5 charged in Mass. bullying case strike deals

i picked this article because i think that bullying should be stopped. You can bully a person in so many ways but it should be stopped. Theres consquences to bullying, nobody should have to go through that. Its not only bad for the person but the for the persons parents or loved ones. Five teenagers have agreed to plead guilty to a minor charge in the bullying of a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl who later committed suicide.  The teens are charged in the bullying of Phoebe Prince, an Irish immigrant who hanged herself in her family's South Hadley apartment last year after what a prosecutor called a "relentless" campaign of bullying that included yelling "Irish whore" at her in the school library, posting demeaning comments about her on Facebook and threatening to beat her up. Prince's death drew international attention and was among several high-profile teen suicides that lead to new laws aimed at cracking down on bullying in schools. The five teens are expected to plead guilty to criminal harassment, a misdemeanor. In exchange, prosecutors will drop more serious charges, including civil rights violations. The harassment charge carries a maximum of 2½ years in a county jail, but the teens could receive probation
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42786085/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Maine boy without hands honored for penmanship

A 10-year-old boy who earned a spot in a national penmanship contest despite being born without hands and lower arms is in a league of his own.

Nicholas Maxim, a fifth-grader at Readfield Elementary School who writes by holding a pencil between his arms, impressed judges at a national penmanship contest enough that they created a new category for students with disabilities. Maxim received the first Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellent Penmanship this week at a school assembly.

Judges who sifted through 200,000 handwriting entries in the annual contest run by Columbus, Ohio-based schoolbook publisher Zaner-Bloser said the new category would inspire others.

Maxim, who said he likes writing and illustrating comic strips, didn't know his paper had even been submitted to the contest, so Monday's school assembly in his honor came as a surprise.

Will teen multitasking give rise to ADD? Study may offer answer

I chose this article because its crazy how teens now a days are so concentrated on their phones and computers instead of their homework. Whether they’re texting while talking to friends or plugging in to an iPod while studying, today's teenagers seem to be constantly multitasking. Young people are spending at least seven-and-a-half hours a day with media computers, cell phones, TV or music -- and by frequently multitasking that means they're packing in the equivalent of nearly 11 hours hours of content, according to a 2010 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. That's an increase from nearly six-and-half hours a day, or eight-and-a-half hours of media multitasking, just six years ago. Parents who grew up in a world without all the technological chatter often find themselves wondering whether their kids will ever learn to focus on one thing at a time. They ask: Are we raising an entire generation of children with attention deficit disorder?
 

Government Shutdown Would Threaten Time-Sensitive Science

When New York City lost power in 2003, security guards at Columbia University's medical center had to trawl the dimly lit halls to kick out all the lab workers. There's no snowstorm fierce enough or holiday sacred enough to keep a dedicated scientist away from work. And yet, if the government shuts down in the coming days, many publicly funded scientists will have to stay home stewing as their clinical research goes stale on the shelves. "It's very frustrating. Everyone is demoralized,". The agency has been very quiet about who gets to make these decisions, but has indicated to its staff that much of the work will simply have to stop. For clinical researchers, the interruptions could be devastating, potentially threatening patient participation.  Animal work and molecular biology are likely to fare even worse during a government shutdown. If they get the plug pulled on them, researchers at these labs will have no idea when they can return, forcing them to freeze what samples they can and throw out the rest. Most experiments that get interrupted will probably just have to be trashed and restarted. "If you lose a month, you lose a year's worth of data. It's really horrific," they said. 

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/08/government-shutdown-threaten-time-sensitive-clinical-research/ 

Naked man with AK-47 fires at SWAT robot

A Brevard County man blasted away with an assault rifle at a SWAT robot while wearing nothing but his birthday suit. The suspect's dog was the only onlooker as the robot approached the door at the West Melbourne home on Del Mar Circle. Authorities said a man with several guns was suicidal and threatening authorities. "He said he'd shoot anyone he could,".  Instead of risking any lives, deputies sent the $65,000 robot into the home. The robot has cameras, which record all of its actions. The video shows the robot searching each room, its electronic eye roving from side to side while officers watch safely from a command post. As the robot slowly pushes the man's bedroom door open, the man comes out, stark naked, with an AK-47 in hand. The man then starts shooting at the robot. The camera goes out at first, and then comes back on. The robot came away with bullet holes, frayed wires and broken cables, but no one was hurt. The man was charged with criminal mischief. The robot will be out of commission for a while. It's being sent back to its manufacturer for repairs.

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42481171/ns/us_news-weird_news/

Simple life in Manhattan: A 90-square-foot home

I chose this article because it seems crazy how she can live in such a small space and not mind. She loves her cozy little room and feels really comfortable.  The average size of the American home is shrinking -- it dropped in both 2008 and 2009 after 15 straight years of growth -- but most of us are still living larger than people in the Big Apple. Home size in Manhattan is about half the national average. One New Yorker has taken her love of frugal living to the extreme. Felice Cohen’s apartment measures just 90 square feet, but she doesn’t see it as a sacrifice. With such a small space, she pays just $700 to live in a part of town where rents average $3,600 per month. Her kitchen consists of a toaster oven, hot pot, and mini fridge, but she claims her backyard is larger than average: “I look out my window, and it’s New York City. Her first night she had a bit of a panic attack the first night in her apartment when she woke up in the loft bed with the ceiling 23 inches from her face, but she’s grown accustomed to the small space. Now when she goes back to her childhood home, she misses her apartment’s coziness: “I think a lot of people have a lot of space that they’re not using. I grew up in a place where my bedroom was 17 feet by 17 feet with two walk-in closets that combined were almost the size of this apartment ... when I go home now, I go in the closet just to feel like I’m back in New York.”
http://shine.yahoo.com/event/green/simple-life-in-manhattan-a-90-square-foot-home-2472666/

House Republicans Seek to Derail FCC's New Internet Rules

The House Republicans pushing along legislation that would block new Internet regulation ran smack into a wall this week when President Obama threatened to veto the measure if it made it to his desk. On Tuesday, the GOP led-house approved the terms of debate for the measure that would block the so-called "net neutrality" rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission on a party-line vote late last year. The Housed is expected to pass on the measure on Thursday, but it's highly unlikely the Democrat-led Senate will take the measure up and the White House has made its opposition clear.  The bill "would undermine a fundamental part of the nation's Internet and innovation strategy – an enforceable and effective policy for keeping the Internet free and open," the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement Monday. "Since the development of the Internet, federal policy has ensured that this medium is kept open and facilitates innovation and investment, protects consumer choice and enables free speech." "If the president is presented with a resolution of disapproval that would not safeguard the free and open Internet, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the resolution,". The rules are intended to prohibit phone and cable companies from abusing their control over broadband connections to discriminate against rival content or services, or play favorites with Web traffic. But critics say it's a solution in search of a problem, and that the move could open the door for ever-expanding government dominion over the Internet.