Blancer.com Tutorials and projects
Freelance Projects, Design and Programming Tutorials
world news,online new,us news,uk news
Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced a major overhaul of the English schools system to MPs.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Private and public sector workers across the country are expected to strike Portugal’s unions hope to bring the country to a near standstill on Wednesday as they stage a general strike in protest at planned wage cuts.
Transport, industry and schools are set to be severely affected by the strike, the unions said.
The strike comes two days before the parliament in Lisbon is to vote on an austerity budget.
The budget aims to quell international ease over Portugal’s public spending and deficit.
For the first time in 20 years, the country’s main unions UGT and CGTP have united in a call for a national day of industrial action.
They expect workers from the private and public sector to take part in the strike, the head of the CGTP, Manuel Carvalho da Silva, said.
“The mobilisation of workers is enormous,” he added.
The strike will hit banks, media and petrol supplies, the unions say.
They also aim to paralyse the country’s ports, and hundreds of flights are set to be cancelled.
Many Portuguese have been angered by the government’s plans to cut wages for public sector workers, freeze pensions and increase taxes.
However, analysts say the walkout is unlikely to stop the passage of the austerity budget, given that the opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) has said that in order to not jeopardise the country’s fragile finances it will abstain from the vote on Friday rather than vote against the measures.
The PSD position is crucial as Lisbon is trying to convince international investors that Portugal will not be forced to seek a bail-out like Ireland or Greece.
The austerity budget aims to reduce Portugal’s deficit from 7.3% to 4.6% of GDP in 2011 through a combination of spending cuts and tax raises.
BBC Europe business correspondent Nigel Cassidy says that Portugal has failed to prosper or drive up productivity since joining the euro at what many now say was an unrealistic exchange rate.
The country found it especially difficult to compete with China in a previously strong sector, the manufacturing of textiles and shoes, our correspondent adds.
With 80% of its public debt held abroad, the country now finds itself at the mercy of bond traders and wants to convince the markets that it will be able to meet its commitments, our correspondent says.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The atmosphere gallery promises an “interactive, immersive experience” “The general level of knowledge about climate science is extremely hazy and very rudimentary,” says Chris Rapley.
“There will be a few pieces of information or maybe misinformation; but the ability to join the dots and make sense of it – the science that shapes their lives – is quite limited.
“So people struggle – and not surprisingly – to understand what they hear through the media on this subject.”
We are standing in what looks more like a building site than a museum exhibit – all plastic coverings and hard-hats – but which will, within two weeks, be transformed into possibly the most sophisticated attempt yet to bring the science of climate change to the public.
By the time Prince Charles makes his opening speech on 4 December, this will be atmosphere – that is the title, deprived of an initial capital letter, of the newest gallery in London’s Science Museum – a £4.5m exhibit that will, in Professor Rapley’s word, “immerse” people in the topic.
The conclusions he puts forward on peoples’ understanding of the subject come largely from research his own staff have done on museum visitors.
“What it is not is the means by which we would convert someone who fervently believes climate change is a hoax”
Chris Rapley Science Museum
atmosphere is an attempt to help them clear the haze, join the dots and begin to make sense of it all.
The philosophy marks an abrupt turnaround from the museum’s previous venture into the issue last year, a temporary exhibit slugged Prove It – All the Evidence You Need to Believe in Climate Change.
In some peoples’ eyes, what it proved was that the museum was proselytising when it ought to be informing and educating – and at least privately, eyebrows were raised over the word “believe”, given that science is not supposed to be about belief but about evidence.
The atmosphere gallery, by contrast, is designed to infom – giving facts when facts exist, admitting uncertainty where that is the reality.
“What it is not is the means by which we would convert someone who fervently believes climate change is a hoax, or what have you – that is not what the gallery is attempting to do,” says Professor Rapley, the museum’s director.
“We will have succeeded if when people have had this experience, they leave more interested in the subject, more likely to read something in the media about climate change, and better able to make sense of it.”
