If the size of the diamond is any indication of Hugh Hefner's love for bride-to-be Crystal Harris, it's a safe bet to say that he's head over heels.
RELATED: Hugh Hefner Gets Marriage License?
Harris revealed her engagement ring on Tuesday, via her Twitter feed.
"My beautiful ring from [Hugh Hefner]," Crystal posted along with photos of the giant sparkler.
The couple is reportedly planning to wed on New Year's Eve.
Just in time for Christmas, security guards at JFK Airport are threatening to walk off their jobs and create a holiday nightmare for travelers.
The 300 workers, employed by two private companies, do several key jobs.
Most importantly, they inspect planes takeoff, looking for weapons, explosives and contraband.
They also check out maintenance crews, mechanics and caterers who board the aircraft.
Others direct traffic in front of the terminals and check that gates leading to the tarmac are secure.
The guards, who are not in a union, say they want better training and equipment.
If they strike, company managers could replace some of them.
Port Authority cops might also be assigned some duties, like traffic control. But the unionized police officers would not be asked to inspect aircraft, a source said.
Another problem would be getting replacement workers “Secure Identity Display Areas’’ credentials. That can take weeks because background and fingerprint checks are required.
If the workers strike, planes would stay on the ground much longer, throwing off schedules and causing delays at destination cities. On the ground, the confusion could make it difficult for travelers to get to their gates.
The workers will vote tomorrow, and are expected to authorize a strike starting Dec. 20.
About 200 guards work for Air Serve; the others are employed by Global Elite Group.
They’ve filed several dozen grievances with the Transportation Security Administration, claiming management failed to provide them with training and gear, such as functioning two-way radios or security wands.
They say they’ve been forced to rely on their own cellphones and stick to unrealistic “productivity’’ schedules.
“These security officers feel responsible for the safety and security at JFK Airport. They feel it is their duty to bring attention to these gaping holes in preparedness and safety standards,” said Michael Allen, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union, which is advising them.
He claimed management “retaliated against workers for speaking out.”
Air Serve did not return a call for comment, and a Global official said the firm has no knowledge of a threatened walkout.
Port Authority spokeswoman Lisa MacSpadden did not return calls for comment, but a senior PA official told The Post a strike could be a “challenge.’’
Q. Recently I’ve been unable to send emails from my home email address. In addition, my incoming email contains several notices of undeliverable emails that I didn’t send that are addressed to people I don’t know. I suspect that my computer is infected by some malicious software and is being used to send spam email — and that those that are undeliverable are being returned. What should I do?
Joseph Campbell Burnsville, Minn.
I agree that your PC has been taken over by hackers and is being used to send spam.
The fact that you aren’t able to send emails from your home account supports this theory, since it indicates that your Internet service provider believes you are spamming and has temporarily blocked your ability to send email to anyone.
I suggest you download and run the free version of security program Malwarebytes (go to www.tinyurl.com/cwbd73f and click “free download.”) If that doesn’t work, try Windows System Restore to eliminate recently installed software (see www.tinyurl.com/y9q9apj and www.tinyurl.com/ykgps6.) Then call your Internet service provider; explain what happened and what you’ve done to fix it. If your PC is clean, you’ll be allowed to send email again.Q. I’ve recently received a lot of spam, including some that appear to be from people I know — except that the messages come from the wrong email address. How does a spammer use a familiar name with a fake email address and send it to me?
Also, is there a way to find out the identity of the people who send spam emails? I’ve read that the email address of the sender is not always accurate.
Ginger Bramlett Rockwall, Texas
The bogus email that appeared to be from your friend, but came from the wrong email address, is from a spammer who is trying to trick you into opening the email.
Why did this happen? Your friend’s email may have been hacked and his or her address book stolen, providing the spammer with a host of addresses where an email bearing your friend’s name might be opened by the recipient.
It’s hard to find out who actually sent spam, because originating email addresses are easy to fake.
