World's largest Ferris wheel to go forward in Superstorm Sandy devestated SI

While New York City grapples with rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy, developers are pressing ahead with plans to build the world's largest Ferris wheel on the shoreline of storm-torn Staten Island.

Sandy's flooding spurred some changes to the nearly $500 million project, which includes an outlet mall and hotel. But developers haven't slowed it or scaled it back.

Supporters say Staten Island needs the boost now more than ever.

Some residents have asked whether it makes sense to push ahead with a tourist attraction, set partly in a flood zone, before officials take a comprehensive look at how to build smarter after Sandy.

REUTERS

An artist rendering of the giant ferris wheel planned for Staten Island.

Wheel developer Richard Marin says the project stands to provide a one-of-a-kind boon that Staten Island "would have no other way of getting right now."

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Housing, jobs key to lifting S&P toward record

NEW YORK --
With it appearing that Washington lawmakers are working their way past the “fiscal cliff,” many analysts say that the outlook for stocks in 2013 is good, as a recovering housing market and an improving jobs outlook helps the economy maintain a slow, but steady recovery.

Reasonable returns in 2013 would send the S&P 500 toward, and possibly past, its record close of 1,565 reached in October 2007.

A mid-year rally in 2012 pushed stocks to their highest in more than four years. Both the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the Dow Jones industrial average posted strong gains in 2012. Those advances came despite uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election and bouts of turmoil from Europe, where policy makers finally appear to be getting a grip on the region’s debt crisis.

“As you remove little bits of uncertainty, investors can then once again return to focusing on the fundamentals,” says Joseph Tanious, a global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds. “Corporate America is actually doing quite well.”

Although earnings growth of S&P 500 listed companies dipped as low as 0.8 percent in the summer, analysts are predicting that it will rebound to average 9.5 percent for 2013, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. Companies have also been hoarding cash. The amount of cash and cash-equivalents being held by companies listed in the S&P 500 climbed to an all-time high $1 trillion at the end of September, 65 percent more than five years ago, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Assuming a budget deal is reached in a reasonable amount of time, investors will be more comfortable owning stocks in 2013, allowing valuations to rise, says Tanious.

Stocks in the S&P 500 index are currently trading on a price-to-earnings multiple of about 13.5, compared with the average of 17.9 since 1988, according to S&P Capital IQ data. The ratio rises when investors are willing to pay more for a stock’s future earnings potential.

The stock market will also likely face less drag from the European debt crisis this year, said Steven Bulko, the chief investment officer at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. While policy makers in Europe have yet to come up with a comprehensive solution to the region’s woes, they appear to have a better handle on the region’s problems than they have for quite some time.

Stocks fell in the second quarter of 2012 as investors fretted that the euro region’s government debt crisis was about to engulf Spain and possibly Italy, increasing the chances of a dramatic slowdown in global economic growth.

“There is still some heavy lifting that needs to be done in Europe,” said Bulko. Now, though, “we are dealing with much more manageable risk than we have had in the past few years.”

Next year may also see an increase in mergers and acquisitions as companies seeks to make use of the cash on their balance sheets, says Jarred Kessler, global head of equities at broker Cantor Fitzgerald.

While the number of M&A deals has gradually crept higher in the past four years, the dollar value of the deals remains well short of the total reached five years ago. U.S. targeted acquisitions totaled $964 billion through Dec. 27, according to data tracking firm Dealogic. That’s slightly down from last year’s total of $1 trillion and about 40 percent lower than in 2007, when deals worth $1.6 trillion were struck.

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3 ways to dispose of your Christmas tree in Miami-Dade

Miami-Dade residents have three options for disposing their Christmas trees.

• Those who want to recycle can take trees to one of the county’s 13 Trash and Recycling Centers or two Home Chemical Collection Centers.

The trees will be converted into mulch and available free to residents on a first-come basis beginning in mid-January.

Those who choose not to recycle their Christmas tree have the following two options:

•  Cut the tree into smaller pieces and place it inside their green waste cart for collection on any of their regularly scheduled waste collection days. The tree must fit entirely inside the waste cart.

