Ticket sales up 16 percent for auto show

Miami Beach’s Miami International Auto Show reported a 16 percent increase in ticket sales for the Miami Beach event held in November.

The auto expo does not release full attendance figures, and won’t say exactly how many people came to the 10-day event, which ended Nov. 18. A show spokeswoman said the overall attendance was roughly 600,000 people, but a large number of attendees came using free tickets handed out as promotions.

Now in its 42nd year, the event is held at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

DOUGLAS HANKS

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Miami receives mixed bag of bond ratings

Don’t look to Wall Street to sort out Miami’s complicated finances.

On Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service issued a negative outlook for some of the city’s outstanding bond obligations, and gave a below-average rating to a bond issue expected to close next month.

Fitch Ratings, meanwhile, upgraded the outlook for the outstanding bond issues from negative to stable. But it, too, gave a subpar grade to the new bonds.

The mixed bag of ratings came one week after Budget Director Danny Alfonso announced that Miami closed the fiscal year with an unexpected $37 million surplus. The city’s computer system put the figure at $45 million, but Alfonso said several transactions had yet to post.

Fitch called the year-end surplus “impressive,” and noted that Miami had managed to boost its overall reserves to $54 million, or about 11 percent of spending.

“I’m extremely pleased that we’ve improved” our rating, City Manager Johnny Martinez said Tuesday. “They’ve been watching the things that we’ve been doing as far as building our fund balance and living within our means.”

Governments sell bonds on Wall Street as a way to borrow money, with bond buyers collecting interest and principal payments from the issuers in the same way a bank makes money off home mortgages. The ratings reflect the likelihood that any issuer will continue making bond payments, with a lower rating suggesting a higher risk of default.

Fitch assigned the city’s latest bond issue a BBB+ rating — a below-average grade for a municipal security.

The $45 million bond issue, which was approved by the City Commission Monday and will likely be sold in early December, will pay off a short-term loan that financed Miami’s share of the PortMiami tunnel dig.

Fitch Analyst Michael Rinaldi said the committee had expressed concern over recent turnover in the city’s finance department.

Said Martinez: “I wish the rating had been a little bit higher.”

Moody’s also assigned a mediocre grade to the tunnel bonds — an A3 rating — and described the outlook as negative.

“The negative outlook reflects the city’s ongoing challenges to control high fixed costs, uncertainties associated with key managerial turnover and the ongoing [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] investigation,” Moody’s analysts wrote.

Earlier in the year, Moody’s put Miami under review for a potential credit downgrade after the SEC announced intentions to file civil fraud charges against the city. The review was expanded when several key finance officials resigned their posts.

At the end of the review, the ratings stayed consistent, Moody’s spokesman David Jacobson said.

On the whole, Commission Vice Chairman Marc Sarnoff said, the news was positive.

“The needle is moving in the right direction,” Sarnoff said. “The gas tank is starting to get full.”

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Tablets, discounters top U.S. holiday shopping lists: Reuters/Ipsos

(Reuters) – Move over computers, your sleek siblings are the prized gift of the holidays.

One-third of U.S. consumers are thinking about buying an electronic tablet this holiday season, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters. And 22 percent of those who want one of the hot devices said they plan to cut back on other holiday purchases in order to afford them.

But the new, smaller tablet from industry leader Apple Inc – the iPad mini – is not taking the world by storm. Only 8 percent named the iPad mini as their first choice, the same percentage that said they would like to buy a Microsoft Corp Surface tablet.

“There has been a lot of controversy about the fact that the iPad mini is $ 329, that the price might not be right,” said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters.

Still, Apple’s full-size iPad remains the leader, with 25 percent picking it as the tablet of choice while 15 percent want to buy Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire, and another 15 percent want a Samsung Galaxy device.

Apple sold about 11 million iPads during the 2011 holiday quarter, and this year analysts expect it to sell about 16 million iPads and 8 million iPad mini tablets, Martis said.

Retailers have prepared for a big tablet season. Walmart, for example, doubled its orders for iPads and other tablets and will offer an iPad 2 with a $ 75 gift card for $ 399 as one of its specials on Thanksgiving night.

Laptops are still on the wish lists for 32 percent of respondents, while 18 percent would like to buy desktop computers and only 13 percent are looking for ultrabooks.

