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.”

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Miami Dolphins assemble familiar faces for lobbying team, many with ties to Mayor Carlos Gimenez

The Miami Dolphins’ lobbying team looks like a reunion of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s campaign brain trust.

To push for a $400-million stadium renovation funded in part with tax dollars, the Dolphins have enlisted three key figures from Gimenez’s recent election races: Marcelo Llorente, Brian Goldmeier and Jesse Manzano-Plaza.

Llorente, who became a frequent presence on the campaign trail after losing his own mayoral bid, has been hired as one of the Dolphins’ Tallahassee lobbyists. Goldmeier, Gimenez’s fundraiser, and Manzano-Plaza, a former Gimenez campaign manager, have been brought on as advisers to help drum up community support for the Dolphins’ plan.

The three men’s participation could indicate a calculated effort on the Dolphins’ part to appeal to the mayor, whom Miami-Dade commissioners tasked on Wednesday with negotiating a potential deal with the football team. Gimenez was a stubborn critic of the lopsided public financing deal for the new Miami Marlins ballpark in Little Havana — a position that helped the former commissioner in his campaign for mayor.

Gimenez dismissed the suggestion that a particular lobbying or campaign team could curry favor with his office.

“If anybody knows me, you can hire whoever you want. At the end of the day, I work for the people of Miami-Dade County — that’s who pays my salary,” he said in an interview Thursday. “I’m pretty black-and-white about things like that.”

Gimenez, who said he was unaware of Llorente’s and Manzano-Plaza’s involvement with the Dolphins, said his former election workers are successful in their own right.

“They’re very good at what they do, and they’re professionals,” he said. “I would hope that’s why the Dolphins hired them. In terms of me, that makes no difference.”

Goldmeier, Llorente and Manzano-Plaza are part of a larger team, led by Dolphins CEO Mike Dee, hunting for votes among state lawmakers and county commissioners, who would have to sign off on the football team’s request to raise a Miami-Dade mainland hotel tax to 7 percent from 6 percent and to receive a $3 million annual subsidy from the state. The funds would amount to some $199 million, about half the cost of proposed upgrades to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens.

Voting 9-4, commissioners on Wednesday endorsed state legislation that would allow the county to raise the hotel tax — an early victory for the Dolphins, who are having to stare down criticism of the Marlins deal. Commissioners directed Gimenez to negotiate with the Dolphins. The mayor said talks would begin soon, led on the county side by deputy mayors Ed Marquez and Jack Osterholt.

“If the public is going to be investing money via a bed tax — which is tourist money, but still public money — then what are we going to be getting in return? Why should we be investing public money into the enterprise?” Gimenez said. “I know we’re not going to put the general fund at risk in any way, shape or form. There’s not going to be any fancy financing.”

His administration will likely hire outside consultants with expertise in negotiating with professional sports teams, the mayor added.

“I don’t want to be at a disadvantage,” he said. “So it may be that we come to some kind of framework — and maybe we don’t.”

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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.

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“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?

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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.

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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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LeAnn Rimes' Fashion Transformation

Following the debut of her new hairstyle on Tuesday's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, we're with LeAnn Rimes as her closet gets a major adjustment at the hands of stylist Mary Alice Haney.

PICS: LeAnn Rimes Defends Self with Teeny Weeny Bikini Photos

Haney, who is working with the singer as a part of a one-hour special called Celebrity Closet Confidential, explains that while Rimes has always been able to pull off a sexy outfit, it's Haney's hope that she'd find a more refined style without losing her allure.

"LeAnn's wedding dress had exactly the right amount of sexiness and sophistication," Haney said. "I want to take that and incorporate it in every other aspect of her fashion life."

The gown Rimes wore during her 2011 "I do's" with Eddie Cibrian was inspired by the Grammy dress she wore just weeks before the ceremony.

"Eddie makes me feel sexy and sensual, so I really wanted to bring that off in the dress," Rimes said.

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The new looks Haney settled on included creations by Bottega Veneta, Missoni and Tom Ford.

Celebrity Closet Confidential airs January 30 on Style Network.

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Bronx detectives snare 14 in gun sales investigation

These Bronx detectives don’t have supernatural powers — but two operations, including one called Ghostbusters, took down fourteen people in a gun sales investigation today, authorities said.

Ringleader Reinaldo Romero, 27, who gave the operation its name because of his alias ‘Caspa,’ and other crooks affiliated with him allegedly sold 55 guns to undercovers—including seven assault rifles, police said.

Romero sold the weapons out of a Soundview barbershop he owned called Kache on Westchester Avenue, as well as out of his Van Nest home, to cops between April 2011 and November last year.

Most were loaded, and the assault rifles came with 30-round magazines. Some were brand-new, others were used. They were sold in the South Bronx, Soundview, and Baychester, authorities said.

The guns initially came from Ohio, but started coming in from Baltimore last year. “These guns are coming out of state,” said Detective Charles Lennon, the lead investigator on the case. The case started when police received a tip about the gun ring in Brooklyn.

