It's an ET exclusive!
On Wednesday Oscar-winner and Django Unchained star Jamie Foxx sits down with Nancy O'Dell to talk about his new film and open up about his interesting on-set relationship with co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.
Video: Oscars Flashback '05: Jamie Foxx Wins for 'Ray'
Also tomorrow, Anne Hathaway's style evolution and an update on Kate Middleton's health. Plus, we unveil a mystery Hollywood bride ready to walk down the aisle.
Four Occupy Wall Street protesters collared for breaking into a vacant Williamsburg building and throwing a destructive party copped plea deals in Brooklyn Supreme Court today that land them 105 hours of community service and $500 in restitution.
The four radicals could have faced seven years in prison for their role in the illegal bash, which injured three responding police officers.
Zachary Dempster, 32, Robert Nilon, 26, Emma Engle, 21, and Matthew Whitely, 25, had been charged with riot, assault, and resisting arrest but so long as they stay out of trouble for six months, all felony charges will be dropped.
“I hope that they continue what some call ‘the good fight,’ but in a less violent manner,” said Assistant District Attorney Lewis Lieberman.
The suspects' lawyer, Martin Stolar, said of the deal, “It represents a compromise. The DA and the police did not want to take the risk of the defendants getting acquitted, and the defendants didn’t want to take the risk of getting a felony."
Nilon, who was accompanied to court by a pretty gal pal and also has a pending assault charge in Pennsylvania, said, “I’m glad to have this over.''
Despite global economic uncertainties, Latin American and Caribbean economies are expected to show an uptick in 2013, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Next year, regional economies will grow by an estimated 3.8 percent, compared to 3.1 percent — the figure projected for 2012, said Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of ECLAC, which is based in Santiago, Chile.
Despite the more positive outlook, the report said the region’s economic performance will still depend on possible recession in Europe, the strength of economic growth in China, the impact of modest growth in the United States and other world economic trends.
Among the Latin American countries projected to have growth rates of four percent or higher are: Brazil (4 percent), Bolivia (5 percent), Chile (4.8 percent), Colombia (4.5 percent), Nicaragua (4.5 percent), Panama (7.5 percent), Paraguay (8.5 percent), Peru (6 percent), and Uruguay (4 percent).
“[Next year] may not be the great year that we all want but it will be a good year for Colombia,’’ said Alvaro Moreno, a researcher at Colombia’s Private Competiveness Council. Revaluing the Colombian peso has proved difficult, he said, and trade in Colombia’s non-traditional exports also has been declining but oil and mining exports will contribute to growth.
Buoyant consumption levels in a number of regional economies as well as commodity prices that aren’t expected to fall significantly despite global uncertainly are contributing to regional growth.
But Bárcena warned: “The challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean is to increase and stabilize investment growth, and not to depend exclusively on consumption as a means to drive structural change with equality, to incorporate technical progress and deliver sustainable growth.’’
Among other large economies in Latin America, Mexico is expected to grow by 3.5 percent; Argentina, 3.9 percent, and Venezuela, 2 percent. The Cuban economy, with growth forecast at 3.5 percent in 2013, is expected to do slightly better than it did in 2012.
Combined Argentina and Brazil — South Florida’s most important trading partner — account for about 41.5 percent of regional gross domestic product.
While the Argentine economy is expected to improve on a 2012 growth rate of 2.2 percent, some analysts aren’t very bullish on its prospects. “Argentina has been gradually isolating itself over a number of years,’’ said Jonathan Heath, chief economist at Health & Associates in Mexico City.
“Argentina has been faking its inflation rate for a number of years and everyone knows that,’’ he said during a recent conference in Miami on Latin America’s 2013 economic forecast.
Tiny, land-locked Paraguay is expected to have the strongest economic growth in South America at 8.5 percent in 2013 but it is coming off a 1.8 percent contraction in 2012.
The news is not as encouraging in the Caribbean where growth is expected to average 2 percent next year but that is still better than this year’s projected growth rate of 1.1 percent.
The economies of many Caribbean nations remain fragile and the GDP of Jamaica is expected to grow a mere .1 percent in 2013. Sluggish growth also is expected in Barbados (1 percent), Dominica (1.7 percent), Grenada (1.2 percent), St. Kitts and Nevis (1.8 percent), St. Vincent and the Grenadines (1.5 percent), St. Lucia (1.9 percent) and Trinidad and Tobago (2.5 percent).
Haiti with 6 percent growth is forecast to have the most vibrant growth in the Caribbean but it is coming off a devastating earthquake in 2010 when its economy shrank by 5.4 percent. Guyana (4.9 percent) and Suriname (4.7 percent) are the only Caribbean countries whose economic growth rates are expected to top 4 percent next year.
The bus that rammed into an overpass at Miami International Airport has claimed a third life.
The crash happened a few minutes before 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 1. The bus carried members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation on their way to the annual general assembly meeting in West Palm Beach.
The driver, Ramon Ferreiro, 47, took a wrong turn on Le Jeune Road. He sped past multiple signs warning of the low clearance at the airport’s arrival concourse, smashing the 11-foot-tall bus into an overpass.
After the crash, one person died at the scene. A second person died the same day after being taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital.
On Monday, a Jackson spokeswoman announced that another person, who had been in critical condition since the crash, had died. Miami-Dade police identified her as Gliceria Emerida Garcia, 75, of Miami-Dade County.
