The University of Cambridge is proposing to abolish its admissions’ requirement for a grade A to C in a foreign language at GCSE, to attract more students from state schools. As national curriculum changes have meant a foreign language is no longer compulsory after 14, there has been a 30% drop, resulting in only half of pupils taking a foreign language to GCSE. Only 17% of state schools now enforce it. Cambridge is currently the only university with this requirement and as of next September proposes to leave the decision to individual departments.

One of Britain’s best loved butterflies, the small tortoiseshell, is under threat according to research which shows how numbers have plummeted by 80% in the last 20 years. Conservationists believe that the sturmia bella fly is to blame, because it lays its larvae inside the caterpillar until it cocoons. Dr Martin Warren, Chief Executive of Butterfly Conservation, told The Daily Mail that he was “deeply concerned”.

Three squatters have been evicted from a college-owned property, which they broke into during the Easter vacation.
A window was smashed, furniture was damaged and rubbish was strewn about the house during the illegal occupation.

One of the students currently living at the house, Sebastian Kaupp-Roberts, made the discovery after passing by and noticing that the front gate had been taken off its hinges. A notice detailing ‘Squatters Rights’ had been placed in one of the windows.

Roberta Klimt, another student resident, described how they realised what was going on.

“Later that night on his way home, Sebastian peeped in at the kitchen window (which can be seen from Walton Street) and saw a man helping himself to my low-calorie hot chocolate supply.

“The porters told us that they’d spoken to the squatters who had said they hadn’t realized the house was a student house, and that they wouldn’t have moved in if they’d known.”

After two days, police and bailiffs evicted the squatters and the students were allowed back into the property. Klimt said, “We had a look around the house. The squatters’ belongings were still lying around because they’d been apprehended without having time to gather their things together. It was at this point that things started to turn out as quite amusing.

“The house was in a pretty big mess. Various bits of furniture had been moved around from room to room inexplicably. They’d pinned up a couple of Page 3 girls on our living-room wall, where pictures of Chairman Mao and Germaine Greer used to be. ”

“The nicest touch was the shopping trolley we found in my friend George’s room, which contained but a single egg” she said.

Although the break-in ended without significant damage, the students were initially concerned for the safety of their possessions.

Another housemate, Marielle Cottee, said, ”I was shocked to hear that squatters had gained access to the house, particularly because we had only left it a few days before and some of my belongings were inside. Once the squatters had got in, they removed the doors from our bedrooms and boarded up the windows to stop anyone else coming in.”
“I was fairly horrified to see the state of the house from the outside” she said.

Miss Cottee explained that the housemates who were in Oxford at the time were allowed back into the house in order to identify what damage had been done and what belongings were their own.

“All of our beds had been slept in, they had broken into our medicine boxes and there were newspaper clippings everywhere about previous squatter escapades” she said.

Thames Valley Police have confirmed that they were called in to assist in the eviction of the three squatters who had taken up residence in the house.

The house, which is owned by Worcester College, has since been cleaned and the college has made improvements to the security of the building. The Domestic Bursar, Steve Dyer, commented, “The squatters were discovered in the house on the 25 March and were removed two days later. ”

“We’ve put extra locks on the windows in the house and the police have advised us that the property should not be left un-occupied for long periods of time.”

Klimt praised the efforts of Worcester College to rectify the situation. She said, “College were very helpful and reassuring to us. We were very happy with how they handled the situation.”

{nomultithumb}A former Oxford student, Toby Kendall, has been uncovered as a spy working undercover in an anti-aviation group.

The 24 year old graduate, who studied Oriental Studies at Wadham College, aroused the suspicions of activists in the group Plane Stupid and was exposed as a spy working for C2i International, a private investigation agency.

Kendall joined the London based group last July.  Plane Stupid is a network of groups which protest against airport expansion and aviation’s climate impact, who last Sunday staged a protest on the roof of the Scottish Parliament against plans to expand Scottish airports. Kendall told fellow group members that his name was ‘Ken Tobias’ and became a committed activist, allegedly always being the first to arrive at meetings and constantly pushing for more direct action.

Kendall’s excessive enthusiasm and expensive dress sense raised suspicions amongst activists. They discovered that he wasn’t on the electoral register for the area in which he claimed to live. The rugby club which he said he played for held no record of a ‘Ken Tobias’ either.

The group began a mole hunt and fed Kendall false information about direct action, and within 48 hours UK airport security had been alerted.  The content and locations of meetings that Kendall attended also appeared in the Evening Standard.