I suggest you send these emails to your spam filter so that you and others may be spared at least some spam in the future. In addition, your Internet service provider allows you to block spam that comes from a specific domain name — the part of the email address that follows the symbol, such as Yahoo.com. See www.tinyurl.com/cxmq4m7.
WASHINGTON --
Don’t expect South Florida’s congressional delegation to stray too far from party lines when it comes to dancing on the edge of the fiscal cliff, the end-of-the-year spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect if Congress and the president don’t address them.
Democrats are firmly with President Barack Obama, whose proposal seeks to raise $600 billion over a decade by eliminating tax deductions and $960 billion over the same period by raising tax rates for the top 2 percent of income earners. Many Democrats sounded as though the highly charged presidential campaign was still under way.
Republicans are just as committed to their party.
There’s been "no evidence thus far" that Republicans are truly interested in the middle class, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Weston, who the president just asked again to head the Democratic National Committee.
"We need to continue to focus on rebuilding our economy from the middle class out," she said during an appearance on MSNBC.
"President Obama talked eloquently and passionately during the campaign about making sure that we can get a handle on this deficit, that we can rebuild our economy from the middle class out, that we can focus on creating jobs and getting the economy turned around," she added.
Equally firm: South Florida Democratic Reps. Alcee Hastings, of Miramar and Frederica Wilson, of Miami. Both are members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which released a statement of principles this week calling for the Bush-era tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans.
Social Security should be completely off the table, the caucus warned, and it said it would oppose any plans that change the eligibility for Medicare or cut Medicaid, the statement said.
Some Democrats made conciliatory moves, however. Sen. Bill Nelson said that during his campaign, voters told him they want consensus and an end to partisan gridlock.
"They want bipartisanship," he said in a video message. "They want to stop the ideological rigidity."
It’s the only way to rebuild the economy and reduce the federal deficit, while preserving Social Security and Medicare, he said. He called on people of both political parties "to reach across the aisle and work together so America doesn’t go over the cliff."
That’s unlikely to come from his Republican counterpart, Sen. Marco Rubio, who along with former vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was featured in a speech this week in Washington.
Rubio blamed the "complicated and uncertain tax code" for "hindering the creation of middle-class jobs." He gave no hint he would be interested in supporting the president’s tax proposal on the wealthiest Americans.
"You can’t open or grow a business if your taxes are too high or too uncertain. And that’s why I personally oppose the president’s plan to raise taxes," Rubio said. "This isn’t about a pledge. It isn’t about protecting millionaires and billionaires. For me, it’s about the fact that the tax increases he wants would fail to make even a small dent in the debt but it would hurt middle-class businesses and the people who work for them."
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Miami, was one of the few Republicans from South Florida to suggest she’d be open to tax reform, saying there needs to be a review of the tax code "to remove special interest tax loopholes used by the wealthy."
But she warned that the country’s debt exists "not because tax rates are too low, but because government spends too much."
Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, also of Miami, said he was less optimistic about a resolution now than he was right after the election.
He said he feels as though Republicans have moved closer to the president without getting credit for it.
"I’m very disappointed with the president’s response," he said in an interview.
"The speaker put forward a proposal, and whether you agree with it or not, there are a couple of things beyond debate: He’s gotten closer to the president’s position."
Even those on their way out of Congress made no move to cross party lines. Republican Rep. Allen West, of Plantation, who was ousted by Democrat Patrick Murphy, warned constituents in a letter that he didn’t think there was a true plan to reduce spending.
Rep. David Rivera, a Republican who lost his re-election bid and who will be replaced by Democrat Joe Garcia, did not respond to a request for comment.
Will Smith and his son Jaden haven't shared the big screen since 2006's The Pursuit of Happyness. Now the father-son duo pair up once more for M. Night Shyamalan's post-apocalyptic thriller After Earth, and we're showing you the new trailer.
