A Swiss insurance worker lost her job after surfing popular social network site Facebook while off sick, her employer said Friday.

The woman said she could not work in front of a computer as she needed to lie in the dark but was then seen to be active on Facebook, which insurer Nationale Suisse said in a statement had destroyed its trust in the employee.

"This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract," it said.

The unnamed woman told the 20 Minuten daily she had been surfing Facebook in bed on her iPhone and accused her employer of spying on her and other employees by sending a mysterious friend request which allows access to personal online activity.

Nationale Suisse rejected the accusation of spying and said the employee's Facebook activity had been stumbled across by a colleague in November, before use of the social network site was blocked in the company.

credited to reuters.com

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The Most Badass Epitaph Ever

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The secrets of the Northern Lights, one of the world's greatest natural spectacles, have been unlocked by scientists.

The ghostly displays that illuminate the skies above the Arctic have inspired myths and captivated onlookers for centuries, but now researchers have discovered more about how they are created.

The lights, also known as Aurora Borealis, are generated when electrical tornadoes hurtle towards Earth and come into contact with the ionosphere, one of the upper layers of the atmosphere.

These tornadoes, spinning at more than a million miles an hour, are produced by vast clouds of solar particles.

They gather 40,000 miles above the planet's surface, releasing whirlwinds when they become destabilised by the strength of their own electrical charge.

Astronomers have long known that the lights are created when streams of particles from the sun – known as solar winds – come into contact with the Earth's magnetic field.

But a team including Professor Karl-Heinz Glassmeier of the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics in Braunschweig, Germany, has now established how the field traps the particles on the planet's sun-facing "day" side, before deflecting them to the "night" side, where they gather in clouds and then dive towards the surface.

The researchers used five Nasa satellites sent up as part of the Themis programme to monitor the Northern Lights - and their equivalents at the south pole - to produce the first images of these tornadoes, and discussed their findings at a European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna last week.

"The Themis satellites have given us our first opportunity to see the process that generates the aurorae in three dimensions and show just what spectacularly powerful events they are," Prof Glassmeier said.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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When you're an anaconda you don't need venom to take down your prey, even if it's the world's largest rodent, a capybara, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred pounds!

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A 57-year-old Detroit woman avoided serious injury when the underwire on her bra deflected a bullet shot at her from next door, police said.

The woman, who lives on the West side of Detroit, saw a group of men breaking into a neighbor's house on Tuesday morning. When the men spotted her, one of them fired a shot at her, a police spokesman said.

The bullet struck the underwire on the woman's bra and that saved her from a more serious injury, police said.

"It did slow the bullet down," said Detroit police spokesman Phillip Cook. "She sustained injuries but they're not life threatening."

The woman, who was not identified, was treated at a nearby hospital. The suspects in the shooting drove away.

credited to reuters.com

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These endangered whooping crane, pictured flying through the air in V-formation, are seen making the long journey south in a unique human-led migration.

Travelling 1,250 miles over a three-month period the birds follow a specially constructed ultralight aircraft from central Wisconsin to the west coast of Florida each October.

The journey is the result of efforts by conservationists to increase the population of whooping cranes in the wild, which had declined to just 15 in 1941, although numbers have now risen to approximately 200.

To combat the threat of extinction of North America's tallest bird, US Fisheries and Wildlife Services teamed up with the Whooping Crane Recovery Team to breed a secondary flock who will migrate down the eastern seaboard.

Led by conservation group, "Operation Migration", the annual journey from Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin, sees as many as 20 whooping cranes making the trip south to the Florida refuge.

"The total migration distance is 1,250 miles and the migration takes around 80 days to complete," said 59-year-old lead pilot Joe Duff.

"The problem with reintroducing these birds is they learn the migration route by following a parent.

"As there is no parent generation we become the surrogate parent and we teach them to follow our aircraft and we lead them on their first migration.

"Thereafter they are on their own and they return as wild birds."

Mr Duff and his team, who are to be awarded the Conservation Partners Award from the Department of Interiors in Washington this week, have led over 100 birds south in this secondary migration project from 2001.

The complicated process begins before the birds are even born.

"We start the procedure at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Centre in Maryland where the largest captive flock of Whooping cranes are kept," he said.

"We start playing the sound of the aircraft carrier engine and the brood call before the egg hatches.

"Once the birds are about 50 days of age we ship them out to Wisconsin before they learn to fly because once they earn to fly then the first thing they see from the air is where they home to."

Using a specially constructed ultralight, complete with cameras, GPS system and an amplifier system to broadcast calling sounds, Mr Duff and his four man team can cover 50 to 100 miles per day at a speed of 38mph.

However, conditions can only be achieved during smooth air conditions, which restricts flying time.

"We can only fly for that very calm cold period first thing in the morning right after the sun rises when we only get an hour of dead calm air.

"So we have to wait for calm days and for days where there is no ground fog or until the frost clears in the mornings so we have a very narrow weather window we can use."

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Every British taxpayer faces a bill of nearly £5,000 for losses associated with the financial crisis and the bailout of the country's high-street banks, the International Monetary Fund warned last night.

The warning was sounded only hours before Alistair Darling is expected to be forced to admit in today's Budget that Britain is experiencing the worst recession since the Second World War.

The Chancellor will admit that the Government is likely to lose about £60 billion from the rescue of British banks including RBS, Lloyds and Northern Rock. The Prime Minister had previously insisted that the Government may actually profit from the deals.

However, the IMF predicts that Mr Darling's admission underestimates the scale of the potential losses. It expects that Britain will eventually face one of the worst losses of any leading industrialised nation in the world from the financial rescue – amounting to about £140 billion. The respected international body also believes that the British Government will have to spend billions more rescuing the banks and may even have to nationalise other financial institutions.

However there was confusion after the IMF revised its figures late last night after the Treasury disputed its calculations.

The IMF had initially said the British Government was likely to lose £200 billion from the bank bailouts. Its revised figures are still more than twice as much as the Treasury is expected to admit today.

