Just sold!

Manhattan

HARLEM $1,995,000

111 Central Park North

Three-bedroom, three-bath condo, 1,914 square feet, with glass balcony, floor-to-ceiling windows, walk-in closet, washer/dryer and Central Park views; building features doorman, parking, roof deck, gym and party room. Common charges $2,170, taxes $467. Asking price $1,995,000, on market 34 weeks. Brokers: Michael Rosenblum, Douglas Elliman and Kristina Ojdanic, The Corcoran Group

UPPER EAST SIDE $1,400,000

300 E. 74th St.

Two-bedroom, two-bath co-op, 1,450 square feet, with windowed kitchen, dining room and balcony; building features doorman, gym, laundry and storage. Maintenance $2,042, 45 percent tax-deductible. Asking price $1,425,000, on market 21 weeks. Brokers: David Wolfenson, Maxwell Jacobs and Linda Chen, The Corcoran Group

Westchester

BEDFORD HILLS $2,385,000

33 Bedford Center Road

Five-bedroom, five-bath stone house, 6,731 square feet, with two-story conservatory, formal living and dining rooms, family room, guest wing and four antique fireplaces; landscaped property features fenced yard, pool and tennis court. Taxes $45,923. Asking price $2,750,000, on market 50 weeks. Broker: Angela Kessel, Houlihan Lawrence

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Mompreneur jumps into the ‘Shark Tank’

It all started with a 4 a.m. email nearly a year ago: “Do you think a baby bib could change the world? I do...”

Then Susie Taylor included a link to her website, bibbitec.com, and off it went to Shark Tank, the popular ABC television show where entrepreneurs pitch their companies to investors on the show — and by extension, 7 million viewers.

Four months later, as the “mompreneur” was leaving her Biscayne Park home to pick up her kids from school, she got a call from the show asking her to pitch on the spot. Driving with her phone on her shoulder, she told the Bibbitec story.

Shark Tank bit. After a few more back and forths, her segment was filmed last summer.

Friday night, Taylor is scheduled to be on the show pitching Bibbitec’s main product, “The Ultimate Bib,” a patented generously sized, stain-resistant and fast-drying child’s bib made in the USA — Hialeah, to be exact. Bibbitec’s $30 bib can be a burp cloth, changing pad, breast feeding shield, full body bib, place mat, art smock and more, Taylor says.

We won’t be getting any details on what happens Friday night when she and her husband, Stephen Taylor, get into the tank with Daymond John, Mark Cuban and the other celebrity sharks; Taylor has been contractually sworn to secrecy. But whatever the outcome, she believes it will be worth it for the marketing pop.

Taylor was inspired to create her bib after a long and very messy plane ride with two young sons and started her company in 2008. She and her team — her husband is CFO, her sister, Heather McCabe, handles sales and marketing, her uncle, Richard Page, is in charge of production, and her aunt, Marcia Kreitman, advises on design — have expanded the line to include The Ultimate Smock for older children and the Ultimate Mini for babies. Coming soon: a smock for adults.

Taylor already got a taste of what a national TV show appearance can do for sales. In September, Bibbitec’s sales jumped 40 percent after she was on an ABC World News "Made in America" segment. “Within 30 seconds, we started getting sales from all over the country and they didn’t even mention our name on the air,” Taylor says. She said that confirmed her belief that a Shark Tank appearance would be worth it.

Plus, Taylor has been hooked on Shark Tank since the first time she watched it in 2008 as she was developing her product. Trained in theater, she admits she didn’t know much about business and learned from the show. She would practice how she would answer the questions.

“I’m all about empowering women who are sitting on the couch watching, because that’s what I was four years ago,” says Taylor. “All I wanted to do was to be on Shark Tank because I believed if I got on Shark Tank the world will see what I am trying to do and that’s all I need. I know it’s a great product.”

Will that theater training come in handy Friday night? Stay tuned. Shark Tank airs at 9 p.m. on ABC and Taylor hopes viewers will join in on Twitter using the hashtag #sharkbib.

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South Miami police supplier hires chief's son

The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics said last week that the South Miami Police Department can continue to purchase equipment from Lou’s Police Distributors, a company that recently hired the police chief’s son.

“The son has no direct or indirect financial ownership in the company and will not be involved in the local contract, or profit from it,” the commission on ethics said in a press release.

Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro had asked for the opinion.

