PHOTOS: FDNY douses taxi fire in Brooklyn

Aaron Neilson-Belman

Firefighters put water on a burning taxi in Brooklyn.

These are some hot wheels! Firefighters doused a raging taxi fire that erupted on busy Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn today, just a block from the new Barclays Center.

Firefighters quickly put out the blaze, which erupted on Flatbush near Dean Street at about 3 p.m. in the northern section of tony Park Slope.

No one was hurt and the FDNY did not know what caused the fire, but from photos captured by a quick-thinking lensman, the taxi looks like a total loss.

Aaron Neilson-Belman

'HOT' COUTURE: Cab caught fire in front of the Versailles clothing shop.

Aaron Neilson-Belman

JUST AIN'T 'FARE': This cab won't be making pickups any time soon.

Read More..

Fed aims for a 6.5% jobless rate

Six and a half percent unemployment in America would mean almost 2.1 million more people working than today. At the rate the country has been creating new jobs each month, it would take more than a year to find work for that many people.

Keep 6.5 percent in mind this week when the Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday to talk about its efforts to push interest rates down. The hope is that the cheap cash will spur on investment leading to job creation. After all, the central bank has promised to keep its target interest rate near zero as long as more than 6.5 percent of Americans in the workforce are without work. The Fed has put other conditions on maintaining its historically low interest rate such as low inflation, but official measures remain tame. So its job growth the Fed is looking for.

It won’t have to wait long for the latest update. On Friday the first jobs report of 2013 will be released. Hiring has been a slow grind but it has been positive.

Finding work in January, though, can be tricky. Winter weather, a hangover from the holidays and seasonal work ending can slow down hiring.

It will be months, maybe even a couple of years before the U.S. unemployment rate hits 6.5 percent. There is nothing magical about that number, but as long as the Federal Reserve has it in its sights, so should we.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.

Read More..

Former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz considering bid for governor

Former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz looks ready to run for governor and has spent the past three weeks lining up support from strategists, financiers and elected officials.

Diaz, who hasn't taken calls from The Miami Herald for three weeks about his plans, finally returned a text message on Friday and said he wasn't ready to speak about the matter, in part because he was attending a charity golf tournament.

Diaz met Friday morning with top Democratic strategist Jeff Garcia, who said he'd like the former mayor to run.

"His potential candidacy presents a unique opportunity for Democrats and Floridians to take the state in a completely new and positive direction," said Garcia, U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia's chief of staff who met Friday morning with Diaz. "I'm excited he's considering running. It adds something new and fresh to the field."

Diaz, mayor from 2001-2009, would be the only Democratic Hispanic candidate among those who have announced or are considering a bid to challenge Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the electorate, helped President Obama win his reelection campaign in Florida.

If elected, Diaz would be the first Democratic Hispanic governor. The state's first Hispanic governor was a Republican, Bob Martinez, from 1987-1991.

Diaz has made no formal announcement for the election, which is still nearly two years away.

Former Democratic state Senate leader Nan Rich, of Weston, has announced her intention to run. Former state CFO and the last Democratic governor's candidate, Alex Sink, is mulling a run as is former Gov. Charlie Crist, a former Republican, who helped President Obama's campaign in Florida this year.

Diaz was a big help to Obama's Florida campaign as well. In the waning days of the election when he cut a Spanish-language ad rebutting a spot from Republican Mitt Romney's campaign, which suggested the president was a socialist.

As a past leader of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Diaz has some close allies in top spots. He wants to hire some of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson's campaign team.

New York Mayor and media tycoon Michael Bloomberg wrote the forward to Diaz's book, Miami Transformed, which Diaz is promoting.

Diaz is also on good terms with former Baltimore Mayor and current Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who recently stepped down as head of the Democratic Governor's Association.

One Democratic source said the DGA is nervous about a potential Crist candidacy because of the former Republican governor's "baggage."

But Diaz has some, too, according to his critics in Miami-Dade, home of the largest block of voters in the state.

His successor, Republican Tomas Regalado, faulted Diaz for leaving the city's budget in bad condition.

Regalado noted that as mayor, Diaz spent more money than Miami took in, draining the reserves from $120 million at the beginning of his tenure to just $20 million by the end.

"He's going to have a hard time explaining the way he left Miami," Regalado said.

Regalado also faulted Diaz for pushing for a new stadium for the Miami Marlins baseball team.

Diaz won't, however, need to explain anything after recently changing his party affiliation from independent to Democrat, Regalado said.

