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.
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
The competition for Bachelor Sean Lowe's heart is heating up!
Thirteen girls are left to vie for Sean's affections this week, and it's no surprise announcements of the coveted one-on-ones are making everyone a bit antsy. To the dismay of the other women (especially Leslie H., who breaks out in tears from frustration), Selma is chosen for the first whirlwind date.
Despite Selma's distaste for athletics and the heat, Sean's rough-and-tumble rock climbing date in the desert turns out to be a hit. The self-proclaimed girly girl escalates the 100-ft rock with relative ease and earns a few points from Sean in the process. As a reward for being a good sport, the two cap off the night with a romantically eclectic dinner in a converted trailer park. Struck by the urge to kiss his date, Sean asks permission to make a move but is denied by Selma out of fear her strict parents will be upset by their nationally broadcast exchange of lust. Respectfully, Sean backs off, but Selma's modesty doesn't deter him from bestowing a rose to his date.
Pics: Meet Sean Lowe's Lucky Ladies!
As if the house wasn't competitive enough, Lindsay, Robyn, Jackie, Catherine, Amanda, AshLee, Sarah and Tierra are pitted against eachother for a spirited roller derby group date. While the festivities begin with fervor, it doesn't take long before Sean decides to change the rules and make the date a friendly one. Amanda, who came into the ring with confidence, suffers a violent spill which sends her to the hospital. Sarah experiences extreme difficulty maintaining her balance with one arm, and nearly leaves the rink for good out of sheer disappointment. In an attempt to assuage the girls' anxieties, Sean opts to forgo the competition and free skate instead.
Back at the house, Tierra grows frustrated as the group date leaves her with little time to spend with the bachelor. This prompts her to spontaneously announce her tearful exit from the competition in the middle of Sean's sexy date. After some reassurance from Sean, Tierra is talked off her ledge and given a rose to the horror of the remaining women.
The second one-on-one went to Leslie H. and Sean goes to extreme lengths to make the outing the most romantic date he can manage. A la Pretty Woman, Leslie was bestowed with diamond earrings before being treated to a day of shopping on Rodeo Dr. and dinner. Despite all the right circumstances, Sean is upset that he isn't feeling a "romantic connection" with Leslie, and opts to send her home.
Recap: 'Bachelor' Sean Sets World Record, Dumps a Fave
"Blindsided," Leslie takes the rejection well. Climbing into her waiting car, she warns Sean to be careful of the ladies who aren't in the competition for the right reasons.
When it came time down to the final rose ceremony, Sean gives Amanda the final boot.
"Sean has everything that I'm looking for," weeps a teary Amanda. "I feel really rejected, and it hurts."
Tune in next week for a special two-night extravaganza of Bachelor madness. Brand-new episodes will air both Monday and Tuesday night on ABC.
John Crudele
Take an unlit cigar, point it top down and roll it between your thumb and forefinger until tobacco starts falling out. There’s now space in the wrapper for your favorite illicit substance.
I’m not suggesting you smoke anything illegal. But you should know about one of the hottest trends in New York City — so hot that it is sparking a boom in the cheap cigar business.
Why should taxpayers care? Because the trend is also costing Albany a small fortune in lost tax revenue.
Today’s pot smokers, it seems, are too lazy to roll their own joints. And they are too smart to pay full price for their indulgence.
Convenience isn’t the only reason cigars are being used as the “delivery system” for marijuana and other drugs.
Potheads are also lighting up cigar sales because their cigar “joints” don’t give off that pungent, sickly sweet smell that makes the people around them snicker, roll their eyes and maybe call the cops.
And flavored cigar wrappers — called “blunts” — are also showing a sales spike because they make the smell of your illicit smoke even harder to detect.
Apple Brown Betty-flavored blunts work well disguising the pot smell, I’m told, as do Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Cherry Vanilla wrappers.
It’s like Betty Crocker met Bob Marley.
If I were writing a “How To” piece for the magazine High Times I could stop here.
But since this is the financial section, the point of this column is this: NYC’s mainstream cigar sellers — tobacconists — and the state are being hurt by the booming sales of what one expert calls “inner-city cigars.”
Mark Goldman, who once owned cigar wholesaler House of Oxford, tells me “sales of inner-city cigars are way up.”
