General secretary of the University and College union warns that stakes are high this year for those in the clearing system The clearing process for teenagers who fail to make their A-level grades this summer will be “the most frantic and stressful in living memory”, the general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) has warned. Sally Hunt, the leader of the lecturers’ trade union, said: “The stakes have never been higher for university applicants. With tuition fees set to treble from 2012, demand for places this summer is likely to be unprecedented. “I fear that clearing will be the most frantic and stressful in living memory with thousands of young people, encouraged to aspire to university throughout their lives, left disappointed. Those who are unable to get a place this year face the prospect of having to pay the highest public university fees in the world.” However, Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), told the Observer there were no signs that the near-trebling of tuition fees would spark a dramatic rise in competition for places. She predicted that the number of students eligible to enter clearing would be similar to last year – just over 209,000 – and they will be competing for roughly the same number of places – just over
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Frontline closer to the capital than at any point since the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime
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Click here to view this media It’s not everyday you see a would-be Republican nominee for the highest office in the land find inspiration in the music from a children’s cartoon and tell America about it. Ok, well Herman Cain didn’t exactly do that, saying instead he was quoting “a poet”. No Matter. I was so impressed I had to have a little fun with this surreal image. Via NYMag : One of the weirdest moments of last night’s Republican debate probably slipped completely under the radar for most viewers. This moment occurred in Herman Cain’s closing statement, when the former pizza-chain CEO recited a favorite inspirational quote: “A poet once said, ‘life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line.’” Nothing strange about that on the surface, until you Google the quote and you realize that these words of wisdom were uttered not by a poet, but by disco queen Donna Summer in her song “The Power of One.” Even more bizarre, this isn’t even one of Summer’s classic hits — she recorded it just over a decade ago as the theme song for Pokémon: The Movie 2000 . enlarge
Continue reading …NYT’s Timothy Egan Hits ‘Biblical Bully,’ Asks: ‘Is God Listening to Rick Perry?’
August 13, 2011 No Comment
On MSNBC Friday afternoon, openly gay Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart (while substituting for host Martin Bashir) cited his newspaper competition to mock Gov. Rick Perry’s religious-right stances. “Timothy Egan has an interesting column in the New York Times,” he insisted, “that pointed out that when Rick Perry prays to God, they tend to not get answered. For example, he prays for rain, they have an extreme drought. He holds prayer services and the markets tank. Is God listening to Rick Perry?” But that loaded question is nothing compared to Egan’s actual screed on the Opinionator blog on Thursday. Remember before these excerpts that Egan was an “objective” national reporter for the Times for decades. This is your secular-left media elite when it's ready to roar.
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Euan Ferguson travels to Pembrokeshire, where sightings of sea turtles have surged, to find reasons for the marine invasion This is, it hardly needs saying, the story everyone’s been talking about all week. The turtles are coming! Giant leatherback sea turtles. Dermochelys coriacea , to be formal about it. Those who know about these things include them in an elite group known as “charismatic mega-fauna” – lions, elephants etc – not because they (necessarily) light up a room when they join a party, but because, without wishing to anthropomorphise too much, they’re much “nicer” than slugs and jellyfish, and possess a serious wooo! factor. Children are happy to stare and stare; adults get a frisson at the sheer size, the grace in the water. They are big, up to three metres long. This is one big turtle. This is Turtlezilla. And sightings, normally, are extremely rare. This summer is different though. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has asked the public to log any sighting of a giant leatherback. There have already been an unusually high number; eight in the last fortnight, mainly from around here, by walkers, yachtsmen, surfers. August is the month to watch for them. “What we do know,” according to Peter Richardson of the MCS, “is that something’s been happening in the Atlantic which is good for the leatherbacks.” They’re still on the list of critically endangered species – a colony in Gabon which was huge in the 1970s is now practically extinct. But, in the Atlantic, the leatherback population appears to be starting to thrive. So here I am in very wet, very Welsh, very west Wales, near the whales. Looking for a turtle, somewhere out at sea, off the coastline near Solva, a coast of such grandeur it would be rejected by film-location scouts as ridiculously overblown unless they were scouting for ridiculously overblown things such as Dr Who or Camelot . My turtle sighting is, frankly, unlikely to happen. There’s a lot of coast to cover for one: there’s 180
