Facebook has launched a new tool in the US and soon all over its network to help users who are worried about a friend’s risk of suicide.
It will help people report posts which will trigger a message from the site.
“Often, friends and family who are the observers in this situation don’t know what to do. In the past users have posted about taking their own lives, but no action was taken in time. This is how the new system will work – The person who flags the post will see a screen with links that allow them to message the potentially suicidal person, contact another Facebook friend for support or connect with a trained professional at a suicide helpline for guidance,” University of Washington researchers explain.
Facebook then reviews the post and if the person is thought to be in distress then suggestions for getting help will display when they next log on.
For example Forefront, the university organisation that has been working with Facebook, have created videos which are based on real-life accounts of coping with thoughts of suicide.
Mobile World Congress…It’s here again
Organised by mobile trade association the GSMA and Fira de Barcelona, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show will celebrate its tenth anniversary in Barcelona this year. But what does it take to keep the biggest party in mobile running?
The show, known as the one must-attend event in the mobile calendar, will see over 100,000 square meters of exhibition space filled with representatives from more than 2,000 companies – including 167 Spanish firms. Some 90,000 people from 201 countries are expected to descend on the show.
Behind the scenes, before the new flagships are unveiled, competing business models discussed, and mobile’s hitherto unimaginable future shaped, MWC is an event planned and finely tuned to the last detail.
The staging of the congress, which formally starts in Barcelona on March 2, quietly began on February 18 with all the necessary security measures put in place to keep any information about those new products launches from leaking out. More than 10,000 people have been involved in the preparations for the event, including contractors, staff from the evens site the Fira de Barcelona, and drivers of the 1,800 trailer trucks carrying all kinds of sales collateral.

MONSTROUS ANCIENT BLACK HOLE IS 12 BILLION TIMES HEAVIER THAN THE SUN
The universe is a huge place, and the numbers used to describe just how mind-bogglingly large things are out there can be hard to grasp on their own. For example, astronomers have recently discovered a black hole in a far-away corner of the universe. This black hole isn’t just big — it’s monstrously large and almost impossibly bright. This object, some 12.8 billion light years away, is 420 trillion times more luminous and 12 billion times more massive than the sun.
The newly discovered black hole, dubbed SDSS J010013.02, is remarkable for several reasons, not least of which is its incredible size. However, coupled with its advanced age, the mass is even more unusual. Because it’s 12.8 billion light years away, the light coming from this object is 12.8 billion years old. That places it very early in the universe, less than 1 billion years after the ‘Big Bang’. It’s six times larger and brighter than any other black hole from that era ever discovered.