The damning verdict comes as Mr Darling prepares to announce the Government will have to borrow more than £150 billion this year to fight the recession. The borrowing is likely to plunge Britain into debt for a decade and will lead to large tax rises after the next election.

Today's budget - described as "Judgement Day" for Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown – will also coincide with the release of official unemployment statistics expected to reveal the jobless total climbing to the highest level since Labour came to government.

There are growing fears that the Government may scrap higher-rate tax relief of pension savings in a bid to reduce the black-hole in the public finances. The move, which could raise £5 billion, would have devastating effects for millions of Britons earning more than £40,000 who will have to save far more for their retirement.

The Daily Telegraph has also learnt that the budget is expected to announce:

*A new higher Isa limit for pensioners. The Daily Telegraph has campaigned for new help for savers who have been hit hard by the impact of falling interest rates. However, Mr Darling will not introduce more radical measures to help savers – such as the Conservative proposal to scrap all tax on the savings of basic-rate taxpayers.

*Drivers of older cars will be offered a new "scrappage" payment if they trade in their vehicles for newer, more environmentally friendly models.

*Mr Darling will claim to have saved 500,000 jobs as a result of measures introduced in the pre-budget report and interest rate cuts. He will pledge to create 250,000 new jobs with a range of new initiatives. Anyone aged under 25 who has been out of work for at least a year will be offered a job or full-time training.

*Grandparents looking after their grandchildren for more than 20 hours a week will be entitled to a higher state pension. The move will benefit an estimated 40,000 people.

However, these measures will be overshadowed by the unprecedented scale of the economic and financial problems looming over the UK. The IMF's verdict last night on the cost of Britain's banking bail-out is likely to cause particular concerns. When the Prime Minister and Chancellor unveiled their original rescue package for the City's stricken banks last autumn, they claimed that the public money injected into the system was likely to yield an eventual profit. At the time, Mr Brown said: "These are investments that we are making in banks... We believe that these shares will grow in value over the next period of time".

In fact, the IMF calculated in its Global Financial Stability Report that the eventual cost to British citizens would amount to some £140 billion - or almost £5,000 for every UK taxpayer. The loss is related to the fact both that the banks are set to lose so much money throughout this crisis, and that the value of the shares bought by the Government are unlikely ever to recover fully.

At 9.1 per cent of gross domestic product, this total cost is among the worst of any major industrialised nation.

Although the Treasury has privately admitted that it will have to make some allowance for losses associated with its rescue package in today's Budget, it is likely only to write off around £60 billion in taxpayer cash.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: "Now we know the potentially massive cost of Gordon Brown's utter failure to regulate the banking system. This couldn't be worse news on the eve of the Budget.

"It blows apart the myth that Britain was better prepared for the recession than other countries."

Moreover, the IMF added that although the Government has already poured some £75 billion of cash into the banking system, in the process nationalising Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley and taking controlling stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, it would have to spend more on rescuing banks in the coming months. It calculated that the Government may have to spend as much as £170 more buying up banks' shares if it wants them to get back to the financial health they were in in the 1990s.

The Fund's report, which warned that the total cost of the crisis would reach $4.1 trillion - more than $630 for every man, woman and child on the planet - is a reminder that the financial crisis is far from over. Indeed, it said only a third of this total had been recognised by banks.

The extra costs associated with the crisis are set to push up the total size of the national debt at the fastest rate in 60 years. Britain's total net debt, which sat comfortably below 40 per cent of gross domestic product last year, will be catapulted towards 100 per cent in the coming years, according to Capital Economics, leaving future taxpayers with a near-World War-sized bill to pay off in the coming decades.

As a result fears have been raised that in today's Budget the Chancellor will be forced either to raise taxes or slash spending dramatically in the coming years. If not, he faces the prospect of a possible revolt in the capital markets as private investors from around the world grow wary of Britain's economic credibility and abandon UK government debt. The result could be not merely political humiliation but the prospect of possibly having to call for extra help from the IMF or other countries.

In an effort to reassure markets, Mr Darling is expected to set out a "direction of travel" for the repayments of his debts, although he will be forced to push back the date at which the public finances will be balanced from 2015/16 to 2018/19.

The gloomy outlook will be compounded by the relative frugality of the Budget, which is unlikely to endorse as big a giveaway as did Barack Obama recently in the US. Instead, Mr Darling will pledge to cut public spending by £15 billion through "efficiency savings" and by selling off a number of public sector institutions, including British Waterways, the Dartford Crossing, the Land Registry and the QEII conference centre in London.

The Treasury is also likely to balance out any giveaways with small tax rises elsewhere, with the Budget as a whole only slightly fiscally negative.

A Treasury spokesman said their view was the IMF forecast was very high and did not seem to attempt to take into account the consequences of the UK Government's action.

He confirmed that the "Budget will make a prudent provision for potential losses from banking interventions in line with our cautious approach to forecasting the public finances", and said the figure would be "based on a detailed understanding of the schemes, stress testing and takes account of the fees".

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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A cartel engaged in Mexico's deadly drug wars has told its members to avoid heavy drinking and using narcotics and live a clean family life as it tries to build a well-run criminal organization, police say.

Rafael Cedeno, a leader of "The Family" cartel based in the western state of Michoacan, told police after he was arrested at the weekend he had trained several thousand cartel members with courses in ethics and personal improvement.

"The indoctrination of this group consisted of courses they considered to be for personal improvement, values, ethical and moral principles of the criminal gang. The objective was for the subordinates to avoid drugs, hard drinking and maintain family unity," the federal police said in a statement.

Cedeno, 47, was picked up at a family baptism on Saturday with 43 others after a raid by police in helicopters. Accusations against him include ordering the murder of rivals and running prostitution rings of young girls.

About 6,300 people died in the bitter war between Mexico's drug cartels last year. The conflict has spilled over the border into the United States, worrying President Barack Obama.

The training courses show the level of organization of Mexico's cartels, well-armed groups which often control territory and take on federal police and the army.

