Real Estate Daily News Buzz is designed to give news snippets to readers that our (yet to be award winning) editors thought you could use to start your day. They come from various business perspectives, real estate, government, the Fed, local news, and the stock markets to save you time. Here you will find the headlines and what the news buzz for the day will be.

The Dow Jones Industrial average slipped 10 points, or 0.1%, to 16,086.41 on Friday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index ended down one point, or 0.1%, to 1,805.81. The NASDAQ composite rose 15 points, or 0.4%, to end at 4,059.89. Benchmark U.S. crude for January delivery rose 42 cents to close at $92.72 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

S&P 500 GAINS FOR 8TH STRAIGHT WEEK
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market fizzled Friday at the end of a holiday-shortened trading day, but still logged its longest streak of weekly gains in a decade. Investors watched for early trends in holiday sales as the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, got underway. Retailers were one of two industry groups in the S&P 500 to rise. Stocks overall have surged this year as the economy maintains a slow but steady recovery and corporations keep earnings growing. Demand for stocks also has been bolstered by Federal Reserve policies that have held down interest rates, making bonds less attractive investments than stocks.

MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS NOW EXPORTING ORE
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican drug cartels looking to diversify their businesses long ago moved into oil theft, pirated goods, extortion and kidnapping, consuming an ever larger swath of the country’s economy. This month, federal officials confirmed the cartels have even entered the country’s lucrative mining industry, exporting iron ore to Chinese mills. Such large-scale illegal mining operations were long thought to be wild rumour, but federal officials confirmed they had known about the cartels’ involvement in mining since 2010, and that the Nov. 4 military takeover of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico’s second-largest port, was aimed at cutting off the cartels’ export trade. That news served as a wake-up call to Mexicans that drug traffickers have penetrated the country’s economy at unheard-of levels, becoming true Mafia-style organizations.

EUROZONE INFLATION RISE EASES PRESSURE ON ECB
LONDON — Welcomed news on inflation and unemployment came Friday that will ease pressure on the European Central Bank to act again next week to shore up the 17-country Eurozone economy. But they do little to ease longer-term worries over the recovery. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said unemployment was down for the first time since early 2011 and that inflation edged higher in November, dampening fears that the Eurozone is about to face a debilitating period of falling prices, also known as deflation.

JAPAN SEES GAINS IN PRICES, INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy is gaining momentum, data for October showed, with consumer prices excluding food and energy rising 0.3% from a year earlier, the biggest gain since 1998. However, household spending remained tepid, as incomes slipped from the same month a year before. The slew of indicators released Friday suggests that the ultra-loose monetary policy and stimulus strategy of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is helping end a long bout of deflation for the world’s No. 3 economy.

INDIAN GROWTH EDGES UP, STILL WEAK AT 4.8%
MUMBAI, India (AP) — India says its economic growth has risen to 4.8% in the Q3 ending September. It is an improvement over the previous quarter’s dismal figure but still far below what it needs to pull millions out of poverty. Asia’s third-largest economy had averaged a healthy 8% expansion for the last decade but recently has been faltering. The previous quarter’s growth of 4.4% was the lowest in 10 years. India’s government estimates it needs 8% growth to provide jobs for the 13 million people entering the workforce each year out of a population of 1.2 billion. Friday’s figures for the July-September quarter were dragged down by a weak manufacturing expansion of just 1.0%.

SOUTH KORIEA TO START TALKS ON JOINING US-LED TRADE PACT
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea said Friday it will start negotiations to join a U.S.-led trade pact covering a dozen Pacific and Asian nations. The finance ministry said in a statement that officials will explore the possibility of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership through the preliminary negotiations. The move is a first step and doesn’t commit South Korea to becoming part of the agreement but the trade ministry has been talking up its benefits for the economy. Export-reliant South Korea has free trade deals with the U.S. and European Union. It is negotiating a free trade deal with China, which is not part of the U.S.-led pact. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not in effect yet but the U.S. and other countries hope for an agreement by the end of this year. Apart from reducing trade barriers, the pact also requires its members to meet environmental, labor and intellectual property protection standards.

HIGHLIGHTS OF HEALTHCARE.GOV
WASHINGTON – Highlights of the Obama administration’s update Sunday on the status of HealthCare.gov, the website that people in 36 states were supposed to use beginning on Oct. 1 to sign up for new health insurance coverage. After much work on the troubled site, the government claimed in a new report:
System: Site supports 50,000 concurrent users; users spend an average of 20 minutes to 30 minutes on the site; based on usage trends, the site will support more than 800,000 consumer visits per day.
Site capacity: “Stable at its intended level.”
Performance: Activity levels show the site is “working for consumers.”
Response time: Average system response time is lower than a second.
Error rate: Consistently below 1 per cent, down from 6 per cent earlier this fall.
System stability: Hardware upgrades and software fixes to keep the website up and running more than 90 per cent of the time.
Rapid response team: 24/7 monitoring and operations centre and team in place to watch system performance and to respond to glitches and unplanned downtimes.
Software fixes: More than 400 bug fixes and software improvements have been made.
Hardware upgrades: Improvements increased some capabilities fivefold.

US STEEL PLANT TO BE SOLD FOR $1.55 BILLION
German steel company ThyssenKrupp has agreed to sell its U.S. steel plant business to two competitors for $1.55 billion. Following extended speculation over the deal, ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. said Friday that they will jointly acquire the ThyssenKrupp Steel USA. The steel processing plant in based in Calvert, Alabama. The deal adds U.S.-based finishing facilities for the two companies, which are headquartered in Luxembourg and Japan, respectively. It also is expected to benefit the buyers by expanding their energy and auto industry businesses. ThyssenKrupp was looking for a buyer after a fall in steel prices led to losses for the company and large write-downs for the reduced value of the plant.

