Write your Last Wish On Facebook Part II

A depressed charity worker killed herself as Facebook users mocked a suicide note she left on the social networking website.

So-called Facebook ‘friends’ of Simone Back responded with cruel messages after she posted a message that read: ‘Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one.’

One user replied calling her a liar who ‘overdoses all the time’ while another said it was ‘her choice’. Miss Back, 42, is thought to have been dying of an overdose as the messages were posted on Christmas Day.

Yesterday Miss Back’s mother demanded to know why none of her daughter’s 1,082 Facebook friends tried to save her.

Jennifer Langridge, 60, said: ‘Nobody told me anything about it until the following day when I was sent a text saying “Get help”. I am disabled so can’t get up the stairs to Simone’s flat so I called the police straight away. It is upsetting to think nobody did anything for my daughter.’

Miss Back’s friend, Samantha Owen, said: ‘Everyone just carried on arguing with each other on Facebook like it wasn’t happening. Some of those people lived within walking distance of Simone.

‘If one person just left their computer and went to her house her life could have been saved.’

Miss Back posted her final status update at 10.53pm on Christmas Day. At 11pm, one of Miss Back’s friends wrote in response: ‘She ODs all the time and she lies.’

An hour later a Facebook user wrote: ‘Did you catch the part about Simone taking pills?? .. the ‘bye bye’ part?? Did anyone go by personally and check on Simone.. or call 999?? what’s wrong with you people??’

The first friend responded: ‘She does it all the time, takes all of her pills,’ adding: ‘She’s not a kid anymore.’

Another Facebook user replied: ‘If any of you lot actually call yourself a friend one of you should call around and see if she’s ok, so glad I don’t personally know any of you, heartless.’

After the discovery of Miss Back’s body on Boxing Day, Mrs Langridge posted a message on her daughter’s page: ‘My daughter Simone passed away today so please leave her alone now.’

Miss Back, from Brighton, is thought to have had relationship troubles.

A spokesman for the site insisted the safety of its users was of “paramount importance”.

A statement said Facebook was “deeply saddened” to hear of Ms Back’s death.

'We have a close working relationship with the Samaritans and have a process in place whereby friends and family who are concerned about someone can report it to us through the help centre,” it said.

'A team of trained professionals are then able to review the case and the Samaritans will make contact with the person at risk.'

Write your Last Wish On Facebook Part I

KUALA LUMPUR: “It was the first and the last time he said he loved me in 22 years of knowing him. And now, he’s gone,” sobbed air stewardess, Chelvin Kong, 28, recalling her last conversation with her brother.

He committed suicide in the wee hours of Wednesday last week. Stating she and her brother, Alviss, 22, had drifted apart since she moved to Brunei after getting married and joining the Royal Brunei Airlines some nine years ago, they still stayed in touch via Facebook.

"I would check his status updates on Facebook before going to bed and we would tease and exchange comments with each other," Chelvin told The Malay Mail.

She became concerned when she saw Alviss' status at 11.15pm on Tuesday, stating there was a 45-minute countdown to the end of his life.

“At first, I thought he was joking," said Chelvin. "What freaked me out was him asking me to take care of the family, especially my mum.”

Taken aback by Alviss' comments, Chelvin said: “Never once had he expressed such mushy words in all the years I had known him.”

Chelvin then tried to call her brother about 1.30am.

When she did not get a response, she contacted her father to check on Alviss. Her father told her Alviss was at his usual mamak spot near their apartment, having a drink with his friends.

Chelvin then persuaded her father to go to the mamak stall and call her from there.

“I spoke to Alviss when my father passed the phone to him. When I scolded him for not answering his handphone, his excuse was he had not heard it ringing. He told me the Facebook comments were just a joke and that he was pulling a prank on his friends.

”During the call, Chelvin said he assured her everything was fine and told her to go to sleep. Reassured, Chelvin called it a night. Thus, she was shocked to get a call from her father later at 3.30am telling her Alviss had jumped off the 14th floor of the apartment building.

“I heard a loud noise and when I looked down from the veranda. It was Alviss lying covered in blood on a car at the ground floor," he had told her.

It is learnt Alviss had been emotionally istressed over a recent breakup with his girlfriend.

Chelvin said she knew about her brother's relationship and learnt the couple had split from his Facebook relationship status update.

It is learnt Alviss and his ex-girlfriend were together for four months. Both had been blogging about the end of the relationship.
Alviss

LAST PICTURE ALIVE: Alviss' final Facebook photo

In a farewell note on his Facebook profile page, Alviss posted one last picture of himself tearing up. Alviss' father, a taxi driver, was disappointed at not being informed his son had been harbouring suicidal thoughts.

