Dead customer Virgin Media bill goes viral on Facebook
A
broadband bill sent to a deceased man, which included a fine for late
payment, has been shared more than 53,000 times by Facebook users.
Social media experts say it is a reminder of the importance
of responding quickly and publicly to complaints made on social
networks.The man's son-in-law, Jim Boyden, posted a photograph of the bill, along with a message addressed to Virgin Media, on the social media network.
Virgin Media said sorry to the family.
"We obviously apologise for the bill and have spoken to Mr Boyden to bring this account to a close more sensitively," a spokesperson told the BBC.
At time of writing Mr Boyden, who put the bill online on Monday night, had not visibly mentioned the apology on Facebook himself.
"I've just placed a little reminder on their Facebook page. This actually amused me to start off with, but their complete lack of response irks me somewhat," he added as a comment to the original complaint last night.
Qwerty keyboards: Time for a rethink?
The Sensory, Elastic and Adaptive (SEA) interface responds to gestures in 3D space
Could a spongy musical instrument hold the future of computer interaction, wonders Tom Chatfield.
Q-W-E-R-T-Y. Six letters that define so much of our waking lives.
If they are not there on the screen in front of you, chances are they are only a click away.
In some ways, these six letters are a triumph of design. They’re wired into our brains, replicated on keyboards, phones and tablets across the world – and have changed very little since Milwaukee port official Christopher Sholes used the layout to stop mechanical levers jamming on a 19th-Century typewriter.
In another sense, though, the over 140 years of continuity embodied in keyboards show a strange tension at work behind technology’s claims of progress and perfectibility. And it’s the same for other interfaces. The mice attached to almost every desktop system in the world still conform to the same essential design set out in the 1965 paper on “computer-aided display control” that coined the term. Even touchscreens ape established layouts and conventions.
Appropriately enough, the name for this inertia is the “qwerty phenomenon. Some things simply seem to be too deeply and universally engrained to be susceptible to change, even if there would be numerous advantages in doing so. Having found a design that largely fitted our early needs, we gave up on alternatives (the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, patented in 1936, is the only other option with any global following).
CIA 'tracked Boston bomb suspect Tamerlane Tsarina'
One
of the Boston bomb suspects was added to a terrorism database 18 months
ago at the request of the CIA, officials have told US media.
The FBI has already said it investigated Tamerlane Tsarnaev, 26, but had found no evidence of a threat.Tsarnaev was killed during a police chase last week. His brother Dzhokhar, 19, is in custody over the bombs.
Three people were killed and more than 260 wounded when two devices exploded at the Boston Marathon on 15 April.
A US politician earlier confirmed the bombs were set off by remote-control.
But the devices were not sophisticated and apparently had to be triggered within a few streets of the explosives.
FBI 'not at fault.'
Frantic search for survivors after Dhaka building collapse
A
frantic search for survivors is continuing at a building outside the
Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, which collapsed, killing at least 160
people.
Rescue workers are working with volunteers, using heavy machinery and their bare hands to free survivors.Tens of thousands of weeping family members are gathered at the site.
Police said the factory owners had ignored warnings not to allow their workers into the building after cracks were noticed on Tuesday.
The owners are now said to have gone into hiding.
The disaster has prompted questions over Bangladesh's chronically poor safety standards.
Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing cheap clothing for major Western retailers which benefit from its widespread low-cost labour.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced a national day of mourning on Thursday in memory of the victims.
Officials said the death toll had risen to 160 by late on Thursday morning, from an overnight figure of about 100 - and they warn it may rise still further.
'Like a pancake' Some 2,000 people were in the Rana Plaza building in Savar, some 30km (20 miles) outside Dhaka, when it collapsed suddenly on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading the main story
Grieving relatives have been anxiously waiting outside the
collapsed building in Savar. Rescue teams have been working frantically
using concrete cutters and cranes digging through the rubble to pull
people out.
It is still not clear how many people are trapped inside, although local media say there are hundreds. A doctor at the local hospital told the BBC that their services had been stretched.
The reason for the collapse is not yet known. The latest incident has once again raised questions about safety standards in the country's thriving garments industry. However, factory owners say safety standards have improved significantly in recent years.
At the scene
It is still not clear how many people are trapped inside, although local media say there are hundreds. A doctor at the local hospital told the BBC that their services had been stretched.
The reason for the collapse is not yet known. The latest incident has once again raised questions about safety standards in the country's thriving garments industry. However, factory owners say safety standards have improved significantly in recent years.
Living a conjoined life
Abby
and Brittany Hansel are conjoined twins determined to live the normal,
active life of outgoing 20-somethings anywhere. They have been to
university, they travel, they have jobs. But how easy is it for two
people to inhabit one body?
Like most 23-year-olds Abby and Brittany Hansel love spending
time with their friends, going on holiday, driving, playing sport such
as volleyball and living life to the full. The identical, conjoined twins from Minnesota, in the United States, have graduated from Bethel University and are setting out on their career as primary school teachers with an emphasis on maths.
Although they have two teaching licenses, there is one practical difference when it comes to the finances.