And the gallery is also most definitely about engagement, through techniques you will not find in traditional museums.
In the nascent gallery, wisps of mesh hang above our heads like tendrils of eddies in the atmosphere.
An ice core excavated from Antarctica will illustrate how past climates can be analysed The floor describes the Earth’s surface – land, sea, ice – and rising from it are various stations where interactive potentialities lie cloaked, for now, under bubble-wrap.
One exhibit that is up and running is a central platform winged by games consoles. What the games deal with is nothing than the world’s future.
First up on the screen is a slice of the atmosphere.
As I rub my fingers across the screen, triangles emerge, representing molecules of some unspecified greenhouse gas.
An on-screen thermometer at the bottom shows the temperature of my imaginary world rising.
When it rises beyond the level the thermometer considers safe, it issues a warning.
I jab the screen, my fingertip issuing a circle of darkness that clears away some of the gas, much as some proposed geo-engineering schemes would suck up carbon dioxide.
The next game features a grasping tool, an electronic representation of the ones in fairgrounds where you can manouevre the jaws to snatch up a soft toy.
But here, we are capturing lumps of fossil fuel from the ground to burn.
The consoles are linked together; and in some games, players will see the results of their combined choices displayed on the central platform.
I can’t help imagining negotiators from the various countries at next week’s UN climate talks gathered here, playing the game – the US upping the greenhouse gas concentration, China mining new coal, and so forth – and wondering whether it might affect their approach.
Whatever the fruits of that idle speculation, there’s no doubt that this technology is much more engaging than a textbook.
Keeling made his pioneering CO2 measurements using jars such as this But is it accurate?
In order to produce something that handles like a fairground game, is it not inevitable that essential details and caveats will be lost?
It is a difficult balancing act, the museum team acknowledges.
For example, one of the modules still under wraps aims to show people how computer models of climate work, how they forecast the future and what their limitations are.
In the research world, the word is always “projection”; here, the much stronger “prediction” is employed.
“We do use the word ‘prediction’, but with a lot of caveats,” says Alex Burch, atmosphere project leader.
“What we’re trying to explain is not an absolute – it’s what scientists think might happen under a number of different scenarios.
“So we’re very cautious about what it is that we’re saying.”
Visitors with more curiosity can drill down into 600 electronic pages – sort of web-pages, but not on the world-wide web – that the museum has prepared on some of the more detailed issues.
Historical context is given by reference to the work of climate science pioneers such as Fourier, Arrhenius and Tyndall.
And the last but perhaps most impressive visual – which will arrive only when the builders have gone – will be a segment of ice core from Antarctica, storing the record of atmospheres and temperatures past.
The science in atmosphere is based on the work of authoritative institutions – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Royal Society – and the museum has engaged about 120 experts to make sure the details are absolutely correct.
What this means is that the museum has put more effort into ensuring the integrity of science in this exhibt than in anything it has done before – testament to the size of the hornet’s nest that climate science has become.
A hydrogen car forms the centrepiece of the “clean technology” section It steers clear of the overtly controversial – there is no hockey stick graph, nothing on “ClimateGate”.
But even so, atmosphere will undoubtedly have its critics; and some may focus on the decision to include an exhibit designed to show how a low-carbon society can be prosperous.
“By and large, people are really confused about a low carbon future – there’s a tendency to fear it, to think it’s a hair-shirt, grey, ‘you can’t do anything’ future,” says Chris Rapley, again citing research by the museum’s team.
“And when they begin to hear that low carbon technologies are seen by many as the great green race, that there’s money to be made out there, and actually you can have a sustainable world that’s also a high quality world, that’s news to them – that message hasn’t got across.”
Whether the message that societies can continue to grow economically while drastically curbing their carbon emissions belongs in a straightforward science exhibit is another matter; in the real world, it is very much a live topic of debate.
Whatever the caveats, there appears little doubt even from my brief early glimpse that the gallery has begun to answer the big but persistent question of how to make climate science intelligible and interesting – something that has eluded the best minds in the environmental education field for two decades.
