anybody can take someone else off Facebook.
The obituary needs to have the same name (or at least a close name), but doesn’t need to match any other details on the profile. The obituary Foster’s friend used to prove Foster’s death was for a man who was born in 1924 and died in 2011 in a different state than the one Foster lists on Facebook as his home state.
Foster, 36, said he never got any notification his account was going to be locked, and only discovered it when he attempted to log in. He filled out a form to report the error, and received a response that began with “We are very sorry to hear about your loss.”
More than a full day later, Foster’s account still hadn’t been unlocked. Buzzfeed, tipped off by Foster, posted an article in which one editor “killed” another editor, John Herrman, on Facebook. According to the article, about an hour after Herrman reported the error to Facebook, his profile was reactivated. About an hour after that, 27 hours after Foster first reported his erroneous death, he was “resurrected” by Facebook and allowed back into his account.
Foster does not know the total amount of time he was “Facebook dead.” He told ABC that nothing was different with his account when he logged back in, only that some of his friends had a little fun with his status.
“The only thing that happened was some of my friends posted little mock-eulogies for me, because word got around that I was locked out, due to a temporary case of death,” Foster wrote in an email with the subject line, “Rusty, the Facebook zombie.”
When pages are memorialized, they are removed from sidebars, timelines and friend suggestions and searches. This is likely to prevent people from seeing their friends who have died pop up on their newsfeed, and to prevent people from hacking into the accounts of dead people.
Foster said he understands the position Facebook is in when it comes to the death of one of its users, but believes there are better options for the social media site.
“There ought to be an email sent to the account’s email address informing it that the account has been reported dead and providing a link or something to dispute the report before any action is taken,” Foster wrote.
Foster said the most frustrating part was not being able to get into his account to “click the ‘I’m not dead’ button that should also be there.”
This has apparently been the same “memorialization” process since at least 2009, when another user took to his personal blog to write about his experience of being “Facebook dead.” In his case, the obituary his friend used to have him declared dead wasn’t even close to his real name. Instead, the man who performed the funeral services had a similar name.
In a statement to ABC News, Facebook said the system is in place in order to respect the privacy of the deceased.
“We have designed the memorialization process to be effective for grieving families and friends, while still providing precautions to protect against either erroneous or malicious efforts to memorialize the account of someone who is not deceased,” the statement reads. “We also provide an appeals process for the rare instances in which accounts are mistakenly reported or inadvertently memorialized.”
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