Trees placed next to the waste cart will not be collected by the automated waste collection truck.

•  For those residents who cannot drop off their Christmas trees for recycling or cut it in pieces and place it in their waste cart, trees may be placed at the curbside no later than Monday, Jan. 7. They will be picked up by special collection crews.

The county is asking residents to be patient as these crews will be covering a large area. Christmas trees placed at the curbside after that date will not be picked up and must either be dropped off or placed in the green waste cart.

To be recycled, decoration-free Christmas trees must be brought to the following locations:

Trash and Recycling Centers (open seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)

North Dade Landfill — 21500 NW 47th Ave.

Norwood — 19901 NW Seventh Ave.

Palm Springs North — 7870 NW 178th St.

Golden Glades — 140 NW 160th St.

West Little River — 1830 NW 79th St.

Snapper Creek — 2200 SW 117th Ave.

Sunset Kendall — 8000 SW 107th Ave.

Chapman Field — 13600 SW 60th Ave.

Richmond Heights — 14050 Boggs Dr.

West Perrine — 16651 SW 107th Ave.

Eureka Drive — 9401 SW 184th St.

South Miami Heights — 20800 SW 117th Ct.

Moody Drive — 12970 SW 268th St.

Home Chemical Collection Centers (open seven days a week for tree drop off only, from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)

West Miami-Dade — 8831 NW 58th St.

South Miami-Dade — 23707 SW 97th Ave., Gate-B

Christmas tree mulch will be available at the following six locations beginning in mid-January.

Residents must bring their own bags or containers to fill with mulch, which will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, while supplies last.

Here are the locations:

West Perrine - 16651 SW 107th Ave.

Eureka Drive - 9401 SW 184th St.

Moody Drive - 12970 SW 268th St.

Sunset Kendall - 8000 SW 107th Ave.

West Little River - 1830 NW 79th St.

North Dade Landfill - 21500 NW 47th Ave.

For more information, click www.miamidade.gov/publicworks or call 311.

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NYC counts record 52 million visitors in 2012

The Big Apple is a bigger-than-ever tourist draw, welcoming a record 52 million visitors this year, Mayor Bloomberg announced Monday.

The estimate, up more than 1 million from last year, caps several years of effort to make the tourist trade into an economic development engine for the nation's largest city. After reaching a goal of attracting 50 million annual visitors in 2011, Bloomberg has now set sights on 55 million by 2015.

The 2012 statistic "keeps us on course to meet our goal," the mayor said in announcing the number at a news conference animated by some New York razzle-dazzle: It was held at the popular American Museum of Natural History, and Bloomberg was flanked by a half-dozen of Radio City Music Hall's Rockettes.

An estimated 41 million of this year's visitors came from elsewhere in the United States, but the city says its international tourist base is growing notably. The numbers of Brazilian and Chinese visitors have nearly quintupled since 2006, the city says.

The tourism numbers are based on a model that includes surveys, hotel data, airport traffic and other information and includes business travelers and vacationers.

Hotels, for instance, hit a new high of 29 million bookings for some 91,500 rooms citywide this year, up nearly 7 percent from 2011, Bloomberg said.

While New York has always been a magnet for visitors, the city has amped up efforts to market itself to tourists during Bloomberg's 11 years in office. The city's tourism arm, NYC & Co., has opened 18 offices in countries ranging from Australia to China to Sweden in roughly the past decade.

City officials say the efforts have paid off for both businesses and residents here.

This year's visitors generated an estimate of nearly $37 billion in direct spending, and more than $55 billion when such indirect benefits as orders to hospitality-industry suppliers are counted, the city says. Meanwhile, hotel room taxes alone topped $500 million this year; about $15 million went to NYC & Co. and the rest to fund general city operations, NYC & CO. CEO George Fertitta said.

New York's tourism claims have sometimes raised eyebrows in its chief domestic rival for visitors — Orlando, Fla. Orlando officials last year forecast they'd hit more than 53 million visitors from 50 miles away or farther this year. New York officials have rebuffed the comparison, saying Orlando includes surrounding areas in its count.

But, Bloomberg said Monday, there are plenty of tourists to go around.