For that reason alone, one can see a number of other organisations beating a path to the Science Museum’s door in the coming months, and inhaling deeply of the atmosphere they find.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Harrier jump jets have taken off from the Ark Royal carrier for the final time as the ship is scrapped as part of a government savings programme.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Egypt’s Christian community represents some 10% of the population Police in Egypt have clashed with Coptic Christians over the construction of a new church.
Police fired tear gas to break up the protest of at least 150 Copts, in the Giza area of Cairo.
Reports say one protester was killed and several police and protesters were injured. About 20 people were arrested.
The Christians said they had permission to build the church but Egyptian media said permits had been denied, Reuters news agency reported.
Christians make up about 10% of Egypt’s 85 million population.
There has been friction in the past between the majority Muslims and Christians, who complain they do not have the same freedom to build places of worship.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Snow fell earlier this month across the Pennines and the Scottish Highlands The UK is entering a prolonged cold snap which could bring one of the earliest significant snowfalls since 1993, according to weather forecasters.
Northern and eastern parts of the UK are expected to bear the brunt of the wintry conditions.
Overnight on Wednesday, 15-20cm (6-8in) of snow could fall in Scotland and 2-5cm (1-2in) in north-east England.
BBC forecaster Matt Taylor said: “It’s not just a short, sharp shock, it’ll be around well into next week.”
He added: “We’ve had snow earlier than this, but to have as much as this across a large part of the country, we have to go back to about 1993.”
The Met Office is warnings of heavy snow or blizzards from Thursday onwards in much of northern and eastern Scotland, and the whole of eastern England from Northumberland to the south coast.
West Wales and south-west England could also see snow on Friday.
Daytime temperatures in central London on Saturday could fall to around 2C (35F), compared with an average of 9C (48F) for the time of year.
In south-east Scotland, the temperature could struggle to get above 0C (32F).
Snow has already fallen this winter across the Pennine hills and the Scottish Highlands, with some roads forced to close.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Police in the Indian city of Mumbai say that they have arrested eight people, including senior executives of top state banks, over a suspected scam.
They say that the alleged fraud involved bribes paid to secure large corporate loans.
Senior figures from the Bank of India, the Central Bank of India and the Punjab National Bank were arrested.
The Mumbai stock exchange recorded significant losses after the arrests were made public.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Flight Commander James Blackmore was the last of four Harrier GR9 pilots to roar off the deck
A formation of Harrier jump jets have made their final journey from HMS Ark Royal – the last such flight from a UK aircraft carrier for about 10 years.
The four GR9 jets marked the end of an era when they roared off the deck near North Shields, North Tyneside.
Both the Ark Royal and the Harriers are being scrapped under cost-saving plans.
The Harriers, heading to RAF Cottesmore in Rutland, will be decommissioned in 2011 and replaced by the F35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.
The Ark Royal was sailing across the North Sea to Hamburg in Germany.
Flt Cdr James Blackmore, who was the last Harrier pilot to leave, said he was immensely proud.
‘Emotional moment’
“It is amazing. I watched a Harrier hovering over Chatham dockyard when I was eight years old and I am now fortunate enough to be flying the Harrier today,” he said.
“It’s an amazing aircraft, superb to fly and just very enjoyable.”
“HMS Ark Royal is like the girlfriend you hate and you only realise you loved her when she has binned you”
PO Andrew Collins
The crew of the 22,000-tonne Ark Royal, which has seen active service in the Balkans and 2003 invasion of Iraq, lined the decks to watch the historic departure.
Captain Jerry Kyd said there was a tear in his eye when the last Harrier left.
“It was an emotional moment and also one of real pride as we look back over 25 years service to Queen and country,” he said.
“No naval officer wants to see any ship decommissioned early and she is a fine vessel and she has a fine history.
“She is at the peak of her efficiency but one understands that very difficult decisions have to be made across government.”
