TurkmenPost

Microsoft said yesterday that Martin Taylor, a vice president appointed in March to revamp marketing for the MSN Web sites and Windows Live services, had left the company.

"We’ve made the difficult decision to part ways with Martin Taylor but we don’t comment on personnel matters," the company said in an e-mailed statement that did not disclose the reason for his departure. Adam Sohn, a director in the group that reported to Mr. Taylor, declined to comment. Mr. Taylor could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Taylor, 36, had worked at Microsoft for 13 years. A protégé of Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, he was credited with helping Microsoft beat back the threat posed by the free Linux operating system when he was head of platform strategy for the Windows group.

Mr. Taylor was quoted in a Microsoft news release Monday about the new Windows Live instant messaging service and was scheduled to talk with reporters about it. Interviews were instead handled by Mr. Sohn because of what the company said yesterday was a scheduling conflict.

British popster James Blunt’s song You’re Beautiful has taken a beating of late, with even the singer himself referring to it as "overplayed".

But Britain’s Daily Mail has revealed that the song might have miracle powers.

Five-year-old Claudia De’Alwis, had been a coma for 10 days following a head-first plunge from a five-metre balcony. She began to awake after her favourite song came over the hospital radio - it was Blunt’s You’re Beautiful.

Claudia’s father, Paul D’Alwis, 40 told the newspaper he was convinced it was the song that brought her around.

"Claudia loves You’re Beautiful and she used to sing it all the time. It was like her theme tune," he said.

"Following the accident, the doctors warned us she might not make it, and after 10 days in a coma we were desperately worried that she wasn’t going to recover.

"But then the song came on the radio and she started to move for the first time, and we could tell she was starting to wake up.

"It was an unforgettable moment when she opened her eyes and acknowledged us at last."

Claudia, an only child, was playing on the balcony at a friend’s house when the accident occurred. Her father said that, as the family lived in a single-storey house, she might have been unaware of the dangers of such heights.

Her family hope that she will be well enough to go home in time for her sixth birthday next month.

via smh.