This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news… This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive.

If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite dies aged 64
Oscar-nominated British actor Pete Postlethwaite has died at the age of 64, a spokesman has announced. Journalist and friend Andrew Richardson said Postlethwaite, who was made an OBE in 2004, died peacefully in hospital in Shropshire after a lengthy illness. In 1994, he was nominated for an Oscar for In The Name of the Father. Actor Bill Nighy, who performed with Postlethwaite at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre in the 1970s…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12106753

Facebook worth $50 billion after investment
Facebook has received investments that place the social network’s value at $50 billion, according to a published report. Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and an unnamed Russian investor have invested $500 million in Facebook, the New York Times reported late Sunday, citing people close to the transaction. The investment would make Facebook worth more than media companies such as Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500)…
http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/03/technology/facebook_goldman/index.htm

Peaceful Vote on Sudan Appears More Likely
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the situation “a ticking time bomb.” A team of British researchers are so concerned about the prospects of a conflict that they published a study on the possible price tag: $100 billion. Even George Clooney is focusing on it and has joined with Google to monitor the potential battlefields, by satellite imagery. But what, really, are the chances that the independence referendum…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/world/africa/03sudan.html

Blood test to spot cancer gets big boost from J&J
A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to being available at your doctor’s office. Boston scientists who invented the test and health care giant Johnson & Johnson will announce Monday that they are joining forces to bring it to market. Four big cancer centers also will start studies using the experimental test this year. Stray cancer cells in…
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDefault/8ef5320729ce4298abefc1903704c7d5/Article_2011-01-03-Cancer%20Blood%20Test/id-4991a73ffd124be1acd0deadfa90dff6

City’s Graphic Ad on the Dangers of H.I.V. Is Dividing Activists
The advertisement opens like a French film noir, showing portraits of melancholy-looking men standing against a shadowy black-and-white backdrop of menacing New York City streets. “When you get H.I.V.,” the narrator intones, “it’s never just H.I.V.” To music that telegraphs calamity, the advertisement warns of osteoporosis, “a disease that dissolves your bones,” flashes a gory picture of anal cancer and delivers a punch line…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/nyregion/04hiv.html

Son of Iranian Ex-Shah Is Found Dead
The apparent suicide of the former shah of Iran’s youngest son has shocked and saddened Iranian emigres, many of whom were forced into exile by the Islamic Revolution and hoped their country’s monarchy could one day be restored. The death of 44-year-old Alireza Pahlavi of a gunshot wound at his home in Boston brought home the personal tragedies of many who fled Iran more than three decades ago, and symbolized another…
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/01/04/us/AP-US-Obit-Shah-of-Irans-Son.html

Simone Back Announces Suicide On Facebook–And None Of Her Friends Help
Forty-two year-old Simone Back announced her intention to commit suicide in a status update on Facebook–and not one of her over 1,000 Facebook friends reached out in person to help. According to the Daily Mail, Back, who committed suicide on Christmas Day, wrote in her Facebook status, “Took all my pills be dead soon bye bye everyone.” What followed was a series of callous posts from some of Back’s Facebook friends…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/05/simone-back-facebook-suicide_n_804566.html

Birds Dying In Italy: Thousands Of Turtle Doves Fall Dead From Sky
On Wednesday, GeaPress reported hundreds — possibly thousands — of dead and dying birds in Italy. Countless turtle doves were found scattered in the streets, in flower beds and hanging tragically from trees “like Christmas balls” in the town of Faenza. Many of the birds that fell dead from the sky were discovered with a mysterious blue stain in their beaks. In the past week, similar incidents of mass animal deaths have been…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/birds-dying-in-italy-thou_n_805541.html

Historic day ahead after decades of war
Several million people will decide in the next week or so whether to give birth to the world’s newest nation. They will cast ballots on whether to declare independence at polling stations sprinkled across the vast, flat plains of Southern Sudan, an East African landscape long riven by chaos. War and famine have ravaged generations in the south for as long as anyone can remember. Fighting forced more people from their homes…
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/05/sudan.historic.day/index.html

Twitter For Mac Is Like Massively Multiplayer IM — Will It Alter Twitter Itself?
Back in August, I first got to try out the Twitter Streaming API via the User Streams feature which was being beta tested on a new version on popular third-party client TweetDeck. “Twitter User Streams Is Crack For Realtime Web Junkies,” was the title I went with. For this post, I sort of wanted to use the title “If User Streams Is Crack, Twitter For Mac Is A Crack Pipe.” Then I thought better of it. Actually, I didn’t…
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/06/twitter-for-mac/