Unfortunately Zoo are waiting for a video of the Gumpathon that I mentioned in last weeks blog, so unfortunately it has not been put online yet.

Some of the stories that I have found interesting this week include…

Putin has a black eye, how? We don’t know, some believe it is possibly from judo, other speculations include illness or that he has undergone cosmetic surgery. However the official line says that it was due to a busy schedule and bad lighting.

A couple who thought they were having their vows renewed during a ceremony in the Maldives were actually being insulted during the blessing by the local celebrant in the Dhivehi language. The celebrant made references to infidels, fornication, homosexuality, and refered to their children as bastards.

BBC journalists are set for two 48 hour strikes in pension row. The first to be held on the 6th and 7th November and the second on the 15th and 16th November.

Finally, Aleksandr the meerkat, from the Compare the Meerkat advert has written an autobiography. Pre-sales have put it 165% in front of Katie Price’s new autobiography. Also a Compare the Meerkat shop will open on Regents Street for two days. The autobiography is to tell the tale and tail of the struggles his family has faced in order to become a success in comparing meerkats.

Last week, I was at Zoo magazine, and it was amazing. I did
research for stories and transcribed interviews, but I also got to write
articles for the website. I wrote an article about Nike – The Grid, a new Adidas
viral advert, and the Gumpathon run across America.

http://www.zootoday.com/lateststuff/archive/2010/10/12/nike-wants-you-to-run-your-city.htm

http://www.zootoday.com/lateststuff/archive/2010/10/21/funny-fast-dont-lie-music-video.htm

The Gumpathon article will be uploaded hopefully tomorrow,
so I will put the link up next week.

I have also now become behind where I would like to be on my
university assignments, so spare time is now being spent typing on my laptop.

As I have mentioned previously, I have to write a dissertation this year, and I have been struggling to think of a topic, but I think I have decided. Obviously the wording will change when I realise that what I am doing is too difficult or is  just no good,  but it will be along the lines of ‘comparing the differences in the reporting of the government and government run organisations in citizen journalism and the BBC’.

I have work experience next week at Zoo magazine, and I received the ‘workie’ information pack this week, and it looks like it is going to really good. Every morning I will need to look through all the newspapers, and search the internet for any stories, and they will be used within the magazine. However I will talk more about that next week. As part of my university course I need to write a 5000 essay reflecting on my work experience, and I’m going to make it more interesting by comparing working at Heat magazine to Zoo magazine.

This week I have been glued to the television watching the Commonwealth Games, since I am a Gymnastics Coach, I have been watching that for the last few days, and I enjoyed it so much. With a lot of the ‘big name’ gymnasts being rested for the World Championships, it has been great seeing younger and less experience gymnasts get their chance, and all of the British gymnasts did great.

Susan Boyle has featured three times in the book because; her ‘I Dream a Dream’ album was the fastest selling album by a UK female, the most successful first week’s sales of a UK debut album, and finally the oldest person to reach number one with a debut album

Boyle was 48 when the album went on sale, and she took the record from 35-year-old Jane McDonald in 1998. Her debut album sold 411,820 copies in its first week in the UK – almost 50,000 more than the previous record holder Arctic Monkeys.

A couple other singers mentioned include Sir Tom Jones who holds the record for the oldest artist to have a number one single, and Lady GaGa who is the most searched-for women on the internet.

In the bird world, there is another record breaker; there is a new oldest recorded Arctic Turn. One which was ringed as a chick is now at least 30 years, 2 months and 23 days old. The birds on average live for 13 years. This species also hold the record for the longest annual journey by any animal, as it migrates, 44,000 miles, pole to pole.

Finally there is the smallest cow which has entered the World Records book. Swallow, a Dexter cow from Cheshire, stands 33.5in (0.8m) tall from hind to foot – shorter than most sheep. The 11-year-old female is used for breeding and is currently pregnant.

If you haven’t realised, Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the UK this week, and is at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, preaching to the schoolchildren of the United Kingdom.

