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Royal Wedding to be Superhero Themed

It was announced today that Prince William and Kate Middleton are taking the unusual step of making their upcoming wedding superhero themed.

The happy couple are both big fans of comic books and it is expected that guests will not be allowed entry into Westminster Abbey for the service unless they are appropriately dressed. A senior source from Clarence House told us there will be a strict “No mask, no entry” policy.

Speculation as to what the bride and groom will wear is rife, though it has been suggested that political pressure is being put on Kate to dress as Wonder Woman “for the good of the nation”.

As for the Prince, a close friend revealed that Spiderman is his favourite masked crusader, claiming:

“William loves the Spiderman comics and the first two films. He became disillusioned with the whole thing after the third film, but he’s managed to overlook it”.

Indeed, bookmakers in Britain are already making Spiderman the 3/1 favourite, though it may be worth taking a punt on SpongeBob SquarePants at 25/1.

After the announcement was made, the Queen smirked “I think we can all be sure that they are certainly going to have a super day”.

New Post-Study Visa Rules Explained

You have probably heard that new visa regulations were announced last week by the British Home Secretary, Theresa May. If you are already studying in the UK and hope to stay here to work after university then you may understandably be worried about these changes.

Post-Study Work Visas

To make it clear how the Post-Study Work visa regulations have changed, here are the basics:

  • The Post-Study Work Route that allows students free access to work in the UK for 2 years after they finish studying is being closed.
  • To stay and work, you must have a job offer from a sponsoring employer. This means that the firm has been registered with the government to accept overseas workers in the Tier-2 visa point system.
  • The job must be suitable for your skills and the starting salary must be a minimum of £20,000 a year.
  • This starts in April 2012, so students graduating this year will not be affected.

 

Working whilst you are studying

There are also tighter regulations on working whilst still a student:

New Visa Regulations Announced

The British Home Secretary Theresa May announced today that the number of non-EU students granted a visa to the UK is going to be cut by up to 80,000 a year.

The announcement is part of the government’s drive to scale down immigration to the UK to just tens of thousands by 2015, and is likely to reduce foreign student visas by as much as 25%. Of the proposal, May told MPs:

“It will protect our world-class institutions. It will stop the abuse that became all too common under Labour and it will restore some sanity to our student visa system."

“Fake Colleges”

However, away from these headline grabbing statistics, what do these new regulations actually mean to your standard student hoping to study in the UK?

Well, the proposals are basically aimed at stopping people from manipulating the system in order to simply get a UK visa. At the moment the government say there are thousands of non-EU inhabitants every year who get student visas with no intention of actually studying in the UK.

Olympic Fever Starting to Grow

Olympic excitement is growing by the day in Britain as a range of events have taken place over the last few weeks.

It all kicked off last week when the first of a series of giant Olympic symbols was unveiled in London. A set of Olympic Rings 20 metres wide and 9 metres tall were revealed at St Pancras International train station by Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

Next to come was a countdown clock in Trafalgar Square which marked 500 days to go until the start of the 2012 Olympics. The four tonne timer looks very impressive (as you can see above), but unfortunately (and in a very British way) it stopped working just one day after being unveiled. It’s back up and running now though so is all is fine again!

Finally, tickets for the Games went on sale around the world yesterday. For 42 days you can apply for tickets to up to 20 events, and although there are 6.6 million tickets available, demand is expected to be huge. Don’t worry though, it is not a first come first serve system, but instead everyone who has applied for tickets by the 26th April deadline will be drawn at random to decide who actually gets the tickets.

Walk the Royal Wedding Route

Fancy virtually walking the same route that Prince William and Kate Middleton will follow before their wedding on April 29th? Or maybe you want to explore one of London’s parks without leaving your computer? Well now you can thanks to a new idea from Google.

As part of Google Maps, they have created a 3D map of London which allows you to see the sights of the Capital all from the comfort of home. If you live a long way away or simply want to check out an area before you go there, you can now explore thousands of buildings throughout the city.

What’s more, the people behind it have also ‘virtually planted’ 12,000 individual trees to create St James' Park, Green Park and Hyde Park. Click here to explore London for yourself.

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