One senior officer described the decision to scrap both the jets and carrier as “madness”.
Petty Officer Andrew Collins, 26, from Glasgow, said: “HMS Ark Royal is like the girlfriend you hate and you only realise you loved her when she has binned you.”
And Petty Officer David Terracciano, 31, from Portsmouth, added he was “gutted”.
The Ark Royal – the Royal Navy’s flagship – will eventually head back to her Portsmouth base on 3 December.
It will be replaced by the Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carrier at the end of the decade, which will carry F35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.
A group of former Royal Navy admirals have suggested scrapping the Harrier force and HMS Ark Royal could leave the Falklands open to attack – a claim denied by ministers who insist the UK will still be able to defend the islands.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Many of the marsupial carnivores have long been extinct They are an extraordinary and now rare group of animals but Earth has had some formidable marsupial carnivores.
These pouched killers have included lions, wolves, and even sabretooths.
Today, the only large marsupial carnivore left in existence is the Tasmanian Devil, and that is on the brink of extinction.
These animals’ past success though is illustrated by a new skull study that reveals the creatures to have been just as diverse as their placental cousins.
An international team examined the skulls of some 130 carnivores – marsupial and placental, living and extinct – from the past 40 million years.
Dr Anjali Goswami and colleagues used a technique known as geometric morphometrics to map the objects.
Their analysis shows the variation in shape in marsupial carnivores’ skulls is actually greater than that observed in placentals, such as “ordinary” lions and tigers – even though the marsupial sample was smaller.
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The team says the research gives the lie to the idea that marsupial carnivores’ method of reproduction, wherein the young are born at a very early stage, somehow limited their ability to adapt to new habits and environments.
“A straightforward example is with the forelimbs,” explained Dr Goswami.
An extinct sabretooth marsupial, T. atrox, evolved ever-growing canines “Because marsupials have to crawl really early – they have to develop these crawling, grasping hands to get into the pouch. Once you have to have that kind of structure, it’s really hard to then develop a flipper or a bat wing.
“And while it’s been shown marsupials do have less diversity in their forelimbs than placental carnivores, our study has shown that’s not true of the face.
“I think you can argue that marsupials have gone way beyond what placentals have done in terms of modifying their face and their dentition to be able to eat meat,” she told BBC News.
“There was a marsupial sabretooth from South America, for example, that had ever-growing canines, and the roots of these teeth went up over the [eye socket]. There’s nothing like that in placental carnivores. It’s really very extreme.”
The reasons for the loss of marsupial carnivores must therefore be more complex than some have recognised, the researchers argue. The group cites competition with placentals during the fusion of North and South America three million years ago, and more recent human hunting as both likely reasons for the creatures’ decline.
Co-author Dr Stephen Wroe from the University of New South Wales said: “It seems likely that the diversity in skull shape among marsupial carnivores reflects a diversity in lifestyle that once was quite comparable to that of placentals.
“Our results reinforce my own suspicion that the lack of marsupial predators in the world today has more to do with bad luck than bad genes.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The audience judges the cook-off Ready Steady Cook has hung up its apron, given the chop after almost 16 years on air, with only repeats to be screened.
The last grain of salt has run through the egg timer. The timer has pinged on the oven. The goose is cooked. And the red tomato and green pepper have been consigned to the great compost heap in the sky.
Fans of daytime television have reacted with sadness to news that BBC Two’s Ready Steady Cook has staged its last cook-off.
No more episodes of Britain’s longest running cookery show are being made, although mourners with a £5 bag of mystery ingredients to hand can console themselves with repeats screening on daytime TV until the end of next year.
One clue to its passing perhaps lies in its prosaic team names – red tomato and green pepper.
Born in 1994 when guacamole would never, ever have been served in a Hartlepool chip shop, the show’s aim was to pep up Britain’s culinary tastes with a dash of “Percy Pepper” and “Sally Salt”, as chef-turned-presenter Ainsley Harriott would have it.
