AP Exclusive: Richardson pressing NKorean test ban

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that his delegation is pressing North Korea to put a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests and to allow more cell phones and an open Internet for its citizens.

Richardson told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview in Pyongyang that the group is also asking for fair and humane treatment for an American citizen detained in North Korea.

“The citizens of the DPRK (North Korea) will be better off with more cell phones and an active Internet. Those are the three messages we’ve given to a variety of foreign policy officials, scientists” and government officials, Richardson said.

He is accompanied by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas think tank Director Jared Cohen on what Richardson has called a private, humanitarian trip. Schmidt, who is the highest-profile U.S. business executive to visit North Korea since leader Kim Jong Un took power a year ago, has not spoken publicly about the reasons behind the journey to North Korea.

The high-profile visit comes just weeks after North Korea launched a long-range rocket to send a satellite into space. Washington has condemned the launch as a banned test of missile technology.

Schmidt, who oversaw Google‘s expansion into a global Internet giant, speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology. Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea’s neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.

He and Cohen have collaborated on a book about the Internet’s role in shaping society called “The New Digital Age” that comes out in April.

Using science and technology to build North Korea’s beleaguered economy was the highlight of a New Year’s Day speech by leader Kim Jong Un.

New red banners promoting slogans drawn from Kim’s speech line Pyongyang’s snowy streets, and North Koreans are still cramming to study the lengthy speech. It was the first time in 19 years for North Koreans to hear their leader give a New Year’s Day speech. During the rule of late leader Kim Jong Il, state policy was distributed through North Korea’s three main newspapers.

___

Follow AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

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Behind the Scenes of PSY's 2013 Super Bowl Commercial

ET has your exclusive sneak peek at PSY's next big project!

Video: Stars Party Gangnam Style Backstage at AMAs

The Korean superstar will launch an out-of-this-world Super Bowl commercial Sunday, January 3, and we have your first look behind the scenes of the top-secret shoot this Wednesday.

Also tomorrow, inside Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey's American Idol feud! Plus, the deleted scene deemed too sexy for Twilight.

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Ex-Disney site in play for RL

Lois Weiss

BETWEEN THE BRICKS

The long vacant Disney store at 711 Fifth Ave. may soon be filled with Ralph Lauren clothing.

Several sources report a deal is being negotiated to bring RL’s preppie and all-American looks into 35,000 square feet at the Coca-Cola Building, named for the all-American beverage company that owns it.

Most of the 65,000 square feet that was the Disney Store — before Mickey decamped for Times Square — remains vacant. The Breguet shop of 3,000 square feet uses the old Mickey-and-friends character awning, which needed a variance to be installed.

Neither Lauren, which owns and rents along Madison Avenue and has other spaces in SoHo and on Bleecker Street, nor Jones Lang LaSalle’s spokespeople commented prior to press time.

*

Bids were due yesterday for the Sony Building at 550 Madison. Those previously outed and likely to have put in bids include the Rockefeller Group, owned by Mitsubishi Estate; Mitsui Fudosan America; Vornado Realty Trust; Boston Properties; Harry Macklowe; and Steven Witkoff; along with investors from the Middle East and Israel, China, Russia and Europe.

Locals, REITs, insurance companies and groups were teaming with capital from all over the world for the rare offering of a Class A Midtown office building, especially now that capital-gains rates are set for the moment. Douglas Harmon and his Eastdil Secured team are not responding to requests for comment on the bidders or bid amounts.

***

Michael Kors Holdings has leased 15,000 square feet at 520 Broadway in SoHo between Spring and Broome streets. When it opens, sources said, the three-level store plus storage will become the brand’s new SoHo flagship. Right now, there is a Michael Kors store around the corner at 101 Spring St.

Gary Dana, Rick Dana and Adam Kramer of Dana Commercial Group at Douglas Elliman represented the tenant in the 15-year lease.

The space has 4,500 square feet on the ground and 5,000 square feet each on the second floor and concourse, along with underground storage of 2,500 square feet.

“We have been looking for them for a year in SoHo, and they wanted a big splash,” said Gary Dana.

Rodney Prop, chairman of Tall Prop Equities, negotiated on behalf of the Prop family partnership but declined comment.

Ground-floor rents in the area are now pushing into the $700s a square foot for midblock space. The entire space, however, had an asking rent on Costar of $4.556 million per year.

Construction will begin after the current tenant, Club Monaco, vacates in June.

***

Douglas Durst has paid $18 million for a down-on-its-luck Times Square-area hotel right next to the fancy Lambs Club on a block where he already owns several parcels and is cobbling together a development site.

