World

In the state's first decision involving juries and social media, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has called on judges to better police jurors' use of the Internet to make sure they do not discuss cases online, and thus risk a mistrial. The court said judges need to do more to explain to jurors that refraining from conversations about a case also means not posting anything about it on Facebook or Twitter, common practice in today's technology-driven world. "Jurors must separate and insulate their jury service from their digital lives," the court said in a ruling involving a Plymouth Superior Court...

His promising sophomore season at Wheaton, one in which Sean Ryan (inset) was swinging away at a .367 clip through 15 games, ended last March against Clark, when the conference's reigning Rookie of the Year suffered a knee injury in a collision at first base. This season, the Wheaton College baseball team is riding a healthy Ryan to the program's first appearance in the NCAA Division 3 College World Series since 2006. The Lyons (38-9) punched their ticket to Wisconsin with a 2-0 win over Western New England in the New England Regional final...

"American Idol" finalist Joshua Ledet won't be belting it out on this season's final showdown. The booming 20-year-old vocal powerhouse from Westlake, La., was revealed Thursday to have received the fewest viewer votes on the Fox talent contest, leaving bluesy 21-year-old crooner Phillip Phillips of Leesburg, Ga., and sassy 16-year-old budding diva Jessica Sanchez of San Diego to compete for the show's record deal grand prize on next week's finale....

Palioca helps school to World Series berth In his first start of the season, Wheaton College sophomore Alec Palioca gave a hint of what was to follow. The former King Philip Regional High star pitched 7 ⅓ shutout innings of a 1-0 win over Webster University on March 11 in Florida. That no-decision was followed by eight consecutive wins, a catalyst for Wheaton's run to the NCAA Division 3 World Series for the second time in program history.

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

What does National Geographic consider the best island in the world? Tahiti? Capri, Italy? Lord Howe Island, Australia? Nope. According to its recent book, "The 10 Best of Everything," it's actually Nantucket, which takes the coveted spot in the ten best islands category.  Nantucket? No disrespect to the Massachusetts hotspot, but it seems a bit of an odd choice on a list that doesn't even include Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, or the Bahamas. Travel writer Leslie Thomas came up with the list for National Geographic and had the...

On a recent Friday morning, a classroom of teenagers at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School broke up into small groups and spent an hour not answering questions about Albert Camus's "The Plague. " It wasn't that the students were shy, or bored, or that they hadn't done the reading. They were following instructions: Ask as many questions as they could, and answer none of them. The kids wrote in rapid fire on sheets of butcher paper. "Why is everyone acting normal when people are dropping dead?"

The headlines from last month's Iranian nuclear talks in Istanbul could not have been more misleading: "Iran is ready to resolve nuclear issues. " The accumulation of historical fact in this long crisis proves just the opposite: The Iranian regime is bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon, and will take full advantage of diplomacy toward this end if allowed to do so, including this week's talks in Baghdad. Indeed, the Iranian strategy of exploiting diplomacy to further advance the nuclear program is a matter of regime policy.

Polls show that frustration with Washington has never been higher — and who could argue? Most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Most lawmakers openly concede that nothing will get done before the November elections. The leaders of both parties are already trading threats over the possibility of a national debt default next year. Barack Obama got elected by promising to change the tone in Washington, but clearly he's failed, as George W. Bush did before him. That should be a clue that the partisan animosity consuming the political system doesn't originate in the White House.

Is fiction good for us? We spend huge chunks of our lives immersed in novels, films, TV shows, and other forms of fiction. Some see this as a positive thing, arguing that made-up stories cultivate our mental and moral development. But others have argued that fiction is mentally and ethically corrosive. It's an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down? This controversy has been flaring up — sometimes literally, in the form of book burnings — ever since Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic.

SYDNEY - Australia is the world's happiest nation based on criteria including income, jobs, housing, and health, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. Australia led Norway and the United States, the Paris-based group's Better Life Index showed, when each of 11 categories surveyed in 36 nations is given equal weight. Life expectancy at birth in Australia is almost 82 years, two years higher than the OECD average, the survey showed. More than 72 percent of people aged 15 to 64 in Australia have a paid job, above the OECD average of 66 percent.

The All-American Soap Box Derby, the Depression-born race that initially was the sole domain of boys who pieced together their street machines from scraps off dad's workbench, has gone through some changes. Your daddy's Oldsmobile may be out of production, but your grandfather's motorless soap box car still pokes along in kit form - especially in Arlington, where Cary Conrad, a 55-year-old electrical engineer, has worked tirelessly in recent years to revive a sport that was once as much a part of Americana as a '57 Chevy.

(David L. Ryan/Globe staff) Fareed Zakaria to Harvard graduates: "When we come together, when we put aside petty difference, when we cooperate, the results are astounding. " By Johanna Kaiser, Town Correspondent Acclaimed journalist and author Fareed Zakaria told graduating Harvard University students on Thursday that the world is in the midst of an "astonishing age of progress" that they can help shape. "When we come together, when we put aside petty difference, when we cooperate, the results are...

East Asia's developing economies could face a shock from China's slowdown and need to boost domestic demand to offset weak exports due to a sluggish U.S. recovery and Europe's debt crisis, the World Bank said Wednesday. Overall growth for East Asian economies should decline from last year's 8.2 percent to a still-robust 7.6 percent, the bank said. The group includes China, South Korea and Southeast Asia and excludes Japan. "As external demand is likely to remain weak, countries in developing East Asia and Pacific need to rely...

The world's tallest tower and Tokyo's biggest new landmark, the Tokyo Sky Tree, has opened to the public. Nearly 8,000 visitors were expected to take high-speed elevators up to the observation decks of the 634-meter (2,080-foot) tower Tuesday to mark its opening. It is recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest tower, beating out the Canton Tower in China, which is 600 meters (1,968 ½ feet). The world's tallest structure is Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which stands 828 meters (2,717 feet)

The United States fell to its second straight defeat at the Team World Cup and Serbia posted its second victory in two matches on Tuesday. Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek won their singles in straight sets, Berdych defeating Andy Roddick 6-1, 6-2 and Stepanek cruising past James Blake 6-2, 6-1. Serbia also took an unassailable 2-0 lead over Russia. Viktor Troicki lost only seven points on serve in a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Dmitry Tursunov. Janko Tipsarevic secured Serbia's victory by defeating Alex Bogomolov Jr. 6-1, 6-3. Russia fell to 0-2. Defending champion...

Facebook was supposed to soar. Instead, it plunged. After the social network's stock fizzled on Friday in its long-awaited debut, its stock fell 11 percent on Monday, even as the rest of the stock market rallied. The downward spiral has left some people sitting on big losses, and others scratching their heads. After all, nothing fundamental has changed at Facebook in the days since the much-hyped company came to the stock market — Facebook still has more than 900 million users, its 28-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg controls the company, and it is still one of the few...

Having studied typesetting and typography at Simmons College (in another century), having worked in a pressroom, and having been a corporate librarian, I found Leah Price's Ideas piece intriguing and provocative (" Other ways to use a book ," May 6). As Paul Krugman states in the Bibliophiles interview in the same edition, "The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for, but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren't looking for. " As an avid reader, I maintain that books are primarily for reading, and as I have reinterated since first...