The point of training was "to have better motivational and emotional control over the members," the statement said. "The Family" has previously portrayed itself as a local organization protecting Michoacan residents from outside drug smugglers, many of whom frequently indulge in drugs or drink.

The group, a splinter group from "The Gulf" cartel, now fights its former allies for control of territory in Michoacan, often leaving gruesome messages next to decapitated heads.

On a visit to Mexico last week Obama voiced strong support for President Felipe Calderon, who sent tens of thousands of troops and federal police to fight the cartels in late 2006.

credited to reuters.com

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The owner of "DOT COM" licence plates says he is confident they will sell on eBay, despite the $400,000 reserve he has put on them.

Sean Selva, a 43-year-old business consultant from Sydney, said he bought the New South Wales plates in 1997 for just $300 and turned down a $500,000 offer for the plates in 2000 .

"I have enjoyed owning them over the years, but have reached the stage where I would like to realise the investment," he said.

Mr Selva is not oblivious to the global financial crisis - part of his job is to help large organisations downsize to ride out the crunch.

"It is probably not the best time to sell the plates given the global crisis, but I think the impact will be a reduction in potential purchasers rather than impacting other aspects such as price," he said.

He describes the plates as "head-turners" and says he's been amused by the stares and sniggers they have attracted over the years.

"My target market is a successful technology specialist who has made their cash and wanting something special to differentiate themselves.

"They will have reached the stage in life where they are financially secure and can afford the luxury of a vanity plate."

As yet there are no bids placed on the eBay auction but Mr Selva someone had offered him $330,000.

"I will continue to market the plates until I find a buyer that is willing to invest in these plates," he said.

Shannons national auctions manager Christoph Boribon wished Mr Selva luck with the sale but said he might struggle to find a buyer.

"I can't see anyone paying anywhere near that kind of money for them, but as they say there's one born every day," Mr Boribon said.

He said the market for single and double-digit plates was much stronger. A NSW "6" plate is believed to have been sold privately last year for more than $700,000 and Shannons auctioned a Victorian "43" plate for $322,000.

"A licence plate is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. They have no real value, that's the reality of it," he said.

credited to news.com.au

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Slovenian police sealed off an area of Ljubljana on Thursday to hunt down a wild brown bear, the first seen roaming the capital in decades.

The bear was seen on a hill called Roznik, which is only about a mile away from the center of the city and usually full of joggers and hikers, Tone Lesnik, a spokesman of the national Forest Service, told Reuters.

"The police have sealed off the hill and we have five people looking for the bear, believed to be about two years old," he said. If found, the bear will be tranquilized and returned to his natural habitat, he said.

"It is surprising he managed to come to Ljubljana without being hurt by a car," Lesnik said, adding the bear was believed to have come from the forests west of the capital.

Each year about two bear attacks on humans are registered in Slovenia. The last took place last year about 20 miles southeast of Ljubljana, when a female bear with cubs attacked a jogger.

In recent years bears have been moving closer to villages and cities in search of food as the bear population has been rising, Lesnik said.

Slovenia has between 430 and 490 brown bears and the south of the country, covered with thick woods, has the highest density of brown bears in Europe.

Each year some 25 bears die in car and railway accidents. Last week the environment ministry said hunters will be allowed to kill 70 bears this year, down from 75 in 2008, in order to keep the bear population steady.

credited to reuters.com

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A Kenyan man bit a python who wrapped him in its coils and hauled him up a tree in a struggle that lasted hours, local media said Wednesday.

Farm manager Ben Nyaumbe was working at the weekend when the serpent, apparently hunting for livestock, struck in the Malindi area of Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.

"I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python," he told the Daily Nation newspaper.

When the snake coiled itself round his upper body, Nyaumbe resorted to desperate measures: "I had to bite it."

The python dragged him up a tree, but when it eased its grip, Nyaumbe said he was able to take a mobile phone out of his pocket and phone for help.

When his supervisor came with a policeman, Nyaumbe smothered the snake's head with his shirt, while the rescuers tied it with a rope and pulled.

"We both came down, landing with a thud," said Nyaumbe, who survived with damaged lips and bruising.

The snake escaped from the three sacks it was bundled into.

credited to reuters.com

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An Indonesian maid has appeared in a Hong Kong court accused of adding menstrual blood to her employer's food in an effort to improve their stormy relationship.

Indra Ningsih, aged 26, mixed the blood in a pot of vegetables in the belief that the recipe would help ease her difficult work environment, The Standard newspaper reported.

In some southeast Asian cultures, menstrual blood is thought to have special powers, the paper added.

The maid has been charged with one count of "administering poison or other destructive or noxious substances with intent to injure'' and has not yet entered a plea.

The report cited a prosecution statement that said Ms Ningsih's ingredient had been discovered after her female employer, surnamed Mok, peered through the kitchen door and saw the helper acting suspiciously.

She entered the kitchen and found the accused throwing something into the rubbish bin.

When she checked the pot, she found a suspicious substance mixed with the vegetables and water, the English-language daily said.

Ms Mok later discovered a used sanitary napkin in the bin and called the police.

Ms Ningsih told police Ms Mok had been unhappy with her performance since she was hired last July.

credited to news.com.au

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With their flowing blonde hair, hourglass figures and slender, toned legs, they could easily pass for twins. Both look fabulous in their matching polka dot dresses and, as Janet and Jane Cunliffe happily recount, potential boyfriends often struggle to tell them apart.

Hardly surprising, as both weigh in at 8st and, save for a couple of inches in height (at 5ft 6in, Jane is two inches taller) and different eye colours (Jane's are brown, Janet's are blue) they are virtually identical.

But Janet and Jane are not twins. They aren't even sisters. They are mother and daughter. And, in what many will see as a depressing indictment of today's youth-obsessed society, Janet confesses to having spent more than £10,000 on plastic surgery in a desperate effort to bridge the 22-year age gap between herself and her daughter.

In this image-conscious age, it is a bittersweet moment for many mothers to confront the fact that their daughter's beauty eclipses her own.