“It’s for the fifth generation,” he joked the other day of the future development, noting that the oldest person in the fifth generation is now 7 years old.

Durst’s new addition, the Crown Hotel at 136 W. 44th St., is rented to an agency funded by the city that has a year left on its lease.

Knowledge of Durst’s interest in the block made the transfer a fast off-market deal handled by Neal Sroka, Vincent Santoro and Suzan Kremer of Douglas Elliman on behalf of seller Steven Silberberg.

***

A boutique office building at 551 Madison on the northeast corner of 55th Street was just purchased for north of $125 million by an institutional investor advised by Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors, sources say.

Darcy Stacom, Bill Shanahan, and Paul Gillen of CBRE advised sellers LaSalle Investment Management. CBRE declined comment.

The 17-story property of 150,000 square feet has Lacoste as its largest tenant.

***

In another year-end deal, the Media Arts building at 311 W. 43rd St., west of Times Square in Clinton, where Hakkasan NY is located, was just sold to Atlas Capital’s Jeff Goldberger and Andy Cohen for $62.4 million.

Brian Ezratty and Peter Hauspurg of Eastern Consolidated represented the sellers, Richard Berry and Tony Zunino of Zuberry Associates, while Ezatty procured the buyers.

“We made a quick deal, but it was a securitized loan and they had to get it done in 45 days,” said Ezratty. He credited Cohen’s experience for the fast lender action.

The engineering firm Cooper Robertson is a tenant here.

Atlas is also part of the investment group that recently bought the St. Johns Center, the East Gate Tower Hotel on 39th Street and a Broome Street development site.

Lois@Betweenthebricks.com

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Magic Jack ends suit against Net Talk

A suit between Magic Jack and a Miami-based rival has ended.

Net Talk, with headquarters in suburban Miami-Dade, announced Tuesday that Magic Jack had dropped its patent-infringement suit against Net Talk over the company’s Internet phone service. Magic Jack is one of the best-known providers of VOIP (voice over Internet protocol), and sued Net Talk in April over the competitor’s product.

In December, both sides agreed to drop the legal action, and the federal case was dismissed.

DOUGLAS HANKS

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Parents of disabled kids blast Florida care

Twice in the past year, state health administrators cut the number of hours caregivers assisted Alex Perez’s severely disabled son at his Westchester home. Both times, the child’s pediatrician was left wondering why the state had reduced the care he had prescribed for the boy.

On Monday, state Rep. Katie Edwards asked Perez if she had been “misled or misinformed” when state healthcare bosses told her that the company that reviews such prescriptions always speaks with family doctors to find a way to help parents.

“Yes,” Perez told Edwards at a town hall meeting in Sunrise for parents of disabled and medically fragile children Monday night.

Perez, whose 13-year-old son, Christian, suffers from cerebral palsy and failure to thrive, was one of a dozen parents and advocates who spoke to several lawmakers and other community leaders Monday night at the meeting called to address the needs of Florida children with severe disabilities and life-threatening medical conditions.

As Perez looked on, Edwards, the meeting’s chairwoman, called a spokesman for the state Agency for Health Care Administration to the podium. AHCA legislative director Chris Chaney said it was common for the private company, eQHealth Solutions, to speak with family doctors to “reach a consensus” over the care for children like Christian.

“Not happening,” several parents shouted from the audience.

“You need to correct this,” Edwards said, speaking to Chaney.

Edwards, a Democrat from Sunrise who was recently elected to the House, called Monday’s meeting at the Sunrise Senior Center following several stories in The Miami Herald about the state’s cutting of in-home nursing care to medically fragile children, which has forced some parents to place their children in geriatric nursing homes. Edwards said she became aware of children like Christian while volunteering at, and raising money for, a Homestead daycare center for children with complex medical conditions.

“They keep finding new reasons to deny services,” Perez told the group about eQHealth, a private company under contract with the state at the center of the controversy. “It’s a very combative atmosphere.”

The plight of children with complex medical needs came to light last fall when civil-rights lawyers with the U.S. Justice Department accused the state of warehousing severely disabled children in geriatric nursing homes — where the youngsters often have little contact with the outside world, and can spend their entire childhood with no social or family interaction. Hundreds of children have landed in such homes, the Justice Department wrote, because state health administrators have dramatically cut in-home and other services to children whose parents care for them at home.

Edwards said it was partly the Legislature’s “fault” that disabled children were suffering from lack of care. For too long, she said, lawmakers avoided getting involved in the details of state health and social service agencies, allowing departments to write their own rules with little legislative guidance, and offering inadequate oversight over how the state’s “limited pool of resources” is spent.

