05/27/2005 - 05/28/2005

beatles story goes multilingual

The award-winning Beatles Story has become the first tourist attraction in Liverpool to provide audio tours in foreign languages.

From Tuesday, the Living History Tour will be available in Japanese, French and Spanish. Further translations will be produced next year. One Japanese holiday company has already made 400 bookings for the new tour.

impact of culture of scientific research

Cultural considerations are increasingly vital in multidisciplinary research as more scientists stray from narrowly focused studies to expansive, boundary-blurring questions, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist will announce to attendees (May 27) at the 17th Annual Convention of the American Psychology Society in Los Angeles.

islamic school creating British-Muslim identity

Two hundred students, giggling and gathering on the playground, are the best antidote to Islamic extremism, although they may not realize it yet.

Students at Britain`s first state-funded Islamic school are pint-sized but carry the huge responsibility of forging a new identity for Muslims, one which is neither secular nor extremist, but "organic, dynamic and chaotic", according to their headmaster.

"We`re creating a British-Muslim identity and ethic, and we`re not in the business of preserving any particular culture," Abdullah Trevathan said, describing the motley group of 23 nationalities, mostly of mixed descent, that make up the Islamiya Primary School.

New EU nations provide 40,000 workers in first quarter

Workers from the eight accession states are continuing to take up hard-to-fill job vacancies in the UK a year after their countries joined the European Union, new Home Office figures reveal.

The latest Worker Registration Scheme figures show that just over 40,000 people from the new European states applied to the scheme between January and March 2005. This brought the total number of applicants since May 2004 to 176,000, although many workers may only have stayed in the UK for a short time.

Expatriate pensioner loses claim for parity

More than 500,000 British pensioners living abroad have been refused an increase in their state pension that would bring them into line with their UK counterparts. The House of Lords yesterday rejected a test case by a retiree in South Africa who claimed she should be paid the same as people who retire in the UK.

business wire begins german press releases

Business Wire has begun transmitting full-text German-language releases -- simultaneously and in real-time -- to leading market-moving news agencies, business/economic portals and online services in this major international financial center, it was announced today.

MI5 launches urdu website

The British intelligence service MI5 announced yesterday it has launched an Urdu version of its website for the British Pakistani community.

The website will be used to recruit new members from ethnic minorities to the security services. It will also explain how visitors can help the MI5 with useful information.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director General of the Security Service, said: "To do the best possible job, we need to communicate effectively with the whole community. We have launched Arabic and now Urdu versions of our website to reach particularly important audiences; members of the Muslim community make a vital contribution to countering the terrorist threat."

word of the day: lionize

lionize \LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb:
To treat or regard as an object great interest or importance.

At Penn State he'd been welcomed, nurtured, lionized as a track and field star who narrowly missed making our Olympic team in the decathlon --James Brady, Further Lane

But it is a good reason to be wary, and to pay some attention to that man behind the curtain -- or, if anyone tries to sell you one, to be cautious about lionizing "some pig" -- however terrific, radiant, and humble -- in a poke. --Marjorie B. Garber, Symptoms of Culture