It is a rite of passage that most women, while far from thrilled, are pragmatic enough to accept as a part of life.

But not 50-year-old Janet. She views the small matter of being in her sixth decade as a mere technicality.

She is amused and proud that friends jokingly refer to her and her daughter as Paris and Chantelle after the platinum blonde socialite and the equally platinum former Celebrity Big Brother contestant.

Some might see this as empowering for a woman who is well into middle age. Others might take the view that it is contrary to the laws of Mother Nature - not that Janet has much truck with her anyway.

As she told the Mail this week: 'It might sound barmy that I had cosmetic surgery to look like my daughter, but she's gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to look like her?

'The way I see it is that she got her looks from me in the first place - mine have just faded with age.

'Seeing how attractive Jane is made me want to get my looks back. Now instead of mum and daughter we look more like twins. I had good genes and good skin, but I needed a helping hand to make me feel better about myself.'

Certainly Janet wasn't always such a head-turner. Just a few years ago, she was a size 14 redhead and felt, she says, dowdy and unattractive.

Not, she insists, that she was ever vain. 'I didn't have time for vanity in my 20s as I was too busy bringing up Jane and her brother, Pete,' she says.

'I didn't pay much attention to myself.'

That changed as she entered her 30s and became increasingly disconsolate with her changing figure.

'Like any woman who's had children, gravity had started to take its toll on my breasts,' she says.

They'd been small to start with, but they had become saggy and it made me depressed. So I booked in for a boob job. At £4,000 my husband wasn't best pleased, but I thought it was worth it,' she says.

Alas, the new breasts weren't enough to save her marriage.

By the age of 40, Janet, by then divorced, had moved to Spain. Her new partner (who she doesn't want to name) ran a swimming pool business and she took on secretarial work.

It was a fresh start, but one which was overshadowed when, in 2003, an implant ruptured.

Restorative surgery was needed and Jane took the opportunity to go from a 34C to a DD.

'I thought if I was going to pay £2,500 I might as well go bigger,' she says. 'I hadn't been that pleased with them the first time round and when Jane came to visit I noticed my bust looked flat in comparison. I wanted to give myself a boost.'

Despite the new breasts, Janet still felt she looked old before her time, and her relationship with her new partner was floundering.

'We'd been living together for eight years, but it wasn't working any more. We argued non-stop and finally, in May last year, I decided to move back home to be with my daughter.'

Happily, Jane was more than willing to provide a berth for her mother while she found her feet.

'It was a tough time and I was a bit of a lost cause,' says Janet. 'I didn't know who I was or where I belonged. I hadn't lived in Britain for so long that I didn't have any friends here. It was a terrible time. I knew I had to sort out my life.'

For Jane, a fun night out was an obvious way to cheer up her mum. But well-meaning as it was, for Janet it only reinforced her feelings of inadequacy.

'I couldn't find anything decent to wear - having lived in Spain, all I had were shorts, T-shirts and scruffy jeans. I had nothing fashionable and couldn't borrow anything from Jane because it was all too small.

'I remember looking at Jane and saying: "I wish I had your figure." I'd had a body just like hers when I was younger but now I was just a blob.

'I began to see that in Spain I'd been living the life of a pensioner and had forgotten how to make the most of myself. I may have been pushing 50, but I still wanted to live life to the full, and why shouldn't I?'

Nonetheless, spending time with her daughter's young friends made Jane examine her face and body more closely.

'Jane and her friends are so glamourous and gorgeous that I stood out like a sore thumb. I felt like an old bag,' she says. 'Jane told me not to be so self-critical, but I knew it was true.'

For Janet, socialising with friends her own age, starting a hobby or meeting new people were not going to help. What was holding her back, she felt, was the face staring back in the mirror.

'I remembered only too well when I used to be a lovely looking girl,' she says. 'I'd seen all these older celebrities who somehow managed to turn back the clock and I wondered if I could do the same. At the very least I wanted to give it a try.'

And so Operation Overhaul began. 'I ditched junk food and started to follow the same healthy diet as Jane.

'Out went potatoes and pasta and I started eating grilled chicken salad and green veg,' says Janet.

'Jane didn't drink in the week, so I cut out white wine in the evening and stopped snacking between meals.'

The effects were startling: in four months, Janet lost 2st and could slip into her daughter's size 8 trousers.

For many fifty-something women, a healthy, slender figure would have been enough, but Janet wasn't happy - dropping three dress sizes was all very well, but she still had the face of an older woman.

'I envied Jane's crinkle-free eyes, full lips and luscious, long blonde hair,' says Janet. 'I was desperate to look more like my daughter, but knew no wrinkle creams could ever wind back the clock that far.'

And so, perhaps inevitably, Janet started to consider the more drastic route of cosmetic surgery, initially conducting her research on the internet.

She stumbled across the website of Linda Briggs, a surgery aficionado who has her own business offering guidance and advice to others thinking of going under the knife.

'I decided to give her a ring and ended up speaking to Linda's husband, Mike,' says Janet. 'He said he'd just had his eyes done in Croatia and was thrilled with the results. That was enough for me. I booked pretty much straightaway.

'I had some savings and knew if I wanted to look more like Jane then I'd have to get my eyes done first, and my nose.'

None of this comes cheap, even if prices are competitive abroad. By the time she had totted up her procedures, the bill came to £5,000, including flights and board. Then there was the little matter of telling her daughter.

'She was furious and begged me not to do it,' says Jane. 'It wasn't that she was cross with me for wanting to look like her, it was because she was worried about me having an operation.'

For some, this might have given serious pause for thought. This was, after all, non-essential surgery, and did not come without risk. But Janet was determined.

'I'd made up my mind,' she says. 'As far as I was concerned, I knew what I was doing. I wanted to look younger and felt it would do wonders for my self-esteem.'

And so last September, she flew out to Croatia on her own to undergo the two-hour operation on her nose and eyes, which took place under local anaesthetic.