"Thankfully, Charlie Crist has already done that," he said.

Other Miami movers and shakers, though, say Diaz did an excellent job in trying times.

"Manny is a visionary leader who has never lost his footing or his roots," Eduardo J. Padrón, Miami Dade College president, said in blurb about Diaz's book. "He epitomizes the immigrant success story and the fruition of the American Dream."

At a recent Miami fundraiser for a Los Angeles candidate for mayor, Eric Garcetti, Diaz was introduced as "Gov. Manny Diaz." Diaz did nothing to quiet the talk, according to people in the room.

Miami Herald reporter Kathleen McGrory contributed to this report

Read More..

Nicolas Cage Superman Lives Kickstarter Documentary

Director Zack Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan are putting the finishing touches on their big-budget Superman reboot, Man of Steel, which flies into theaters this June. As buzz around the return of the Son of Krypton continues to grow with Henry Cavill in the title role, many non-film geeks may be unaware that in the late '90s there was a major Superman film in the works that never got off the ground – with a first draft script written by Kevin Smith, directed by Tim Burton, and starring Nicolas Cage as the man in the red cape. Yep, you heard that right.

Pics: 13 Must-See Movies of 2013

Metalocalypse director and Grimm Fairy Tales producer Jon Schnepp is a man obsessed with this film that never got made -- just before Superman Lives was set to start filming in 1997, production was shut down on – and now he's attempting the second-best thing to seeing the final film: He's putting together a documentary chronicling the movie that never was with the help of Kickstarter called The Death of Superman Lives; What Happened?

"For whatever reasons, it all fell apart right before they started shooting," says Schnepp. "It's a bummer, I mean, especially looking at it like almost 15 years later, we could've had the weirdest Superman movie ever made. The weirdness level of this Superman movie beats any superhero film that's ever been made."

After the huge, successful re-launch of the Batman franchise in the early '90s with Michael Keaton in the title role, Warner Bros. was keen to get Burton on board to resurrect their Superman franchise, which had lost steam after four Christopher Reeve movies (WB was only loosely associated with 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) a decade before. Much like how they recently got The Dark Knight trilogy producer Christopher Nolan on board to produce Snyder's Man of Steel, WB execs believed Burton had the magic touch.

But Burton's vision was perhaps a little too eccentric for the very "Boy Scout" Superman franchise, envisioning bizarre black, rainbow-colored and electrical circuitry suits; drooling, scaly monsters; skull-shaped spaceships; and a Superman who didn't even fly. Brainiac was intended to be the main villain, with a disembodied head connected to a spidery robotic apparatus, no doubt the influence of former Batman and Batman Returns producer Jon Peters, who was obsessed with spiders.

Video: New 'Man of Steel' Trailer Soars!

Of course, we all know that Warner Bros. eventually entrusted the Superman franchise to X-Men director Bryan Singer, whose Superman Returns fell short of box-office expectations in 2006 and failed to yield a new series. Meanwhile, Nic Cage named his own son after Superman, with little Kal-El born in 2005, and Burton went on to make a string of remakes and franchise adaptations to varying degrees of success -- but never took on another major comic book superhero.

The enthusiastic Schnepp is hoping to interview the key artists involved with the Superman Lives movie that never happened, and if his Kickstarter campaign exceeds his budget goal, he plans to use the money to film a few actual scenes from the film that never saw a frame of exposed celluloid. Pretty cool idea, eh?

Read More..

Caught: Suspect who escaped during bathroom break nabbed in Bronx

They finally flushed out this fugitive!

A murder suspect who escaped from a Brooklyn police precinct yesterday by asking a cop for a bathroom break was captured today by cops hiding out in a friend’s Bronx apartment, the NYPD said.

Brandon Santana, 24, was apprehended at 3:15 p.m. at 3930 Third Avenue by NYPD officers and the Regional Fugitive Task Force, about 37 hours after he ran, un-handcuffed, from the 78th Precinct in Park Slope after knocking down a cop escorting him to the toilet.

Police said that the girlfriend of Santana’s friend opened the door when they arrived, and she told them that a pal of her boyfriend was staying there.

NYPD

Brandon Santana, escaped during bathroom break.

Cops found Santana standing in the bedroom, and took him into custody without incident, according to the NYPD.

Santana is suspected of repeatedly bashing 22-year-old dad-to-be Alexander Santiago with a lead pipe during a gang assault on the man and three of his friends at 12th Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope on Aug. 1, 2010.

