EDISON, NJ – Fifteen year old Sarah Murphy was found dead last night in front of her New Jersey home. After an autopsy was conducted and medical records were reviewed, doctors concluded the cause of death was Sarah’s rare, fatal form of object-oriented separation anxiety which caused her to collapse after the discovery that her phone was not in her Vera Bradley tote bag.

Detectives have taken the prime phone theft suspect, 16-year-old self-proclaimed hipster Penelope Fox, into custody. No substantial evidence has been found, but at least three witnesses confirm that Fox rolled her eyes in response to an overheard statement made by Sarah to a group of Lacrosse players.

“Guys! I would just DIE without my cell phone,” Sarah exclaimed after school last Thursday. The statement turned out to be horrifically prescient.

After a thorough investigation, Murphy’s phone was discovered plugged into its charger on her dresser. Detectives have concluded Fox must have climbed the tree house in the backyard, opened Murphy’s bedroom window from the roof, deactivated the ADT home alarm system and plugged the phone back in, completely undetected by Sarah’s family or her puppy, Tinker.

In related news, Fox was found dead this morning in front of a secondhand store she frequently described as “so obscure you’ve probably never heard of it”. Doctors have concluded Fox must have collapsed after she discovered that her Lomography camera was not in her Urban Outfitters mini backpack.

EVANSTON—NAGS (Northwestern’s Annoying Geek Squad) released NU’s iPhone app version 1.3333 (repeating) yesterday in order to fix bugs in the old system and add more student-friendly features.

“Our first priority was to fix minor problems and glitches within the software. The most obvious error was an unfortunate spelling error in ‘Lunt Hall’ on the GPS map,” said head developer Smith Bergman.

“Students also requested that we add ‘Thirsty Thursdays’ to the campus events calendar. I assume that’s an ASG initiative to install more water fountains in campus buildings. It’s great to see students using the app to work together,” he added.

The updated version also includes more features targeted directly at students, most notably an action that allows for direct chatting with NU President Morty Schapiro.

“I just thought about, like, dumb stuff I wish I could do on my phone, and then, like, designed the software around that,” said McCormick senior Dave Brenning, who also worked on the app’s design.

When asked how the application enables the school president to BBM, a function currently only capable on the BlackBerry, Brenning responded, “Want to do worthless and unfeasible things using valuable Northwestern resources? There’s an app for that.”

The updated application also makes greater use of the interactive map that was created in the first version of the app. Now students can use the GPS system to find their way back to their dorm room from anywhere in Evanston and the greater Chicago area.

“Perfect for one-night stands,” explained freshman Sally Merkelson, who uses the Northwestern app on her purple bejeweled iPhone.

“Knowing that now I’ll somehow make it back to Bobb in the morning takes a little bit of headache out of my already horrible hangover.”

While Bergman is proud of NAGS’ work on the app, he knows there will be more room for improvement. He said he hopes to develop a breathalyzer for the phone, which rates inebriation on a scale of “buzzed,” “schwasted,” and “shitfaced”.

“It’s all about making life more enjoyable for the kids, even if it will cause tuition costs to double in the next two years. I really look forward to getting to work on version 1.667,” he said.

WASHINGTON—What started as a feud between 12-year-olds became something much more when Joe Hansen became the millionth person to join the Facebook group “One Million Against South Dakota”. When Hansen joined the group at 3:58 A.M. on October 30th, President Obama, who had been following the group closely since its start, promptly signed the executive order to revoke South Dakota’s statehood.

“As president, it is my duty to serve the American people. If the people say they don’t like South Dakota, the natural course of action is to renounce its 119-year history as a state,” said Obama in a statement later that day. The group, whose description was “i hate south dakota everyone there sucks especially chris”, was created by Timmy Griffith, a 7th-grader at Chamblee Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia.

“My cousin’s a total jerk. He said his state was better than my state and I was like nuh-uh and then he was like uh-huh so I made this Facebook group and it got a lot of people so I win,” said Timmy. He spoke to reporters in an interview conducted via Facebook Chat as part of a consciousness-raising campaign for his next project: the growing group “One Million Strong Against All Non-Facebook Forms of Communication.” If only 40 more people join, Griffith’s hopes will be realized, and Skyping, texting, phoning, and speaking face-to-face will all become illegal.

When asked what motivated this monumental act, Griffith said, “My cousin got the new iPhone. Douchebag.”