I was a bit frightened, but not enough to put me off,' she says. 'I just decided to put my trust in their hands. It wasn't pleasant, but I got through it.'

She returned a week later, bruised and bandaged, but euphoric after being told by the surgeon that the result would be good, a claim that seemed to be upheld when the bandages were removed, revealing a younger Janet who looked eerily like her daughter.

'I was delighted,' she says. 'It was everything I'd hoped for.'

There were, however, a number of other final touches if Operation Overhaul - or should that be Project Jane? - was to prove fully successful.

'I decided that my lips were too thin, so I had a series of injections to plump them up. They cost around £300 but they make all the difference,' she says.

Then there were the blonde hair extensions, at a cost of several hundred pounds, at a local salon. And finally a new wardrobe of size 6 to 8 clothes.

The effect, it must be said, is certainly startling. 'The first time we went to a local wine bar, we were the centre of attention,' says Janet proudly. 'Men kept doing a double take and all night people asked if we were sisters. We both loved the attention.'

Just what must Jane really make of it? A family resemblance is one thing, but a mirror image when you look at the woman who gave birth to you is quite another.

And Jane has sometimes had to cope with the fact that some people think she is the 'older' sister.

'It's not because I look older than my years, but just that Mum looks unbelievably young for her age. She looks better than Madonna at 50, which is saying something.

'People ask if I mind that she's transformed herself into me, but I couldn't be more proud. I'm the one who helps her with her hair and clothes, so it's down to me, too. I can hardly accuse Mum of copying my looks when she gave them to me, can I?

'Actually, I love us looking the same, we're closer than ever and she's the sister I always wanted and never had.'

Both 'girls' insist there's no jealousy. 'We're both confident about our looks,' says Jane. 'Men give me just as many compliments as Mum gets, so why would I feel jealous?

'I don't worry about introducing boyfriends to her. I know they'd never get anywhere, even if they did make a move on her.'

In fact, while there have been no shortage of offers from toy boys, Janet is happy being single.

'It's not a competition. This has always been about my own confidence and self-esteem. I haven't done this to get a man, I'm happy spending time with my daughter and reliving my youth, thanks to my new look.'

The question, of course, is where will it all end? For now, Janet says: 'I think I've had enough surgery. I've put myself through enough . . . unless I suddenly start to look really old overnight.'

credited to dailymail.co.uk

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A 13-year-old boy who police say was caught red-handed a block away was accused on Tuesday of robbing a bank in Peoria.

The unidentified boy was charged with felony armed robbery in juvenile court, accused of threatening a teller with a gun and demanding cash.

He was found hiding in a nearby garage about 30 minutes after Monday's robbery, stained red from a dye pack that had been placed in the bag of money.

"It's the youngest person I can remember," said Sheriff Michael McCoy, a four-decade veteran of the sheriff's office.

Prosecutors were considering whether to seek to have him tried as an adult and face up to 30 years in prison.

credited to reuters.com

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Surprised surgeons performing a lung cancer operation apparently found a 5cm fir tree growing inside the patient.

The Daily Mail reports doctors thought Russian man Artyom Sidorkin, 28, had a tumour after he complained of extreme pain in his chest and had been coughing up blood.

The x-ray image shows what looks like a large tumour in his lung.

During the operation, surgeon Vladimir Kamashev said he thought he was hallucinating when he saw the fir tree needles inside the tissue.

Medical staff said the 5cm tree is too big to be swallowed and believe Mr Sidorkin had inhaled a seed which later sprouted.

“It was very painful. But to be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me,” said Mr Sidorkin. “I’m so relieved it’s not cancer.”

credited to news.com.au

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Last night, ThinkProgress editor Faiz Shakir appeared on Fox Business and slammed the network’s aggressive promotion of the anti-Obama tea parties. Guest host Charles Payne denied that Fox News and Fox Business were advocating in favor of the protests:

SHAKIR: These tea parties are a sham. The reason they’re a sham is because they’re directed by lobbyists here in D.C. … And on top of that, you’ve got this network, Fox News, which is advocacy — pushing this, promoting this with all of its heart. And it is not a grassroots movement when you have Jonathan Hoenig, Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren promoting this up the wazoo. That is not a grassroots movement.

PAYNE: Faiz, let me just jump in. There’s a big difference between covering something and promoting it.

SHAKIR: That’s not what’s going on.

Jonathan Hoenig, a Fox News contributor and a managing director of a hedge fund who will be speaking at the Chicago tea party, grew furious with Faiz for discussing the corporate backing of the protests:

HOENIG: What you’ve got, Faiz, is 500 cities and literally tens of thousands of people, myself included —

SHAKIR: Directed by corporate lobbyists and corporate money.

HOENIG: That’s not true! Why do you keep saying that? Am I directed by lobbyists, Faiz? Am I paid by lobbyists? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!

Watch a compilation:

Payne vociferously denied that Fox News was promoting the tea parties. However, seconds after dismissing the panel on which Faiz appeared, Payne declared it was “time to party like it’s 1773.” He launched into an endorsement the tea parties as an example of “what is right” and praised them for “carrying on in the American spirit”:

PAYNE: Thank you, panel. Excellent job. Okay. Why it’s time to party like it’s 1773. Next. […]

What is right though is the growing chorus of Americans that want their country and their liberties back. Anti-tax tea parties will happen all over the country Wednesday, carrying on in the American spirit that will send a message to Washington and Wall Street. … Remember, you have a right to voice your opinion and fight back.

As Faiz said, the tea parties are not the grassroots movement Fox News would like you to believe. They are being heavily promoted by corporate-funded lobbyist groups, including Dick Armey’s Freedom Works. And Fox has enthusiastically taken up the banner of these far-right protests: Just yesterday, host Stuart Varney declared, “It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties.”

credited to think progress

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Three off-duty Russian policemen were fired on Monday for driving drunk through Moscow's Red Square in the early hours of the morning, dressed in their police uniforms.

"A medical examination revealed that all three policemen were drunk," Moscow City Police said in a statement about the incident which took place on Friday.

