Which celebs are triumphing over the battle of the bulge?
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From Christina Aguilera to Kirstie Alley, ET breaks down the stars who are staying trim during the holidays.
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Andrew Sullivan, one of the most prolific and high-profile writers for the Daily Beast, is leaving the IAC/InterActiveCorp-owned news venture and starting his own subscription website.
Sullivan, who arrived from The Atlantic with much fanfare two years ago to write The Dish blog for Daily Beast Editor Tina Brown, said in a blog post that his contract ended on Dec. 31.
He and executive editors Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner formed their own company, Dish Publishing LLC. On Feb. 1, they will begin charging readers an annual subscription rate of $19.99 for access to the site, andrewsullivan.com.
WireImage
Just days after Tina Brown steered Newsweek into an online-only existence, she’s lost one of her biggest draws at the Daily Beast: journalist Andrew Sullivan.
The site will eschew ad dollars because of “how distracting and intrusive it can be, and how it often slows down the page painfully,” Sullivan wrote. “We felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism.”
He thanked Brown and IAC/InterActiveCorp Chairman Barry Diller for hosting the Dish site.
“We’re sad to see him go, but we’re excited for him as he goes off to try something new,” said a Daily Beast spokesman.
The move is seen as a blow to Brown, who supervised the last print edition of Newsweek, which was folded into the Daily Beast, and laid off about 60 people on the 270-person staff. She will begin publishing a paid digital-only version starting this Friday for $29.99 a year.
“Her biggest mistake from the beginning was merging Newsweek into the Daily Beast, rather than vice versa,” said Samir Husni, a professor who founded the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism. “She was willing to kill a brand that was 80 years old that every household in America knew for one that nobody knows.”
A spokesman for Daily Beast declined to comment.
kkelly@nypost.com
A New York firm bought part of the Macy’s building in downtown Miami and is expected to acquire the rest. The next priority is negotiating a new lease to keep Macy’s as a tenant.
In a deal that could have implications for the future of downtown Miami’s anchor retail tenant, a New York real estate investment firm paid $15.55 million to acquire more than half the property that now houses Macy’s Flagler Street store.
The acquisition by Aetna Realty Group includes the 48,000 square feet of land that was leased to R.W. Burdine in 1917. Until the recent sale, the property was owned by 23 heirs of Richard and Harriet Ashby, who signed the initial 99-year lease with Burdine. The lease expires in 2016.
The Ashby family began taking steps to prepare the property at the intersection of Miami Avenue and Flagler Street for sale nearly four years ago, said Lewis R. Cohen, a GrayRobinson lawyer who represented the Ashby family in the transaction that closed on New Year’s Eve.
Over the years, Macy’s and its predecessor, Burdines, grew the site’s downtown presence well beyond the Ashby land, and the current building now extends another 30,000 square feet of land. Aetna has also made a commitment to purchase the remaining portion of the building, that is currently owned by Macy’s, Cohen said. But that deal hasn’t closed yet.
“That deal is a sure thing,” Cohen said. “They could not have closed with us without having an agreement with Macy’s completely nailed down.”
When Macy’s decided not to purchase the Ashby land itself, the owners soughta third-party that could control both pieces. The reason: Improvements made to the store over the years straddled both properties, such as elevators and escalators starting on one parcel and ending on another.
“Between the engineering difficulties of severing the properties and the legal issues involved, it would have been somewhere between extremely expensive and impossible” for different entities to share control, Cohen said.
Aetna was one of three bidders interested in the site, Cohen said. One of the other players was the Barlington Group, a Miami developer that in 2011 signed a deal with Macy’s to sub-lease 20,000 square feet of empty ground-floor space for a mix of restaurants and cafes.
Macy’s spokesman Jim Sluzewski said this transaction doesn’t impact Macy’s current lease. He declined to comment on any other pending transaction regarding the property the retailer owns in downtown Miami.
“It’s business as usual,” said Sluzewski, who also would not discuss Macy’s long-term plans for downtown Miami beyond the expiration of its lease. The company’s roots in downtown Miami date to 1898, when the first Burdines opened in a nearby downtown location.
Aetna and its local attorneys did not respond to calls Wednesday for comments.
But Cohen said Macy’s is in the process of finalizing a short-term deal with the new owners.
“They intend to stay for at least the foreseeable future,” Cohen said. “For a minimum of five years they’ll be there and possibly longer.”
Downtown scene
Macy’s long-term future on Flagler Street has been in doubt since 2007, when Macy’s Florida then-Chairwoman Julie Greiner took city leaders to task for the deplorable conditions in downtown and threatened that the retailer might leave.
A stray bullet fired into the air just after midnight on New Year’s Eve struck a man as he celebrated at a party in Miami, according to police.
The bullet grazed the man’s upper left shoulder. Paramedics treated him outside the Allapattah home at Northwest 25th Avenue and 32nd Street. The man, who was not identified, wasn’t taken to a hospital.
Miami police spokesman Detective Willie Moreno confirmed that the victim was struck by a stray bullet.
Homeowner Randy Ruiz said the injured man was a friend of a friend who was visiting his home on New Year’s Eve.
“We had a lot of friends and family in my yard, and fireworks were being fired off,” Ruiz said. “Just after midnight, one of the guests complained of blood on his shirt. So we quickly ran over to see what was going on and saw there was blood on his left arm.”