The opinion comes at time when a majority of the commission wants Martinez de Castro out of a job. The chief has a case pending with the commission on ethics, after investigators reported finding evidence there were a few transactions involving the police department and his wife’s business. Also, Mayor Philip Stoddard has been accusing the chief of breaking state rules when he signed off on a $9,998 gun repair expense that used state forfeiture funds to pay for gun repairs at Lou’s Police Distributors.

Stoddard said that the police department broke Florida rules of use, because the purchase was an operating expense and it was not part of an “extraordinary” program.

Meanwhile, the chief’s eldest son, Christopher Martinez de Castro, is the new vice president of international sales at Lou’s Police Distributors, which has been a South Miami supplier for about two years, has contracts with many departments in Miami-Dade County and also sells weapons and tactical equipment in Central and South America.

“It’s an entirely different department. Where the city will piggyback on a bigger contract to get a better deal, I work with clients from around the world,” the chief’s son said. “I have nothing to do with sales to South Miami – absolutely nothing. It is just being brought up because they [commissioners] want to attack him.”

Stoddard and his supporters have been poring over public records related to the chief’s use of public funds. Most recently, Stoddard threatened to file a lawsuit against the city, after Maj. Ana Baixauli refused to release records related to ongoing criminal investigations, which are exempt from the state’s public records law.

Commissioners have accused the chief of abusing his position to target those who oppose him, after two commissioners’ friends were arrested — including Commissioner Bob Welsh’s friend who was a homeless Canadian undocumented migrant with a criminal record.

Commissioner Walter Harris said Martinez de Castro has continued to show a special interest in cases involving politicians’ friends and family. The chief has said that his officers have only been doing their job when the politicians’ friends and family have broken the law, because “any special treatment” would mean breaking the law.

On Jan. 5, Harris’ wife, Eda Sagi Harris, who has been active in South Miami politics for years, damaged a parked silver Honda Odyssey while backing out of a parking space at the Dadeland Station Mall garage in Southeast Miami-Dade. She was driving the commissioner’s blue Toyota Corolla and told police that she “scratched” the car but left the scene, because she didn’t “hit it.”

Several cars from Miami-Dade police and South Miami police showed up at her home, after surveillance video identified her. Miami-Dade police cited her for “leaving the scene of an accident,” which is a misdemeanor. The police reports referred to the incident as a hit-and-run and estimated the “minor” damage at $500.

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New BlackBerry to Be ‘Most Comprehensive in Mobile History’

RIM is finally ready with its answer to Apple’s iPhone and the many Android smartphones. After months of delays, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, along with others from the company, will take the stage Wednesday in New York to unveil the final version of BlackBerry 10, the next version of RIM’s phone software, and the phones that will run it.

“We expect tomorrow to really be the kickoff for the introduction of Blackberry 10,” RIM’s Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben told ABC News in a phone interview. “We have been engaged for quite a period of time with the two main constituents — the carriers and the developers — and we’ve already said we are in the labs of more than 150 carriers around the world.”

Column: BlackBerry Burden: What RIM Must Do to Come Back

With more than 150 wireless carriers around the world planning to offer the latest BlackBerry, Boulben says it will be the most “comprehensive launch,” not only for the company, but in the history of the mobile industry.

“This makes it the most comprehensive launch in mobile history. There has never been a platform launching with that many carriers,” he said. When the iPhone 5 made its debut in September it actually had more — Apple said there would be 240 carriers by December. But Boulben points out that BlackBerry 10 is an entirely new operating system that doesn’t share a single line of code with previous BlackBerry software; the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, by contrast, was essentially an upgrade.

At Wednesday’s event the company will show its new handsets in detail. RIM is expected to release a touch-screen device called the Z10 and another with a physical keyboard. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have said they will carry devices that run the new software. Boulben also said RIM will highlight major differences between BlackBerry 10 and the other leading mobile phone platforms.

“We are highly differentiated in four areas,” Boulben said. The first is with communications — RIM has designed the software around a messaging hub and new multitasking features. The second: the touch keyboard, which predicts words as you are typing them. Lastly, RIM says its BlackBerry Messenger and its BlackBerry Balance feature, which separates work from personal uses on the phone, set it apart.

Boulben would not address specifically how much market share RIM is hoping to gain back in the U.S., having lost the lead it had in the last decade. According to Kantar Worldpane ComTech’s data released in November 2012, the BlackBerry brand only had 1.6 percent of the American smartphone market. The iPhone had 48.1 percent of the market and Android had 46.7.