After Santana’s latest arrest today, Santiago’s girlfriend Stephanie Mercado, told The Post, “'I hope the cops keep him tight, and don't let him get away.”

“No bathroom breaks this time,” Mercado said. “And now that they have him we want them to get the rest of the cowards. I want justice."

Santana’s apprehension was the second time in the past week he was caught by cops.

He had been hiding out with a relative in Iowa, but returned to the city this week – and was promptly caught by cops who wanted to arrest him for Santiago’s murder.

Detectives questioned Santana at the station house Wednesday night, and then left at the end of their shift at 1 a.m. yesterday, expecting to put him in a witness lineup later.

An hour later, after he had been placed in a first-floor holding cell, Santana asked the officer minding him if he could use the bathroom.

When the cop opened the cell door, Santana — who was not handcuffed — shoved the officer, knocking him to the ground, and ran straight out of the station house, law-enforcement sources said.

One cop behind the front desk jumped over it to chase him, but hurt himself in the process, sources said.

A lieutenant also went after Santana but couldn’t catch up, sources said.

“It’s like they gave us justice, then took it away,” said Anaisa Santiago, Alexander’s 15-year-old sister yesterday.

Read More..

Economist: Euro crisis could erupt again this year

DAVOS, Switzerland --
Is the euro crisis over? A leading U.S. economist says not by a long shot.

Even as the head of the European Central Bank talked Friday of “positive contagion” in the markets and predicted an economic recovery for the recession-hit eurozone later this year, economist Barry Eichengreen warned that the debt crisis that has shaken Europe to its core could easily erupt again this year unless European leaders move faster to solve their problems.

While European governments and markets have been breathing easier in recent months after years of turmoil, it’s no time for complacency, said Eichengreen, a professor at the University of California - Berkeley who has chronicled the Great Depression and explored the consequences of a breakup of the euro currency.

“Nothing has been resolved in the eurozone, where markets have swung from undue pessimism to undue optimism,” Eichengreen told The Associated Press in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an annual gathering of corporate and government leaders. “They said all the right things last year … and they’ve been backtracking ever since.”

He urged eurozone leaders follow up on its proposals to steady its banking system and keep failed banks from adding to government debt through expensive bailouts.

European leaders in Davos this week are seeking to reassure investors and corporate leaders that the continent is on the mend after its punishing debt crises.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi on Friday forecast a recovery in the eurozone economy in the second half of the year, and spoke of “a new restored sense of relative tranquility” and “positive contagion on the financial markets.”

But he acknowledged “we don’t see this being transmitted into the real economy yet.”

Read More..

Seven50 planners: Congestion, transit and rising seas top concerns for SE Fla.

The seven counties of Southeast Florida, already more populated than 35 states, will cram 3 million more people into the region in the next 50 years, planners told a summit meeting in downtown Miami on Thursday.

But transportation networks, public infrastructure and land-use rules are not keeping pace, meaning the region could face gridlock, a widespread loss of farmlands, and a deteriorating economy if current policies remain unchanged, planners told hundreds of attendees at the meeting at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus.

Casting a big shadow over the region is the certain prospect of rising seas, which new research shows will inundate some low-lying coastline areas, including parts of densely populated barrier islands, displacing thousands of people.

But the planners and researchers who drew up that worrisome scenario as part of the Seven50 plan, an unprecedented effort that aims to chart the region’s development through 2060, also said Southeast Florida has potent economic assets and the basic infrastructure — including ports, a road network and rail lines — to adapt and even prosper if its leaders tackle the issues in a coordinated fashion.

“The population growth is coming, no matter what,’’ said the project’s lead consultant, Coral Gables-based planner Victor Dover.

That growth is not the off-the-charts population explosion that some experts were predicting before the economic crash, Dover said.

Still, detailed new projections developed for Seven50 show the region’s population will balloon by 50 percent over the next 50 years to around 9 million people, said consultant Santanu Roy.

Given current land-use policies, he said, that means the region will by then have run out of buildable land, and 250 square miles of productive farmland will be lost to development.

Absent a substantial increase in local and regional mass transit, other experts said, Southeast Florida residents could find it nearly impossible to move around the region by car.

James Wolfe, Florida Department of Transportation district secretary for Broward, Palm Beach and the three Treasure Coast counties, said the agency’s ability to expand its highways is already “nonexistent’’ because of shrinking budgets and lack of space.

