Donald Trump Fires Miss California USA

By John Rogers, Associated Press

Los Angeles (AP) – Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, who stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy when she expressed her opinion that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry, got the word from pageant poobah Donald Trump on Wednesday: "You’re fired."

Trump and other pageant leaders said Prejean was being sacked not because of her controversial remarks but because she hadn’t been holding up her end of the agreement she signed when she entered the pageant.

"This was a decision based solely on contract violations, including Ms. Prejean’s unwillingness to make appearances on behalf of the Miss California USA organization," the California pageant’s executive director, Keith Lewis, said in a statement.

Lewis had complained at a news conference last month that Prejean was skipping Miss California USA events while speaking out against gay marriage at unsanctioned appearances.

There are two sides to every story though?

English language gets its one millionth word

 
The English language, which has more words than any other language in the history of the world, today added its one millionth word or phrase, according to the site Global Language Monitor. Several phrases were in the running, including “Jai Ho,” “Slumdog,” (terms popularized by the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire) and “N00b,” a derogatory name for an amateur video-game player.

But the winner was “Web 2.0,” a phrase usually applied to social networking sites such as Facebook, and Twitter. (The Global Language Monitor, somewhat stiffly, calls “[Web 2.0] a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services. It has crossed from technical jargon into far wider circulation in the last six months.”) Since 2008, the Global Language Monitor, which is based in Texas, has been counting down its “Million Word March.”

According to the site, a new English word or phrase is created about every 98 minutes, for an average of…

[Not to be picky but wouldn’t “Web 2.0” be the 1,000,000 & 1,000,001?]

Microsoft Will Soon Unveil Free Anti-Virus Software

Reuters

BOSTON–Microsoft Corp (MSFT: 22.55, n.a., n.a.%) is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for PCs that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp (SYMC: 16.45, n.a., n.a.%) and McAfee Inc.

A Microsoft spokesman said Wednesday that the world’s biggest software maker is testing an early version of the product with its own employees. Microsoft would "soon" make a trial version, or product beta, available via its Web site, he added, but declined to provide a specific date.

Symantec shares fell 1.6% in afternoon trading and McAfee fell 1.8%, while Microsoft was…