"Go to Orlando. It's a wonderful place," he said, but "I think New York has a very different experience than Orlando."

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Florida recovery picks up the pace

A Federal Reserve index shows a big improvement for Florida’s economy.

Each month, the Fed’s Philadelphia bank issues state-by-state indices that combine wage, employment and manufacturing data. And while most states have been improving since 2009, Florida’s index for October saw the biggest jump in seven years.

The so-called coincident index by the Philadelphia Fed tracks overall job growth, unemployment, average hours worked in the manufacturing industry and wage levels. The four indicators are combined into a single index, which the Fed says should roughly match growth in each state’s economic output.

For October, the most recent index available, Florida’s coincident score grew by three-tenths of a percent. That would amount to an economy growing at 3.5 percent per year. It was the largest monthly increase since September 2005, when the Florida index grew by slightly more than three-tenths of a percentage point. The biggest dip came in January 2009, when Florida’s “Philly Fed” index dropped by almost two percentage points in a single month.

DOUGLAS HANKS

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Manhunt continues for Miami man suspected of killing ex-girlfriend

Miami police detectives on Sunday were still looking for the man suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend outside a Little Havana drugstore Friday afternoon.

Investigators said Ifrain Quintana is armed and extremely dangerous. Quintana is believed to be driving a 2001 Blue Ford Explorer with a Florida tag.

Quintana is wanted for questioning in the daylight shooting of Ariadna Gonzalez Campa, 42.

Police said Quintana confronted Gonzalez on Friday afternoon along Southwest Fifth Street and Eighth Avenue, taunted her then shot her multiple times in front of La Milagrosa drugstore.

Among those urging him to turn himself in is his mother, Katileydi Quintana, who on Saturday made an emotional plea on Miami Herald’s newspaper CBS4 for him to come forward.

“Turn yourself in,” she told him over the phone. “Call me.”

He said Quintana acted out of jealousy and Quintana’s mother agreed.

“You did it out for love. For love...” Katileydi Quintana said.

Quintana said her son needs psychiatric help.

Gonzalez’s 19-year-old son waited for word about his mother shortly after she was rushed to the Jackson Memorial Hospital. The young man broke down on the sidewalk when police told him his mom didn’t make it.

“I want justice for the man who did this,” he told CBS 4

Anyone who sees the suspect or has information about the shooting should call Crime Stoppers at 305- 471-8477.

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Hidden Powers of Your Mouse

You use your mouse for just about everything: you drag, you drop, you highlight, you scroll. But even if you click your mouse a thousand times a day, I bet I’ve got a few secret mouse tricks you’ve never heard of.

Click Tricks
You surely know that double clicking highlights a word, and you might even know that triple clicking highlights a paragraph. But have you ever wanted to select a column of text in a Word document, without getting all the text to the left and right of it? Here’s how you can: Hold down the alt and left mouse button (on a Mac, option-left mouse), and drag the cursor over the section you want to select. The coolest thing about this trick is that the text you are selecting does not even need to be formatted as a column for this to work.

[Related: 8 Microsoft Word Shortcuts You Probably Don't Know]

Scroll Tricks
Most mice have a scroll wheel. Sure, it takes you up and down on a page, but in combination with other keys, it can do much more:

• Scroll sideways: In many versions of Excel, holding down the shift key while scrolling will take you sideways. That’s super helpful in a big spreadsheet.


• Scroll wheel as back button: In most web browsers, if you hold the shift key while using the scroll wheel, it works like the back button: You can fly through all the sites you’ve recently visited. (Some mice have side buttons that work like back and forward buttons in your browser, too.)


• Scroll to zoom: Holding ctrl and scrolling lets you zoom in or out of the page you’re viewing. Ctrl-scroll up zooms you in; ctrl-scroll down zooms you back out. On a Mac, this trick will zoom in and out your whole screen, not just the document you’re in.

Windows-Specific Tricks
While most of the tricks I’ve listed so far work in either Windows or Mac OS, here are a few that are specific to Windows machines:

• To maximize a window: drag the title bar to the top.