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Brad Pitt has battled Nazis and Trojans. Now, he’ll take on Zombies. The Oscar-nominee stars in “World War Z,” an adaptation of the cult hit book by Max Brooks. While the book, as /Film points out, is subtitled, “An Oral History of The Zombie War,” and is written in a retrospective style, the big screen version, according to a press release, is an in-the-moment action flick: The story revolves around United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Pitt), who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself. Enos plays Gerry’s wife Karen Lane; Kertesz is his comrade in arms, Segen. Enos refers to Mireille Enos, Emmy-nominated star of “The Killing,” who was recently added to the cast. Big name stars aside, fans are not happy with this development. In any case, here’s a photo captured from the film’s set. PHOTO:
Continue reading …Tina Fey has a second kid on the ground, having given birth to a daughter on Wednesday, People reports. Penelope Athena joins big sister Alice, 5. The 41-year-old comedian announced the pregnancy , which she called “easy,” earlier this year while promoting her book, Bossypants. Fey is married to 50-year-old composer…
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Mitt Romney thinks “corporations are people” – if so, they are the luckiest people in the world. Check out this video, hot off the press: Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Kicking Ass Discovery Date : 12/08/2011 01:17 Number of articles : 3
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Texas governor says he will work to make Washington as ‘inconsequential’ to people’s lives as possible if elected Texas governor Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential race on Saturday, jolting the crowded field seeking to unseat Barack Obama. Perry told voters in a conference call from Columbia, South Carolina, that he wants to take on Obama and said that “I full well believe I’m going to win.” About an hour later, he outlined his principles in a speech at a conservative conference in Charleston, South Carolina, declaring that if elected president, he would work to make Washington as “inconsequential” to Americans’ lives as possible. He accused Obama of providing “rudderless” leadership at home and abroad, and declared that he wants to cut taxes and free businesses from the shackles of regulation to spark an economic recovery. Perry spoke only a few hours before the release of results from a straw poll in Iowa, the state which holds the first nominating contest next year. In Iowa, thousands of Republicans mingled with presidential hopefuls on a college campus in Ames where they began voting in the first test to see how the candidates are faring with the party’s base. The poll results are nonbinding, but the outcome will probably provide a road map for the Iowa campaign heading into the caucuses that are scheduled for early February. Mitt Romney leads national polls and many states’ surveys for the chance to challenge Obama, who is considered vulnerable in next year’s election because of lingering high unemployment and the sputtering economic recovery. But there is no shortage of rivals looking to emerge as the top alternative to Romney, who lost the nomination in 2008 to John McCain. Even before he officially entered the race, polls of Republican voters showed Perry running only a few percentage points behind Romney, who has been emphasising his business background to persuade voters he can turn the economy around. But many conservatives have not embraced him because of his past support as Massachusetts governor for abortion and gay rights and a health care reform package used by Obama as a model for legislation that Republicans loathe. Evangelical Christians, a key part of the Republican base, also look askance at Romney’s Mormon faith. Through three terms as Texas governor, Perry has overseen significant job growth in his state while working to keep taxes low. He was an early backer of the small government, anti-tax Tea Party movement. He enjoys the support of social conservatives because of his opposition to abortion and gay rights. He is also an evangelical Christian who organised a well-attended prayer rally in Houston last week. Rick Perry Republicans US politics United States guardian.co.uk
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Senior Liberal Democrats attack ‘hasty’ measures as housing charities condemn the threat of eviction Coalition efforts to present a united front over the riots have come under strain as senior Liberal Democrats call for an end to “kneejerk” reactions by politicians and warn that stripping those involved of their benefits could worsen crime on the streets. In a clear sign of tensions between the governing parties, the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, Simon Hughes, insists that long-term solutions lie in supporting communities by offering opportunities and redistributing wealth, not slashing help from the state and cutting taxes for the
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