It came along at a time when we were still a bit naive about cooking in this country. It changed people’s attitudes towards food.
Suddenly we were looking at these professional guys doing something very spontaneous that only cost a certain amount of money.
Viewers could see products that they had never seen before and understand what was a reduction or a jus or a mirepoix – all those culinary terms.
As a chef, it was a real discipline. Even when I was presenter, every time they tipped the contents out of the bag I was thinking, “What would I do with that?”
Within a few years, no tomato would be simply red – the nation had woken up to sun-dried, sun-blushed, cherry vine – and green peppers had been all but eclipsed by a rainbow coalition of red, orange and yellow varieties.
Eulogies come this week from close friends, including chefs Antony Worrall Thompson and James Martin, and presenters Fern Britton and Harriott himself.
Ready Steady Cook is survived by younger sibling the Hairy Bikers, who stage their own cook-off, and its glamorous older siblings Masterchef, Celebrity Masterchef, Masterchef: The Professionals and Junior Masterchef.
And its progeny include Goosey Goosey Gammon Traffic Lights 123, an on-the-spot culinary creation of chef Harriott, along with some 5,478 other dishes – named as if after a list of random ingredients tipped from a shopping bag – in its recipe archive.
This lasting legacy will be a boon for those stuck for inspiration when the cupboard is all but bare.
Whatever to make with paneer cheese (soon to go off), dried figs and tinned kidney beans? Why, Harriott’s own paneer cheese and fig skewers with bean dip, of course. Or, if there’s pitta bread in need of using, Gino D’Acampo’s curried paneer with tzatziki and pitta bread.
No flowers. Or canapes.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
With funding changes to school sports planned, a shift to a more competitive ethos is mooted, but there is likely to be a bitter battle for the heart of PE.
For many people PE encapsulates their unhappiest memories of school. They look back to blasted, windswept sports fields where shouting PE teachers in ill-fitting tracksuits marshalled unwilling pupils.
The classic fictional depiction is the 1969 film Kes, where Brian Glover’s Mr Sugden takes part in a football match as both player and referee, awards himself a penalty and then remonstrates with Billy Casper by knocking him into the mud with a wet football.
It has that classic breeding ground for school social stigma – the picking of teams. An opportunity to further make life miserable for the group memorably referred to as the “wets, weirdos and fatties” in the sitcom, Red Dwarf.
The popular perception is that something started to change in the culture of sports and physical education in schools in the 1970s. Activities that didn’t alienate the unsporty started to chip away at the dominance of competitive team sport.
Mr Sugden from Kes is not considered a model PE practitioner But now there is to be a shift back towards competitive sport. The government is ending the ring-fencing of £162m of funding for School Sport Partnerships, which promoted co-operation in sport and PE provision between schools, as well as inter-school competitions.
Opponents say this will lead to money being used to plug gaps elsewhere in school budgets, but the government is instead focusing on its plans for Olympics-style competitions for schools.
But what everybody does agree on is the importance of PE. Adults may look back ruefully to being made to exercise in their underpants or do punishment laps of a field, but few would dispute the long-term benefits.
“Getting the regular habit of exercise ingrained controls weight later on in life,” says Dr Andy Franklyn-Miller, a consultant in sports medicine.
This week his representative body, the British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine, is to call for a health-focused segment to be incorporated into PE lessons.
Forged sick notes
But it’s not just about obesity, Dr Franklyn-Miller says. Getting used to exercise helps avoid injuries later in life. Even basic routines like improving balance can be vital to developing children.
Educational consultant Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, has seen children arriving in primary school with difficulties with basic movement.
“They have really poor physical skills and physical strength. They are coming through ‘floppy’ because of [early years spent] staring at screens.”
Source: Department for Education
Vision for schools to be unveiled Michael Gove defends school sports funding
It puts even more of an onus on PE teachers. And they have to make their subject fun. While you might be able to force children to learn something from academic lessons, a string of early Kes-style experiences might make some shun sport in adult life.
