Florida’s Turnpike shut down in Northwest Miami-Dade due to tractor trailer fire




















All lanes of traffic in a section of Florida’s Turnpike in north Miami-Dade has been closed due to a large tractor trailer fire during Thursday’s rush-hour.

The fire engulfed the cab of a southbound tractor trailer following a collision with another truck at around 5:30 p.m., the Florida Highway Patrol said

No one was injured in the fiery collision.





All north and southbound lanes of traffic at around Northwest 210th Street and Hallandale Beach, near Calder Race Track, have been closed as firefighters use foam to battle the blaze.

By 5:45 p.m., the fire was under control, but traffic was stopped. Southbound traffic was backed up to Hollywood.

This article will be updated as more details are known.





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Hannibal Full Trailer NBC 2013

Every since it was announced last May, NBC's Hannibal has been high atop my must-see list -- and this just-released trailer for Bryan Fuller's latest small screen endeavor does not disappoint!


RELATED - TV's Most Devastating Deaths

Starring Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale's Le Chiffre), Hugh Dancy, Laurence Fishburne and Caroline Dhavernas, Hannibal looks to be a dark, disturbing and dynamic reimagining of Thomas Harris' classic Hannibal Lecter saga.

Watch the bloody exciting trailer & tune in to the April 4 series premiere of NBC's Hannibal at 10 p.m.

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'Occupy' group urging straphangers to give away MetroCards in MTA protest








An Occupy Wall Street-affiliated group called “No Fare Hikes” is calling on unlimited ride MetroCard users to give away their swipes when they reach their final destination to protest looming subway fare increases.

The plan — which organizers dubbed “Swipe Back” — requires users to offer swipes to straphangers who pay per ride, thus depriving the MTA of revenue, according to the group’s website.

Activist and Occupy Wall Street protester J.A. Myerson is featured in a video on the group's website explaining why the MTA should not hike fares. It’s not illegal to give your swipe away.




Selling it, however, is.

In a flier calling for the protest, organizers said that they are trying to stop the hikes and call on the city to increase transit funding.

However, the state funds the MTA, not the city.

“If you use your unlimited card to swipe someone else in, then you’re effectively helping them boycott the fare hike, sort of like boycotting it forward,” reads a flier that the group is spreading.

MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said, “If anyone thinks the best way to balance the MTA’s budget is to reduce the amount of money we collect from customers, then their math is as bad as their logic.”

jennifer.fermino@nypost.com

Swipe Back Flyer by











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Don’t get too personal on LinkedIn




















Have you ever received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone you didn’t know or couldn’t remember?

A few weeks ago, Josh Turner encountered this situation. The online request to connect came from a businessman on the opposite coast of the United States. It came with a short introduction that ended with “Let’s go Blues!” a reference to Turner’s favorite hockey team in St. Louis that he had mentioned in his profile. “It was a personal connection … that’s building rapport.”

LinkedIn is known for being the professional social network where members expect you to keep buttoned-down behavior and network online like you would at a business event. With more than 200 million registered users, the site facilitates interaction as a way to boost your stature, gain a potential customer or rub elbows with a future boss.





But unlike most other social networking sites, LinkedIn is all about business — and you need to take special care that you act accordingly. As in any workplace, the right amount of personal information sharing could be the foot in the door, say experts. The wrong amount could slam it closed.

“Anyone in business needs a professional online presence,’’ says Vanessa McGovern, the VP of Business Development for the Global Institute for Travel Entrepreneurs and a consultant to business owners on how to use LinkedIn. But they should also heed LinkedIn etiquette or risk sending the wrong messages.

One of the biggest mistakes, McGovern says is getting too personal — or not personal enough.

Sending a request to connect blindly equates to cold calling and likely will lead nowhere. Instead, it should come with a personal note, an explanation of who you are, where you met, or how the connection can benefit both parties, McGovern explains.

Your profile should get a little personal, too, she says. “Talk about yourself in the first person and add a personal flair — your goals, your passion … make yourself seem human.”