“We’ve reached the limit,’’ he said to applause from the audience of planners, activists, government officials and business leaders, before adding: “The answer is obviously transit.’’

Paying for new public transportation will be a challenge as well, said Miami-Dade County transit chief Ysela Llort, noting that operating and maintaining buses and trains requires substantial subsidies.

But renown planner Andres Duany told the meeting that the region has no choice but to make the investment if it wants to compete with other U.S. and foreign regions now organizing to steal away Southeast Florida’s banking, freight, trade and tourism, including Panama City and South Texas. Global economic competition is now driven by such emerging “mega-regions,’’ he said.

Seven50, a two-year planning effort led by the South Florida Regional Planning Council and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, is funded by a $4.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Read More..

Nintendo Reaches into Wii U Grab Bag, Pulls Out Some Vague, Some Fascinating Promises

It’s been a ho-hum 2013 for Nintendo’s Wii U so far: some carry-over posturing about scads of “launch window” titles, but less than a handful of games with bankable release dates. When I checked the hopper for January, February and March, I counted four, maybe five Wii U titles with firm dates, all of them least a month or two off.

That’s not how you move systems, and Nintendo ran damage control Wednesday morning by trotting out company president Satoru Iwata in a broad-ranging (and reaching) “Wii U Direct” video effort to soothe jittery system owners and would-be buyers still waiting for slam dunks. Call it Nintendo circling its wagons…or maybe just an “if you squint you can make it out on the horizon” wagon-train parade.

(MORE: Mostly Piano, Not Pretender: Yamaha’s AvantGrand N2 a Year Later)

“In past Nintendo dialogues, we have focused more on games releasing in the near future, but it’s still early in 2013, so I’d like to change the format a little bit,” said Iwata before launching into a sneak preview of what Nintendo has cooking.

For starters, Iwata says the Wii U will see at least two major system updates this year: one in the spring, another during the summer. Arguably the most important of these involves a desperately needed fix for the crazy-long time it takes to launch apps or reload the Wii U Menu — a process that can take up to 30 seconds. Imagine if each time you backed out of an iOS app it took half a minute to bring up iOS’s icon overlay. That’d be insane, and it’s a shame quality control didn’t view load times as prohibitive enough to remedy before the launch in November. Thank goodness Nintendo’s working to put things right.

Iwata also mentioned finally debuting the long-awaited Wii U Virtual Console – Nintendo’s vehicle to sell old-school NES and Super NES games – just after the spring system update. The Virtual Console’s been missing in action since the Wii U launched, despite its longstanding availability on the original Wii. That, according to Iwata, is because Wii U Virtual Console games are poised to offer features their Wii counterparts didn’t, like being able to save backups of your game progress, the option to play away from the TV on the Wii U GamePad, access to Miiverse communities for these older games and support for additional platforms like the Game Boy Advance (never released on the Wii Virtual Console).

If you’ve already purchased the Wii Virtual Console version of a game, it sounds like you’ll have to pay again, though Nintendo says you’ll get “special pricing”: regularly priced games will run $ 5 to $ 6 (NES) or $ 8 to $ 9 (SNES), with those prices dropping to $ 1 and $ 1.50, respectively, if you bought the game for Wii Virtual Console. It’s better than no discount, I suppose, and Nintendo can probably justify the nominal buck to buck-and-a-half for research and development on the Wii U Virtual Console’s extras (it’s certainly taking the company long enough to pull everything together).

If you’d rather not wait for spring, Nintendo’s running a beta dubbed “Wii U Virtual Console Trial Campaign”: Between January and July, Nintendo will release a classic title every 30 days for $ 0.30 a pop (Nintendo’s tied the pricing and release timeframes in with the original Famicom‘s 30th anniversary in Japan, coming up this July). After July, the prices of the discounted titles will bounce back to normal, but you’ll be able to buy them at the reduced price if you participated in the beta. The games list is none too shabby, either: Balloon Fight, F-Zero, Punch-Out!!, Kirby’s Adventure, Super Metroid, Yoshi and Donkey Kong.

Wii U Virtual Console sounds like a clever little diversion for Nintendo wonks, but let’s not forget how fuzzy these games look nowadays on resolution-locked flat-screens. It’s not that I want high-res versions — these things are what they are at their native pixel counts — but you wouldn’t lay wax paper over a Monet, would you?