This is an incredible couple of days, and we should be happy that the Pope has visited. However of course there are those against the Pope’s visit for various reasons such for it being a State Visit which means that it is paid by tax money and not by the Vatican, and also the issues with child abuse and the Catholic Church. I personally see no reason why we shouldn’t pay for the visit as it will just be a benefit for the country. I would say the same if it was religious leaders from any other religion, and you shouldn’t try and stop it. I am not going to get into talking about child abuse apart from just reminding that it is small minority of priests involved and although the Catholic Church is being blamed heavily, that there is child abuse cases everywhere, not just those that have arises recently. Please don’t think that it is only happening in the Catholic Church and forget about others, all of it needs to be stopped and punished.

Anyway, I’m back to University on Monday, although I don’t really know what is going to be happening until I get there, although it looks like I am going to be having about 6 hours of lectures this semester which is nice and easy. However I know there will be a lot more work outside of lectures as well now.

I have had quite a good few ideas about where to get some work experience, however I am reluctant to apply in case there is issues with my university. So there will be some updates about those in the next couple of weeks.

The BBC today reported that 660,000 students had applied for university, and 190,183 students were still trying to find a place at 12.00 on Friday with just over 4,000 places already filled via clearing.

Of course, like previous years, there has been the stories about those who have 6 As and still did not get their place at University, however with the A*s being introduced this year, it seems to have made things even more interesting.

Then like every year, phone lines to UCAS and to universities became jammed with the amount of phone calls being made. UCAS counted 1.5 million log-ins to its tracking website and answered thousands of phone calls. However, there are still thousands of people who are missing out on placements now. Part of the issue is only being able to have two offers that you could get accepted to. So if you aim high, you could fail to get the grades needed and then not get a place. However nobody wants to aim lower than they could possibly get.

The system needs a rethink, but then Universities need to change as well, which I am not going to go into this week.

The events of yesterday reminded me of two years ago when I was finding out if I got into University. Somewhere between the exam board, UCAS, and the Universities, my exam results failed to get passed on. So on the Thursday, I logged onto UCAS, and my page had not updated. I had to go to school to find out my results and then fax them to the Universities for them to then say if they would accept me or not. It all worked out ok in the end because I got my first choice, and whilst I was waiting for the Universities to look at my results, I phoned some other Universities and got offered three other places.

Anyway, I am off on holiday next week, so there will not be another blog for two weeks. So any readers who got a place at Uni yesterday, well done, and if you didn’t, good luck with making other plans.

Tonight, there is the Perseid meteor shower, where up to 80 meteors could be seen per hour, and weather permitting “we should be in for a very good show across the UK” said John Mason from the British Astronomical Association. With lots of people thinking about aliens, I wonder how many claims will be made tonight.

Now the main topic of this blog is about a news story involving a Sainsbury’s customer being accused of fraud. Whilst shopping, Christine Turton’s nectar card got mixed up by the cashier with another customer’s.  She went on to use what she thought was her points on future purchases. The original owner complained about her card going missing with several hundred pounds worth of points on it, and then Sainsbury’s and the police worked together to trace who was using this card. A police officer turned up at Turton’s house; Christine was still unaware of the mix up. She was arrested on suspicion of fraud by false representation. The police released Turton the same day and said no further action will be taken after she was; however she has been banned from every Sainsbury’s store in the UK.

Now obviously Sainsbury’s went through quite a lot of effort in tracing Christine Turton, so they should easily be able to find CCTV footage of when the switch took place, then they could have seen if it was on purpose or an accident, which could have been Sainsbury’s fault in the first place.

So when you go to the supermarket next time; don’t hand over your credit card, cover your pin, and keep an eye on your nectar card.

First there is a story about a bet placed by a man from Leeds, that aliens would have landed (dead or alive) on Earth before December 31^st 1999, at odds of 17-1. The bet was placed in the early 1990s, and the man believed he had won as he had found 19 books about the Roswell incident in 1947. Ladbrokes refused to pay out as they said there was no proof of alien landings, so the man appealed to the Ministry of Defence, to help settle the bet. The MoD replied with “to date the MoD is not aware of any evidence that might substantiate the existence of alien life forms and therefore supports the view that your bet should not be upheld”.