If the state is favoring nursing homes by strangling the flow of dollars to families raising disabled children at home, though, Edwards said that should stop.

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Intel bets big on thin PCs and phones at Las Vegas show

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Top chipmaker Intel Corp on Monday announced shipments of a new low-power chip and showed off next-generation ultra thin laptops and convertible tablets in its latest bid to prove that the struggling PC industry still has a bright future.

At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas , Intel said new energy-efficient processors for tablets and laptops are available now, and it outlined features like voice recognition and drastically improved battery life on future PCs.

“Absolutely all-day battery life where you just don’t have to bring your power brick at all anymore,” Kirk Skaugen, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group, said of laptops built with the company’s upcoming Haswell processor.

While macroeconomic troubles have weighed on sales for several quarters, the growing popularity of tablets and smartphones is seen as an existential threat to the PC industry.

Anxious to breathe new life into PCs and prove a recent slump in sales is not permanent, Intel and PC manufactures in Las Vegas this week will display a range of ultra thin laptops, dubbed Ultrabooks, and hybrid devices that convert into tablets.

On a stage flanked by dozens of tablets and laptops with rotatable and detachable screens, Skaugen said Intel’s newly available chip based on its current Ivy Bridge architecture sips just 7 watts of energy, more efficient than a previously planned 10 watts of power.

NO-EXCUSES PHONE

The Santa Clara, California-based company has long been king of the PC chip market, particularly through its historic “Wintel” alliance with Microsoft Corp, which led to breathtakingly high profit margins and an 80 percent market share.

But it has struggled to adapt its powerful PC processors for battery-powered smartphones and tablets, a fast-growing market led by Qualcomm Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, ARM Holdings Plc and others.

Mike Bell, who co-heads Intel’s mobile and wireless business, introduced a new processor platform, code named Lexington, targeted at low-priced smartphones in emerging markets like Latin America and Asia.

“It’s designed to be a no-excuses multimedia phone,” he said.

Acer, Safaricom and Lava have already agreed to use the new chips in future phones, Bell said.

A handful of manufacturers and telecom carriers in Europe and Asia have already launched smartphones using Intel’s Medfield processors this year. Google’s Motorola Mobility in September launched the Razr i in Europe and Latin America as the first handset of a multi-device agreement between the two groups.

But Intel is fighting an uphill battle in a market where chips made using technology from ARM Holdings have become ubiquitous. Intel also has yet to release a chip for 4G telephone networks, keeping it out of the running for major smartphone design wins in the United States.

Sales of smartphone processors soared 58 percent in the third quarter, but Intel had just 0.2 percent of that market, according to a recent report from Strategy Analytics.

By comparison, worldwide PC shipments fell 8.6 percent in the third quarter, according to IDC.

Intel said 3D cameras would be integrated in future Ultrabooks to allow consumers to use gestures and facial recognition to control their devices. Upcoming Ultrabooks will also include voice interaction, Skaugen said.

“We’re basically going to give the PC the same human senses we’ve all had,” he said.

Intel and other tech companies are increasingly looking for ways to let PCs and other devices use cameras, GPS chips, microphones and other kinds of sensors to predict their users’ needs.

“It’s this combination of computer devices doing things before you ask them to do it, in that they’re smart enough to know based on their sensors,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

(Reporting By Noel Randewich; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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The Bachelor Premiere Recap Sean Lowe

Chaos ensued as ABC's newest Bachelor Sean Lowe decided to bend the rules tonight on the series' season 17 premiere.

About a dozen girls walked into the first rose ceremony clutching a coveted stem after the Dallas native threw tradition to the wind, handing out his sign of approval with abandon on night one.

Video: Sean Lowe's Steamy 'Bachelor' Debut

As expected, the ladies left rose-less were thrown off their game when Sean first bestowed his first rose to 24-year-old brunette beauty Tierra less than 5 minutes after she stepped out of her limousine.

"Tonight I'm going to break the rules a little bit," Sean told the stunned Coloradoan hopeful within moments of their meeting. "You have such a good energy and I'd like for you to stick around a little bit longer."

The 29-year-old Bachelor's signature nice-guy persona never faltered during the good, the bad and the ugly as he politely entertained 26 starstruck women including one overly enthusiastic 50 Shades of Grey fan, a decked out bride-to-be, and a back-flipping bachelorette over the course of Monday's two-hour premiere. While many ladies put their best foot forward, only 19 were bestowed the opportunity to date Sean another day.

