Barack Obama looks the picture of fitness and health, but is he really? The 6ft 1in, 12stone 12lb, basketball-playing, golf-loving regular exerciser is a modest eater and a modest drinker, with a pulse rate of 56 and blood pressure of 106/62 giving him an enviable fitness profile. But superman is man: a dodgy right knee, raised cholesterol and an admission that he still puffs the odd cigarette blot that clean bill of health. Keep taking the nicotine gum, advises his doctor Captain Jeffrey Kuhlman.
Our graduates are not up to scratch.
So da 1st u gt 4 yr DgrE aint wrth da ppr its ritN on. Ggle n ntel aint hpy dat d stdnts cnt spl or ad. Dey say dey pt cvs in d bin cos r stndrds aint hi nuf lyk in rst of EU. Woteva.
Who dey tryN t impr$ wit dis gr8 db8 over Grade infl8? We workD hrdr n studyd hrdr n r mre focusd. Dats wot da teechrs n lectrs say. And dayre alwys rite. Roysh?
A courtroom is silenced as a 20-year-old man describes the crippling legacy of his father's sexual abuse. The stigma, the returning nightmares, the constant fear and hatred never go away. The boy and his brothers and sisters went to school with lice crawling all over their faces, in ill-fitting shoes, dirty clothes. "I hate the man," says the son. "I will never forgive him. He has given me a life sentence and now I want to see him being given a life sentence – behind bars." He gets 14 years.
What was all that about being sorry, learning lessons and taking responsibility? Having run up massive legal bills defending the indefensible, the Bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan, now asks his parishioners to stump up for the cost of compensating victims who were lied to and fought at every turn in their battle for justice. Bishop Willie Walsh in Ennis says he might do the same. Expect more empty pews.
Typical woman! Team Ashley says Cheryl realises she's partly to blame for Ashley's infidelity. She understands how he thinks she let him down as a wife. He's vulnerable and immature, easy prey for predatory women. Team Cheryl, however, says she'll meet the little rat, but it will be short and sweet: he's got 15 minutes and then he'll be asked to hobble out of the nine-bed house on those stupid crutches before she up-ends him and hits him with one.
A 12-inch high, blue-and-white vase on the nondescript list for a Sheppard's household contents and furniture auction is given a guide price of €150, but within minutes and a flurry of discreet nods, it goes to London dealer Richard Peters for a "bargain" bid of €110,000. Within a day, Chinese dealers put in offers of €220,000-plus for the vase. Time for another peek at that blue and white dust collector on the mantelpiece?
"Been/working and working/but I still got so terribly far to go," sings Nina Simone. Sixty-one-year-olds who thought they were on the home stretch know just how that feels as they're told they must work another year – if their employers still want these Granny and Grandpa O'Grimms. Spring chickens under 49 won't be able to go home to roost until they're 68.
"We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer, 'to hell with them'. The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do." Speech made by the late, truly great, Michael Foot on the eve of leading the British Labour Party to its historic 1983 worst-ever election defeat by Margaret Thatcher.
After three months apart, a humiliating public apology, a threat of divorce and a lotta therapy, Tiger and Elin Nordegren are reportedly moving back in together. She's been living about a mile away from their Florida home, but the couple are spotted together and (hold the front page!)Tiger kisses Elin on the cheek three times.
"Awesome job," says the pilot on a Jetblue plane bound for Sacramento as his air traffic controller tells him he's "cleared for take-off". No, he's not chuckling encouragement to the seven-year-old son of a JFK air traffic controller, but to his boy's twin sister. There were actually two children guiding planes at JFK on the President's Day Bank Holiday.
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