Comedian John O’Farrell has unpleasant memories from life at his all-boys school.
“My school didn’t do football, so I was forced to do rugby. I was small and skinny… was thrown the wet, muddy ball and everyone tried to jump on my head.”
Passing the ball immediately, even to the opposition, was O’Farrell’s solution. He then tried basketball, but as a late-developer did not like playing in the “skins” team, without shirts.
“I tried to shoot for the hoop without revealing my bald, pre-pubescent armpits. The teacher would say ‘shoot, O’Farrell, shoot… no, not underarm’.”
O’Farrell started forging sick-notes from his mother and soon developed a cottage industry performing the same service for other boys.
Former headteacher Roger Hurn, author of 101 Dance Ideas, goes into schools to encourage the use of dance. He says children can be put off sport by bad experiences, as he was by a strict, rugby-mad PE teacher.
Danger
“I never played rugby again, the experience under that teacher was so horrible. I won’t even watch it. It has a negative effect.”
Modern PE is aimed at avoiding the above scenarios. A plethora of options have sprung up in recent years.
A recent government study found 37% of schools offered cheerleading. At a fifth of schools a child can learn yoga. Individual sports like boxing are on the rise, but traditional team games like rugby, hockey and netball are in decline.
The cross-country run – not everyone’s favourite Peripatetic practitioner William Allen, author of Games, Ideas and Activities for Primary PE, will try anything to get children’s enthusiasm flaring. Street dance, tri-golf and American football are among the activities he uses.
“PE is now a gateway to doing things outside school,” says Mr Allen.
But an older generation of PE teachers also remember great things being done in schools. Now retired, Ray Twentyman taught PE for more than four decades before retiring last year and focusing on coaching young athletes.
Starting out in the 60s at a school in Liverpool, he recalls excellent provision of football, rugby, cross country, tennis, athletics, and volleyball, among others.
“It was unusually good, but there were lots of other good schools,” he says.
Cautious mindset
But by the 1980s PE teaching was becoming more prescribed, with the National Curriculum meaning many boxes had to be ticked.
“You did six-week blocks of a sport. I defy anybody to learn a game properly in six weeks,” says Mr Twentyman.
Teachers also have a more cautious mindset.
“I liked kids to get stuck in. I think today, if it’s raining or windy, they won’t go out and play,” he says.
His colleague Chris Sproat, now also retired, was disappointed at the limits the evolving health and safety culture imposed. Instead of just taking a group of children for a run outside school premises, forms had to be diligently filled.
Both teachers and children might want things to be a little freer.
“There are kids who like structured sport, but for the ones who don’t we need to be more creative about encouraging them to be physically active,” says Tim Gill, author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society.
“That might mean introducing more fun, more choice and maybe a little bit of danger.”
But whatever happens, the place of the brutal Mr Sugdens is hopefully gone. With funding cuts to school sports planned, a shift to a more competitive ethos is mooted, but there is likely to be a bitter battle for the heart of PE.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The European Parliament voted to eject UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom following comments he made against German social democrat Martin Schultz.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Tiger numbers have plummeted by 40% in the last decade alone Governments of 13 countries where tigers still live have endorsed a plan to save the big cats from extinction.
Delegates at a summit in St Petersburg, Russia, agreed to double tiger numbers by 2022.
The countries will focus on protecting tiger habitats, addressing poaching, illegal trade and providing the financial resources for the plan.
In the last 100 years, tiger numbers have dropped from about 100,000 to less than 3,500 tigers in the wild today.
There has been a 40% decline in numbers in a decade, and some populations are expected to disappear within the next 20 years.
The United Nations Environment Program (Unep) says that the St Petersburg Declaration will strengthen international collaboration to protect the majestic Asian wild cat.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive-secretary of Unep’s Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) Secretariat, commented: “Safeguarding international migration corridors and trans-border habitats will be crucial for global efforts to save the tiger.”
