Sir Peter to live blog last Hobbit day

Filming of the last Hobbit movie wraps up in Wellington today after an epic 14-year journey, with Sir Peter Jackson promising to live blog every step. ”Today is not exactly ‘average’, given it’s our last day of shooting, but if I don’t do it today, I never will!” Sir Peter posted on Facebook this morning

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Study: TV’s female characters are sexual targets

Teenage female characters are sexual fodder for broadcast network TV series, especially comedies, according to a conservative US advocacy group’s new study. An examination of 238 sitcoms and dramas airing in the United States during four weeks in 2011 and 2012 found a third of the episodes included content that “rose to the level of sexual exploitation” of females, according to the Parents Television Council report

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Top Gear’s new season opener features NZ

Top Gear’s adventures in New Zealand feature when the popular car show returns to British screens on Sunday (local time) for its 20th series. “The motoring magazine returns with the action kicking off in New Zealand, as Jeremy Clarkson and James May race a car against a boat in a nail-biting battle up the beautiful coastline to the very tip of the North Island,” BBC promotional material says

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Fiji TV editor ‘quits over criticism’

A prominent TV editor in Fiji has been forced to quit after he complained on air that the daughter of the country’s dictator was playing music too loud. Fiji TV said today sports editor Satish Narayan has resigned after an incident this year when he was reporting on high school athletics in Suva.

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From wild child to doting mother

As a tattooed wild child wearing her husband’s blood in a locket and luring Brad Pitt away from Hollywood rival Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie was dream fodder for the tabloid press. But her transformation into a humanitarian campaigner and now poster girl for the fight against breast cancer with her revelation that, faced with a high cancer risk, she had undergone a double mastectomy has elevated her to heroine status in the media.

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Anti-Gaddafi Forces Distrustful of Western Reporters

As the push to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi has stalled, journalists have increasingly borne the brunt of the frustrations of Libya’s rebels. Although the foreign press was eagerly welcomed just months ago, reporters in rebel-controlled areas have recently been harassed and intimidated.

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Should Tenure Be Abolished?

These days tenure for teachers is such a brawl in America’s elementary and secondary schools that it’s easy to forget that it’s more a cornerstone of higher education.  When Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, announced earlier this month that he was leaving the White House to return to the University of Chicago it was a reminder just how strong the ties — and inducements — of university tenure can be, and why it has recently come under fire. At colleges and universities, tenure basically bestows a job for life unless an institution runs out of money.

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