Video: Sean Lowe Is Most Sincere 'Bachelor' Ever, Raves Chris Harrison

Interestingly enough, Sean's first-rose sweetheart Tierra may not be as charming as she appears. In the season preview, featured directly after tonight's airing, a handful of Sean's suitors warn the Bachelor that, despite her kind demeanor, Tierra may not be the girl Sean thinks she is.

Tune in for all the drama when The Bachelor returns next Monday on ABC!

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Mike Speaks the Truth

Mayor Bloomberg isn’t one for eating his own words, but he’d probably like to have back his weekend comparison of the United Federation of Teachers to the National Rifle Association.

Predictably, howls of outrage ensued — most of it of the manufactured variety, designed purely to deflect attention from the fact that the teachers’ union is once more hard at work protecting incompetent teachers at the expense of New York’s public-school pupils.

Mayor Mike needs to apologize, the union demands — and so he should.

But to the NRA, frankly.

Think what you will of the nation’s largest and most powerful gun lobby, at least it doesn’t purport to be something other than what it is.

Michael Bloomberg

As opposed to the UFT, which camouflages its contempt for the best interests of city kids with saccharine rhetoric and vicious TV attack ads aimed at Bloomberg.

The mayor last week opened fire on the UFT for abandoning talks aimed at establishing a teacher-evaluation regime based partly on student achievement, as required under a state law passed last June.

Never mind that city schools stand to lose $450 million in funding if a deal isn’t reached by Jan. 17. Reforming the city’s teacher-evaluation system will be a blessing for students citywide and for teachers, who deserve to be rewarded for their best work and better monitored and trained.

But UFT boss Mike Mulgrew has unilaterally ended months of negotiations and nearly ensured the money will be lost.

“It’s typical of Congress, it’s typical of unions . . . where a small group is really carrying the ball,” Bloomberg said on his Friday radio show. “The NRA is another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.”

Bloomberg rightly refuses to apologize.

Many of his would-be successors, however, are eagerly lining up to drink the UFT Kool-Aid.

The top four Democratic candidates for mayor have all joined a noxious petition attacking Bloomberg for his comments.

(Of course, they won’t say a word about how Mulgrew torpedoed the teacher-evaluation talks.)

The petition says Bloomberg “vilifies New York City teachers,” but he did the exact opposite, drawing a distinction between bosses like Mulgrew — who could not care less about New York’s kids — and the main body of teachers, which the mayor contends “doesn’t agree with the leadership.”

That’s the word straight from the mayor’s mouth: Don’t blame the educators, don’t blame City Hall — the schools are going to lose half a billion dollars because of Mike Mulgrew and the UFT.

Will the union apologize for that?

Fat chance.

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Florida company provides electrical power for the world

More than 4,000 miles from its home base in Doral, Energy International is helping keep the lights on and the power grid humming in Gibraltar, the British territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.

Energy International, a global provider of power plants and energy solutions, sent a temporary plant that will provide power for at least the next two years while a more permanent fix is sought for the territory’s erratic and aging electrical system.

The Doral company was founded 14 years ago as MCA Power Systems and its initial goal was to pursue energy contracts in Latin America. It began 2000 with a name change and in recent years its focus has become global.

“The world needs energy,’’ said Brett Hall, EI’s vice president of finance.

While the 2007-2008 recession curtailed the growth of worldwide energy demand, the U.S. Energy Information Agency has projected that global demand for electricity will increase by 2.3 percent annually from 2008 to 2035.

The potential is especially strong in developing nations. The International Energy Agency estimated that in 2009, 21 percent of the world’s population — 1.4 billion people — didn’t have access to electricity. In sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage of people without power rises to 69 percent.

Energy International has expanded sales from Latin America and the Caribbean to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, boosting revenue from $100 million annually in 2009 to more than $300 million today, Hall said. This year, EI is anticipating revenue of $350 million to $375 million.

In the next seven years the company, which is privately owned by American shareholders and affiliated with Gecolsa — the Caterpillar dealership in Colombia — hopes revenue will top $1 billion, he said.

Even though Energy International is based in the United States, it does little work domestically. Its sweet spot is emerging economies and contracts of $100 million or less.

“Our focus is to do whatever makes the most economic sense for a particular market,’’ said Hall.

“We’re not going to be building a nuclear power plant,’’ he said. But EI will accommodate its solutions to local fuel supplies whether it’s biofuel, natural gas or heavy fuels that are more prevalent.

When it comes to the type of temporary power solution needed by Gibraltar, which had been plagued by a string of power outages at its archaic electrical facilities, EI can have a temporary plant up and running in 30 to 40 days, supplying the engineering, rental turbines and other equipment and doing the installation.

