Category: news

Josie Rourke is named as the new artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre company, replacing Michael Grandage.

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Manchester United winger Nani is set to miss up to three weeks with a leg injury sustained in the 3-1 defeat by Liverpool.

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Police in Nepal investigate how an Indian “hitman” shot a former TV executive being held in a Kathmandu prison.

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Google has launched a version of its Person Finder service for people caught up in the Japanese earthquake.

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Swans’ behinds measured in name of conservation

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US actor Charlie Sheen files a $100m (£62m) legal action against the makers of Two and a Half Men after being fired from the sitcom.

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Airline giant Virgin Atlantic has announced the creation of 450 new jobs.

Many of the new jobs, which include 350 cabin staff and 50 pilots, will be based at Gatwick airport.

The Crawley-based airline said it was creating a new route between Manchester and Las Vegas, and increasing London departures to the Caribbean and Ghana.

It will also introduce a new fleet of 10 Airbus A330 aircraft over the next two years, with the first two entering service in the next two months.

Corneel Koster, director of operations, safety and security for Virgin Atlantic, said: “We have enjoyed a good year of recovery and can now look forward to expanding our network and welcoming a new fleet of aircraft.”

The airline said the bulk of the new cabin crew roles had been created to support the additional weekly flights from London to Ghana, Tobago, Grenada and Havana.

The launch of the new Manchester to Las Vegas route will create 100 crew jobs in the Manchester area.

The recruitment drive is in addition to the 200 jobs that Virgin Atlantic announced in November for its new contact centre in Swansea.

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The final day of hearings at the war crimes trial of Liberia’s ex-President Charles Taylor starts at a UN court for Sierra Leone in The Hague.

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A massive earthquake has hit the north-east of Japan, triggering fires in several areas including Tokyo, and numerous casualties are feared.

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A court order, banning Sony from importing PlayStation 3’s into the Netherlands has been lifted following a legal challenge.

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Children need to leave school with the skills required for the workplace as well as knowledge, a head teachers’ leader will say later.

Association of School and College Leaders president John Fairhurst will say such skills should be recognised alongside GCSEs in England.

He will say the league tables system “impinges destructively” on teaching.

It comes as ministers are boosting the place of facts and traditional subjects in schools.

They have ordered a review of the national curriculum, as well as bringing in the English Baccalaureate, which will be awarded to any student gaining grade C or higher in maths, English, two science qualifications, a language and history or geography.

The ASCL president says young people need both knowledge and skills, and will tell members at his association’s conference in Manchester that the “dichotomy” between the two is “a myth”.

“Successful people have both. Employers understand this. They want knowledge plus a variety of skills and attributes: teamwork, dependability, honesty, persuasion, genuine literacy and numeracy,” he will say.

He will say that ASCL and the Confederation of British Industry agree that “the bottom line is not test scores but what young people really know and can do when they leave us”.

He will call for the English Baccalaureate to include vocational subjects and skills that prepare youngsters for the workplace.

Mr Fairhurst will say: “ASCL has long argued for an English Baccalaureate. Not the one just launched but a genuine baccalaureate that embraces knowledge plus skills, and which further accredits the whole range of school and community involvement.

“The current English Bacc is not a qualification, it is a performance indicator.”

Many schools were angered that the English Bacc was included as a league tables measure only months after it was brought in, while supporters of subjects such as music and religious education are campaigning for their inclusion in the qualification.

“We do not need a new prescription of knowledge. We need a radical rethink of assessment, league tables and accountability procedures,” Mr Fairhurst will say.

“The system as it is now impinges destructively upon the curriculum and innovative, inspirational pedagogy,” he will say.

The call for more recognition of workplace skills was backed by Confederation of British Industry. Its chief policy director Katja Hall said: “Every school or college leaver needs the right skills, knowledge and attitude for success in today’s competitive workplace.

“But currently employers find that too many young people lack employability skills such as customer awareness, self-management and problem solving.

“Recent school reform has failed to place enough emphasis on these skills. That’s why the CBI fully welcomes ASCL’s call for the government to support the development of employability skills in the curriculum.”

Education Secretary Michael Gove is set to speak at the conference on Friday afternoon.

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People stuck for a stamp in Denmark will soon be able to send a text message to pay the postage on a letter.

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Profits at pub group JD Wetherspoon fell as chairman Tim Martin warned of the impact of a “pernicious combination of increasing taxes and regulation”.

Despite posting record half-year sales up 7.6% to £525.4m, Wetherspoon’s pre-tax profits fell 11% to £32.2m.

The operating margin fell from 10% to 9.4%, with Mr Martin blaming higher energy, food, labour and tax costs.

Trading in the six weeks to 6 March had also seen like-for-like sales up 2.8% and total sales up 7.9%.

But Mr Martin said the business environment was increasingly tough.

“Britain has now become a high tax and regulation environment for business, with the effects of this being seen in many thousands of closed pubs and other small businesses across Britain, as well as a marked increase in unemployment, ” he said.

During the six months 14 Wetherspoon pubs opened and two closed, leaving the group with 787 outlets.

The dividend for the six months is 4 pence.

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Electro-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys have for decades been filling club floors with hits such as West End Girls and Go West.

Now, they’ve turned their music skills to the very different dance form of contemporary ballet, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen.