Activists confronted Kendall earlier this month and asked to see some ID but he claimed to have lost his wallet.  Eventually Kendall was identified when the activists showed an Oxford acquaintance his photograph.  A Bebo social networking profile provided further evidence that Toby Kendall worked as an analyst in ‘security and investigations’ at C2i International.

In a statement, Plane Stupid activist Tamsin Omond said, “The aviation industry brought its special brand of bumbling incompetence to the task of spying on us. The secret agent was more Austin Powers than James Bond though the question still remains, who paid the espionage agency?”

BAA, which owns Heathrow and has repeatedly been targeted by Plane Stupid, denied having any relationship with C2i or with Toby Kendall but admitted that it had rejected an invitation by C2i to offer its services.  C2i claim to have been unaware of Kendall’s infiltration of Plane Stupid, stating that he was employed to carry out counter-surveillance such as debugging company offices.

Kendall emailed Plane Stupid the day after he was confronted expressing his upset at how the group dealt with the situation.  He said “As you guys made clear [the accusation] is not personal, but I can’t help but feel that the manner by which you went about it was aggressive and cold…it is now clear to me that at no point did you consider approaching me in a friendly way first”

He added that he could no longer trust Plane Stupid enough to volunteer for the group again, “even with my proof of ID I don’t feel you would trust me and to be honest with the way in which you approached this, I do not feel that I can trust you…I am very sorry to have to leave it this way and I can assure you that I came into the group with a pure heart wanting to make a difference.”

Pete Doherty may be taught Shakespeare by an Oxford student next month whilst behind bars in Wormwood Scrubs. Doherty, serving a 14-week sentence, has the chance to enrol in a Shakespeare workshop to be given at the prison by post-graduate Yvette K. Khoury, currently studying for her DPhil at St John’s College.

Ms Khoury, studying Shakespeare in Arabic for her Doctorate, pledged to give a teaching workshop at a charity auction for her local west London church without knowing who would buy it. When a teacher at Wormwood Scrubs called to say she had bought the pledge, Ms Khoury was surprised but happy to teach the inmates.

The workshop is not until May 19th, and so details remain speculative at this stage, with Ms Khoury saying she will have to ‘play it by ear’. However, she knows her underlying aim will be ‘for them to have a good time, just like with anything else – not teaching as such but a workshop, reading and getting them involved.’

Doherty has been in the prison since April 8th, after failing to attend drug tests as part of a suspended sentence for possession of heroin, crack cocaine, cannabis and the horse-tranquiliser ketamine. Since being inside Doherty has been the subject of claims from tabloid newspapers that he has been injecting heroin inside his cell and that he has been given privileged treatment, with extra bedding and his own cell.

As an inmate, Doherty now has the chance to sign up to educational opportunities such as this one. The former Libertines and current Babsyhambles front-man may perhaps be keen to take up the offer, having dropped out as a
student of the first-year of his English Literature course at the University of London and since become famous for the creativity of his song-writing.

At the same university, Ms Khoury also studied English and achieved a first- class BA, before taking an MA in Shakespearean Studies. She is keen to dispel the fiction that Shakespeare is too difficult to be enjoyed, and hopes this will come across to the inmates.

‘I want them not to be frightened of approaching Shakespeare. A lot of people seem to think Shakespeare is too intellectual, too highbrow… I don’t want them to think of Shakespeare as something monstrous, lurking away.’

Prison officers may be hoping Doherty will attend and sprinkle some stardust on their classes – others, knowing the singer’s renowned self-destructive capabilities, may be less optimistic. When asked about whether Doherty might be one of the twelve inmates she will teach, Ms Khoury said ‘I can’t comment – I don’t know, it’s far too speculative.’

Second year medical exams have been surrounded by controversy again this year, after complaints that unhelpful phrasing, obscure content and inclusion of material not on the syllabus made them even more difficult.
The exams, known as 1st BM Part 2, take place after the end of Hilary, and candidates are due to receive their results this week.

The controversial questions, which appeared in the multiple choice section of the paper, asked the student to identify the incorrect or least likely answer rather than the correct one.

One second year medic, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “This made it incredibly easy to misread almost every question.’ Another pointed out that ‘the point of the examination [is] to test our core medical knowledge, not our grammar!”

A further objection was at the alleged inclusion of ‘extension’ material in the multiple choice sections. These are only meant to test a tightly-specified syllabus of ‘core’ knowledge, and typically carry a pass mark of 80% for each question.

Yet students claim that a significant amount of extension material was included in the examinations.

One question in particular, covering the mechanisms of diuretic drugs, asked for information that candidates claim was specifically excluded from the syllabus.