“It’s a change in smartphone experience — the dominant paradigm, introduced six years ago, was great and revolutionary at the time. But six years is a long time for a technology cycle, with a new user experience with a clear focus we have the opportunity to take market share back,” Boulben said.

RIM CMO: BlackBerry 10 Will Make Others Look Outdated

While RIM is of course bullish about its new products, it faces one big challenge it might not be able to control: apps. While the platform might be innovative, it will trail behind the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in variety of apps. Boulben says the momentum around apps is strong and that Wednesday the BlackBerry World store will launch with 70,000 new apps.

RIM BlackBerry 10 Launch

Apps that worked on previous BlackBerry 7 devices won’t work on the BlackBerry 10 platform, since it is completely new. Analysts say that apps are bound to be the pain point for the platform, but it’s not too late to rule out RIM from taking back at least some of what it has lost.

“Given the speed that the market is moving, it’s hard to be dismissive of RIM given the strength of their brand and continued loyalty of many users,” Michael Gartenberg, Gartner Research Director, told ABC News. “It will be important for RIM to show tomorrow how they’ve evolved the BlackBerry to meet the challenges of other platforms and at the same time show positive differentiation.”

And that seems to be exactly RIM’s plan. “The time was right to switch to a new platform, one that will allow us to continue true to our DNA but also take it to the next level,” Boulben said. “It is a major undertaking for the company. It has been two years in the making, but we are ready.”

RIM’s BlackBerry 10 event begins at 10:00 a.m. ET on Jan. 30, 2013. ABC News will be reporting on the news throughout the day.

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Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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James Franco Disses Amazing Spider Man

It seems Spider-Man alum James Franco isn't too keen about the recent relaunch of the web-slinging franchise starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

In an interview with MTV News, Franco (who played Peter Parker's frenemy Harry Osborn in the series) is asked to share his thoughts on director Marc Webb's follow up to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. His response was not exactly positive.

Pics: Amazing New 'Spider-Man' Posters

"Ehhhhh," answered Franco with hesitation. "They could have strayed a little bit more from the original… It was like, 'Why?'"

Both Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man series spin the tale of Peter Parker's journey to becoming NYC's crime-fighting vigilante, but Franco appears to imply that the team behind the reboot failed to get to the heart of the beloved tale, opting instead for profit over perfection.

Related: Emma & Andrew Spin New 'Spider-Man' Tales

"I guess they made a lot of money. Congrats. Good for them. Sam and I moved on. We made Oz."

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Ground Zero’s new face: No substitute for the twins

The Issue: The almost complete 1 World Trade Center at Ground Zero and its affect on the skyline.

***

If Steve Cuozzo thinks that freedom is singing at Ground Zero, he is seriously tone-deaf (“Freedom Sings,” PostScript, Jan. 27).

If Cuozzo were really a part of the common rabble, he would never have written a column that tried to build the Freedom Tower up by tearing the Twin Towers down.

Doesn’t he understand that when he attacks the Twin Towers, he is attacking the millions who thought they were marvelous?

Doesn’t he know that his propaganda gives aid and comfort to those who feel free to blow the public’s money?

J.C. Rice

View of 1 World Trade Center from Jersey City.

For years he has been cheerleading for a building that almost no one wanted and that is sucking commuters dry at Port Authority crossings.

It’s bad enough that the public is heavily subsidizing the rebuilding of Ground Zero, while Larry Silverstein gets a free ride.

Cuozzo’s effort to demolish the Twin Towers’ reputation was way over the top. M. L. Donovan

Manhattan

In regard to the newly built One World Trade Center, as beautiful as it looks, we need to have a second tower built.

Our hearts and the New York City skyline cry out for its twin.

James Lautier

Windsor, Conn.

Neither I nor anyone I know has anything but contempt for that travesty of a building.

It belongs in Cincinnati or Singapore, but not where the Twin Towers once stood.

Cuozzo didn’t like the Twin Towers, and he’s welcome to his opinion, but many of us did.

Furthermore, unlike 1 WTC, the Twin Towers were memorable, inspiring and the recognized signature of the Big Apple.

They were used as the establishing shot for almost every movie filmed in New York City from the time they were finished to the time they came down.

They were us. The Freedom Tower will never represent New York to the world.

It’s just another mediocre building in the skyline.

Now the Port Authority, meaning the toll-paying public, is on the hook for at least $7.5 billion for a project we don’t want and shouldn’t have had to pay for.