RELATED: Will Smith Surprises Jada on The Talk
In the film, opening June 7, 2013, a father and son crash land on a now-abandoned Earth. While the father, General Cypher Raige lies dying after the accident, his 13-year-old son Kitai must play the soldier, searching for the rescue beacon -- their only chance to be saved.
Watch the video for more.
Andrea Peyser
EXCLUSIVE
The shy, pretty victim cried tears of joy and hope. It’s over now.
“I can’t wait until he’s in prison,” said the young lady, who, starting at age 12, saw her purity, her innocence, her very life stolen by a brutish Satmar pig named Nechemya Weberman.
“I can’t wait until someone stronger, who weighs 350 pounds more, holds him down, lets him knowhow it feels to be so helpless,” she told me in her Brooklyn apartment, holding onto her husband with one hand and cradling a Shih Tzunamed Angel with the other.
“I’d like to see that,’’ she said.
Not long ago, she wasn’t so strong.
Gabriella Bass
IN GOOD HANDS NOW: The victim embraces her husband at their Brooklyn home last night after her abuser’s conviction.
But yesterday, Weberman was convicted in Brooklyn of sexually abusing this young lady, now 18, repeatedly and cruelly, for three long years. He was her tormentor. There was no escape. But after a trial that ripped open the veil concealing the Orthodox Satmar Jewish sect, a religious subset whose leaders the victim calls “the Jewish Taliban,” Weberman will never again be free to hurt girls.
“This is a happy day,’’ she said, tears in her eyes.
The victim, with her long, blond hair and pleasant smile, looks like any other girl just discovering her womanhood.
But six years ago, she was sentenced by her repressive Jewish school to go into counseling with Weberman, a charlatanwho used his practice like fly paper to catch time alone with girls in a community so sheltered and repressed, unrelated men and women are forbidden from being in rooms alone together.
The sin that led her to Weberman?
“I questioned some Jewish laws,’’ she said. “I questioned why women are sometimes — I don’t want to use word — degraded. They’re less than guys.”
And the Satmars punished her by sending her to the devil.
During her first session with Weberman, he touched her bare skin, right under her clothes. She barely knew what was happening, but she knew it was wrong.
“I asked him to stop. I felt invaded. He stopped for a minute. Then he started again.”
Three times a week, she spent time in his study or traveling upstate with him. He got increasingly aggressive.
Then, it got unimaginably worse. “He burned me with a lighter on my stomach,’’ she said almost in a whisper, recalling a terrible incident that never made it into trial testimony.
Why? “He found it arousing,” she said matteroffactly.
“He told me, ‘When you go home, you put on peanut butter,’ ” she said. “Peanut butter!” her husband cried. “I stayed in my bed for three days. I didn’t get out of bed. I didn’t eat. I just wanted to die.
“I was 13, I think.”
At one point, the Vaad Ha’Tznius — or “modesty committee,” the loathed Satmar enforcers — visited her parents.
“They made them sign papers saying we have to throw out the computer. I can’t go on vacation. I’m too rebellious. I have to dress in a certain way. I felt they were telling me how to breathe.”
Weberman was a “master manipulator,” she said. He’d call her mother, tell her her daughter was a liar, rebellious, threaten to cast her entire family out of the religion if the girl failed to improve.
“She was mad at me. We fought a lot. So there was no one to complain to,” the girl said.
So she dealt with the pain — “He liked to hurt me” — by zoning out of life.
“I didn’t love,” she said. “I didn’t hate. I felt nothing. I froze my emotions. I wouldn’t let myself feel anything.”
It ended only after the victim started a new high school, where questioning religious tenets is not heresy. At age 15, she told school leaders the awful truth.
She was the concubine of a man revered in the Satmar community. He was fed a small girl by fanatics who cared nothing about a human being.
The shy, brave girl still considers herself Jewish. Religiously so. But the Satmar sect is ancient history.
“I strongly dislike the Satmar dictators,” she said. Finally, she’s free.