The assault rifles sold for $1400 a pop, while pistols went for $900, cops said.

“They would have gone into the streets of the Bronx," said Lennon.

Romero was charged with first-degree sale of a firearm, authorities said.

Angel Plass, 31, who went by the alias ‘Acura’ was extradited from East Lake, Ohio and arrested Tuesday, police said. He was charged with criminal sale of a firearm, in the third degree.

Elvis Montero, 25, was also extradited from Baltimore, and charged with criminal sale of a firearm, in the third-degree.

Four other people were arrested in a second investigation where they sold 85 guns from George and Virginia to an undercover detective.

“We appreciate the hard work of the NYPD in apprehending these alleged peddlers of illegal and often deadly weapons,” said Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson.

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Cinelatino and WAPA part of new company

A private equity firm hopes Wall Street will be simpatico with some leading Spanish-language media companies.

InterMedia Partners has transferred three of its Latin media holdings into a placeholder of a publicly traded company called Azteca Acquisition Corp. The move of Cinelatino, WAPA America and WAPA TV gives investors quick access to Wall Street and the ability to trade sell shares in the new company. The deal is valued at $400 million, and InterMedia will remain the primary owner of the new company, according to a release.

The company will be called Hemisphere Media Group and will have corporate headquarters in the Miami area. The merger of the Spanish-language cable movie network (Cinelatino), Spanish-language cable network targeting the U.S. Puerto Rican market (WAPA America), and the Puerto Rico broadcast network (WAPA TV) will not affect operations at the three businesses, a spokesman said.

Hemisphere will apply to be traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Alan Sokol, a senior InterMedia partner and former COO of Telemundo, will be CEO of the new company.

DOUGLAS HANKS

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Miami conclave to help map the next 50 years for Southeast Florida

On a Google map, the long stretch of Florida coastline from deep South Miami-Dade County to Sebastian Inlet appears a seamless mass of urban development jammed between a thin border of sand on one side and wetlands and farmland on the other.

But zoom in and it’s soon sliced up by lines both real and imaginary: roadways, highways, railways, waterways and the boundaries of numerous, and often overlapping, governmental jurisdictions.

Now this vast area, at once connected and disconnected, is the subject of one of the most ambitious planning efforts ever undertaken in Florida. Called Seven50, it aims to chart a coordinated, integrated future for the development of Southeast Florida’s seven counties for a couple of generations, through the year 2060.

On Thursday, the big moveable feast of thinkers, planners, economists, government officials and business leaders that is Seven50 will convene in downtown Miami for the effort’s second public summit since its launch in Delray Beach last June.

It may sound like “wonky stuff,’’ said Seven50 lead consultant Victor Dover, a Coral Gables-based planner. But he said Seven50’s scores of participants are convinced that agreeing to coordinated plans across jurisdictional lines is critical if the region is to prosper and meet a long list of common challenges. They range from transportation logjams to the prospect of rising seas and U.S. and international competitors trying to grab our share of international investment, tourism, cargo and trade.

And that competition is serious and well-organized, Dover said. In Texas, for instance, 13 counties and 100 cities between Houston and Galveston have banded together in a similar planning alliance, and so have cities and states along the Great Lakes.

The advantage Southeast Florida has, Seven50 planners say, is that old real-estate cliche: Location, location, location.

But it risks throwing its advantage away unless it better links up its airports and seaports, installs more and better-connected mass transit, and develops strategies to improve education and retain and attract the kind of skilled, educated young people considered key to economic prosperity in today’s economy.

“Planning at this scale is profoundly American, from Jefferson to the creation of Washington, D.C., and if we don’t do it, we’re going to get blown away by the competition,’’ said Andres Duany, a renown Miami-based planner who will give the keynote address at the downtown gathering. “They’re gunning for us.’’

The free, full day of sessions at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus is designed to gather public input and share a still-in-development snapshot of the region as planners build what they describe as a massive data warehouse covering everything from demographics to housing, economics and transportation networks. Key discussion areas will be transportation, education and the daunting implications of climate change.

Because Southeast Florida will be among the first regions to experience rising sea levels, across-the-board planning on how to adapt will be essential. That could include difficult options like steering investment for new public infrastructure away from vulnerable areas, or protecting the region’s underground water supply from saltwater intrusion by raising freshwater levels in drainage canals, which could produce more seasonal flooding in some areas.

Some 200 public agencies, advocates, business groups and academic institutions, including the region’s principal universities, have signed up for the effort. Any resulting plans are purely voluntary, and no town or agency is obligated to adopt any ideas it doesn’t like, planners stress.

Still, the process hit a roadblock in the northernmost county, Indian River. The county commission and the Vero Beach city council voted to drop out after Tea Party-linked activists raised a public ruckus over their participation. The activists contend Seven50 is part of Agenda 21, a 20-year-old, nonbinding United Nations resolution that called for environmentally sustainable urban development, which they describe as a conspiracy to evict people from their homes and force them into dense urban housing.