SPENDING LESS OR STILL UNSURE

Meanwhile, retailers may want shoppers to believe the holiday shopping season begins sometime in September. But the poll shows that most consumers still are waiting until around Thanksgiving to start their holiday shopping.

Walmart, Toys R Us and others started promoting their layaway plans in September as a way to reserve hot items.

While 11 percent said they were using layaway more this year than last year, 71 percent said they were not.

Seventy-two percent have done no shopping yet or less than a quarter of it, the poll found.

“The fact that 72 percent haven’t really started yet reinforces why Black Friday is coined the official beginning of the holiday season because that’s truly when shoppers start to open their wallets,” Martis said.

Most of that shopping will still take place in stores, despite the rise of online shopping and fears of shoppers using physical stores as showrooms for products they will buy online using their mobile devices.

“It is still growing, but it is still a very small portion of retail sales,” Martis said of mobile shopping.

Going to a mix of different types of stores is the plan for 42 percent of the respondents planning to go to stores, while 31 percent plan to do most of their holiday shopping at a discount chain such as Walmart, Target or Kmart, which will all be open for at least some of Thanksgiving Day to court shoppers.

The U.S. economy and possible tax hikes continue to be a concern for some, with 28 percent saying that they are spending less this year because of the fiscal cliff, though 58 percent said the fiscal cliff was not affecting their holiday spending plans.

Two-thirds of shoppers said they were planning to spend the same amount as last year or were unsure about their spending plans, while 21 percent plan to spend less and 11 percent plan to spend more. Also, 60 percent said are choosing to shop closer to home to save on gas.

Contrary to the cry of some traditional retailers, “show rooming” is not the norm for most people.

When asked how, if at all, they use a mobile device while in stores, 63 percent said they do not even pull out their smartphones while shopping. Fifteen percent compare prices online and 14 percent said they research products.

Amazon is the top online retailer shoppers plan to visit more than they did last year, with 42 percent picking it, 38 percent choosing Walmart, 23 percent selecting Target and 14 percent picking EBay.

Physical stores remain the top destination, with 26 percent planning to shop primarily at stores and only 14 percent planning to shop primarily online.

The poll is the first in a series that Ipsos will conduct during the holiday season.

The findings are from an Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters from November 15-19, 2012, with 1,169 American adults interviewed online. Results are within the poll’s credibility intervals, a tool used to account for statistical variation in Internet-based polling. The credibility interval was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

(Additional reporting by Brad Dorfman; Editing by Edward Tobin and Leslie Gevirtz)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ariel Winter's Sister Continues Temporary Custody

The real-life drama for Modern Family's Ariel Winter continues as a judge granted temporary custody to continue with Winter's sister Shanelle Gray, ET has learned.

PICS: Legendary Kid Stars

This news follows a new declaration filed by Winter's brother, Jimmy Workman, pleading with the court system and the Department of Children and Family Services to help his family get back together.

"I have NEVER seen any physical or emotional abuse in the home of my parents regarding Ariel," Jimmy wrote in his declaration. "I have seen normal mother and daughter arguments and banter back and forth but nothing more. Counseling was set up for [Ariel's mom] Chrisoula and Ariel to get to the root of their issues and corrected."

VIDEO: Ariel Winter's Mom Speaks

In October, temporary guardianship of Ariel was granted to Shanelle after court documents were filed, claiming that Ariel "has been the victim of ongoing physical abuse (slapping, hitting, pushing) and emotional abuse (vile name calling, personal insults about minor and minor's height, attempts to 'sexualize' minor, deprivation of food, etc.) for an extended period of time by the minor's mother [Chrisoula 'Crystal' Workman]..."

Crystal denies the allegations, telling ET, "I love my daughter very much. I would never abuse her in anyway and I have always tried my best to always protect her and do what is right for her. My daughter is in a business that requires you to grow up fast. It's hard enough being a teenage girl, but it's even harder when you are in the public eye. However, because you are in the public eye, it doesn't mean you are no longer in need of good parenting."

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Secretary accused of hoarding millions' worth of art

Imelda Marcos hoarded shoes. And her former personal secretary in New York hoarded tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten Monets, according to a new indictment.

Vilma Bautista, 74, hid and then sold four valuable Impressionist paintings that had disappeared from the Philippine Consulate townhouse in Manhattan after the Marcos regime toppled in 1986, prosecutors said today.