Next we have a story about the Welsh version of the Roswell incident in 1974. It was reported there was a loud bang and bright lights over North East Wales. The MoD investigation concluded that there were no UFOs. The National Archives files show it was explained by a noisy earth tremor coinciding with a meteor burning up in the atmosphere. Search and Rescue teams were sent in search of anything but no wreckage was found.

Finally, it has been revealed that Churchill ordered a cover-up of UFOs. The National Archives files show that the Government in the 1950s took UFOs seriously enough for UK intelligence chiefs to meet and discuss the issue. In 1957, the Joint Intelligence Committee was receiving one UFO sightings as week.

Along with the Welsh Roswell, there have been many other sightings, including:

• A near-miss with an “unidentified object” reported by the captain and first officer of a 737 plane approaching Manchester Airport in 1995.
• A mountain rescue team called to investigate a “crashed UFO” in the Berwyn Mountains in Wales in 1974.
• Attempted break-ins at RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire – sometimes referred to as Britain’s “Area 51″ – the US’s secretive desert military base.
• The Western Isles incident, when a loud explosion was reported in the sky over the Atlantic in the Outer Hebrides.
• The 14-minutes of “missing” film relating to the Blue Streak missile test launch in 1964, believed by some to show a “spaceman”.

To use an X Files cliché, no matter what you believe, ‘The Truth Is Out There”.

I have finished my second year of my degree of Journalism & News Media with English Language & Linguistics. For Journalism, from September I will be studying ‘East & West: Terror, Power & New Journalism’, I will also be completing my second half of my work placement modules, and I will also be completing a dissertation in Journalism. I have an idea with what I am going to do the dissertation about, I just need to check with my lecturers, but if I get to do my idea, then I am looking forwards to doing it. For English, I will be studying ‘Language in the Media’ as I thought it would be relevant to journalism, and ‘The Linguistics of Sign Language’ as I thought it would be interesting.

I especially like next year’s timetable seeing as in the autumn semester I am in for three days a week and in the spring, I am in University for only two days a week.

In last week’s blog, I said I had one day left at FHM; well the last day was pretty interesting. They refunded the cost of my travel for the week, which was a surprise because I didn’t know they would, especially as Heat magazine didn’t and they are from the same magazine. But the Editorial Assistant said that if I want more work experience, to just send an email to her, and she would get me in on a week where there is more to do, as when I was there it was when they were finishing an issue off.

I also spoke to Heat magazine, I asked if there was any chance of getting work experience as Editor for a day, the editorial assistant said she will see what she can do, however I doubt that will happen, but you never know.

So now I know what I am doing from September, and I cannot wait. I have fewer modules to do than the previous years; however I think it will be more work especially with the dissertation, but I think I am going to enjoy it. Writing is what I enjoy, and I am going to have plenty of it.

I have had varying jobs over the week, from the normal handing out mail, to researching stories. I was even told that I can research a story of my choice and write it up for it to go onto the website. That was great, I wrote a story about Anna Chapman, the russian spy, possibly selling her story and posing for Playboy because she is now broke.

I also got to sit in on team meetings, where they were discussing what was going into the next issue. I am surprised about how far ahead the magazine is made from the actual sell date. One thing to remember about the dates though is that the August issue is available in July, the September issue is available in August and so on. It is the 22nd July today, and they have finished the September issue, and have done most of the features for the October issue.

Thats the thing with a monthly magazine though, the deadlines are more spread out, so you have more time to work on articles. You can then also organise features far in advance, and you only need to have the news section up to date.

Being honest, I actually prefer Heat. As Heat is weekly it is more fast paced, and there is a lot to do. I think it could also be that I just prefer Heat magazine to FHM. However I am glad that I have had work experience here and I have enjoyed it.

I popped upstairs to Heat to say hi, and to give them a new issue of FHM, and I was chatting to them saying how I really enjoyed working for them, and if they need any help that they can just phone me. They seemed happy to see me, and you never know, they might actually phone me up again.

I don’t have any more work experience organised until October with Zoo now, and I am looking forwards to that. I will have to get back onto the case of getting some more. Seeing as I have done a couple of magazines now, I think I may need to get some in a newspaper. Seems like I am going to have to give those locals a phone call.