The Electric Pitchfork

Black applicants make up half of cheats, says UCAS UCAS said it had examined three million applications from British candidates made over the past five years More than half of students submitting fraudulent applications for degree courses are black, the university admissions body said yesterday. Black candidates make up 52 per cent of all applications flagged despite comprising only 9 per cent of applicants, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said. The figures triggered a race row with politicians and student leaders who said Ucas should offer a better explanation for the findings. Applications can be considered fraudulent for several reasons, including plagiarism of the personal statement, falsifying exam results, sending false documents, using fake identities, or making multiple applications at once. Ucas defended its systems from accusations of bias, saying the software that flagged questionable applications did not see the candidate’s ethnicity, and nei...

IN DEPTH Will Erdogan’s star crash to earth under Turkey’s debts? The Turkish president has built his reputation on economic success — but the country is staggering under enormous debt, writes Hannah Lucinda Smith Among the tulip-motif tiles, the Ataturk trinkets and the ceramic ornaments of whirling dervishes, there is another classic Turkish souvenir on sale on every Istanbul street corner. Street hawkers line up bundles of one million, five million and ten million lira notes on wooden carts, weighing them down with stones to stop them fluttering away. For Turks, many of whom still think in the millions when it comes to money, these banknotes stir recent memories of bad times. In July 2001 the lira went into freefall, losing 13 per cent of its value against the dollar overnight. Inflation ran at 1,800 per cent. Nothing the central bank did, from auctioning bonds to raising interest rates to 105 per cent, could stop the rot. The crisis  eventually led to the co...

Daisy Hardman How my bipolar landed me in crippling debt 'I felt terribly embarrassed and an absolute failure for having to go back to live with mum and dad' Debt Week Health & Wellbeing Options to share this content Facebook Twitter Share Close the expanded menu Copy this link About sharing Katie Conibear 29 May 2018 As part of  BBC Three's Debt Week , Katie Conibear talks about the impact the condition has had on her life. Before my diagnosis of bipolar, I thought my rapid and extreme mood swings were just me, just a part of my personality. Half the time I hated myself, and the other half I thought I was the most incredible person in the world. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. After 10 years of trying to figure out why, totally sober, I suddenly went from pole dancing in a nightclub on my own to wanting to drive my car into a tree, I was given the diagnosis of bi...

Making war is easier than making peace david aaronovitch The tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it suits extremists on both sides to continue the slaughter From beside a wrecked tank on the surprisingly green hill you could look down and see the line of the border, with its fence and watchtower. We’d driven the coast road south from Beirut with Bassam, our Palestinian guide, through PLO and militia checkpoints and were now looking at Israel, the land taken from his parents by invaders. Five days later, we were by the same fence, under the same watchtower, gazing back up to those hills, wondering if we could see the tank and listening to Shaul, our Israeli guide, talking about the defence of his new country. That was 1978: 30 years into the state of Israel and now, unbelievably, 40 years ago. And callow though I was, it struck me then how  similar the Jews and the Palestinians were. In Beirut, where the PLO had its headquarters, our del...

OBITUARY Margot Kidder obituary Actress who found fame as Lois Lane in the Superman films, but struggled with alcohol and depression May 17 2018, 12:01am,  The Times Margot Kidder in character as Lois Lane in the 1978 Superman film REX FEATURES In December 1978 Margot Kidder was booked to fly first class from Los Angeles to London and was looking forward to meeting the Queen at the royal premiere of Superman: The Movie. Kidder, who played Lois Lane in the film opposite Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent, was on the set of her next movie, The Amityville Horror. She had negotiated time off, but at the last minute the producers came to her with an unforeseen complication. She could not be released “because the flies they were breeding to crawl over Rod Steiger’s face were hatching that day” and her presence was required in the infamously creepy scene. Missing a royal premiere was, perhaps, a trivial setback, but it was an early augury of what Ho...

IN DEPTH Why the future of Northern Ireland is crucial to Brexit negotiations As a recent poll causes grave concern among senior Tories on all sides of the argument, Sam Coates, the Times deputy political editor, breaks down ten key reasons the province has become critical to the debate The Times,  May 15 2018, 5:00pm Theresa May’s decision to challenge Jacob Rees-Mogg over the future of Northern Ireland comes amid mounting nerves in Number 10 about the future of the union after  Brexit . Downing Street and key ministers have been shown polling from October that suggests opinion in the province is drifting towards a united Ireland. Another finding suggests leaving the EU with no deal on  the border  could shift voters in Northern Ireland decisively in favour of leaving the United Kingdom and joining the Irish Republic. Tory MPs are actively discussing the findings, with Brexiteers furiously rejecting the findings and insisting...