News

Mermaids are up there with unicorns and dragons as some of the best known mythical creatures, yet a US government agency recently felt the need to officially deny their existence. This rather unusual step was taken after a fictional TV programme was mistaken by some viewers as factual.

It all started when the Discovery Channel aired ‘Mermaids: The Body Found' in May. As the press release detailed, the tongue-in-cheek programme painted "a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like and why they've stayed hidden...until now".

However, some easily fooled viewers took the show as a factually accurate documentary and wrote to the National Ocean Service asking about the creatures. This led the agency to post an article on its educational website last week entitled: "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found".

On following the story up, the BBC managed to get a quite brilliant quote from National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh, who clarified "we don't have a mermaid science programme".

The BBC used half-time of the Euro 2012 final last night as the perfect time to reveal the title sequence for their coverage of the London 2012 Olympics. The animated trailer works on the idea of the whole of the UK becoming a giant stadium for the Games. It features music created by the band Elbow specially for the campaign, which will be available for with all profits going to Children in Need and Sport Relief.

The Olympics are starting on 27 July and in the UK will be shown exclusively on the BBC. So without further ado, watch the video below.

International students have been headline news in the British media almost every day this week. The week began with an exposé by The Daily Telegraph newspaper which unveiled that foreign students are being accepted with lower grades than British students at some universities. After the backlash to this there was a plea from a government minister for overseas students to study in Britain, before the UK Border Agency insisted that the recent visa changes will not affect genuine students.

Angelique is originally from the Seychelles and has recently finished as a Law student at the University of London. Here she looks at one of the differences she has noticed between British and international students.

Each September, thousands of international students cross the border into the United Kingdom with the aspirations of attaining a degree, starting a new life and being submerged into a foreign culture. Months pass and quizzical looks emerge as Britain and British students reveal their oddities. The mind of an international student only wonders: "Are we right or are they right? Or maybe it's just a cultural thing". However, no one dares ask but sits there always wanting to know.

Studying the Arts at University

Higher education for international students is seen as a great opportunity and often difficult to attain with the high cost of living in the United Kingdom and excruciating tuition fees. Therefore, international students are always perplexed when told that a student chose to study Philosophy (for example) at university because they enjoyed it or had an interest in it. Many British students simply love the arts, such as philosophy, history of art, languages, photography, film production or illustrations. I wasn't sure if this was just my bias, but then I found this table:

England have been knocked out of Euro 2012, yesterday was the first sunny day in weeks, and the London Olympics are still over a month away. It all adds up to make it the perfect time for Wimbledon to take centre stage. The annual tennis tournament in south-west London started yesterday, and already fans have been treated to the world's best players, some huge shocks, and even a British win.

The tournament is one of the four ‘Majors' in tennis and is the oldest tennis competition in the world. For two weeks each year it becomes the focus of the sport, as crowds descend on the twenty grass courts to stuff themselves with strawberries and cream and watch some world-class tennis.