The Guardian:
Financial crisis beckons as public spending cuts loom and universities face intense competition from overseasUniversities are facing a new funding crisis with looming public spending cuts and intense competition from overseas, according to the man employed by the government to allocate money to higher education in England.S (Read More)
The Guardian:
Digital economy bill proposals receive welcome from music and film, but anger from ISPs and privacy campaignersThe government's planned crackdown on unlawful online filesharing has been attacked by privacy campaigners and internet service providers but welcomed by executives and artists in the music business.Earlier today, (Read More)
observer.guardian.co.uk:
Errors in car scrappage data mean scheme will be extended beyond FebruaryThe government has exaggerated the success of its car scrappage scheme after double counting thousands of orders, the Guardian has learnt.Officials at Lord Mandelson's business department have begun a "data cleansing exercise" of its database and are e (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Politics:
Another nasty decision for Nice this week, as the health service's rationing agency turned down Nexavar, which treats liver cancer. Everyone agrees it provides extra months, but it will not be administered – except to the rich – as it fails to provide enough extra months for the money. The watertight logic is that cash blow (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Politics:
Cathy Ashton's meteoric rise has surprised many, but not those who know her bestWhen Cathy Ashton arrived in Brussels at short notice just over a year ago she had to attend to some urgent business: removing traces of her predecessor, Peter Mandelson.In her first act Ashton took down a large painting of a bare-breasted woman (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Politics:
On a walkabout in east London, Nick Griffin is a magnet for feelings of grief as well as angerOn Thursday Nick Griffin paid his first official visit to Barking and Dagenham as the newly declared British National party candidate in next year's election. This took the form of "walkabouts" and the one I attached myself to went (Read More)
New York Times:
A jury will decide whether the dealings of Joseph L. Bruno, the former Senate leader, were illegal. But testimony has already exposed an unseemly way of doing business in Albany.
. (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Politics:
Tory David Curry stood down as head of standards and privileges committee pending inquiry into second home claimsThe Tory MP in charge of the Commons standards and privileges committee, who stood down pending an inquiry into his second home allowance claims, today insisted his expenses were "very modest" and "completely abo (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Society:
The NHS should be freed from direct government control and run as a separate body without political interference, according to its former chief executive.In an article that will be interpreted as support for Conservative reform plans, Sir Nigel Crisp urges the Department of Health to focus on wider health issues while allow (Read More)
Huffington Post:
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands — A gunman went on a rampage on the Pacific resort island of Saipan Friday, first at a shooting range and then at a World War II historical site, killing four people and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself, officials said.The violence claimed the lives of two men, a 4-year-ol (Read More)
The Guardian:
Denuclearisation will only come when bridges have been built with Pyongyang and it feels firmly set on a new economic courseNegotiations over the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula look set to resume. Sadly, they are unlikely to end soon. Talk of a "grand bargain" remains just that – talk.Trust between North Korea and (Read More)
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed:
One of the loudest populist voices in the Democratic Caucus predicted on Thursday that the party may have to forcefully challenge the White House on economic matters if it wanted to hold on to power in the 2010 elections.One day after calling on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to resign, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told (Read More)
The Guardian:
By forcing a flawed model of democracy on Afghans, the US has made Afghanistan less stable and less democraticThe fiasco of the elections in Afghanistan has been widely lamented. Most laments focus on a single obvious fact: by winning a new term through fraud at the polls, President Hamid Karzai has weakened his legitimacy, (Read More)
www.guardian.co.uk:
Once a place to escape to, the suburbs became a byword for conservatism. Owen Hatherley on a surprising exhibition at the London Transport MuseumA couple of years ago, I temporarily moved out of south-east London, where I have lived for 10 years, into a strange, exotic land. Flat-sitting in East Finchley might not sound ful (Read More)
observer.guardian.co.uk:
Think a paradise break in the Indian Ocean will cost a small fortune? Not on Zanzibar where a clutch of new boutique hotels offers cool style and seriously good valueFragile thing holiday serenity. Zanzibar has the full deck of tropical idyll cards – squeaky white powder beach, azure ocean, mellow trade winds and I'm trying (Read More)