“The state government is getting hurt because they are not collecting the tobacco tax,” he said.
“And if they are not collecting the tobacco tax they are certainly not paying the sales tax,” he adds.
There are no statistics on statewide cigar sales.
But five sources with knowledge of the tobacco and cigar industry and another in law enforcement filled me in on what’s been going on.
New York State doesn’t require a tax stamp on cigars like it does on cigarettes, so sellers are left on their own to collect the 75 percent excise tax in addition to the regular 8.875 percent sales tax.
New York State’s stiff tax — which was raised from 46 percent to 75 percent in 2010 by then Gov. Paterson — has enticed owners of candy stores and bodegas to get their merchandise from other states, sources said.
My sources estimate that the state could be losing $1 billion a year in tax revenue.
Pennsylvania is said to be getting the bulk of the business from the New York stores because it doesn’t tax cigars. The economics of those deals are irrefutable.
Not only can these Pennsylvania-bought cigars be sold for the usual profit margin, but once the smokes are in New York the prices are jacked up to near what they would be if bought through legitimate in-state wholesalers.
Altruistic store owners, of course, could pass the entire savings on to customers but they don’t — for good reason.
If their cigars were priced too low it would be a dead giveaway that the smokes are from out of state.
So store owners simply price the out-of-state cigars at a level that would indicate that the 75 percent tax is included and they pocket the extra money rather than send it to Albany.
“Sales have plummeted in these [legitimate] stores” since the cigar tax was jacked up, says David Schwartz, a spokesman for the New York Association of Grocery Stores.
Between when the tax increase was implemented in 2010 and the beginning of 2011, sales at tobacconists have fallen by 25 percent. At the same time, the number of retailers selling high-end cigars dropped to just 40 from 48.
So even as there is a boom in cheap, pothead cigars imported illegally from other states, the fancy tobacconist shops are disappearing.
***
The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee is meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday so you can expect the usual array of rumors.
Since former Treasury Secretary and former Fed Vice Chair Tim Geithner is no longer around you shouldn’t expect anyone to leak information to Wall Street friends ahead of this meeting.
People will be watching for more opposition to Chairman Ben Bernanke’s economic policies.
The Catch-22 is this: If the economy is doing as well as some experts think — and, incidentally, I don’t agree with this view — the Fed should start to tighten monetary policy soon.
In order to keep interest rates as low as they are the Fed (and everyone else) would have to admit that the economy is still weak, something that politicians won’t want to do going into talks about the federal budget and debt limits.
It’s a damn tough predicament.
john.crudele@nypost.com
Entrepreneurs, please don’t let the name of our contest scare you.
As we launch our 15th annual Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge today, we are putting out our annual call for entries. But we aren’t looking for long, laboriously detailed business plans. Quite the contrary.
More and more, today’s investors in very early stage companies want to see a succinct presentation of your concept and how you plan to turn it into a success. We do, too.
If you have a business idea or an operating startup that is less than two years old, you can enter the Challenge, our annual celebration of South Florida entrepreneurship. Sponsored by the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University, our contest has three tracks — a Community Track, open to all South Floridians; an FIU Track, open to students and alumni of that university; and a High School Track, co-sponsored by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
Your entry may be up to three pages and you may attach one additional page for a photo, rendering, diagram or spreadsheet if you wish. Think of it as a meaty executive summary. Experts in all aspects of entrepreneurship — serial entrepreneurs, executives, investors, advisors and finance specialists (see judge bios on MiamiHerald.com/challenge) — will judge your short plan. In doing so, they will be looking at your product or service’s value to the customer, market opportunity, business model, management team and your marketing and financial strategies. See the rules on page 22, which also include tips on preparing your entry.
Your entry is due by 11:59 p.m. March 11. Entries should be sent to challenge@miamiherald.com, fiuchallenge@miamiherald.com or highschoolchallenge@miamiherald.com.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help!
“Frame your business from your customer’s perspective and not yours. Rather than diving into a detailed explanation of your product or service, a more compelling way to tell your business story is to clearly share the problem that you are solving for your customers and how your business is different, better, faster, cooler, cheaper, smarter,” says Melissa Krinzman, managing director of Venture Architects and a veteran Challenge judge.
