This morning, I read that the 6 Bulgarian medical workers who were imprisoned in Libya, were released after being jailed for 8 years. If you’re not familiar with the story, the BBC’s Q&A and the workers’ profiles should get you up to speed fast. To summarize (and since we all like happy-ends), the EU paid a lot for this (there’s still a lot of confusion about what amount was paid) and will start normalizing their trade relations with the once-pariah-for-life-country.
The other thing that surprised was that the Bulgarians were flown to Bulgaria in the French presidential plane accompanied by no-one else than Mrs. Sarkozy, which has European (and particularly French) papers wonder if this was ‘a presidential scoop’ or that she actually played a role. It should be no surprise that mr. Sarkozy has planned a visit to Libya tomorrow.
Most of the North American news, however, concentrated on the Democratic candidates debate, which (for a change) included the First Ever Video Comments And Questions Section, featuring all your favourite YouTube stars. Oh Noes! It wasn’t as dramatic or bad: but I wonder which (American) demographic these YouTube users actually represent.
Giving your kids a laptop is not good, according to this Canada.com article: It distracts. According to a fellow student:
In the classrooms itself, you’ll see students who are on it procrastinating, not paying attention. But I don’t see the Internet as any more of a distraction as doodling notes with a paper and pen. Before the laptop, some people would play games on cell phones or text message.”
I read an article about the upcoming quad-core processors that generally run on lower speed but (theoretically) surpass the current single core processors because they handle things more efficiently: Note that efficiently is the correct term here. The article raised some concerns about the implications of multi-core programming (threading) and the state of that kind of programming in the current popular OSses. For now, you should do with Intel’s comments about multi-cores and programming techniques.
And last but not least, with all these flash floods in Great Britain, a study that (unequivocally) shows that humans are responsible for the change in global rain patterns. And, what can I say about that heatwave in Hungary?