They’ve written the score to The Most Incredible Thing, a ballet adapted from one of Andersen’s lesser-known stories of the same name and soon to be premiered at Sadler’s Wells, London.

It’s by no means the first time the duo’s Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have ventured into other areas of the performing arts.

They are already credited with the score and lyrics to the musical Closer to Heaven, their soundtrack to Eisenstein’s film classic Battleship Potemkin and the music for David Almond’s play My Dad’s a Birdman.

Their elaborate, theatrical tour shows have become the stuff of legend too.

But their first foray into ballet, The Most Incredible Thing – choreographed by the award-winning and controversial Javier De Frutos and featuring star dancer Ivan Putrov – has piqued the interest of their fans and dance enthusiasts.

Tennant and Lowe know they have to please a wide cross-section of people.

“The range of the audience is a challenge,” says Tennant. “Hopefully our fans will be interested in the dance, although it will probably be the first time some of them have been to a ballet.”

Nonetheless, he says, a project such as this was, in career terms, part of the natural order of things.

“We don’t ever want to do something everyone else is doing and this seemed fresh, not only for us but also for pop music.

“We’ve never been afraid to explore areas not normally covered by pop. Our pop is dance music but you should be able to go into contemporary dance too – it’s fun and exciting.”

‘Power and glamour’

The Andersen fairytale will also be fresh for many. It tells the story of a king who sets his people a challenge to present “the most incredible thing”, with a prize of half his kingdom and marriage to the princess.

One hopeful creates a magnificent clock containing the whole of creation only to see it destroyed by a jealous rival. Ultimately, the clock miraculously comes back to life, leading to a happy ending.

Tennant says he liked the story because it represented the “fascinating drama, energy, power and glamour of everyday life.

He read its meaning to be that “you can’t kill an idea. You can kill the physical reality of something but the ideas live on”.

But it was Lowe who came up with the ballet idea after buying a collection of Andersen’s tales.

“Some of them are quite twisted with odd endings. Reading The Most Incredible Thing, I thought it would make a great ballet. It’s a traditional story for a classic Tchaikovsky work.”

There Lowe’s thought would have ended, but for Tennant remembering he’d had a call from Royal Ballet star Putrov, asking if they would write some music for him.

Tennant and Lowe had become friends with Putrov through their work with the artist and director Sam Taylor-Wood.

“Ivan wasn’t anticipating what we came up with, I think he was just asking for some music to the Seven Veils, he got a bit more than that – a full three-act ballet with a narrative,” says Lowe.

Tennant says the coincidence was “weird” but dismisses the idea that fate has been at play in their careers. (Tennant and Lowe met by chance in a London music store in 1981).

“It’s more about seizing the opportunity,” he says.

Putrov introduced them to Sadler’s Wells, who brought in playwright Matthew Dunster to set down, scene by scene, emotion by emotion, the “music map” Tennant and Lowe followed to create their score.

And that score has turned into a track list of 21 pieces of music, divided into three acts in the tradition of classical ballet.

“It’s only a short story but it has so much content,” says Lowe. “So when you come to write music, it’s a lot.”

But just how much of that music, to be performed by a 26-piece orchestra, is undeniable Pet Shop Boys fare?

“I think some fans will be disappointed we’re not actually in it, perhaps we could have taken a couple of roles, Neil could have been the king,” says Lowe.

“Overall the music is part of the Potemkin product range, mainly orchestral with electronics. That’s not to say it’s without catchy tunes, there are lots of melodies and themes. Miked up very loud it should sound amazing.”

Russian theme

As the man charged with putting movement to this music, Javier De Frutos admits that, despite his 20 years experience, he has faced a big feat.

“This work has forced me to work in a more angular way when my movements are normally softer, more Latin,” he says.

“When I heard the music, I didn’t hear pop, I heard Russian Constructivists, 1920s marches, militaristic stuff. The boys adore that kind of thing so that’s the way I have gone – go West as they say.”

The choreographer, who has previously ruffled feathers by dancing nude and creating a ballet featuring a deformed pope abusing a pregnant nun, was bemused to be told this production should be “a family show”.

“I didn’t know what the hell that meant. And they didn’t tell me what type of family,” he says.

The Russian theme has been carried through to the set and costumes, which are described by designer Katrina Lindsay as “naive”.

But De Frutos has used video representations of the action in parts, a move he considers in keeping with the ballet’s mix of classical meets new.

As for working with pop stars, De Frutos – who directed Mika on the video for We Are Golden – sees it as an entirely normal thing for ballet producers to be doing.

“When Swan Lake was done for the first time, Tchaikovsky was working with contemporaries, and the Pet Shop Boys are contemporaries of mine. We are not reinventing the wheel but following tradition,” he says.

With Sir Paul McCartney recently announcing he too was writing the music to a ballet, De Frutos’s vision could be realised.

For Tennant and Lowe more ballet is off the agenda, at least for now. They are back writing a new album and at the back of their minds is another musical.

“We’d like to write another one but trying to find the right story is really hard. You need luck and inspiration,” says Lowe.

“We’d want to do something totally original. Pity the Bible’s been done. I suppose we’ll just have to read more. But if anyone’s got a good idea…”

The Most Incredible Thing will be at Sadler’s Wells from 17- 26 March. The ballet’s score will be released on 14 March.

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Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Michael Schumacher are all in action on day four of the final pre-season test event at the Circuit de Catalunya.

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