On Feb 26 at 6:30 p.m. at Miami Dade College, we’ll host a free Business Plan Bootcamp, where you can bring your working plan with you for advice from experts, including Krinzman. Find the sign-up link on MiamiHerald.com/challenge.
And each week in Business Monday and on MiamiHerald.com/challenge, we’ll be bringing you advice and answering your questions. You can post your questions on the Q&A on MiamiHerald.com/challenge or email your questions to me at ndahlberg@miamiherald.com. Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter.
The top six finalists in the Community and FIU Tracks will present their 90-second elevator pitches for our popular video contest. Last year our People’s Pick contest drew more than 18,000 votes.
On May 6, in a special section of Business Monday, we will profile the winners — the judges’ top three selections in each track plus the People’s Pick winners. Along the way, we will unveil semifinalists and finalists to keep the suspense building.
Today, though, we are looking back on the entrepreneurial journeys of our 2012 winners. Funding was a nearly universal challenge, and many faced setbacks in developing their platforms. Throughout the entry period, we’ll also look back on other winners from the past 14 years.
Show us what you’ve got. Let’s make this the best Challenge yet.
TALLAHASSEE --
The Department of Economic Opportunity is one of the most critical agencies in Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, and it has run through four directors — two permanent, two interim — since it launched 16 months ago.
After the fleeting tenures of three bureaucrats and a banker, Scott’s handpicked director, Jesse Panuccio, began his term as the agency’s fifth director three weeks ago.
Panuccio, a 32-year-old attorney, is an outside-the-box choice for jobs chief. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2006 and has been on Scott’s legal team since 2011, becoming the governor’s chief litigant last year.
After defending some of Scott’s most controversial laws in the courtroom, Panuccio faces the crucial task of executing the governor’s job-creation strategy from the state’s official boardroom.
“I chose Jesse for three reasons,” Scott said in a statement. “He is a problem solver, he is a skilled manager of people and he is experienced at holding people and organizations accountable.”
After graduating from Harvard Law, Panuccio clerked for a federal judge and then joined a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C. The New Jersey native said he took the Florida Bar Exam after spending much of his childhood vacationing in the Sunshine State, and was drawn to Scott’s campaign message in 2010. He left Washington and joined the governor’s transition team as deputy general counsel in January 2011.
Throughout Panuccio’s brief professional career, he has fought legal battles in support of conservative causes ranging from gun rights to traditional marriage to state’s rights. His new position will require a full embrace of Scott’s conservative job-creation agenda: less regulation, taxation and litigation.
“My overall view is that the economy, the free market flourishes when government gets out of the way,” he said.
The Department of Economic Opportunity, or DEO, is 1,600-person agency responsible for overseeing many of the state’s economic development initiatives. Created by Scott in 2011, DEO runs Florida’s unemployment compensation system, collaborates job training efforts with regional workforce boards and oversees business incentives programs. As the $140,000-a-year director, Panuccio leads efforts to coordinate local and regional job-creation efforts, and implement an overarching economic development vision for the future.
He shares Scott’s small-government approach to creating jobs, and embraces using taxpayer incentives to draw companies to Florida.
“I do think incentives, especially in a recessionary period like this, are a targeted way of reducing taxation and enhancing the business climate for competitive projects,” he said. “It is a reality right now that we’re competing with other states and other countries for these companies.”
So far, Scott’s approach on jobs has had mixed results. Florida’s economy has improved in the last two years with a rapid decline in unemployment, but job growth is considerably slower than the national pace and wages continue to lag.
Meanwhile, DEO has come under fire — and a federal probe — for restricting access to unemployment compensation benefits, making Florida one of the least generous states in the nation for those who are eligible for aid.
It’s actually pretty surprising that it took everyone three days to figure out that Twitter’s new cell phone camera-powered video sharing app, Vine, is perfect for porn. Vine has it all. It can record reasonably high quality videos of anything you want, on-the-go, and post it publicly for all the Internet to see. You add hashtags so that people can easily find special interest content. There’s even a little comments section so that you can share your thoughts about the distinctively addictive six-second loops. Heck, we’d be surprised if people didn’t immediately start to post pictures of their genitals doing what genitals do. They probably did, actually. Everyone else was just too busy watching pictures of their friends pets and children to notice.