"(They have) tarnished the honor and dignity of police officers."

Russians are some of the world's heaviest drinkers and demographers often cite high alcohol consumption as a factor in the low life expectancy of Russian men.

The image of national airline Aeroflot's subsidiary Aeroflot-Nord was dealt a serious blow earlier this year when alcohol was found in the blood of one of its pilots who crashed over the Urals, killing 88 people on board.

credited to reuters.com

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This unrelenting, goddamn Twitter craze feels like the early days of "MySpace" when everyone and their pet lemur were getting on the social networking site. But as long as celebrities keep "tweeting" and studios keep posting exclusive "tweets", we'll keep talking about Twitter until the cows come home. The point here is that BOURNE franchise producer Frank Marshall recently tweeted a 2011 release date for the upcoming BOURNE 4, which means that it'll be a long goddamn time before we get to see the amnesiac superspy kick the shit out of nameless, beefy, exotic baddies, while considering banging Julia Stiles since she kinda reminds him of his first love Marie.

credited to joblo.com

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A Muslim resident of Russia’s St. Petersburg has hired killers to rid him of a daughter who disrespected Islamic laws by wearing short skirts.

The police detained Gafar Kerimov, 46, after he reported that his daughter went missing, but blurted out that the girl was dead already, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Monday.

The family, ethnic Azerbaijanis, used to have frequent arguments about how the daughter should dress and behave.

Rashida Kirimova, 21, studied medicine at a St. Petersburg school and waved away her father’s criticism when he said her clothes weren't modest enough and were unfit for a Muslim girl.

During winter, Rashida wore high-necked sweaters and long trousers, causing no problems in the neighborhood, but when spring came, she put on a skirt that left her knees exposed.

The father’s Muslim friends again started reproaching him for being negligent and allowing his daughter to walk around dressed like a fallen woman. They said the insult could only be washed away by blood, and introduced Gafar to a killer, who agreed to help him for around $3000.

The killer, Kadyr Suleymanov, seized the girl on April 8th as she was hurrying to classes. He and two accomplices drove her out of the city to a suburban dump, shot her dead and covered her body with garbage.

The body was found by the police after the father confessed he had ordered the killing. Two of three criminals have been detained.

credited to mosnews.com

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Twitter, the social networking website, has come under attack from a virus for the fourth time in three days.

A "worm" spreading spam messages promoting another website was first introduced into Twitter in the early hours of Saturday.

Within hours it had spread across the network, infecting scores of accounts and forcing administrators to delete 10,000 messages to stop it infiltrating further.

Users spread the virus simply by clicking onto an infected page.

They then began unwittingly sending out messages – or "tweets" – to other users promoting the site StalkDaily.com.

Despite efforts to curb the virus, Twitter was hit by a second, more intense, bout of attacks later in the day and another early on Sunday.

Twitter then announced early on Monday that it was facing a new "manifestation" of the worm. Messages advised users not to click on links until the problem was rectified.

The website emphasised that no sensitive information such as passwords or telephone numbers had been compromised and suggested it would take legal action against the perpetrators.

A worm is a computer programme which spreads through a network by making copies of itself when users inadvertently click on something.

According to the Twitter news service BNO, a teenager from New York claimed responsibility for the worm "Mikeyy" saying that he had been bored.

He said that he had been trying to highlight ways in which the phenomenally popular site could be vulnerable to hackers.

"I did this out of boredom to be honest," he was quoted as saying.

"I usually like to find vulnerabilities within websites and try not to cause too much damage."

Twitter – a so-called "micro-blogging" service – has seen phenomenal growth in the last year rivalling Facebook and MySpace as one of the most popular social networking sites among British users.

It played a key role in the US election with candidates including Barack Obama posting messages on the site and British celebrities such as Stephen Fry have also become high profile users.

Users post short tweets either directly onto the site or by mobile phone.

These are then forwarded on to their network of friends and contacts.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

The drunk 26-year-old burst into a neighboring room in his hostel Tuesday and used karate moves to kill the pair, state investigator Eduard Abdullin said by telephone from Kazan, a city 700 km (430 miles) east of Moscow.

"He literally beat them to death with his hands and feet," Abdullin said. "The family were poor and drank a lot. He blamed them for infecting his wife and the entire corridor with lice."

The 58-year-old husband of the dead woman was also badly beaten, but survived.

The suspect, who studied karate for seven years, faces life in prison if convicted, Abdullin added.

credited to reuters.com

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Taiwan police have arrested a 55-year-old man for lobbing bank notes worth about T$1 million ($41,000) from vehicles, causing disorder in the streets.

The man tossed the bills from a taxi in a crowded part of Taichung city yesetrday as people stopped to pick up the cash, Changhua police official Lin Shih-ming said.

"He might have had a nervous condition, as his state of mind wasn't normal," Mr Lin said.

He is believed to have thrown heaps more money on an earlier road trip starting in the capital Taipei.

The man also burned about T$400,000 ($16,500) and had two more sacks of cash, apparently the proceeds of a property sale, Mr Lin said.

Some of the passers-by who picked up the bills turned the money over to police, while others pocketed it, he said.

The taxi driver turned the man in to police in Changhua county, just south of Taichung.

The suspect would be charged with public endangerment and destruction of currency, Mr Lin said.

credited to news.com.au

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The man was in Iraq when he sent the SMS informing her she was no longer his spouse.

Saudi Arabia practises a strict form of Islamic Sharia law, under which the law a man can divorce his wife by simply saying "I divorce you" three times.

He followed up with a telephone call to two of his relatives to confirm the split.

A court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah finalised the split – the first known divorce in Saudi Arabia by text message – after summoning the two relatives to check they had received word of the husband's intention, the paper said.

The Saudi man was in Iraq to participate in "what he described as 'jihad'," according to the Arab News.

Many Saudis have gone to fight with al Qaeda militants against the Iraqi government and U.S. forces.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Beautiful flora and fauna abound in this uniquely situated body of water that survived the ice age in tact.

credited to nationalgeographic.com

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Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground. Then again, maybe not— the U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted—all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades.