Seven50 planners had to post a response on their website explaining they intend no such thing. Since then, the Stuart city council voted to join Seven50. Other Indian River agencies remain as participants.

The two-year planning effort, led by a consortium established 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.

The federal agency is encouraging local governments to engage in long-range planning under the sustainability label, which covers a range of strategies to foster development of pedestrian-friendly urban zones that put jobs close to homes and save energy by providing alternatives to auto transportation.

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Let’s Welcome Back Hockey with This ESPN Commercial

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:  

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Hockey, schmockey. As a whole, the Atlantic Wire staff is sort of ambivalent that the NHL is finally back. (Our Canadian correspondent, however, is thrilled.) But you know what we are thankful for? The ESPN commercial reminding us that the NHL is finally back: 

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These people are awesome (and, hey, maybe some of them play hockey):

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People are awesome, and also quite strange. Like this guy, who offers the world a video review of the Astor CB-100 (totally SFW), and the 33,000+ views his video has already gotten:

And finally, these are ponies in sweaters. Ponies in sweaters, people:

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Michelle Williams Destiny's Child Interview

Destiny's Child is back together, and ET's Rocsi Diaz sits down with 1/3 of the dynamic girl group to talk about their reunion after nearly a decade of time off with new music, the Beyonce lip sync controversy, Michelle's new stage role in the musical Fela!, her love life and her battle with depression.

Pics: Beyonce's Candid & Personal Photos

"Happiness is a choice," says Michelle, who says she had to face her "repressed anger" issues to understand why she was depressed, clarifying that it all happened before Destiny's Child went their separate ways. "There were times in depression where I could stay in the bed all week -- but it's like, 'Girl, you've got to get up! Honey, get fabulous, curl your hair, put some lip gloss on it, do something -- you have to choose life!'"

Earlier this month, Destiny's Child (Williams, Beyonce and Kelly Rowland) announced that they're reuniting after eight years with some new music. Love Songs, out January 29, will be a collection of the trio's most romantic tracks over the years, in addition to at least one new song: Nuclear. Michelle is also working on a solo album that is described as an "inspirational" project.

The new Destiny's Child album release date coincides with the national tour kick-off of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Fela!, which is produced by Jay-Z, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and Ruth and Stephen Hendel. In the production based on a true story, Michelle plays Sandra Isadore, an activist and the love interest of Afrobeat originator Fela Kuti, whose music and rousing lyrics openly attacked the corrupt military dictatorships that ruled Nigeria and much of Africa. The multi-city engagement kicks off at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC and travels to Detroit, Chicago, Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, Schenectady, Memphis, Dallas, Cleveland and Los Angeles.

Video Flashback: Destiny's Child on 'Sesame Street'

As for Beyoncé’s alleged lip-synced performance of the national anthem at President Obama's Inauguration, Williams offers, "I will say this, it's not the first or the last time that someone has had to lip-sync…my greatest singer of all time, Whitney Houston, it came to light that her anthem was in fact lip-synced."

CLICK HERE for more of Williams take on the lip sync controversy, and watch the video above to hear Michelle talk about her love life!

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Mother & daughter victim of peeping Tom at H&M -- and employees let him get away, lawsuit claims

A Manhattan boutique owner and her daughter say they got more than they bargained for when they used an H&M dressing room to try on lingerie — they were videotaped by a camera-wielding perv who store employees let get away, a new lawsuit claims.

Zia Ziprin, 51, of the Lower East Side haven Girls Love Shoes and daughter Aishling Labat, 23, were shopping at the discount fashion giant’s Fifth Avenue Flatiron store in January 2010.

The women were “in a state of undress within the dressing room stall” on the second floor when the unidentified man in an adjoining stall filmed them “with a camera or video camera,” according to the suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

PATRICK MCMULLAN/PatrickMcMullan.com

Zia Ziprin and Aishling Labat

As Labat was changing into the negligee, “She saw there was something above the dressing room. She thought it was a security camera, but when she reached up there was nothing there,” her attorney, Ross Rothenberg told The Post. “She started screaming and he ran from the second story down to the first” and escaped, the lawyer said.

“Their assumption is that somewhere on the Internet is videos of both of them,” semi-naked, Rothenberg said, adding that they haven’t been able to track down the smut.

Both Ziprin and Labat “pleaded with H&M’s security and store personnel to stop [the man] from leaving the store ...with the compromising video and photographs,” the suit says. Ziprin, a curvy blonde, “begged for help from security and/or store personnel, who ignored her request.”

Rothenberg said police obtained security footage of the creep and investigated the incident but never caught him.

The women want unspecified damages for the “embarrassment, humiliation, fear, panic, torment” they suffered, the suit says.

The suit charges the store with building flimsy, unisex dressing rooms that allow easy accesses to eavesdroppers and peeping toms.

An H&M spokeswoman said the company hasn’t seen the suit, but its policy is to decline comment on legal matters.

Additional reporting by Sabrina Ford and Dana Sauchelli

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