Apple removes Baby Shaker game.

From BBC:

Apple has apologised for a "deeply offensive" iPhone application called Baby Shaker, which made a game of quieting crying babies by shaking them.

It removed the $0.99 (£0.59) game from its iTunes Store on Wednesday, two days after it went on sale.

It sparked outrage from children's groups and brain injury foundations.

The aim of the game was to quieten babies by shaking the iPhone until a pair of thick red Xs appeared over each eye of a baby drawn in black and white.

Venezuela giving island to New Jersey.

Just what NJ needs - more industrial sludge. More here:

Venezuela will give a 300-acre island in the Delaware River to the state of New Jersey, the governor's office announced.

The Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. had bought Petty's Island -- between Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -- to use as a fuel storage facility.

The island is home to a pair of American bald eagles as well as several great blue herons and state-endangered black-crowned night herons, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine said in a news release Wednesday.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez announced the island's transfer as part of Wednesday's Earth Day celebrations. Plans are being finalized for the transition, which will not occur before 2020, Corzine's office said.

Spain´s jobless rate hits 17%.

From CNN:

Spain's jobless rate rose sharply, to 17.36 percent in the first quarter, with more than 4 million people out of work, the government said Friday.

Nearly half of the 4 million lost their jobs in the past year, the National Statistics Institute said.

It's the first time that Spain's jobless total has exceeded 4 million, economist Carlos Maravall told CNN.

The numbers did not surprise economists, who have been tracking steady increases of monthly jobless raw numbers from the government. But Spain's official jobless rate is revised only every quarter.

Spain's previous rate of 13.9 percent, issued early this year for the fourth quarter of 2008, was already the highest in the European Union.

Stephen Hawking very ill.

From CNN:

Scientist and author Stephen Hawking is "very ill" and has been hospitalized, according to Cambridge University, where he is a professor.

Hawking, 67, is one of the world's most famous physicists and also a cosmologist, astronomer, and mathematician.

Wheelchair-bound Hawking is perhaps most famous for 'A Brief History of Time' which explored the origins of the universe in layman's terms, is considered a modern classic.

Hawking has Lou Gehrig's Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS), which is usually fatal after three years. Hawking has survived for more than 40 years since his diagnosis.