Neighbor Barbara Jimeno, who has three grandchildren between the ages of one and four, said she was alarmed by what happened.
“It could happen to me or my grandchildren, who live around the block,” she said.
The injury followed a series of warnings from the Miami mayor, Miami police and activists about the dangers of firing bullets into the air on New Years Eve.
PARIS (Reuters) – Armed robbers targeted an Apple Inc store in central Paris on New Year’s Eve, taking thousands of euros (dollars) worth of goods, a police official said on Tuesday.
The robbery took place at about 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday, three hours after closing time at one of Apple‘s flagship stores behind the Paris Opera which sells products ranging from iPhones and iPads to Mac computers.
The police official declined to comment on reports the thieves walked away with about 1 million euros ($ 1.32 million) of loot, saying the company was still evaluating the loss.
Christophe Crepin from the police union UNSA told reporters four masked and armed individuals forced their way into the shop and afterwards escaped in a van.
“They were well prepared. As the majority of police were busy watching the Champs Elysees (for New Year’s Eve celebrations), the robbers took advantage of this opportunity,” he said.
($ 1 = 0.7585 euros)
(Reporting By Thierry Leveque and John Irish; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Taylor Swift and Harry Styles had equally amazing 2012's, and they kissed good-bye to the preceding 365 days together in Times Square last night.
After singing on ABC's New Year's Rocking Eve, Swift and Styles braved the crowds to watch the ball drop. And to the hordes of fans who'd gathered to count down to midnight, "Haylor's" ensuing smooch ended up being more captivating than all the twinkling lights in the sky.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a model of understatement yesterday when he declared: “This shouldn’t be the model for how to do things around here.”
No kidding.
With a pre-dawn vote yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a compromise package that undoes the Bush tax cuts for individuals making $400,000 a year and families making $450,000, raises several other taxes and limits personal exemptions.
But the deal was far from done late yesterday: In the House, conservative Republicans had serious misgivings with its terms, and while the expectation was that it ultimately will pass, there were no guarantees.
AP
Mitch McConnell
So, barring a GOP revolt, the so-called “fiscal cliff” has been avoided: there will be no automatic tax-rate hike for all Americans instead of just the wealthiest. But, as Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) noted, the cliffhanger has been traded in for “a journey over the fiscal mountains.”
That’s because the last-minute deal simply postponed dealing with spending cuts, entitlement reform and trimming the national debt for another two months.
Indeed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the package raises taxes by $620 billion while cutting spending by only $15 billion — a 41-1 ratio. Plus it adds $329 billion to the federal deficit in 2013, increasing it by $3.9 trillion over 10 years.
That means an even bigger battle soon. And, almost certainly, an even bigger political drama than the one America just witnessed.
This time, however, Obama will be without his biggest rhetorical weapon: his insistence on what he so misleadingly called “tax fairness.” Which, Republicans hope, means he’ll have to give more ground, provided they hold firm.
Because the fiscal-cliff package does next to nothing on the national debt and the budget deficit, at the risk of damaging the economy as it struggles to move forward.
In fact, the president’s chief goal throughout the talks was blatantly political, to portray the GOP as eager to sacrifice the middle class in order to protect the rich. (How ironic that most Democrats once vehemently opposed what they’re now staunchly defending as “tax cuts for the middle class.”)
Yet Obama — whose only contribution to the negotiations was creating ill will on both sides — made it clear that he hasn’t finished hiking taxes: Even before the House vote, the White House said that “continuing to ask the wealthy to do a little bit more” — i.e., pay even more taxes — “will be part of a balanced approach.”
In other words, he’s going to play the class-warfare card for everything it’s worth.
But the fiscal-cliff compromise actually brings in $200 billion less in tax revenue than did House Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B, which the president opposed (as, embarrassingly for Boehner, did House Republicans).
The whole idea of the “fiscal cliff” was to create a situation so precarious that Washington would have no choice but to reach a comprehensive solution.
But congressional fecklessness and presidential arrogance combined to once again avoid the unpleasant — but necessary — business of restoring the nation’s economic stability.
For all the back-patting now under way on Capitol Hill, the road ahead is sown with mines.
Take 10, America. It ain’t over.
Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!
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.
A suspected “peeping tom” was arrested Sunday after he was caught with video of women trying on clothes at the Forever21 store at the Sawgrass Mills mall.
Andre Clements, 30, has been charged with video voyeurism and disorderly conduct, Sunrise police said.
A manager at the store became suspicious when Clements, 30, was caught loitering in the dressing rooms. Customers also complained about Clements.
The manager alerted mall security, who called Sunrise police. When police arrived, the manager found several large slits in the curtain which separated the fitting room Clements was in and the adjoining fitting room.
In Clements possession police found a Sony camcorder with videos of young women changing clothes.
Clements admitted taping the women just before police had arrived.
It's official! Hugh Hefner married Crystal Harris in an intimate ceremony on New Year's Eve...
ET confirms that the 86-year-old Playboy founder and his 26-year-old model girlfriend were married at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
Related: Hugh Hefner's Fiancee Shows Off Engagement Ring
Harris was nicknamed the "Runaway Bride" for calling off the couple's first attempt at a wedding just days before the ceremony in June of 2011. The couple announced their engagement in December 2010.
This is the third marriage for the Playboy mogul, who first married Mildred Williams in 1949 and then wed Kimberley Conrad in 1989.
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