Beyond that, keep your LinkedIn posts, invitations, comments and photos professional, McGovern says.

If you had a hard day at the office or your child just won an award, you may want to share it with your personal network elsewhere — but not on LinkedIn.

“This is not Facebook. Only share what you would share at a professional networking event,” she says.

Another etiquette pitfall on LinkedIn is the hit and run — making a connection and not following up.

At least once a week, Ari Rollnick, a principal in kabookaboo, an integrated marketing agency in Coral Gables, gets a request to connect with someone on LinkedIn that he has never met or heard of before. The person will have no connections in common and share no information about why they want to build a rapport.

“I won’t accept. That’s a lost opportunity for them,” Rollnick says.

He approaches it differently. When Rollnick graduated from Emory with an MBA in 2001, he had a good idea that his classmates would excel in the business world. Now, Rollnick wanted to find out just where they went and reestablish a connection.

With a few clicks, he tracked down dozens of them on LinkedIn, requested a connection, and was back on their radar. Then came the follow-up — letting them know through emails, phone calls and posts that he was creating a two-way street for business exchange. “Rather than make that connection and disappearing , I let them know I wanted to open the door to conversation.”





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Friday is the deadline for homestead exemption applications




















Friday is the deadline to apply for a homestead exemption or other property-tax break with the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser.

Two new exemptions are on the books. One aims to cut the tax burden for low-income seniors who have lived in their homes more than 25 years. The other is for the spouses of police and fire-rescue workers who have died in the line of duty.

Homeowners can apply for homestead and other tax cuts at the Property Appraiser’s offices or by calling 305-375-4091 for forms.





Information and online filing for homestead exemption also is available at the Property Appraiser’s website at http://www.miamidade.gov/pa/.

A homestead exemption excludes $50,000 of the assessed value of a primary residence from taxation and caps the annual increase in a property’s assessed value at a maximum of 3 percent.





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Spike: The 'Spock' of 'Buffy'?

Fans of Avengers director Joss Whedon's campy ‘90s teen vampire show Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be hard pressed not to think of actor James Marsters' pivotal, genre-defying role as suave bad-boy vampire Spike when reminiscing about the series. But what did Marsters think of the character?

"In Buffy, I thought that I wanted to be the new Spock," he tells ET. "I was a little side character that no one really thought would be much, but I kind of turned the theme at a different angle so you could kind of look at it. …Spock was that side character that nobody thought would be much and he ended up kind of turning the theme on its head, ‘cause Star Trek really was about human beings perfecting a world view and then sharing it with the galaxy, and then Spock was just trying to figure out how to be human in the first place."

The now fifty-something star was just one of many sci-fi icons present at Creation Entertainment’s Grand Slam Convention: The Star Trek and Sci-Fi Summit in Burbank, CA, among other such notables as Sir Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner, and many more.

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fun! Giants on the Big Screen

Marsters went on to do a bit of reminiscing himself, eventually giving us his take on the differences between the more traditional, aggressive Buffy vampires of then and the softer, more melodramatic Twilight vampires of now. "In the world of Buffy, vampires were supposed to be ugly and very quickly dead. Joss used to say that he wasn't into the Anne Rice thing. He didn't want vampires to be romantic. That's why in Buffy when we bite people we become hideously ugly. Because in Buffy vampires are a metaphor for all the problems you face in adolescence. So, the vampires of today are very different. They're more in the Anne Rice vein. And that's cool too."

"I think every generation has their own take on vampires, and I think it's fabulous," he continued. "I think vampires, for some reason, they are the most malleable of all of the basic archetypes of horror. Like, wolfman has to be wolfman, has to be a good man or woman that's forced to do evil by the moon. If the wolfman is a jerk, it just doesn't work. Or, if the invisible man is not a jerk, it won't work. The reason the invisible man works is he's a real jerk and so the audience is terrified when he's invisible cause, what's he going to do now? If it's a really nice guy and he's invisible, who cares? But for some reason, vampires can almost be anything. You can use them to whatever ends that you want. Whatever the zeitgeist is in this decade, or whatever, vampires can morph to fit that."