Bautista hobbled into a Manhattan courtroom gripping a cane with both hands, and pleaded not guilty to tax fraud, conspiracy and offering a false instrument for filing.

In conspiracy with two nephews from Bankok, Thailand, she sold Claude Monet's 1899 "Water-Lily" painting in Sept. 2010 for $32 million after hiding it for two decades, according to DA Cyrus Vance, Jr.

She similarly hid and eventually sold a second Monet, plus paintings by Alfred Sisley and Albert Marquet, despite knowing that the Philippine government sought all four works, the DA said. Bautista never disclosed the sale income in her tax returns, depriving the state of millions of dollars in tax revenue, Vance said.

Officials said the investigation into the Marcos art sale conspiracy is continuing.

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Dear daughter, let me give you some career advice ...

My daughter, a high school junior, wants to be a teacher. That doesn’t sit well with my husband, who worries about the state of education and the job outlook. He and I regularly debate whether we should encourage her to pursue this interest, or strongly steer her in another direction.

Today, coaching our kids about career paths is complicated. Many of my reporter and editor friends who witnessed an overhaul of the media world are highly opposed to their kids becoming journalists. Where parents of the past pushed their kids to follow in their footsteps, we want the generation of college-bound kids we raise to go where the jobs will be.

American workers’ experiences during the recession and the uncertainty of the global economy have made many of us more opinionated about what careers our kids pursue. We have witnessed job loss and burnout. We have seen highly educated professionals such as lawyers and bankers lose their jobs. And worse, we have seen college graduating classes face an overwhelmingly tough employment arena. While it’s true that a college degree usually guarantees better wages, the mantra of parents clearly has become: Can you land a decent-paying job with that degree?

As parents, we’re just beginning to understand that the next generation will have to navigate the workplace differently. Experts forecast that workers starting out now will switch careers — that’s careers, not jobs — an average of more than three times during their lives. Should parents, then, worry less about guiding our kids into careers and focus more on helping our kids identify skills to succeed in the new economy?

Whether my daughter becomes a teacher or an engineer, her success likely will come from a mastery of technology, languages and communications skills. Most importantly, she will need the mindset to be a problem solver, innovator, risk taker and self marketer. She will need to be prepared to continuously acquire new skills, a lesson my generation has learned the hard way.

“We are fooling ourselves to think young people will get a degree and spend the next 20 years at a single company or in a single industry,” says John Swartz, regional director of career services at Everest College, which has campuses in 30 cities including Miami. “They will have to be more focused on dealing with change. In this new world order, they have to follow the jobs in demand, acquire the right skills or at least transferable skills, and know that the skill set needed might change.”

For example, Swartz says, he has seen young people get training to become medical assistants because they have a passion to help others. They later were able to apply those skills to other jobs in healthcare. “Parents need to help their kids soul search, then support their decision whatever they choose, understanding that every good high-wage job requires more skill,” Swartz says.

Cesar Alvarez, executive chairman of Greenberg Traurig law firm, factors this concept into how he advises his four children, 28, 27, 22 and 21. For centuries, the law profession has attracted smart, principled men and women. Yet, in the last few years, we’ve seen lawyers underemployed, law partners burned out and law grads without jobs. I asked Alvarez whether he has encouraged any of his children to enter the legal profession.

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Two deadly scares, and triplets to be thankful for

Anthony and Andrea Temperino of Coral Springs were expecting to welcome triplets on Jan. 11, adding three baby boys to a family that already includes 20-month-old “big” brother Ayden.

Instead, they will spend Thanksgiving Day as they’ve passed most days since babies Ashton, Alexander and Austyn were delivered Nov. 1 by emergency Cesarean section at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Mom and Dad will have dinner with both sets of grandparents, but they’ll also make the long trip to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Holtz Children’s Hospital at Jackson, home for now to their babies.

And they will give thanks – for three tiny lives and for Andrea’s survival. About eights weeks into her pregnancy, she was diagnosed with a rare form of the autoimmune disorder Myasthenia gravis. The disease weakens muscles that affect breathing, swallowing and speech. At one point, Andrea was in extremely critical condition and nearly died.

Meeting with reporters at Jackson on Monday, the Temperinos and what Anthony dubbed their “dream team” of University of Miami doctors talked about the couple’s harrowing journey and its happy ending.