It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. In 2001, Katie Couric told Today Show audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened—that it was staged in the Nevada desert. Millions of X-Files fans believe the truth may be "out there," but more likely it's concealed inside Area 51's Strangelove-esque hangars—buildings that, though confirmed by Google Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge.

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk—in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in "What Plane?" in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. Here are a few of their best stories—for the record:

On May 24, 1963, Collins flew out of Area 51's restricted airspace in a top-secret spy plane code-named OXCART, built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He was flying over Utah when the aircraft pitched, flipped and headed toward a crash. He ejected into a field of weeds.

Almost 46 years later, in late fall of 2008, sitting in a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley, Collins remembers that day with the kind of clarity the threat of a national security breach evokes: "Three guys came driving toward me in a pickup. I saw they had the aircraft canopy in the back. They offered to take me to my plane." Until that moment, no civilian without a top-secret security clearance had ever laid eyes on the airplane Collins was flying. "I told them not to go near the aircraft. I said it had a nuclear weapon on-board." The story fit right into the Cold War backdrop of the day, as many atomic tests took place in Nevada. Spooked, the men drove Collins to the local highway patrol. The CIA disguised the accident as involving a generic Air Force plane, the F-105, which is how the event is still listed in official records.

As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security nondisclosures. As part of Collins' own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. "They wanted to see if there was anything I'd for-gotten about the events leading up to the crash." The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch—except for the reaction of his wife, Jane.

"Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle.

At the time of Collins' accident, CIA pilots had been flying spy planes in and out of Area 51 for eight years, with the express mission of providing the intelligence to prevent nuclear war. Aerial reconnaissance was a major part of the CIA's preemptive efforts, while the rest of America built bomb shelters and hoped for the best.

"It wasn't always called Area 51," says Lovick, the physicist who developed stealth technology. His boss, legendary aircraft designer Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, called the place Paradise Ranch to entice men to leave their families and "rough it" out in the Nevada desert in the name of science and the fight against the evil empire. "Test pilot Tony LeVier found the place by flying over it," says Lovick. "It was a lake bed called Groom Lake, selected for testing because it was flat and far from anything. It was kept secret because the CIA tested U-2s there."

When Frances Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, the U-2 program lost its cover. But the CIA already had Lovick and some 200 scientists, engineers and pilots working at Area 51 on the A-12 OXCART, which would outfox Soviet radar using height, stealth and speed.

Col. Slater was in the outfit of six pilots who flew OXCART missions during the Vietnam War. Over a Cuban meat and cheese sandwich at the Bahama Breeze restaurant off the Las Vegas Strip, he says, "I was recruited for the Area after working with the CIA's classified Black Cat Squadron, which flew U-2 missions over denied territory in Mainland China. After that, I was told, 'You should come out to Nevada and work on something interesting we're doing out there.' "

Even though Slater considers himself a fighter pilot at heart—he flew 84 missions in World War II—the opportunity to work at Area 51 was impossible to pass up. "When I learned about this Mach-3 aircraft called OXCART, it was completely intriguing to me—this idea of flying three times the speed of sound! No one knew a thing about the program. I asked my wife, Barbara, if she wanted to move to Las Vegas, and she said yes. And I said, 'You won't see me but on the weekends,' and she said, 'That's fine!' " At this recollection, Slater laughs heartily. Barbara, dining with us, laughs as well. The two, married for 63 years, are rarely apart today.

"We couldn't have told you any of this a year ago," Slater says. "Now we can't tell it to you fast enough." That is because in 2007, the CIA began declassifying the 50-year-old OXCART program. Today, there's a scramble for eyewitnesses to fill in the information gaps. Only a few of the original players are left. Two more of them join me and the Slaters for lunch: Barnes, formerly an Area 51 special-projects engineer, with his wife, Doris; and Martin, one of those overseeing the OXCART's specially mixed jet fuel (regular fuel explodes at extreme height, temperature and speed), with his wife, Mary. Because the men were sworn to secrecy for so many decades, their wives still get a kick out of hearing the secret tales.

Barnes was married at 17 (Doris was 16). To support his wife, he became an electronics wizard, buying broken television sets, fixing them up and reselling them for five times the original price. He went from living in bitter poverty on a Texas Panhandle ranch with no electricity to buying his new bride a dream home before he was old enough to vote. As a soldier in the Korean War, Barnes demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for radar and Nike missile systems, which made him a prime target for recruitment by the CIA—which indeed happened when he was 22. By 30, he was handling nuclear secrets.

"The agency located each guy at the top of a certain field and put us together for the programs at Area 51," says Barnes. As a security precaution, he couldn't reveal his birth name—he went by the moniker Thunder. Coworkers traveled in separate cars, helicopters and airplanes. Barnes and his group kept to themselves, even in the mess hall. "Our special-projects group was the most classified team since the Manhattan Project," he says.

Harry Martin's specialty was fuel. Handpicked by the CIA from the Air Force, he underwent rigorous psychological and physical tests to see if he was up for the job. When he passed, the CIA moved his family to Nevada. Because OXCART had to refuel frequently, the CIA kept supplies at secret facilities around the globe. Martin often traveled to these bases for quality-control checks. He tells of preparing for a top-secret mission from Area 51 to Thule, Greenland. "My wife took one look at me in these arctic boots and this big hooded coat, and she knew not to ask where I was going."

So, what of those urban legends—the UFOs studied in secret, the underground tunnels connecting clandestine facilities? For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination. But in talking with Collins, Lovick, Slater, Barnes and Martin, it is clear that much of the folklore was spun from threads of fact.

As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers some insight: "We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology, including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area"—even though the MiG wasn't shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk, that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in Area 51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground," he says.

And the quintessential Area 51 conspiracy—that the Pentagon keeps captured alien spacecraft there, which they fly around in restricted airspace? Turns out that one's pretty easy to debunk. The shape of OXCART was unprece-dented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast quantities of fuel. Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The aircraft's tita-nium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO.

