5 Ways to Build Better Relationships With Everyone

Humans are social beings. We enjoy being understood and accepted; feeling that we belong. Maybe that’s why our friends, family and romantic partners are so important to us.

Unfortunately, Western culture values individual achievement over personal relationships. We’re good at finding career success but less than stellar at connecting with other people. As a result, our relationships often suffer.

But wouldn’t you love to rekindle the spark you once had with your significant other? Be respected and understood by your friends? Admired for who you are by your family?

If you want to make all these things happen, this post is for you.

Here are 5 ways to build better relationships with everyone.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/5-ways-to-build-better-relationships-with-everyone/

Business-Vokabular für Trainees No Excuses!

Der Break-Even ist nah! Du fängst demnächst als Trainee bei BayerSiemensBoschTelekom oder irgendeinem anderen Global Player an? Dann ist der folgende Brief Pflichtlektüre: ein Leitfaden zum perfekten Business-Vokabular.

http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsstart/leitfaden-fuer-trainees-zum-perfekten-business-vokabular-a-827080.html

Facebook: is it really worth $100bn?

In The Social Network, the Oscar-winning film about the rise of Facebook, Sean Parker, the company’s founding president, tells another investor: “A million dollars isn’t cool – you know what’s cool?” The scene cuts to Parker in a different meeting. “A billion dollars,” he says.

By 2006, two years after those scenes were set, prospective buyers were reported to be offering $2 billion to buy Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder, said no. Tomorrow, Facebook will float, an event that is expected to value the business at around $100 billion. It seems that even Hollywood wasn’t thinking big enough when it comes to this behemoth of the web.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9269818/Facebook-is-it-really-worth-100bn.html

Non-Hispanic white births the minority in US

Children from racial and ethnic minorities now account for more than half the births in the US, according to the latest US census.

Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other mixed races made up 50.4 percent of births counted in the 12 month period ending in July 2011.

It puts non-Hispanic white births in the minority for the first time.

Sociologists believe the economic slowdown has contributed to a greater decline in birth rates among whites.

The US Census Bureau recorded 2.02m babies born to minorities in the year to July 2011, making just over half of all births, compared with 37% in 1990.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18100457

M&S diamond jubilee knickers? I can give you worse memorabilia

Never since Jeremy Paxman railed against the inadequacies of men's pants a few years ago has so much attention focused on Marks and Spencer's underwear output. This morning the high street retailer is launching in its (serious face) Marble Arch boardroom a new range of underwear (slightly less serious face), the M&S jubilee lingerie collection.

Does anything express your patriotic royal pride than wearing royal knickers, ideally over your union flag leggings? The question was rhetorical. Are you imagining size zero lingerie models disporting themselves on the boardroom table in sensible bras and big pants made from royal purple fringed with corgi fur? Well stop that – treason remains a capital offence, sonny.

Astoundingly, the jubilee lingerie collection isn't the apex of absurd memorabilia. Here are some other contenders.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/16/marks-spencer-diamond-jubilee-knickers-memorabilia

Italian university switches to English

From opera at La Scala to football at the San Siro stadium, from the catwalks of fashion week to the soaring architecture of the cathedral, Milan is crowded with Italian icons.

Which makes it even more of a cultural earthquake that one of Italy's leading universities - the Politecnico di Milano - is going to switch to the English language.

The university has announced that from 2014 most of its degree courses - including all its graduate courses - will be taught and assessed entirely in English rather than Italian.

The waters of globalisation are rising around higher education - and the university believes that if it remains Italian-speaking it risks isolation and will be unable to compete as an international institution.

"We strongly believe our classes should be international classes - and the only way to have international classes is to use the English language," says the university's rector, Giovanni Azzone.

Italy might have been the cradle of the last great global language - Latin - but now this university is planning to adopt English as the new common language.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17958520

US town's police ban pedestrians texting and walking

Police in the US town of Fort Lee, New Jersey, have started a battle against texters who aren't looking where they're going.

Anyone caught texting whilst walking is fined for "jaywalking", an American term for walking on the road instead of the pavement.

The crackdown is all about safety, say police in Fort Lee.

More than 20 of their pedestrians have been hit by cars in 2012. In just six weeks, they've fined 117 texters.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/18056565