RELATED: The Chinese Want to Know Why Their News Is on Twitter and They Aren’t
But alas, by Sunday everyone had noticed. Although it had already been mentioned on smaller tech blogs, the Vine porn problem started to become widely known after New York Times reporter Nick Bilton tweeted, “Friend: ‘So are people using Vine for porn yet?’ Me: “‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ Friend: ‘Check the hashtag #porn.” Both: “Holy ****!’” And the thing is, he’s totally right. TechCrunch published a post on the NSFW trick — #NSFW works for porn seekers, too, by the way — broaching the topic of Apple‘s App Store coming down hard on the adult-only content. It’s against the rules, see, and Apple has a history of yanking apps that become magnets for all things naughty. The Verge followed up a few minutes later with the headline, “Apple has a porn problem, and it’s about the get worse.”
RELATED: How Not to Get Censored on Twitter
This got us thinking: These App Store restrictions on pornographic content have been around as long as the App Store. Surely in the past five or so years, the moderators know a porn magnet when they see one. Vine is hardly the first video-sharing app to make it through the approval process, not to mention the many photo-sharing apps. (And Apple’s certainly not afraid of enforcing those rules, as we learned when it yanked the 500px app after it started to become home to “pornographic images and material.”) It’s no anomaly that Vine made through, though. As virtually every new video- or photo-sharing service has shown us since the dawn of the Internet, from Flickr to ChatRoulette, it’s very difficult to keep these sites or apps G-rated. So the companies either learn how to police it well, like Flickr does, or they wither and die, as ChatRoulette did.
RELATED: Twitter’s New Hashtag Project Sounds Risky
So it’s hard to believe that the App Store didn’t consider the fact that people might upload pictures of their penises to Vine. It’s more likely that they did and decided to see how Twitter would deal with it, when it became a problem. After all, Vine is not going to be the last video-sharing app to be built and it certainly won’t be the last porn-friendly app to be built either. So Twitter gets to play guinea pig and navigate the tricky terrain of moderating user-generated content in real time. It’s a good thing they already have a boatload of experience doing that on Twitter! See, look how fast they came up with a solution. A company statement reads:
RELATED: The Good, the Bad, and the Fuzzy of Twitter’s New Censorship Rules
Users can report videos as inappropriate within the product if they believe the content to be sensitive or inappropriate (e.g. nudity, violence, or medical procedures). Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video.
Uploaded videos that are reported and determined to violate our guidelines will be removed from the site, and the user that posted the video may be terminated.
Twitter being Twitter — that is, big proponents of the free flow of information — they stop short of defining “inappropriate” in Vine’s terms and conditions. Unlike Twitter, which has been free to operate on the whole of the Internet, however, Vine lives in Apple’s house now. If Twitter’s hands off policy doesn’t do enough to keep smut off the iPhone, Apple will surely pull the plug, and then, well — then we’ll be back to where we were last week.
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
From Jennifer Lawrence's navy blue Christian Dior dress to Anne Hathaway's surprisingly sheer Giambattista Valli number, the 2013 Screen Actors Guild Awards was full of amazing fashion.
Pics: Vote on the SAG Awards' Most Talked-About Dresses
Click the video for an up-close view of the night's most incredible dresses!
Anyone with any common sense knows you can lose your job by posting party photos of yourself on Facebook. But there are some lesser-known acts — also unrelated to job performance — that can get you canned. Read on to discover other types of seemingly innocent behavior that can morph into firing offenses.
You can be fired for publishing a group photo: The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled that employees can’t be terminated for publishing certain social media posts about their jobs, provided the posts cover working conditions. However, the ruling does not cover tweeting or Facebooking other — often innocuous — details about your company, and other civil laws can still land you in the hot seat.
For example, an employee can get in trouble if he or she is at a company picnic with co-workers, clients and customers, and whips out an iPhone to snap a group photo. The employee later posts the photo on Facebook with a nice caption about the customers.
As innocent as this seems, it could result in the would-be Annie Leibovitz getting fired, says Pedram Tabibi, an attorney at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone on Long Island, which specializes in social media and business law.
“Under New York civil rights law . . . you can’t a use person’s name, picture, portrait or voice in commercial advertising without their consent,” says Tabibi.
“Arguably those customers could have a claim — you used their image for commercial purposes without their consent,” he adds.