The University Press Office responded to the allegations, saying that if students were concerned, “There is a procedure for them to raise these concerns with the Proctors through their colleges. None of the First BM Part 2 candidates has done so.”

However at least two students, including Richard Rosch, a Magdalen second year, have instead contacted the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre directly.

The senior clerical officer, Ashley Morely, said that their complaints “may be reviewed during the post examination meeting.”

Last year students were unhappy about the content on the multiple choice sections, especially in the general pathology and microbiology paper. “Some of the questions [in this paper] were unbelievably obscure,” said one third year. “I remember everyone was very angry.”

 A summary of the Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) report for that year admits “general unhappiness” about the issue.

The examiners defended their position, claiming that while some of the “distracter answers” may have been off-syllabus, this was not the case for any correct answers.

However the examiners’ report for the 2007 papers shows that they lowered the pass mark for a large number of questions in the pathology paper, judging that it was too high for eight out of the sixteen questions.

 
 
 
The city centre has been hit by its second fire in two days, after a kitchen blaze caused extensive damage to Wagamama in the early hours of Friday morning.

Fire crews were called at 5.40am and Market Street cordoned off after delivery men saw smoke in the building.  Five engines attended, as well as a specialist rescue unit who helped gain access to the restaurant.
 
Incident Commander Paul Molloy said that there was extensive damage to the kitchen area and smoke damage to the rest of the building.  “Things were complicated by the fact that the fire was in a concealed space,” he said.
 
“Now we just want to make sure that everything is safe.”
 
The fire is believed to be accidental and unrelated to a blaze that damaged the facade of Schuh on Magdalen Street yesterday .  There were no injuries in either incident.
 
Wagamama opened in September and is not expected to be back in action until the end of the month.

Two Oxford graduates are facing jail sentences after being charged with industrial espionage by Russian security services.{nomultithumb}

Alexander Zaslavsky, 33, and IIya Zaslavsky, 29, were charged on March 20 after allegedly attempting to obtain classified information from a Russian employee of a “national hydrocarbon institution.”
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), whose predecessor was the KGB, said the accused “were illegally collecting classified commercial information for a number of foreign oil and gas companies to gain advantages over Russian competitors.”

The case is connected to an investigation by the Russian Government into the Russian-British oil firm TNK-BP, whose premises were raided on March 19. FSB said, “The search produced material evidence of industrial espionage . . . and business cards of representatives of foreign defence departments and the Central Intelligence Agency”.

If found guilty of industrial espionage, the Oxford-educated brothers face up to three years in jail. However, because the charges involve strategic natural resources, which may be classed as state secrets, the men could be charged with espionage and face a longer jail sentence of up to 20 years. 

Both men have been released on bail on orders not to leave Russia.

Alexander Zaslavsky, who works as an independent energy consultant, studied at University College, before moving on to both Nuffield and Magdalen.

A friend of Alexander Zaslavsky’s who also attended Oxford, told The Moscow Times that: “Sasha was a brilliant student. For his degree [in PPE] he got one of the best grades in the University.”

Ilya Zaslavsky, a manager in TNK-BP’s international affairs office, completed his undergraduate degree at Worcester before also studying at University College.  

Jane Vicat, a secretary at the College, said “[IIya’s] tutors are aware of what has happened, are concerned about it and are following the matter closely.”

The tutors declined to comment on the matter.

A friend described IIya as “a bright, young guy,” The Moscow Times reported. IIya refers to himself on Facebook as the “First Oil Poet of the Russian Federation.”

The FSB had claimed that the brothers were members of the British Council, which was forced out of Moscow earlier this year. However, a spokesperson for the Council stressed that neither brother was a member, or ever has been.
Alexander Zaslavsky is, however, the head of the British Council’s British Alumni Club (BAC.)

The club was set up in 1998 as a networking forum for Russian professionals who have been educated in the UK. The groups maintain about 1,800 members across Russia. It has faced a campaign of intimidation by Kremlin-backed youth groups.

A British Council spokesperson added that, “The members of the British Alumni Club are valued contacts of the British Council and so we are obviously concerned by these reports.”

Alexander and IIya both won British Council grants to study at Wellington College and at Oxford University.
Russian government officials have opposed scholarships awarded to Russian students for study in Britain. They have said that they believe the grants are part of an MI6 recruitment strategy.

IIya has been critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is a member of a Facebook group which lambasts Mr Putin whilst last year he heavily criticised the outgoing president on a radio programme.

Several individuals have already been detained for insulting the President as part of an apparent clampdown on freedom of speech.

Investors also fear that the raid on TNK-BP suggests the Kremlin is plotting to seize one of the few remaining sizeable oil and gas assets not currently under state control. TNK-BP is a 50-50 British-Russian venture, and sits uncomfortably with the current majority state control of the Russian energy business.