"Obviously right away we understand that we are going to get one salary because we're doing the job of one person," says Abby.
"As maybe experience comes in we'd like to negotiate a little bit, considering we have two degrees and because we are able to give two different perspectives or teach in two different ways."
How are humans going to become extinct?
What are the greatest global threats to humanity? Are we on the verge of our own unexpected extinction?
An international team of scientists, mathematicians and
philosophers at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute is
investigating the biggest dangers.And they argue in a research paper, Existential Risk as a Global Priority, that international policymakers must pay serious attention to the reality of species-obliterating risks.
Last year there were more academic papers published on snowboarding than human extinction.
The Swedish-born director of the institute, Nick Bostrom, says the stakes couldn't be higher. If we get it wrong, this could be humanity's final century.
Been there, survived it So what are the greatest dangers?
Pakistan health workers targeted over Bin Laden death
Few telephone calls can be as portentous as the one Mumtaz Begum, 35, received on 15 March 2011.
At the time, it sounded like just another call from a
supervisor to a health worker inviting her to a meeting the next morning
about a forthcoming vaccination campaign.As it turned out, Ms Begum and 16 other lady health workers (LHWs), as they are known locally, were to become pawns in the hunt for the world's most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden.
They have since been living under constant fear of attacks, have been called traitors by some and have lost their jobs.
Bin Laden was killed by the American Navy Seals in a secret operation in Abbottabad, a city in Pakistan's north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, on 2 May 2011.
Later that month, Pakistani intelligence services arrested a provincial health department official, Dr Shakeel Afridi, whom they accused of leading the American CIA to Bin Laden by collecting DNA samples from his Abbottabad hideout under the cover of a fake vaccination campaign.
In February 2012, the KP health department sacked all 17 health workers who had participated in that campaign, accusing them of working "against national interest".
Mumtaz Begum hardly looks the spy type though.
Koala chlamydia: The STD threatening an Australian icon
The
koala is unique to Australia and is an important symbol of the country.
But numbers are plummeting and the survival of koalas is under threat.
One of the reasons is the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia.
One of the most common places to find koalas in Australia these days is in the hospital.About 50 miles (80km) north of Brisbane, at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital, a female koala is under a mild anaesthetic.
"She's quite an old girl - I think she's over 10 years," says veterinary surgeon Amber Gillett.
The koala is called Penny. Gillett puts some ultrasound gel in Penny's pouch and looks at the ultrasound machine.She's checking her bladder for symptoms of chlamydia.
Outside the clinic are a series of open-air enclosures. These are the "koala wards" - and they are pretty much full all-year round.
Last year, Gillett and her team treated about 300 koalas for chlamydia - and so far, 2013 has been a busy year too.
Darfur war crimes suspect rebel Jerbo 'killed in Sudan'
A
Sudanese rebel charged with war crimes in Darfur by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) has been killed, his defence team has said.
Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus died on Friday afternoon during fighting in North Darfur, the statement said.He was due to go on trial in May 2014 over a deadly attack on African peacekeepers in Darfur in 2007.
The BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague says the court must get proof of his death before the case is dropped.
Other suspects at large Mr Jerbo and fellow Darfur rebel leader Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain face three war crimes charges relating to the killing of 12 African Union peacekeepers in an attack on the AU's Haskanita camp in September 2007.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Defence statementMr Jerbo was killed during an attack on his location by forces of the Justice and Equality Movement faction led by Gibril Ibrahim”
The two men, who voluntarily
surrendered to the ICC in 2010 to face the charges, have been free to
leave the Netherlands and appear before the court when summoned.
In 2011, a pre-trial chamber found that there were "substantial grounds" to go ahead with their trial.Mr Jerbo was chief of staff of SLA-Unity rebel group at the time of the 2007 attack but is currently in the Justice and Equality Movement group, the ICC says.
His defence team said he died in the north of Darfur on the afternoon of 19 April 2013 and was buried on the same day.
"Mr Jerbo was killed during an attack on his location by forces of the Justice and Equality Movement faction led by Gibril Ibrahim," AFP quotes the defence team's notification to the ICC as saying.
Sudan's president, two ministers and a pro-government militia leader have also been indicted by the ICC over Darfur and remain at large.
They deny the charges, saying the scale of the suffering in Darfur has been exaggerated for political reasons.
Sierra Leone: One man's tale of war and recovery
By
the end of the Sierra Leonean civil war, Suleiman Turay was destitute
and had witnessed his father being beaten to death. Now he is a
successful businessman, husband and father. The BBC's Ed Davey reports
how one man bounced back from scarcely-imaginable horrors.
"There was a big attack in Kabala," said Mr Turay, recalling the moment of his capture.
The 31-year-old is energy personified - but this is the first time since meeting the BBC that he has stopped grinning massively."My mother had warned me to go to the bush," he went on.
"But we did not go to the forest - we thought it would be safe."
'Hard and bad'
Sierra Leone's infrastructure remains very basic - but hope is in the air
"This guy was very hard and bad," says Mr Turay. "I was very scared. I wet myself. I knew I was going to be finished.
Maoni haya yameondolewa na mwandishi.
JibuFuta