Despite an agonizingly slow economic recovery, the country’s largest auto retailer, Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation, is thriving again as demand for vehicles expands.
The company, one of Florida’s largest, is posting increasingly strong profits and revenues. Just last week, in a sign of confidence, Autonation announced a major acquisition — buying six large auto stores in Texas — that will add about 700 employees to its national payroll of 19,400.
In announcing the deal Tuesday, which is expected to provide AutoNation with $575 million in additional revenues next year, the company’s CEO and chairman, Mike Jackson, expressed optimism about the prospects for continued growth in vehicle sales.
“You want to know what I’m thinking, look at what I do,” Jackson told viewers on CNBC’s Squawk Box program.
No information was released on the cost of the transactions, but in recent years auto dealerships sometimes sold for three to five times revenue, which would represent a significant investment for the company.
Tough times
To be sure, AutoNation has struggled through some tough times. It was battered by the Great Recession, which depressed sales and pushed the company into a $1.2 billion loss four years ago. As sales began to improve in 2010 and 2011, it was blindsided by a shortage of Japanese-made cars last year after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 shut down Japanese manufacturers of some essential components.
Since then, however, AutoNation has rebounded. Unit sales, revenues and profits all performed well in the first three quarters of this year, and the company expects new vehicle sales to continue their recovery nationwide, rising to the mid-14 million units this year, up from about 12.7 million in 2011. In the third quarter of 2012, AutoNation’s new car unit sales grew by 21 percent over the same period in 2011, doing better than an estimated 15 percent increase industry wide. November’s sales of new vehicles increased by 21 percent over November 2011 .
The big dealerships acquired sell Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen and Chrysler products in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth markets. They are expected to sell 14,000 new and used autos this year, and will add substantially to AutoNation’s future sales.
“We are in the right industry at the right time,” Jackson said during an interview. “The recovery in new vehicle sales is being driven by replacement demand,” added Jackson, who has 42 years of experience in the auto business. “The average age of the light vehicle fleet in the country has increased to 11 years, and even though cars and trucks last longer today, they can’t go on forever. About 12 to 13 million vehicles are scrapped every year and need to be replaced.”
Other factors are contributing to stronger demand for vehicles. “The population is growing, interest rates are low, there is ample credit available and manufacturers are producing a wide range of new models that offer attractive styling, power and greatly improved gas mileage,” said Jackson, who took over as AutoNation’s CEO in 1999. “Auto financing is more available than it has been in recent years. A little known fact is that people are more likely to default on a mortgage than on a vehicle loan.”
The suspect arrested in connection with Friday’s chase through the streets of Miami-Dade in a rental U-Haul truck appeared in front of judge Sunday morning.
Darrell Conyers, 45, made his first appearance in bond court.
Conyers faces a number of charges including grand theft, fraud and resisting arrest with violence.
During the hearing, the judge noted that the only charge before her was driving with a suspended license. For that she set bond at $2,000. Conyers will return to bond court at a later time for the additional charges.
Conyers was scheduled to appear in court on Saturday but was unable to do so because he was still in the hospital being treated for injuries he sustained at the end of the chase which apparently started as an attempted robbery at a tool shop on South Dixie Highway.
For 45-minutes the U-Haul truck weaved in and out of city streets, jumping on and off the Palmetto Expressway and headed in different directions along Southwest Eighth Street and Flagler Street.
The chase finally came to an end 12:45 p.m. next to Miami Senior High in Little Havana on Flagler Street and 26th Avenue.
When officers moved in to apprehend the driver, an unidentified Miami-Dade Police officer was injured when he was pinned between the U-Haul truck and a police vehicle. He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital where he was treated for a broken leg.
Another Miami officer cut his hand from broken glass. Police say that happened when officers had to break the glass on the U-Haul truck to get the suspect out of it.
Police said Conyers has had previous run-ins with the law and has convictions for firearm violations, fleeing police and carjacking.