“TNK-BP is a commercial organization engaged in normal legitimate commercial activity,” TNK-BP said in a statement.

“We are a Russian company and we work successfully on a fair commercial basis with many other Russian companies, both state and privately owned,” it continued.

“We do not condone illegal activity nor do we rely on unfair competitive practices.”

The arrests threaten to further damage Anglo-Russian relations. Hostility between London and Moscow has been evident since the latter refused to extradite Andrei Lugovoi following the death of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive poisoning in November 2006. London has similarly refused to extradite Boris Berezovsky, whilst both countries expelled embassy officials last summer.

Covered Market shopkeepers have expressed anger with the Council’s decision to raise rent prices, fearing that it will force local businesses to shut down. 

The Council is bringing in the changes on a case-by-case basis, following its five-year rent review.  Currently four shops have been faced with substantially higher rent charges after hearings. The Cake Shop will have to pay 51% more for its lease, after managing to convince an arbitrator to negotiate down the figure from the original 170%. 

Sally Davis, the Director of The Cake Shop in the Covered Market, said, “We will struggle but we will carry on. None of us are big businesses, we are all from family-run backgrounds.”

She added, “It will kill the market, I’m sure it will. If a lot of the bigger family businesses go because of the rent, only big franchises will be able to afford it. Because we’re crafty and creative, I think. Ultimately we will survive because it’s my livelihood and we’ll diversify but we may have to take more corporate orders.”

The Covered Market Association currently represents the businesses within the compound, and is planning to step up its publicity campaign, ‘Save the Covered Market’. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, visited some of the affected shops in the market to show his support during a visit to Oxford on 15 April. 

Richard Alden, President of the Covered Market Association and owner of Haymond’s Fishmongers, stressed the need for continued support for the campaign. He said, “The businesses require positive momentum to maximise the presence of the Covered Market.”

Shops like Ben’s Cookies and Moo-Moos, which are smaller in size, are also facing significant rent increases: the former may be charged approximately 30% more. However some have complained that the rent increases are unlikely to be matched by improved maintenance or better advertising for the compound. Davis complained, “It’s archaic, there are over 100 light fixtures that have no light bulbs in them.”

The owners of Moo-Moos, said, “It’s inevitable it was going to happen but it seems unfair, given the state of the market. Basically, if they continue with these increases there won’t be any individual shops left, it will all be Topshop and Zara.” 

A spokesperson for Oxford City Council said, “Both parties freely entered into the contract,  which included a rent review at five year intervals. We have gone to the Arbitrator who will ultimately decide the level of rent…given the circumstances.”

Additional reporting by Daniel Rolle

A prized picture of The Beatles was stolen from the Vincents’ Club after the Varsity Boxing Match this Easter.
The match, which took place on 6 March, was the 101st Varsity Match. Oxford won with a resounding victory of 7-2, having won all of the first five bouts, meaning that they had secured a win by the half time interval.

Stuart Garman, the Oxford Amateur Boxing Club’s President, said, “The photograph is of the Beatles standing at the Vincent’s Club bar, and is a valued part of the Club’s heritage.

“The photograph was stolen on the night of our 101st Varsity boxing match, which was a particularly busy night in Vincent’s; full of many current members, ex-boxing Blues – and a sizeable group of Cambridge Hawkes members.”
The 12” by 12” photograph shows the Beatles with Jeffrey Archer on 5 March 1964, nearly 44 years before it was stolen from the Vincent’s Bar from which it was taken.

The police were alerted to the theft at the time but as there was not substantial evidence for them to follow the thiefs, they are not investigating it.

Oxford police spokesman, Toby Shergold, said, “A theft of a photo from Vincent’s club was reported to us. Police are not currently investigating the incident, because there’s no evidence for us to go on.”

He added, “We have spoken to witnesses and looked for forensic evidence. There is no CCTV and there are no leads, but the case isn’t closed, so if anyone passes us any information on the suspects or the whereabouts of the photo, we will look into it.”

Garman added, “Whilst I would avoid pointing the finger at anyone, I would like to think that no member of Oxford University who was present that night would have taken the picture. It is a shame from the perspective of OUABC that the theft marred what was otherwise a hugely successful evening, both in terms of our Varsity victory and the hospitality of Vincent’s Club afterwards.”

The Vincent’s Club Ex-President, Robert Payne, who was in office at the time, said, “We have reported the theft to the police but have no leads on its whereabouts.”

Cambridge University’s Amateur Boxing Club was unavailable for comment.