News

London's latest landmark, the Shard, will play host to a laser show tonight to mark the building reaching its highest point. It is now officially the tallest building in London, and indeed in the whole of Europe, at 309m tall.

Located by the River Thames at London Bridge, the Shard is quickly becoming one of London's most recognisable buildings. Over the last year it has been steadily growing taller, becoming more and more dominant in the London skyline. However, the building has split opinion; whilst many have praised the modern and sleek design, others have complained that it isn't in keeping with surrounding buildings and its height ruins views of the city.

With the external work on it finally complete, an inauguration ceremony is taking place from around 10pm tonight. For the finale of the ceremony, 12 lasers and 30 search lights will beam out from the Shard across London, picking out famous landmarks throughout the city. Locations such as the Gherkin, St Paul's Cathedral and Tower Bridge will all be marked, before the Shard itself is lit up from all sides. This light show is expected to start at around 10.10pm tonight, so if you're out and about in London around then, make sure you look up.

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.

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.