“We were able to support Gibraltar’s power needs on short notice,’’ said Andres Molano, EI’s vice president of sales. “Some of their equipment required major maintenance and they needed to stop their plants.’’

EI, one of the world’s largest suppliers of interim energy solutions, signed a $12 million contract with the government of Gibraltar in November and the plant was operational by Dec. 21. The agreement includes an option for a three-year extension.

The equipment now in use in Gibraltar is considered part of EI’s fleet and will move on to other energy emergencies when its service in the territory famed for the Rock of Gibraltar is complete.

But when it comes to its permanent power plants, EI will build a facility for a client looking to generate its own power or construct a plant, run it and sell power directly to the final user.

“We can do all the work ourselves. We have all the skills in house — finance, design, operations, maintenance, building and the equipment,’’ said Hall.

Energy International has moved into the Middle East, completing projects in Oman and Yemen and establishing a subsidiary in Dubai in 2012 to pursue business in Africa and the Middle East, said Molano.

“Africa is new to us, but we believe there are opportunities there,’’ he said.

The company also is looking for continued growth in Latin America, especially in Colombia, which is now attracting foreign investors who previously had been spooked by violence.

Remote areas of the Amazon where temporary power solutions are needed also represent opportunity for the company.

“EI is very fortunate to be in a position in which we have more excellent opportunities than capital.’’ said Hall, so this year it will be concentrating on raising equity to finance growth.

“One of our biggest challenges in 2013,’’ Hall said, “will be to find investors or joint venture partners to provide capital that will enable EI to perform these projects so our aggressive revenue growth targets can be achieved.’’

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Scott Israel talks about BSO’s future

On Tuesday, Broward Sheriff-elect Scott Israel will take over the most powerful elected post in the county, overseeing about 5,500 employees and a $670 million budget.

Past Broward sheriffs have generated colorful and political headlines. Nick Navarro, elected in 1984, ordered deputies to cook crack cocaine to use in drug stings, and ordered the arrest of the rap group 2 Live Crew for obscenity. Ken Jenne, a former state senator, plastered his name on everything from pencils to Frisbees to rugs before he pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2007 and landed in federal prison.

Then Gov. Charlie Crist appointed longtime BSO official Al Lamberti as sheriff. On Election Day a year later, Lamberti won as a Republican in Florida’s most Democratic county. Tens of thousands of voters who turned out to elect President Barack Obama skipped the sheriff’s race, helping Lamberti defeat Israel, a Democrat.

But in 2012, fewer voters skipped the sheriff’s race on their ballot and Israel — with the help of key political allies — ousted Lamberti.

Israel set to work changing BSO immediately. In December, his transition team sent emails to 28 high-ranking employees telling them they would be out once Israel took over. Many top officials had already announced they would be leaving, including BSO spokesman Jim Leljedal, attorney Judith Levine and Undersheriff Tom Wheeler.

After 35 years at BSO, Lamberti said Friday that he has not applied for any jobs and doesn’t plan to open a security firm. (He has been joking about the fact that there is an opening at the CIA.)

Bob Butterworth, a former Broward sheriff and Florida attorney general, calls the sheriff’s job the “most challenging office” in Broward.

“If you can deal with the issues of substance abuse and mental health — and a sheriff can if they wish to do that — I think you can reduce crime in this community by a lot and also reduce the jail population,” Butterworth said.

Beyond staff changes, it is not yet clear how Israel, a 56-year-old former Fort Lauderdale police captain and North Bay Village police chief — will change BSO.

But emails from Israel’s transition team to BSO show that Israel has sought information about every aspect of the agency, including budget forecasts, contracts for everything from garbage collection to lobbying, statistics about the race of employees and even about the protocol for military casket arrivals.

Israel’s senior command staff includes many who played key roles in his campaign, including his new general counsel, Ron Gunzburger, son of County Commissioner Sue Gunzburger, and Lisa Castillo, who worked on Israel’s campaign. The name of her husband, Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo, is also being bandied about as having a role in the Israel administration.

Israel, who lives with his wife, Susan, and teenage triplets in Parkland, will be sworn in at a public ceremony by Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes at 11 a.m. Tuesday at The Faith Center in Sunrise.

The Miami Herald spoke to Israel recently about his views on gun control, politics and other topics.

Q. The Broward sheriff is often described as the most powerful elected post in Broward. Your predecessor, Al Lamberti, tried to define himself as a law enforcement professional — not a politician. Do you view yourself as a politician?

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