• To minimize all windows except the active window: “Shake” the title bar. Then if you want to restore all the windows you just minimized with this shortcut, just click again on the title bar of the window in view.


• To view two windows in a 50-50 split: Drag the title bar of one document to the left edge of your screen, then drag a second document to the right edge; they will snap into position in a nifty side-by-side view.

Bonus Sneaky Trick
Suppose you want to walk away from your hyper-secure work computer for a few minutes and not have to re-log in when you get back. Sure, you could change the sleep settings, but this idea is much more clever: Set your mouse on top of your analog watch or a clock. The mouse tracks the second hand’s movement and it tricks your computer into thinking you’re still busy working. Of course, there are valid security reasons for NOT using this trick, but I still think it’s cool that it works.

Did we miss your favorite mouse trick? Like us on Facebook, and share your secret there.

[Related: How to Speed Up Your Internet Browsing]

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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ET Flashback: Eddie Murphy Talks '48 HRS.'

"Roxaaaaanne!" After getting raves for his hilarious sketch comedy on Saturday Night Live in the early '80s, Eddie Murphy turned the spotlight on a movie career in 1982 with his first big-screen effort: 48 HRS. ET's Mary Hart sat down with the funnyman in the days before the movie broke big with a revealing interview in which he got candid about stepping out of his comfort zone and getting serious onscreen.

Video: Eddie Murphy's Funny Friends Honor Actor

"I'm looking forward to the movie coming out, and if my acting looks bad in the movie, which I don't think it will, I'm covered: It's like, 'Well, his forte is in comedy,'" he said with a laugh, adding faithfully, "If you're in a catatonic state, [director Walter Hill] can go in the editing room and make you win awards."

Released 30 years ago this month, the sidesplitting action-comedy finds Eddie in fine form as Reggie Hammond, a man doing time for a robbery who is plucked from behind bars to help hard-edged cop Jack Cates (played by Nick Nolte) nab a pair of vicious cop killers. The pair have 48 hours to get the bad guys -- if they don't kill each other first!

Comparing Nolte to a "big brother," Eddie complimented, "Nick's a great guy to work with and a real good actor, real intense actor -- he makes you act."

Video: Emmy Flashback: Eddie Murphy '83

Of course, Eddie's outdoor interview had its share of sidetracked comedic moments, not to mention his trademark laugh, and a few moments in which he poked fun at Mary. Distracted at one point, he observed, "You see those two butterflies just now, trying to get with it?" Watch and enjoy a slice of the veteran comedy star in his prime: humble and hilarious.

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MetroNorth train hits car, halting Connecticut service

REDDING, Conn. — Metro North train service has been suspended on the Danbury line following a train accident involving a car.

A Metro North spokesman said the train struck a car in Redding on Sunday afternoon. The train had no passengers and there was no information about whether there were injuries involving the car.

Bus service will ferry passengers between Danbury and South Norwalk.

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Week brings startup launches, social media advice for 2013

Jared Kleinert, a South Florida entrepreneur, plans to soon launch Synergist, a platform that allow social entrepreneurs to meet potential co-founders online, collaborate and crowdfund their new projects. He also just launched AliveNDead, a blog about risk-taking, and he interns for a Silicon Valley startup.

And when he’s not doing all that, he’s going to class — he’s a junior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton.

Lester Mapp is CEO and founder of the new Miami-based startup called designed by m. His team has just designed a sleek, ultra-thin aluminum iPhone bumper and launched the project on Kickstarter. After just a few days, Mapp is already more than a third of the way to his $20,000 fund-raising goal.

Read about both these entrepreneurs on The Starting Gate blog, where there’s also a post on the most pressing issues facing small businesses in the coming year — taxes, healthcare, lending and a skilled worker shortage, for starters.

And as you are ringing in the New Year, you may be resolving to beef up your business’ social media strategy. Susan Linning's guest post offers five top tips for boosting your social media effectiveness. Among them: Go beyond retweets and make your posts original, fun and personal (but not too personal.) Use visuals, too. Find this and other news, views and tools for entrepreneurs on the blog, which is at the bottom of MiamiHerald.com /business.

Follow me on Twitter @ndahlberg and Happy New Year to all.

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