Naked Fan's Encounter with 'Fringe' Star

When talking about Buffy creator Whedon, Marsters fondly referred to the man as a "true artist," though he recalled one encounter in particular that made him realize that even the most talented of artists suffer their creations. "I asked him one time, 'It must be wonderful to wind up the universe and just see how it plays out,’ and he was sweating. He was like, 'Yeah, the problem is I have to keep winding.' He was really killing himself to put the show out, and basically do a 48-hour movie every week, and so I got to see him under intense pressure."

"He's a genius," Marsters concluded, "so it's like, some days you'll get a huge amount of love, and some days you want to hide from him."

Creation Entertainment, the company behind the event, hosts a number of interactive film and television genre conventions throughout the year. For more information on upcoming events, CLICK HERE.

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Man who shot cop he found in bed with his wife indicted for attempted murder








The Staten Island man accused of shooting an NYPD detective he found in his estranged wife’s home has been indicted in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

A grand jury hit Robert Dunbar, 35, with attempted murder charges for allegedly grabbing the off-duty cop’s service weapon and firing of several shots, including one that hit the cop, Louis Pepe, in the back.

Dunbar's lawyer said the shooter found the cop in bed with his estranged wife Aug. 12, 2012, after the couple’s child complained about strange men in the Manalapan, N.J. home.

Dunbar dropped by and found his wife, Deborah, naked in the bedroom with the off-duty cop and both men reached for the detective’s service weapon, a .38 revolver.







Robert Dunbar, accused of shooting an off-duty New York City police officer in Manalapan, NJ.





Dunbar’s lawyer has said the shooting was accidental and the estranged husband didn’t realize the man in the house with the gun and his wife was a cop.

kconley@nypost.com










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Friday is the deadline for homestead exemption applications




















Friday is the deadline to apply for a homestead exemption or other property-tax break with the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser.

Two new exemptions are on the books. One aims to cut the tax burden for low-income seniors who have lived in their homes more than 25 years. The other is for the spouses of police and fire-rescue workers who have died in the line of duty.

Homeowners can apply for homestead and other tax cuts at the Property Appraiser’s offices or by calling 305-375-4091 for forms.





Information and online filing for homestead exemption also is available at the Property Appraiser’s website at http://www.miamidade.gov/pa/.

A homestead exemption excludes $50,000 of the assessed value of a primary residence from taxation and caps the annual increase in a property’s assessed value at a maximum of 3 percent.





Read More..

Escaped suspect turns himself in to Hollywood police




















A man who escaped from police custody while in handcuffs Tuesday afternoon has turned himself in to authorities.

The man, identified as Marc Vega, was placed under arrest for a domestic dispute in front of Pediatric Associates at 4500 Sheridan St. about 2 p.m., said Sgt. Lester Cochenour.

The female victim suffered injuries to her face and other areas of her body including her legs, Cochenour said.





Cochenour said Vega, donning handcuffs, managed to pry open the back door of the police car.

The man, who was covering his handcuffs with a green shirt and wearing a white or gray T-shirt, headed south through several Hollywood neighborhoods before finding himself in front of the Hollywood Police Department and turning himself in, police said.

Cochenour said unmarked and marked police cars, K-9 units and a helicopter searched for the man.





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Stars Stay Peppy Through Wee Hours of Oscar Night

For those fortunate enough to be invited, Oscar Sunday is an all-day, non-stop event. ET caught up with the stars to get their tips on making it through the madness while maintaining their energy.

PICS: Awards Season Fashion

"This is just fun," said Academy Award winner Halle Berry. "I see all my friends and peers."

"You just gotta enjoy it and then have a good dinner at the Governor's Ball, because you probably haven't eaten today," said Oscar nominee Queen Latifah. "And then we hit the after parties."

John Leguizamo named caffeine as a primary source for his energy.

"It's a long night," the actor admitted. "But you get jacked up meeting all your heroes."

From the People's Choice Awards to the 85th Academy Awards, this awards season, ET's red carpet runs on Dunkin'.

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