News Shorts - 23.04.08

News Shorts. Wear Them.

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Pain-t ball

A woman was shot in the face by a paintball-gun toting thug on a car showcourt in Portobello last week.

The 34-year old was wandering around the Arnold Clark showroom on Seafield Road East when she was hit from close range by a pink paintball pellet.

The woman was taken to hospital by paramedics.

Arnold Clark Motorstore manager Paul Brown said: "Kevin was showing her round the cars when she all of a sudden collapsed. The paintball had hit her in the face, and if it had been a few centimetres higher it could have taken her eye out.

"If you've ever been hit with a paintball you'll realise that it hurts when you're wearing two pairs of heavy trousers, but I can't imagine what it would be like to get hit full on in the face – at point blank range – without goggles.

Wiki-aye, wiki-naw

A UK-based web development, entering it's public beta-testing, is looking to become the next big thing online: a social debating website.

Aiming to be the "Wikipedia of debates", Debatewise.com offers people the chance to do intellectual battle with others all over the world on a wide range of burning issues from the news cycle.

David Crane, CEO and founder of Debatewise.com, said: "The aim of Debatewise is to further debate and to start where Wikipedia ends.

"Wikipedia proves that huge numbers of people are willing to contribute what they know in order to better inform others. However, one of their founding principles is neutrality, which means posting opinions is forbidden. Yet the vast majority of the eight million posts people make to forums and blogs every day are opinions."

The site allows people to go head to head over issues such as ID cards, cannabis declassification and how much longer Facebook is likely to last.

Nothing is safe from the "special relationship"

Gordon Brown's love for all things American is to be reflected in a series of higher education schemes to be developed by leading academic ambassadors that will lead to greater cooperation between universities in Britain and the US.

Mr Brown has assigned Kings College London principal, Prof Rick Trainor, the task of building a closer relationship between universities on both sides of the Atlantic. He will buddy-up with his New York University counterpart to examine ways to better cooperate.

Mr Trainor said: "I am delighted to take forward this initiative with New York University and other US and UK universities.

"Here at King's we recently collaborated with New York University to be among the first to receive the new Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant so I know that the partnership group will be able to build on many important academic collaborations.

"As a member of the UK/US Fulbright Commission and a Rhodes Scholar, I also have a great personal interest in student mobility."

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