Prince Charles 'black spider' memos reveal lobbying of Tony Blair | UK news A cache of secret memos sent by Prince Charles to senior UK ministers has finally been published, following a 10-year freedom of information battle between the Guardian and the government. The letters reveal that Charles lobbied ministers, including former prime minister Tony Blair, on a wide range of issues including agriculture, the armed forces, architecture and homeopathy. The correspondence was disclosed after the Guardian won a decade-long legal tussle with the government, which had argued that publication of the letters would make it hard for Charles to maintain a position of public neutrality when he became king. The letters, published at 4pm on Wednesday, reveal how Charles lobbied Tony Blair when he was prime minister to replace Lynx military helicopters. Charles complained: “I fear this one more example of our armed forces being asked to do an extremely challenging job without the necessary resources.” Blair replied: “We can do quite a lot here ...
Costo della vita: la Svizzera in testa, India a sconto MILANO - Quanto costa la vita nel tuo Paese? E in quello vicino? Molte volte rendere omogenea la comparazione è difficile. Chi viaggia spesso ha i suoi punti di riferimento: il prezzo di una birra, di un pacchetto di sigarette, di una notte in albergo o ancora di una cena fuori. Alla base di queste considerazioni, movehub ha confrontato le varie situazioni sul costo della vita.
Here are the funniest 'global stereotype' maps Unless you've been living in a cave for the last few years, you've definitely seen (and laughed at) the wildly popular 'global stereotype' maps. The man behind them is Bulgarian artist Yanko Tsvetkov, who told i100.co.uk he started making the satirical maps for fun when trying to explain European geopolitics to friends from abroad. Yanko said the maps he put up on Flickr "accidently" went viral, and based on the interest, he decided to expand the project. It was so popular it ended up spawning two books called Atlas of Prejudice Volumes 1 and 2, and Yanko has just finished a third which unveils "new fascinating landscapes of human bigotry." His ideas span from visualisations of how the ancients viewed the world: To the intricacies of modern geopolitics... Cultural phenomenons (these maps are brand new): And even predictions for the future. Yanko told i100.co.uk he doesn't have a simple explanation for why people love the stereotyping maps so much. Yanko Tsvetkov
Nomi English Baby names Home / Prodotti / Contenuti interattivi / Calcolatori / Nomi Quanti bambini nati e iscritti nelle anagrafi italiane nel corso di ogni anno si chiamano nello stesso modo? È sufficiente inserire un nome e selezionare il sesso per conoscere la serie storica del numero di nati iscritti in anagrafe con quel nome, dal 1999 all'ultimo anno disponibile. Sono inoltre predisposte le graduatorie dei nomi più diffusi ogni anno. I grafici sono interattivi: passandovi con il puntatore del mouse, il tooltip mostra i dati. Inserisci un nome e seleziona il sesso M F Graduatoria dei nomi più diffusi tra i bambini nati nel Graduatoria dei 10 nomi più diffusi tra i bambini nati nel 2013 FrancescoAlessandroAndreaLorenzoMattiaMatteoGabrieleLeonardoRiccardoTommaso SofiaGiuliaAuroraEmmaGiorgiaMartinaChiaraSaraAliceGaia Fonte: Istat, Rilevazione degli iscritti in anagrafe per nascita.
Italy rescues 600 migrants from Mediterranean Italy has rescued about 600 migrants in six operations, one in cooperation with Maltese authorities, in the past 24 hours, the country's coastguard told Al Jazeera. The rescued people included 100 Somali migrants who were stranded on a plastic boat in the Mediterranean on Tuesday, an official involved in the rescue said. A coastguard source, contacted on Wednesday, did not to give further details about the operations. One of the stranded migrants had called Al Jazeera on Tuesday and said the boat was flooding with seawater and that those on board - men, women and children - needed to be rescued immediately. The migrant contacted Al Jazeera after obtaining the phone contact details of the channel's journalist from a friend in Somalia. "We left from Tripoli three days ago and we are going to Italy," said the migrant who declined to disclose his name to Al Jazeera. "We don't have supplies, we don't have food, there are pregnant women on board. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
If the World Were 100 People [Infographic] London-based designer Jack Hagley has created an infographic based on the simple premise of: what the world would like if it were represented by 100 people. The statistics cover a broad range, including: gender, age, race and religion. You can find the original source of the data used here. Hagley specializes in infographics. To see more be sure to check out his website for more interestingness. [via Washington Post]
These 15 countries speak English as a second language best Nearly two billion people - that's almost one in three people - study English as a non-native language. In the developing world, English is less of a foreign language skill and more a tool synonymous with development, expanding a country's economy and increasing its connectedness to the rest of the world. And for small countries with few native-language speakers, it also makes sense to learn a little of the world's lingua franca for business and policy making. The English Proficiency Index has just released statistics on where English is learned around the world and quality of teaching to find the countries with the highest proficiency of English as a second language: Four Nordic countries and the Netherlands come top of the rankings, with at least 65 per cent of the population fluent in English. Other European nations dominate the rest of the list. The only non-European countries to feature are highly-developed city state Singapore, and its neighbour Malaysia, as well as Argentina.
Proportional Pie Chart of the World’s Most Spoken Languages “A world of languages” is a fascinating infographic created by Alberto Lucas Lopéz for the South China Morning Post. On his website Lopéz explains: There are at least 7,102 known languages alive in the world today. The information is based on data from Ethnologue, a comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world’s known living languages since 1951. If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud, and we’ll be honest with you, we struggled with parts of it. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. You’ve been reading “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité, written nearly 100 years ago in 1922, designed to demonstrate the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation.
The real cause of autism Can you pronounce all the words in this poem? Most people probably can't Dutch poet Gerard Nolste Trenité wrote a colossal poem containing about 800 bizarre irregularities in the English language. Written in 1922, the poem reads part tongue twister, part instruction manual. It begins: Dearest Creature in creation Study English pronunciation I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse corps horse and worse Let's stop there for a moment. Once you've managed to stumble your way through the first part, surely you get used to it? No. Hear me say devoid of trickery Daughter laughter and Terpsichore Typhoid measles topsails aisles Exiles similes and reviles Scholar vicar and cigar Solar mica war and far One anemone Balmoral Kitchen lichen laundry laurel There's also this wonderfully simple line: Eye I ay aye whey and key The poem finally ends on a very important question: Finally which rhymes with enough Though through plough or dough or cough? To which he helpfully answers: My advice is to give up! How did you get on? HT The Poke
Get Organised! Collaborative Speaking Tasks | Tim's Free English Lesson Plans Image credit: www.organisemyhouse.com Follow me on twitter @RobbioDobbio This is a speaking lesson plan designed for teenagers that focuses on various exponents of suggesting, offering, agreeing and disagreeing. get-organised – Powerpoint Get organised Teachers notes Teacher’s notes The class is loosely based on Willis’s Task Based Learning in that students are given the opportunity to repeatedly practice a similar task and hopefully internalise some useful exponents for collaborative speaking. Put students into groups of 3, it would also work with pairs but 3s are ideal. Show the 2nd slide of the power point. Note: This is a good opportunity to teach the difference between “will” for decisions in the moment of speaking and “be going to” for a future intention. “We’ll have the party on Friday so we can stay up late.” “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Then when the time comes to present their decisions to class they will change to “be going to.” Follow up Like this: Like Loading...