Jackson spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti said two people remained in the hospital from the crash. Both were listed in good condition. The other nine people admitted to Jackson after the crash have been released, she said.
Seinfeld has never left our pop culture lexicon. Just recently we’ve seen it referenced in the presidential race and in Game of Thrones parodies. But what would the seminal “show about nothing” be like if its characters could use cell phones or Facebook? The @SeinfeldToday Twitter account, which popped up Sunday evening, ventures to propose of-the-moment plots for a modern Seinfeld. For example:
Kramer is under investigation for heavy torrenting. Jerry’s new girlfriend writes an extremely graphic blog. George discovers Banh Mi.
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012
The man behind the account, BuzzFeed’s sports editor Jack Moore, started tweeting out scenarios with his friend, comedian Josh Gondelman, and then decided that the joke merited its own account. Moore is a Seinfeld fanatic himself: “I’m pretty much constantly watching episodes in the background while I’m doing anything,” he told us in an email. “I have a thumb drive with the whole series on it that I keep in my bag pretty much all the time.”
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So far, the modern-day episode summaries ring true, despite warnings from Gawker last year that classic episodes wouldn’t have worked if the characters just had the use of newfangled technology. “It would be different but not as different as everyone acts like,” Moore wrote to us. “People always say that ‘if they had cell phones Seinfeld couldn’t exist,’ which is true for a certain type of Seinfeld episode, but not as a general rule (which I think the account shows).”
RELATED: Jon Huntsman Finds His Voice by Sounding Like a Dad on Twitter
The account makes it obvious that Internet apps and 2012 trends would create the same awkward situations that Seinfeld thrived on. For example:
Kramer uses grinder to meet new friends, doesn’t know it’s a gay hook-up app. Jerry refuses to admit he cried on @wtfpod.
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012
Elaine has a bad waiter at a nice restaurant, her negative Yelp review goes viral, she gets banned. Kramer accidentally joins the Tea Party.
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012
George thinks his GF is faking a gluten-intolerance, feeds her real cookies, sending her to the ER. Autocorrect ruins Jerry’s relationship.
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012
We kind of really want to see some of these made, actually. Reunion special?
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Elmo have hard problem.
The fourth man to accuse “Sesame Street’’ puppeteer Kevin Clash of inappropriate sexual contact says the older man couldn’t get it up when the two were getting it on in Clash’s New York City pad around 1995, according the alleged victim’s civil lawsuit filed today in Manhattan Federal Court.
At the time, Clash, then 35, blamed his penis problems on an unspecified “medical condition,” the lawsuit said.
The accuser, who is now in his 30s, said he was around 16 when he met Clash walking on a Miami beach and that the pair kept in touch over the phone.
Getty Images
Kevin Clash, the former puppeteer for the Elmo character on the long-running children's television show Sesame Street.
After learning that the accuser had problems at home and wanted to run away, Clash, the squeaky voice of Elmo, promised to “be a dad” to him and lured him to the city “with promises to pay for his plane ticket ... and give him cash and a free place to stay,” the lawsuit said. The accuser was allegedly sexually abused after visiting Clash.
A previous accuser who says he was also 16 when he and Clash hooked up also had written in a memoir, “The game we played was father and son.”
Clash’s latest accuser remained unnamed in the suit. His lawyer is also representing two other accusers.
Clash’s rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 2 lost its traction this weekend at the box office, dropping to the number three spot after three weeks at the top.
Skyfall, the latest James Bond flick starring Daniel Craig, emerged triumphant for its fifth weekend in US theaters with an estimated $11 million earned between Friday and Sunday.
Related: 'Skyfall' Wins Box Office, Sets Franchise Record
Not far behind, Rise of the Guardians brought in $10.5 million to secure its place in second with The Twilight Saga finale coming in at a close third with $9.2 million.
Steven Spielberg's Lincoln nabbed the number four spot with $9.1 million. Life of Pi rounds out the top five with $8.3 million.
MEXICO — Authorities in Mexico say the wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying singing superstar Jenni Rivera has been found and there are no apparent survivors.
Transportation and communication minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza tells Mexican television that the plane was found in Nuevo Leon state without survivors.
The minister said that "everything points toward it being the plane" that carried the Mexican-American singer and six others.
The U.S.-registered Learjet 25 went missing early Sunday after taking off from the city of Monterrey.
Jorge Domene, spokesman for Nuevo Leon's government, said the plane left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after a concert there and aviation authorities lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes later. It had been scheduled to arrive in Toluca, outside Mexico City, about an hour later.
Getty Images
MISSING: Singer Jenni Rivera, not heard from since plane disappeared.
Rivera, 43, who was born and raised in Long Beach, California, and is one of the biggest stars of the Mexican regional music known as grupero music, which is influenced by the norteno, cumbia and ranchera styles.
The so-called Diva of the Banda recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for "Joyas prestadas: Banda." Her famous songs include "La Gran Senora" and "De Contrabando."
The singer, businesswoman and actress appeared in the movie Filly Brown, as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown, and has her own reality shows including "I Love Jenni" and "Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C" and her daughter's "Chiquis 'n Control."
Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey on Saturday night. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from baseball player Esteban Loaiza.
"I can't get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other women," she said Saturday night. "The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."
The mother and grandmother had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage. It was her third marriage.
Rivera is the sister of Mexican singer Lupillo Rivera.
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