Declining to be named, the 60-year-old said he learnt only later that Alviss had confided to his friends about his heartbreak.

He felt they should have alerted a family member, whether or not it was a prank.

"I was there at the mamak stall with Alviss. His friends could have alerted me then about the comments and his conversations with them."

He denied barring the ex-girlfriend from visiting his son's body last Thursday.

“I'm not angry with his ex-girlfriend. She can come and pay her respects if she wants.”

Noting Alviss had introduced the woman as his girlfriend a few months back, he said: "Why didn't he think about his family as much as he did for a girl he only knew for four months?"

Meanwhile, Alviss' mother had yet to be informed of his death as she is reportedly emotionally weak and the family was waiting for the right time to break the news.

She is currently in Brunei to help care for Chelvin’s newborn daughter and is still under the impression the couple had rushed to KL on an urgent work matter.

Mutual friends of the ex-couple were seen outside the funeral parlour at Jirat Kwong Tong here on Friday night.

“We are all here to show support when his ex-girlfriend arrives. To us, no one is to be blamed here. We don’t want reporters to question her about anything," said one of the friends at the wake.

“Speculation from family, friends and the media stating his ex-girlfriend is the cause of the suicide should end. What has happened was just a breakup, common among youngsters these days," said another friend.

A better world needs better people

Let us live in peace and harmony.Salut

"Brace for impact. We are facing a double-dip recession"

Number of poor in US jumps to record 43.7 million

By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) – 23 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The number of people living in poverty in the United States leapt by nearly four million last year to 43.7 million, the highest number since the US Census began collecting data on America's poor 51 years ago, officials said Thursday.

One in seven people lived below the poverty line in 2009 in the world's richest nation, or on less than 22,000 dollars a year for a family of four.

That put the poverty rate at 14.3 percent, the highest level since 1994, said David Johnson, head of the US Census Bureau's housing and household economic division.

The number of people without health insurance also reached a sorry record, sweeping past the 50 million mark last year for the first time, Johnson said as the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty, income and health insurance coverage.

Just under 51 million Americans had no health insurance in 2009, up from 46.3 million in 2008, according to the census report, based on data collected early this year.

"This is the highest number of uninsured since 1987, the first year comparable health insurance data were collected," said Johnson, linking the spikes in both the number of poor and uninsured in the United States to the dull economy and rising unemployment.

Poverty hit blacks and Hispanics twice as hard as whites and Asians, according to the Census data. Around a quarter of African-Americans and Hispanics lived in poverty, compared with 12.3 percent of whites and 12.5 percent of Asians.

Children were also hit hard by the rising rate of poverty, with more than one in five under-18s, or 15.5 million kids from all ethnic groups, living in poverty last year compared to 19 percent, or 14.1 million kids, in 2008.

Ten percent of all kids in the United States, or 7.5 million children, had no health insurance, roughly the same number and rate as in 2008.

While the numbers of Americans living in poverty were high, they fell short of the 45 million that experts had predicted, thanks to median incomes holding steady at just under 50,000 dollars a year and poverty actually falling among senior citizens.

President Barack Obama seized on the slivers of good news among the bad, saying the steps taken by his administration had helped millions of Americans to keep their heads above water in an ailing economy.

"The data released today ... remind us that a historic recession does not have to translate into historic increases in family economic insecurity," Obama said.

"Because of the Recovery Act and many other programs providing tax relief and income support to a majority of working families -- and especially those most in need -- millions of Americans were kept out of poverty last year," he said.

"The substantial expansion of the Children?s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) helped inoculate our children from the economic distress experienced by their parents, as there was little change in the percentage of children without health insurance."

Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at Washington-based think-tank the Brookings Institution, agreed with Obama that the social safety net had "kept many Americans, children and adults, from falling into poverty.

"Our public programs, especially food stamps, unemployment insurance and Medicaid, have been exceptionally responsive in this recession. They have responded exactly as they were intended to and kept many people out of poverty.

"The story for the elderly, where poverty declined, is in large part a Social Security story, and that's a public program too," he added.

"But any time that child poverty goes up by 1.4 million kids, that's bad news," Haskins told AFP.

The poverty picture was unlikely to improve in the short-term, said Brookings fellow Isabel Sawhill, predicting the recession will cause 10 million more people, including six million children, to join the ranks of the poor by the middle of the decade.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

Attractive features in Women

Beauty lies in the eyes of the BEER-holder LOL!

Piggy fight

Never fight with a pig.
You can’t win.
You both get dirty.
And the Pig loves it.

-Pasquale Capozzi-

Who says Diego Armando Maradona is God?

he is a superstitious jerk who dont wash his suit since day one for believing it will help his team to win the world cup