We’ve been played for suckers by Silverstein and his shills in the press. Only in New York.Richard Hughes

Manhattan

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In later life, many Americans turn to ‘encore careers’

Don Causey was beginning to plan his retirement, selling off his profitable sporting newsletters when his life took a horrific turn. While on a safari on a long anticipated trip to Africa, a tree tumbled onto him, breaking his back. The process of getting a medical transport to take him from a remote village back to Miami proved arduous and costly.

Today Causey’s back is healed and at 70 he finds himself in a post retirement career — consulting for a company that sells travel memberships that include medical evacuation benefits. It’s a profitable part-time gig that Causey believes is an important service to travelers. Plus, he says, “It keeps my mind alive and keeps me connected with a community I care about, just in a different way.”

Like Causey, most Americans are crafting their own version of meaningful work in their later stages of life. It’s a direction that brings balance and an ability to be impactful in a whole new way.

“More and more people — sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice — are forgoing traditional retirement and investing a new state of life and work,” says Marci Alboher, with and author of The Encore Career Handbook.

Alboher is part of a movement that has named this later-in-life stage “encore careers,” paid or volunteer work that has a social impact. An encore career can last from a few years to 20 or more. While 9 million Baby Boomers already have entered their encore phase, another 31 million will soon make the leap in that direction, according to Encore.org, a nonprofit organization that promotes second acts for the greater good.

The concept of an encore career is being buoyed by a convergence of trends: financial realities, layoffs, long life spans and the desire for a more purposeful existence during the aging process. “It’s a way to leave a mark that makes things better for future generations,” explains Alboher. “But usually it’s not quick or easy. It’s a slow metamorphosis involving baby steps, detours, persistence, creativity and a do-it-yourself spirit.”

An encore career job might be a nurse or health aide. It could be a teacher, tutor or fundraiser, founder of a nonprofit, or even an entrepreneur that solves a social problem. For many, it has become the answer to “now what?” and “what will be my legacy?”

Knowing what’s ahead, some people plan their encore career for years, beginning as early as their 50s. They use travel time to build alliances or weekends to take a community college course.

Though he’s far from retirement age, my 50-year-old husband surely will need an encore career. Even now, he can’t sit still on days off from work, filling his days with house projects and coming up with new ones once the current list is exhausted. Yet he regularly talks about how he looks forward to retirement — a disaster-in-the-making for a man without a mission.

The reignite-rather-than-retire movement has been recent, but it may already have played a role in curbing the high rate of suicide for older males. David Cohen, author of Out of the Blue, and a professor of psychology at University of Texas had previously discovered a high rate of suicide for males in the 65-to-74 year old age group, observing that this set was susceptible because of its preoccupation with lost status and higher risk of apathy and isolation. That high rate has lowered in recent years.

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Lauderhill police investigating homicide; searching for suspect

Lauderhill police Monday night were investigating an apparent homicide.

Details were sketchy, but police said just before 9 p.m. a woman was shot and killed on the 2800 block of Northwest 55th Avenue.

The victim was dead at the scene.

K-9 units were in the area searching for a possible suspect and a public information officer is now at the scene.

This story will be updated as more details are available.

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His cat, his lunch and a high five: Harper’s day chronicled on Twitter

OTTAWA – One of the cardinal rules of social media: no one cares what you had for lunch. Unless, perhaps, you’re the prime minister.

The people behind Stephen Harper‘s Twitter account are using the first day of Parliament’s winter sitting to provide an intimate look at how the prime minister spends his day.

The posts include a video of Harper’s ride to work, photos of breakfast with his cat Stanley and a lunch that included fruit and a Diet Coke at his desk.

The behind-the-scenes look is the latest move by Harper’s team to bolster his presence on social media platforms.

Digital public affairs analyst Mark Blevis says it’s likely an effort to rebrand Harper in the lead-up to the next election, where he’ll face off against politicians far more adept online.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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2013 SAGs: ET Crowns Best and Worst Dressed Star

Who took the top (and bottom) spot this year?

Anne Hathaway, Kerry Washington, Jessica Chastain and Amanda Seyfried earned rave reviews for their fashionably flawless turns on the 2013 Screen Actor's Guild Award's red carpet on Sunday, but only one actress has the notable distinction of being crowned ET's best-dressed star.

Pics: The SAG Awards Fashion Tops & Flops

Click the video to see which lovely lady earned our highest praise! Plus, we reveal our worst-dressed celeb at the SAGs.

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