In all, 2,850 OXCART test flights were flown out of Area 51 while Slater was in charge. "That's a lot of UFO sightings!" Slater adds. Commercial pilots would report them to the FAA, and "when they'd land in California, they'd be met by FBI agents who'd make them sign nondisclosure forms." But not everyone kept quiet, hence the birth of Area 51's UFO lore. The sightings incited uproar in Nevada and the surrounding areas and forced the Air Force to open Project BLUE BOOK to log each claim.

Since only a few Air Force officials were cleared for OXCART (even though it was a joint CIA/USAF project), many UFO sightings raised internal military alarms. Some generals believed the Russians might be sending stealth craft over American skies to incite paranoia and create widespread panic of alien invasion. Today, BLUE BOOK findings are housed in 37 cubic feet of case files at the National Archives—74,000 pages of reports. A keyword search brings up no mention of the top-secret OXCART or Area 51.

Project BLUE BOOK was shut down in 1969—more than a year after OXCART was retired. But what continues at America's most clandestine military facility could take another 40 years to disclose.

credited to latimes.com

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Shoppers are paying £195 per kilo to get their hands on out-of-season cherries.

Harrods is importing the specially grown produce from Spain, where a single farmer has cultivated a plant that flowers during March and April. The Glamour cherries, which cost more than £3 per fruit, are said to be the only ones in the world available at this time of year.

The Knightsbridge department store received its first batch of the cherries three weeks ago. Since then, every one of its twice-weekly deliveries has sold out within 24 hours - despite the recession.

Matthias Kiehm, Business Unit Director for Harrods Food Halls and Restaurants, said: “Cherries are not traditionally available at this time of year, so we are delighted to be able to work with the sole supplier worldwide who can fill the gap in the seasons between the end of March and middle of April .

“Although we appreciate they are on sale at a high price compared to in-season cherries, for a very select group of discerning clients they are a delicacy worth paying for. They are selling well, regular customers are buying them by the box.

“Despite current financial conditions our regular customers continue to tell us that year-round access to produce is important to them, and we are seeing strong sales in particular where a fruit or vegetable is difficult to track down elsewhere.”

The cherries are grown in a giant greenhouse in the Lerida area of Spain, and are picked daily when they are considered to be perfectly ripened. They are dispatched to the UK within hours by farmer Oscar Ortiz, 41, who sleeps among his 15,000 trees to monitor air temperature and humidity. The fruit is firm and crisp with an intense flavour.

However, those prepared to pay for their sweet treat will have to wait: Harrods has currently sold out of its cherry stock and is not expecting another delivery until the weekend.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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A Google Street View cameraman told a photographer "don't you take pictures of me" when he tried to reverse roles on him and take his photograph.

The unnamed driver was busy mapping a street in the village of Wool in Dorset when a local photographer spotted the controversial Google vehicle.

But the multinational's driver was outraged by the invasion of his privacy when the snapper started taking pictures of the car.

The freelance photographer, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that with all the privacy issues surrounding Google's new Street View technology it is ironic that the Google driver should get upset about having his picture taken.

The 58-year-old electrician and part-time photographer said: "When I saw the [Google] car I thought to myself nobody has got any decent pictures of this yet so I hopped out the van and started to take some pictures.

"He was not happy about it. I could tell by his body language and facial expressions."

The Google driver then proceeded to shout at the photographer and said: "Don't you take pictures of me, mate." He then asked the photographer to blur his face out of the pictures as Google does in its Street View images.

The photographer managed to get about six to eight photographers of the car which had a pole-mounted revolving camera protruding from the top.

For months, Google's Street View vehicle has been roaming the streets of Britain, capturing 360-degree images of streets and the people on them.

Since it launched millions of Britons have gone online to look at their own houses or landmarks.

However, residents in the village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire have remained off the map after blocking the vehicle from entering their area.

There are concerns over peoples privacy and some worry that Street View helps criminal's scope out targets for burglary or car theft.

Google says the technology is legal, useful and non-intrusive and to preserve privacy, individuals' faces and car license plates are obscured by pixelation.

Google have said they would remove any image on request, which can be done by clicking a link on the Street View Web site.

So far pictures that have been taken down after they were featured in the press - include one of a man walking out of a sex shop and another throwing up on the sidewalk outside a London pub.

Privacy International, a pressure group, has begun legal action against the company in an effort to bring down the mapping service.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Facebook has baffled everyone from the very beginning, no-one quite estimating how big this social network would become. After reaching 200 million users last week, there is cause for celebration in the Facebook office.

From presidents to students, to civil servants to window cleaners, Facebook has changed the way we communicate with our friends, partners, siblings, our family and work colleagues. If Facebook were a country, it would be the fifth biggest country in the world, according to a video posted by the Facebook team.

To celebrate the milestone, Facebook has teamed up with over a dozen organisations and charities to help raise funds for their causes, including the American Red Cross, World Wildlife Fund and the Women for Women International group. By sending a gift to a friend on the social network helps raise vital funds for these charities to support and help others.

So what is the next step for Facebook?

The problem is, is that I don’t know. I cannot foresee anything for the near future that Facebook could possibly do which could make any more of a difference than it already has done. The site already allows ordinary users to make decisions as a democracy as to how any major changes should be played, and after turning five year old only a couple of months ago, have they already done all they can do?

Facebook will continue growing until either the company cannot handle the amount of users anymore or a third-party company takes away the power. As a student, I can see no more potential in Facebook than what we have already seen, experienced and felt; the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Maybe I am starting to go soft, and worry about the influence this social network has on every day people. The fact of the matter is this; with 200 million people in an online community, sharing and living, breathing and contributing, does Facebook need its own government? Can a team of three-hundred strong employees in a privately owned company really cope with the amount of users which rely on the site for so many aspects of their lives?

This could turn out to be an interesting one…

credited to blogs.zdnet.com

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