QUEBEC GOVERNMENT – $4.3 MILLION OVER 3 YEARS TO WINE INDUSTRY
MONTREAL – Premier Pauline Marois’ government is giving Quebec vintners $4.3 million over the next three years to help boost the province’s wine industry. “Our wine industry is still young and it needs to hit new levels to reach its full potential,” Marois told a news conference Friday. Some of the money will go to improving a program to allow vintners to obtain a reserved designation. There will also be more money — up to $300,000 from $125,000 — for wine producers to boost their output. ”For customers to choose Quebec wines, there needs to be a large quantity of bottles on the shelves at all times,” said Sylvain Simard, head of the Quebec Liquor Corp.’s board of directors. ”There’s no secret there.” Currently, Quebec-produced wine accounts for 0.5% of the shelf space at liquor outlets. ”Just last year, the sale of Quebec wine increased by 40% at the government owned, Quebec Liquor Corp.,” said Simard. He said that in the long term some wines currently available may be withdrawn in favor of Quebec wines.

The following article first appeared in the Arizona Daily Independent and is being reprinted with permission here. The U.S. Forest Service has released the final Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed Rosemont Mine. The final EIS documents the analysis of six alternatives (including a “no action” alternative) that was developed for the Rosemont Copper Project analysis. Alternative 4 – Barrel Alternative is the U.S. Forest Service preferred alternative.

According to the report, the Barrel Alternative was developed to respond to significant issues regarding potential impacts on biological resources, cultural resources, and the surface water component of water resources.

The report reads:

Since the release of the EIS, there have been refinements to the Barrel Alternative in response to public comments and agency efforts toward geomorphic reclamation. Geomorphic reclamation involves the incorporation of postclosure landforms that replicate natural drainages, both functionally and visually. Through the refinement process for this alternative, Rosemont Copper committed to work within the project footprint developed by the Coronado interdisciplinary team. After further construction planning by Rosemont Copper, it became clear that this alternative could not be constructed according to the necessary phasing and still retain the heap leach facility with enough surface area to make the oxide ore processing economically feasible. In response to both public and other agency concerns about the heap leach facility and economic feasibility concerns, Rosemont Copper proposed to remove and the Forest Supervisor decided to remove oxide ore processing from the Barrel Alternative. Additional refinements to this alternative include the following:

• Inclusion of rock cover as part of reclamation on the east slope of tailings and waste rock facilities to promote long-term stability;

• Stormwater redesign, including removing the underdrains, eliminating storage on the top and benches of the tailings and waste rock facilities, and incorporating more stormwater routing downstream;

• Relocation of the Arizona National Scenic Trail to the east side of SR 83. To view the report click here.

Road decommissioning and construction of connector roads and turnarounds would be similar to the proposed action, although there are some differences, based on the location of the perimeter fence for the Barrel Alternative.

Rosemont officials said in a statement on Wednesday, “The publication of the Final EIS is the culmination of over six years of comprehensive environmental and technical studies and analyses,” said Gil Clausen, Augusta’s President and CEO.

“This is an exciting and significant achievement for the Company. We are pleased that the U.S. Forest Service has completed the document and sincerely thank the team and all parties involved for their diligence and efforts. With the EIS process concluded, we can move forward and finalize the last remaining steps of permitting.”

Arizona State University researchers found that the proposed project would bring a significant boost to local, state and national economies. According to Rosemont Copper, the project create jobs for more than 400 direct employees and create more than 1,700 indirect jobs per year. ASU’s economic analysis found that the Rosemont project would support an average of 2,900 new jobs throughout Arizona.

Rick Grinnell of the Southern Arizona Business Coalition, a staunch advocate of jobs in Southern Arizona commended Jim Upchurch of the U.S. Forest Service for his hard work and dedication to the region and its people. “Now we proceed to a 45 day public comment period and the vast majority of the people in Southern Arizona support the mine and need the jobs it will bring,” said Grinnell. Grinnell said he expected many people to speak out in support of the mine in the next 45 days.

Opponents to the mine have frequently raised the issue of water usage, however the farmers in the Rosemont Mine desert area of Southern Arizona use 800 gallons of water to grow one pound of pecans, while Rosemont Mine’s process uses only 8 gallons of water to produce one pound of copper. Copper is recycled so effectively that 80% of copper is continuously reused, whereas pecans are consumed and become part of the waste problem.

The National Retail Federation Wednesday issued the following statement from Vice President and Employee Benefits Policy Counsel Neil Trautwein on the announcement that the administration is delaying small business enrollment through the health care exchanges or marketplaces Wednesday:

“Today’s decision underscores the unmatched complexity of the Affordable Care Act, and highlights the fact that the administration and Congress failed to adequately understand the negative repercussions of the law. It is hard not to be disappointed that employers and employees will not be able to access care through the website.

“If the law is so burdensome for the administration to implement, just think how hard it is for small businesses, which are focused on growing a company, hiring new employees and assisting customers. The commercial market is not as forgiving as the world in which regulators operate.

“The National Retail Federation will continue its efforts to ease the regulatory impact the Affordable Care Act has on retailers, chain restaurants and other businesses as long as it is the law of the land.”

NRF is the world’s largest retail trade association, representing discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and Internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries. Retail is the nation’s largest private sector employer, supporting one in four U.S. jobs – 42 million working Americans. Contributing $2.5 trillion to annual GDP, retail is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. NRF’s This is Retail campaign highlights the industry’s opportunities for life-long careers, how retailers strengthen communities, and the critical role that retail plays in driving innovation. www.nrf.com.