The remains of a private plane carrying singer Jenni Rivera have been found in Mexico with no survivors following a suspected crash.
Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's Secretary of Communications and Transportation, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that, on Sunday, officials found the remains of an airplane that was carrying the Mexican-American superstar and her entourage who were traveling from Monterrey to Toluca, Mexico.
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The small jet had been carrying seven passengers (Rivera included) and lost radio contact with the airport a few minutes after departing in the early hours of the morning following a concert, reports THR.
The singer's father and brother later confirmed to Telemundo that Rivera died in the crash.
With the sad news, Latin artists all over the world took to Twitter to express their heartbreak.
Gloria Estefan mourns, "Our deepest sympathy to the family & fans of @jennirivera & those that accompanied her on what was to be her last voyage. Rest in peace."
Ricky Martin says, "This is sad. A bit in shock. Much peace to your family." (Translated from Spanish)
Eva Longoria writes, "My heart breaks for the loss of Jenni Rivera & everyone on the plane. My prayers go out to her family. We lost a legend today."
William Levy tweets, "My heart goes out to the families. I wish them all the strength in the world." (Translated from Spanish)
Paulina Rubio mourns, "My friend! Why? There is no consolation. God help me!" (Translated from Spanish)
Pitbull writes, "I highly respected #JenniRivera 4 being a gr8 performer but more then tht being real & gr8 example 4 us all que dios la bendiga &may she RIP"
Rivera, 43, was currently a featured coach on The Voice Mexico. A California native, the singer earned several Latin Grammy nominations and recently signed on to star in an American sitcom with ABC titled Jenni.
The Aussie DJs who pranked the hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated, apparently driving a nurse to kill herself, broke their silence yesterday, saying they never thought their trick would work.
“We wanted to be hung up on,” said Mel Greig.
In a joint interview with Australia’s “A Current Affair,’’ her co-host, Michael Christian, said their production team thought of the idea just before going on air.
“[We] just had the idea for just a simple harmless phone call . . . We thought . . . it was going to go for 30 seconds [and] we were going to be hung up on,” he said.
AFP/Getty Images
OUTRAGE: Mel Greig (left) and Michael Christian (right) pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles when calling King Edward VII’s Hospital. Nurse Jacintha Saldanha (left) killed herself three days later.
Greig said, “we thought a hundred people before us would’ve tried it, we thought it was such a silly idea and the accents were terrible and not for a second did we expect to speak to Kate let alone have a conversation with anyone at the hospital. We wanted to be hung up on.”
She added, “These prank calls are made every day on every radio station in every country around the world and . . . no one could’ve imagined this to happen.”
Both shock jocks cried as they recounted how they learned that Jacintha Saldanha — who transferred their call into the nurses’ station — had killed herself.
“There’s not a minute that goes by where we don’t think about her family and what they must be going through and the thought we may have played a part in that is gut wrenching,” Grieg added.
Meanwhile, a rep for their radio station griped that the London hospital should have known how “fragile’’ its nurse was.
Sandy Kaye told The Post that Saldanha must have been depressed or suffering from mental distress if she melted down over a “harmless’’ joke.
“Surely, there’s a lot more to suicide than a prank call where a woman has [done nothing more than] put through a phone call,” Kaye said.
“Perhaps the hospital should have known about that. If that turns out to be the case and they knew about her fragile situation, then why would you leave her on the front line?”
Saldanha — a 46-year-old married mother of two — killed herself Friday, about 72 hours after the prank.
The DJs called King Edward VII’s Hospital and tricked Saldanha — with bad impressions of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles — into transferring their call.
Another nurse, fooled by the prank, nervously gave an update on the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge who had severe nausea.
“These poor kids [Greig and Christian] have done nothing wrong, and they’re being crucified by the world,” Kaye said.
Saldanha had been set to meet with her bosses at the hospital to discuss what happened, but had not been disciplined.
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