News

Despite recent growing pressure from MPs and university heads, the government announced yesterday that international students will continue to be counted in migration statistics.

International students are currently counted in the immigration figures used by the British government, meaning that students are included in the government's pledge to reduce immigration by "tens of thousands". It was in part due to this classification that the tighter visa restrictions were introduced over a year ago, and ever since, a growing number of prominent figures have questioned the wisdom of such a system.

There is the strong argument that placing students within the immigration figures is not only illogical, but gives the false impression that Britain has a cap on international students. The latest group to put this case forward to the government was the Commons Business, Innovation and Skills committee report on overseas students and net migration, which argued:

In typically glamourous fashion, the annual glitzy Oscars ceremony took place in Hollywood last night, with few real surprises. Ben Affleck's Argo took home the top award after being named Best Film, whilst Daniel Day-Lewis made history by being named Best Actor for an unprecedented third time.

Day-Lewis lived up to the tag as red-hot favourite to take home the award for his leading role in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Jennifer Lawrence continued her meteoric rise in Hollywood after claiming Best Actress for her role as a young widow struggling with her mental health in Silver Linings Playbook.

However, not quite everything went right for Lawrence on the night, as she lived every nominee's nightmare- falling over on the way to collect her award. Luckily she saw the funny side, and after she tripped over her dress, she started her speech with the line: "You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell over and that's embarrassing".

The Big Winners

Unlike some years, no single film really dominated the awards, with Life of Pi taking the most with just four. Ang Lee won his second Best Director Oscar, whilst the film also took home awards for cinematography, original score and visual effects.

A group of student actors in London are turning the camera on themselves and their world to create a brand new mockumentary. ‘Thesps' is a web series that will follow the lives of a group of actors sharing a flat together as they attempt to ‘make it' in the daunting world of theatre and film.

The project is a collaboration between students at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and London Met Film School, and they certainly don't lack ambition. The unique way in which they are launching the first episode proves that.

On Thursday and Friday next week British comedian Mark Watson is putting on a 25 Hour Show in aid of Comic Relief. Hosted at the Pleasance Theatre in Islington, he will be joined by a whole range of famous faces all in the hope of raising as much money for charity as possible.

As part of the show, the ‘Thesps' will be attempting to film and edit clips from the opening episode of the series in just 25 hours. To make it even more challenging, questions can be posed to the characters by the audience at the theatre as well as by fans on Twitter and Facebook.

To find out more about this ambitious project, we spoke to Director & Producer Victoria Eyton:

- Why THESPS?

You cannot have gone through February without hearing about or seeing a Harlem Shake video. The phrase Harlem Shake has been everywhere over the last few weeks- TV, newspapers and of course all over the internet. But what exactly is it?

The name was first coined back in the 1980's when a new dance came out of Harlem in New York. As the dance became more and more popular, it was referenced by a number of different hip hop artists and songs in the early 2000's.

The current craze started to get going last year when American music produced Baauer released a song with the title ‘Harlem Shake'. However, it wasn't until the beginning of February 2013 when the first recognizable Harlem Shake meme video was posted on YouTube.

Initially, a number of video bloggers uploaded versions of the song and dance, each developing the concept a little at a time. Though they were all pretty popular, the first one to go truly viral was the video below uploaded by the staff of online video production company Maker Studios. Within its first week, it was watched by more than 7.4 million people.

The horsemeat scandal has been making the headlines for some time now and has been on everyone's mind. At first glance, I couldn't fully grasp the extent of the problem; I thought it was being blown way out of proportion. I'm an (on/off) vegetarian so to me personally, eating horsemeat is no different than eating beef, same principal really.

Accordingly, my focus was on the manipulative intent behind the whole issue rather than the product "ingredients". As I read more on the issue, I started to understand the different aspects related to this whole situation. Obviously there is an overall negative reaction to this issue; however it is fueled by different motivations and concerns.

As I see it:

- Main Parties involved: - Consumer
                                             - Businesses
                                             - Food Standards Agency (FSA)