You can be fired for tweeting something nice about your company: Gene Morphis, once the CFO of fashion retailer Francesca Holdings Corp., was active on Twitter, often posting good news tweets such as “Board meeting. Good numbers=Happy Board.”
The company fired him in May, citing failure to comply with company policies.
Posting sensitive information — even if done in a flattering or unwitting manner — could result in termination: “You just sent out information the company wasn’t ready to release to the public,” says Tabibi.
If this happened today, would the recent NLRB ruling have protected Morphis? Not likely.
“The types of comments he made, more geared towards his own well-being, are really not ‘concerted,’ because he is not necessarily discussing conditions that affect other employees,” Tabibi says.
You can be fired for having a (side) job: Given the sluggish economy, companies everywhere are asking employees to work more while paying them less — so many workers are burning the candle at both ends, taking second jobs or freelance work which could, in turn, waltz them out of their primary position.
These workers are getting canned for two reasons, according to David Lewis, CEO of OperationsInc, a human resources outsourcing and consulting firm in Norwalk, Conn.
“The first thing we’ve seen is companies who have said, ‘Your performance is lacking. You’re showing up late. You’re leaving early, and we view this other job as a conflict,” he says.
Also, many workers get second jobs in the same field as their primary jobs — which can create a conflict of interest.
Lewis recalls the firing of an NYC digital-media employee who consistently refused to work past 5 p.m. When the employer found out he had a night job — also at a Web design company — he was fired the following week.
Entrepreneurs, please don’t let the name of our contest scare you.
As we launch our 15th annual Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge today, we are putting out our annual call for entries. But we aren’t looking for long, laboriously detailed business plans. Quite the contrary.
More and more, today’s investors in very early stage companies want to see a succinct presentation of your concept and how you plan to turn it into a success. We do, too.
If you have a business idea or an operating startup that is less than two years old, you can enter the Challenge, our annual celebration of South Florida entrepreneurship. Sponsored by the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University, our contest has three tracks — a Community Track, open to all South Floridians; an FIU Track, open to students and alumni of that university; and a High School Track, co-sponsored by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
Your entry may be up to three pages and you may attach one additional page for a photo, rendering, diagram or spreadsheet if you wish. Think of it as a meaty executive summary. Experts in all aspects of entrepreneurship — serial entrepreneurs, executives, investors, advisors and finance specialists (see judge bios on MiamiHerald.com/challenge) — will judge your short plan. In doing so, they will be looking at your product or service’s value to the customer, market opportunity, business model, management team and your marketing and financial strategies. See the rules on page 22, which also include tips on preparing your entry.
Your entry is due by 11:59 p.m. March 11. Entries should be sent to challenge@miamiherald.com, fiuchallenge@miamiherald.com or highschoolchallenge@miamiherald.com.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help!
“Frame your business from your customer’s perspective and not yours. Rather than diving into a detailed explanation of your product or service, a more compelling way to tell your business story is to clearly share the problem that you are solving for your customers and how your business is different, better, faster, cooler, cheaper, smarter,” says Melissa Krinzman, managing director of Venture Architects and a veteran Challenge judge.
On Feb 26 at 6:30 p.m. at Miami Dade College, we’ll host a free Business Plan Bootcamp, where you can bring your working plan with you for advice from experts, including Krinzman. Find the sign-up link on MiamiHerald.com/challenge.
And each week in Business Monday and on MiamiHerald.com/challenge, we’ll be bringing you advice and answering your questions. You can post your questions on the Q&A on MiamiHerald.com/challenge or email your questions to me at ndahlberg@miamiherald.com. Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter.
The top six finalists in the Community and FIU Tracks will present their 90-second elevator pitches for our popular video contest. Last year our People’s Pick contest drew more than 18,000 votes.
On May 6, in a special section of Business Monday, we will profile the winners — the judges’ top three selections in each track plus the People’s Pick winners. Along the way, we will unveil semifinalists and finalists to keep the suspense building.
Today, though, we are looking back on the entrepreneurial journeys of our 2012 winners. Funding was a nearly universal challenge, and many faced setbacks in developing their platforms. Throughout the entry period, we’ll also look back on other winners from the past 14 years.
Show us what you’ve got. Let’s make this the best Challenge yet.
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