Man in Guatemala arrested for Twitter messages

A man in Guatemala, Jean Anleu, has become one of the first people in the world to be arrested for using Twitter.

Mr Anleu was so tired with corruption in his country that he decided to vent his feeling with a 96-character message on the social-networking site.

The message, or tweet, has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence.

These words illegally undermined public trust in Guatemala's banking system, according to prosecutor Genaro Pacheco.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/5698527/Man-in-Guatemala-arrested-for-Twitter-messages.html

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week has been killed in a car accident.

Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31.

All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving ability. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math and 24th in science. McKinsey & Company, in releasing its report "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools" (April 2009) said, "Several other facts paint a worrisome picture. First, the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers. In recent cross-country comparisons of fourth-grade reading, math and science, U.S. students scored in the top quarter or top half of advanced nations. By age 15 these rankings drop to the bottom half. In other words, American students are farthest behind just as they are about to enter higher education or the workforce." That's a sobering thought. The longer kids are in school and the more money we spend on them, the further behind they get.

While the academic performance of white students is grossly inferior, that of black and Latino students is a national disgrace. The McKinsey report says, "On average, black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind white students of the same age. This racial gap exists regardless of how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score) and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures. Taking the average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for math and reading across the fourth and eighth grades, for example, 48 percent of blacks and 43 percent of Latinos are 'below basic,' while only 17 percent of whites are, and this gap exists in every state. A more pronounced racial achievement gap exists in most large urban school districts." Below basic is the category the NAEP uses for students unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99923

''True happiness... comes, in the first place, from just liking yourself.''

''In my opinion it is not wisdom that allows poets to write their poetry, but a deep instinct or inspiration, like the kind you find in occultists and Prophets who give their messages without knowing, in many cases, what they mean.''

  Is a Pregnant Gold fish really called a TWIT?

YES!

Boring is the new interesting.

This truth is forced upon us by the ascendance of "Twittering," which we have taken some pains to understand. The distance between us and popular culture was underscored by the fact it took us weeks to muster enough interest in "Twitter" to look it up on the Net and find out what it is all about. The knowledge thus obtained has been disquieting.

Not surprisingly, the California-spawned Twitter phenomenon is about "me." Not me personally, but about members of the Facebook/MySpace generation, to whom nothing in life is more interesting, more precious, more important than their every action and their every thought. (As Grouch Marx said, "I've talked enough about me. Tell me, what do you think about me?")

Now, when these solipsists lack the time to write about themselves at length, they still can broadcast fleeting observations about their lives in 140-character "tweets," filling the interstices between their larger, self-referential posts with their tiniest musings.

Thus you may be captivated to learn that "I'm buying condensed milk," "I just saw a butterfly" or any of the thousand commonplaces that make up our days. This allows each and every participant to think of himself as just so … so … special.

Miguel on Twitter 

SUSAN Boyle turned down the chance of a dream dinner date with President Barack Obama in Washington . . . to stay at home and wash her hair, we can reveal.  

More than 30 years ago, Mike Parker met Mark Henderson while the two teens were on an 800-mile road trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch

But just recently out of the blue came a request from Henderson to Parker to join him on the social networking site Facebook.

"We've had a delightful time catching up," Parker says of the blast from his past, adding that the two still have much in common, all these years later.

The study published Wednesday on the Center for Public Integrity's Web site analyzed government data on $1.38 trillion worth of subprime mortgages made from 2005 to 2007.

The analysis found that about 56 percent of those loans were originated by 15 lenders from California.

A private Kenyan television channel, quoted extensively by the Kenyan and Pakistani media, reported Sarah Obama and her son will also visit Dubai before going to Saudi Arabia for performing Hajj. The pair lives in Kenya.