“It’s hard to express how thankful you are,” says Anthony, a charter company pilot who, like his wife, is 34. “How do you say thank you for my wife’s life, and for the babies’ [lives]…My life would be completely different if not for’’ these doctors.

In June, the Temperinos sought treatment at a Broward hospital after Andrea developed numbness in her lips and weakness. She had so much trouble breathing that she grabbed what little sleep she could sitting in a chair. She spent 10 days in intensive care, but multiple tests didn’t yield a diagnosis. One doctor suspected Myasthenia gravis, but a neurologist disagreed.

Increasingly frustrated, Temperino asked for his wife’s records and drove her to Jackson. By the next day, Andrea had her diagnosis. Her husband spent each night sleeping beside her in the hospital until she was released after five weeks. Aviation emergencies didn’t compare to how he felt about what his wife had gone through.

“I could be upside down in a plane. This made me much more nervous,” he said.

He recalls what Dr. Ashok Verma, the neurologist who treated Andrea for Myasthenia gravis, told him: “He said, ‘Your wife is my most precious patient. She has not just one life I’m looking out for but four.”

The Temperinos, who met in Boca Raton when she was his boss at a bank, married in 2005 but had no luck starting a family. Ayden was conceived through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), and Andrea’s first pregnancy was a normal one. After another round of IVF, she became pregnant with Ashton and identical twins Alexander and Austyn. After her Myasthenia diagnosis and treatment, she was fine until she felt abdominal pain at 30 weeks. The couple went back to Jackson, and “within 15 to 20 minutes of her arrival, she was on her way into an operating room,” said Dr. Salih Y. Yasin, director of obstetrics at Jackson’s Women’s Hospital Center.

Diagnosed with a life-threatening placental abruption, Andrea was given an emergency Cesarean, and all three babies were delivered within the same minute. Ashton, the baby whose placenta had separated from the uterine wall, inhaled and swallowed blood that collected in his amniotic sac, so he was treated with inhaled nitric oxide, and he continues to receive oxygen.

The babies are still close to their birth weights, Ashton at 3.3 pounds, Alexander at 4 pounds and Austyn at 2.7 pounds. They’ll remain in the NICU, continuing to develop, being treated and monitored, but the Temperinos are hoping to have them home by Christmas. The babies had never been dressed up until their photo was snapped on Monday, but at home, their parents have three of everything waiting for them.

“I can’t wait to take all my children home,” Andrea says. “We’re very grateful for having them.”

And they might not be finished with their family.

After Andrea learned that she was expecting three more sons, Anthony says, “She told me, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ We might have to try for a girl.”

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Woman hits ‘like’ on Facebook, gets arrested in India

The police in Mumbai arrested Monday a 21-year-old college student Shaheen Dhada for a Facebook status update and her friend Renu Srinivasan for clicking “Like” on the update. The case is the latest in a string of recent crackdowns on Internet speech in India.

The update had criticized a general strike called by a political party, the right-wing Shiv Sena, to mourn the death Saturday of its elderly founder and patriarch, Bal Thackeray. The controversial leader has been hailed by Hindu nationalists but also criticized by liberals for leaving behind a legacy of political violence in India’s financial capital. The party has been accused of anti-Muslim violence in Mumbai in 1992, and Mr. Thackeray frequently made statements against Muslims.

In her Facebook post, Ms. Dhada wrote, “Respect is earned, not given and definitely not forced. Today Mumbai shuts down due to fear and not due to respect.” She also said that politicians like Thackeray are “born and die daily” and the city need not shut down for it, and that people should remember the martyrs of the Indian independence movement.

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Dhada and Ms. Srinivasan were arrested under section 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code that seeks to punish statements that amount to “creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes.” Additionally the two students have also been charged with Section 66A of the Information Technology Act that criminalizes online speech that is “grossly offensive or of menacing character.” Another law they have been charged with is Indian Penal Code 295A, which makes insulting or outraging religious feelings an offense. The punishment for each count is three years imprisonment each.

The arrests come in the wake of many such in India this year, a result of controversial new information technology laws. The other cases have included arrest of a resident of Chandigarh who complained on the Facebook page of Chandigarh police that they were not doing enough to find her stolen car; a cartoonist who posted work online protesting corruption scandals by the central government; and a professor in Kolkata who merely forwarded an email with a cartoon that was critical of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

While the women in the Thackeray case have been granted bail, the arrest has led to outrage on social media, with even right-wingers condemning the arrest as an assault on free speech.

Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore says that the entire Information Technology Act needs a review by the government, civil society, and other stake-holders. “The current law does not have sufficient safeguards for privacy and freedom of speech and the law is being used as a tool of harassment,” Mr. Prakash says.

In a letter to the Maharashtra state government, Press Council of India chief Markandey Katju urged chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to take action against police officials who misused the laws to arrest the girls. Mr. Katju, a retired Supreme Court judge, wrote in his letter, “We are living in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship. In fact this arrest itself appears to be a criminal act since… it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime.”

On top of the legal action against the women, street thugs exacted further punishment. A mob of Shiv Sena activists vandalized the clinic of Ms. Dhada’s uncle, Dr. Abdullah Ghaffar Dhada. Speaking on the phone from Mumbai, Dr. Dhadha says he incurred losses of two million Indian Rupees (nearly $ 36,500).

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Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Miley Cyrus Surprises Billy Ray on Broadway

Miley Cyrus and her sisters Brandi and Noah surprised their father Billy Ray Cyrus at his recent Broadway performance playing Billy Flynn in Chicago, where the close-knit family showed their ease with one another by joking around backstage.

"Could you imagine, if I had on a shirt like that?," Billy Ray jokes, pointing to some of the cast members' mesh shirts.

"Um no I can't, and I don't wanna," Miley quips.

Video: Miley Cyrus -- My Dad Knows Nothing

But all kidding aside, it was clearly a happy reunion for the Cyrus bunch.

"This was a great surprise, it's been almost three months since I've seen my family," Billy Ray says about the night's events. " [It's] a great way to start off Thanksgiving."

As for people still talking about his eyebrow-raising comments on Miley's upcoming wedding to fiancé Liam Hemsworth, he himself is clearly over it.

Related: Billy Ray Cyrus Spills Miley's Wedding Details

"We're just having fun right now, it's a good time."

Check out the video to hear if he plans on getting emotional at Miley's nuptials.

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Former accused 'Rape Cop' Kenneth Moreno gets a Thanksgiving reprieve from jail

He'll be home for Thanksgiving -- just maybe not for Christmas.

Kenneth Moreno -- the lead officer in last year's notorious "Rape Cops" trial -- won't have to start his one-year sentence in the case until Dec. 20 at the earliest, thanks to his latest attempt to appeal his misdemeanor official misconduct convictions in the case, his former trial judge told him today.

Moreno got the good news in the same Manhattan courtroom where he'd been controversially cleared, along with his partner, in the on-duty rape of a drunken young fashion executive he'd been dispatched to help.

Moreno, 44, a Brooklyn father of two, had been found guilty of three counts of misconduct, one for each time he and his partner, Franklin Mata, were caught on sidewalk video using the woman's keys to reenter her apartment.

He'd originally been due to surrender and begin serving his one year jail sentence on those counts today. He remains free on $125,000 bail. Mata was sentenced to 60 days, and as yet has not filed another appeal, but is also being allowed to remain free until Dec. 20.

"He's got a very good case," Moreno's appellate lawyer, Stephen Preziosi, told reporters as his glum-looking client left court.

"I'm very confident about our submissions before the Court of Appeals," the lawyer said, referring to the highest court in New York state.

Following their May, '11 convictions, both cops were immediately fired and eventually sentenced -- Moreno to one year and Mata to 60 days -- and have been allowed to stay free pending appeal.

A panel of state appellate judges upheld the misdemeanor convictions earlier this month. In not requiring their surrender today, their trial and sentencing judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, was abiding by an order by Court of Appeals Judge Victoria Graffeo.

If Graffeo ultimately decides-- based on a month's worth of written and possibly oral arguments by prosecutors and Moreno's appellate lawyer -- to hear Moreno's appeal, he could stay out past Dec. 20, the lawyer said.

The appeal would argue -- as has been argued unsuccessfully before Carro and the lower appellate court -- that Moreno did not neglect their official duties while inside the woman's apartment, and that prosecutors misstated the law to the jury during summations.

Moreno and the partner, Mata, 30, had been summoned to help the drunken executive out of a taxi outside of her East Village apartment on a predawn morning in December, 2008.

The woman had tearfully told jurors at trial last year that she woke up on her bed hours later to find Moreno raping her, but also that she was blacked out during much of the evening.

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