The declaration sets in motion a strategic plan for tiger recovery; the countries are putting together a roadmap for post-summit action.
They are also discussing the institutional structure which will be set up to implement the aims and objectives of the declaration and its recovery programme.
The tiger summit was hosted by the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, from 21-24 November.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The rising popularity of smartphones have increased need for data on the move Virgin Media is mulling the idea of creating a nationwide wi-fi network to compete with rival BT.
It said it had been inspired by cable operators who have launched wi-fi in other countries.
The cable broadband firm admitted it would be a “massive undertaking” and that no firm plans have yet been drawn up.
But it said it could offer a better alternative to 3G networks for those who crave data on the move.
“We are looking at way to converge data services. 3G networks are reaching a capacity crunch and wi-fi could offload traffic and offer a vastly superior overall throughput,” said a Virgin Media spokesman.
“People are using a variety of services and there is a sheer desire for data wherever people are,” he added.
Virgin Media experimented with a small-scale wi-fi network at this year’s V festival.
The Virgin spokesman described it as a “useful experiment” and said people were using it “in preference to 3G”.
Virgin Media has been watching developments in the US and the example of firms such as Cablevision which has launched a wi-fi network in New York.
It is likely that any wi-fi would be part of a bundle of extras for broadband customers, in a similar way to how BT offers the service.
BT currently runs the UK’s biggest wi-fi network, with nearly 4,000 hotpsots in the UK.
Its wi-fi sharing service BT-FON has 1.6 million public hotspots around the world.
Members of BT-FON agree to securely share a portion of their wi-fi connection through a separate channel, making it available to other members who are in range.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Bar Italia has changed little since it opened in 1949 The story of a famous London cafe is to be told in a stage musical written by one of its most famous customers, Eurythmics star Dave Stewart.
Stewart is writing Bar Italia about the Soho cafe of the same name, which was one of London’s first continental coffee shops when it opened in 1949.
He is working with Porridge and The Likely Lads writer Ian La Frenais.
Stewart said: “This coffee shop is very small but what goes on in there is as big as the world.”
The musician and songwriter has just finished writing the score for a stage musical based on the movie Ghost, which opens in Manchester in March.
Bar Italia, his next project, has been inspired by the Polledri family, who opened Bar Italia to cater for immigrants in London’s Italian quarter, and who still run the cafe.
“It’s about la famiglia – about an Italian family out of place in the middle of Soho, where there are strip joints and everything, and they’re a little Catholic family opening a coffee shop,” Stewart said.
“You’ve already got that great juxtaposition.”
The show will tell the fictional story of the owners’ son, who is lined up to take over the cafe but becomes involved with local criminals.
Stewart will be able to draw on the real cafe’s colourful history. It was opened by US superstars Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and has continued to be a favoured haunt of celebrities ranging from Rocky Marciano to Francis Ford Coppola.
Dave Stewart has previously composed music for shows based on the films Barbarella and Ghost It was used by Sade as the location for a photoshoot to promote Smooth Operator.
Pulp wrote a song about it and it was recreated for the 1986 movie Absolute Beginners, starring David Bowie.
The cafe was also in the thick of Soho’s gang culture, with notorious fights taking place outside and customers with mob connections.
“My father used to bring me down in the 70s and it used to be like a scene out of Goodfellas or A Bronx Tale,” says manager Antonio Polledri, grandson of the founders Luigi and Caterina.
“The Maltese and Italians used to be standing on the streets, some with string vests on. Everybody that my father introduced me to had a nickname – there was Russian Bill, French Lou, Joe the Crow.
“It was a very colourful period. Easy money was coming, easy money was going.”
Stewart, a regular patron, has previously written the score for a stage production of the cult 1968 film Barbarella as well as Ghost, which starred Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore on the big screen.
Ghost – the Musical will star former Coronation Street star Richard Fleeshman and Canadian actress Caissie Levy. It will open at the Manchester Opera House before moving to London’s West End.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.