(MORE: A Helpful Reminder That Rumors Are Not Facts)

Let’s cut to the chase: Nintendo fans want to know where the next Zelda game is, what comes after Super Mario Galaxy 2, when they’ll be able to sample the Wii U’s take on Mario Kart, what’s up with the next Super Smash Bros. game and so forth.

Iwata confirmed that Nintendo won’t offer new games in January or February and apologized for this, but said “Nintendo takes seriously its responsibility to offer a steady stream of new titles in the very early days of a new platform to establish a good lineup of software.” Why the delay? Because, says Iwata, “We firmly believe we have to offer quality experiences when we release new titles.” No argument there.

What’s coming between spring and summer? Iwata identified several titles: Game & Wario, Wii Fit U, Pikmin 3, LEGO City Undercover and The Wonderful 101. But don’t get too excited: These were originally slated to hit by March.

We also caught another glimpse of Bayonetta 2 (as well as the female protagonist’s backside), heard a bit about Super Smash Bros. U and why it’ll probably be a while before we see it (screens at E3), and then Iwata talked about, well, a bunch of stuff we already knew was in the offing: a new unnamed Super Mario game by the team that developed the Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D Land platformers, a new Mario Kart racer (both set to be playable at E3) and a new Wii Party game (Iwata showed video of someone shaking a Wii U GamePad to roll dice as well as two players using a GamePad like a mini-foosball table).

More intriguing were the two unannounced new games, like one from the developers behind Kirby’s Epic Yarn starring Yoshi (a kind of sequel to Yoshi’s Story for the Nintendo 64) or — wait for it JRPG wonks — a Shin Megami Tensei / Fire Emblem crossover from Atlus.

Last but not least, Iwata revealed the company’s plans for Zelda on the Wii U. The really good news: Nintendo says it’s planning to “rethink the conventions of Zelda,” tinkering with tenets like dungeon linearity and solo play. The merely good news: Nintendo’s remastering Zelda: The Wind Waker in HD for the system and tweaking the gameplay. The bad-good news: You’ll probably have to wait a long time for the new Zelda, but you’ll get The Wind Waker HD by “this fall.”

But the best news of all, from where I’m sitting: Taking a page from Apple, Iwata closed by invoking “one more important topic”: a new Wii U game from Monolith Soft, the company responsible for Xenoblade Chronicles, the best roleplaying game on any game system released in…well, when was Final Fantasy XII released? Has it been seven years already?

All told, a mixed performance from Nintendo, but here’s the thing: However vague much of the information in Iwata’s presentation was, I love the dignified, spare, wonderfully thorough way Nintendo’s chosen to address its audience lately. By contrast, I feel like a need to shower after watching most Microsoft/Sony pressers.

MORE: Sony Xperia Tablet Z Aims for ‘World’s Thinnest’ Crown

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Blake Shelton and Sheryl Crow Trash Talk Their Competition on The Voice

It appears that Team Blake's new mentor, Sheryl Crow, will fit in very nicely on The Voice come March 25.

Yep, viewers will get twice the trash talking with Sheryl on board, and when ET visited with the dynamic duo as they prepared for season four, the sassy singer wasn't afraid to rip on one of Blake's favorite targets.

Pics: Christina Aguilera's Most Memorable Looks

When asked whom she had initially wanted to pair up with this season, Sheryl made it clear there was only one person on her mind.

"Adam {Levine] asked me to mentor," reveals Sheryl, "but I wanted to be on the winning team."

Appreciatively, Blake cheered, "That's my girl!"

Fresh from two consecutive wins (season 2 and 3), the country star has good reason to be cocky. Despite the loss of judges Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green this season, Blake feels that newcomers Shakira and Usher should know their place right off the bat.

Related: Sheryl Crow Talks 'The Voice'

"I think the other coaches know that their place in this relationship is they're the losers, I'm the winner," asserts Blake. "'Losers' is the word I said about Christina, Cee Lo, Adam, and now Usher and Shakira, 'losers' is the word. I'm the winner."

Watch the video for more! And don't miss The Voice season four premiere March 25 on NBC.

Read More..

Worker killed in fall at Queens construction site

A Queens worker was killed a construction site this afternoon, police said.

The 42-year-old fell from the first floor to the basement of an Astoria building on Broadway near 45th Street about 3:20 p.m., cops said.

He suffered head trauma and was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, according to an FDNY spokesman.

Police said he was pronounced dead at the hospital.

No criminality is suspected.

Read More..