Firefox 3 Release Breaks World Record (and More!)

It’s time for a quick dose of news with Kandy Korrespondent!

On Wednesday the Colombian military successfully rescued 15 hostages from the FARC rebels. Most notable among the hostages was Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian Senator and presidential candidate, who was kidnapped in 2002. Her family alongside the French government has been working tirelessly to secure her release for the past 6 years. A recent photo showing her incredibly frail caused all parties to ramp up their efforts. French Prime Minister Sarkozy made her rescue a foreign policy priority.

Also among the rescued were three DOD contractors, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell who were captured in 2003 after their plane crash-landed in the Colombian jungle. The three arrived in San Antonio, Texas Wednesday night.

The Colombian rescue team posed as a civilian NGO organization that supposedly had offered to fly the rebels and the hostages to meet with rebel commander Alfonso Cano. Once they were in the air, however, the soldiers quickly overpowered the two rebels and freed the hostages.

In Other News:

Starbucks has said that it will close 600 stores during the next few months. An estimated twelve thousand workers will be affected. With the economy crumbling, the international giant has seen its’ profits tumble during recent months. At the close of trading this past Tuesday, Starbucks stock was 50% less than what it was a year ago. Most of the stores slated for closing are ones that have been opened in the past two years—specifically those that are close to other Starbucks locations. On a personal and purely selfish note, I have to say that as long as there’s one within a mile of campus so I can get my redeye every morning it’s all fine by me.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

It’s official—the release of Firefox 3 gave Mozilla the new Guinness world record for the largest amount of software downloads. The final total was 8,002,530 downloads by people in 25 countries. At one point Mozilla servers were handling 9,000 downloads a minute! Since the initial release, there have been over 28 million downloads of the new version of Firefox. The certification ceremony by Guinness World Records will occur next week in London.

That’s the news!

[photo courtesy of the BBC]