Make Me Think.By Madeline Jenkins

Make me think. I decided to look into how things have made me think from museums, exhibitions, television documentaries, newspapers and magazines. A variety of signs make people think and are often influential by the way they are presented (news-papers, posters, Television) often only certain aspects are shown and for example posters are often summed up quickly so that the viewer only has to view it for a short period of time to realise the topic and the message it conveys.

I decided to base my project on choosing an article everyday and then creating a piece of work to rep-resent or link to the article, by using a variety of mediums and techniques.

I wanted to use this project in a new way of making me think, which once produced and viewed by others will hopefully also make them think about the articles and the work. I mostly chose the less known topics in the world/UK news to work on.

British strawberries benefit from weather

By Ellie Buchdahl

A super-sweet strawberry glut has hit British fields. - and its more then two weeks earlier than usual. Balmy April temperatures have made this the earliest start to the straw-berry season for about 20 years and more than doubled the average yield.

Local producers said the major supermarkets would be switch-ing to 100 per cent locally grown stock this month because of the increase.

Vernon Emery of R&V Emery said: “Our Production yield is up by 150 per cent on recent years - we could be heading for a record year”.

Many pick-your-own farms are also planning to open their gates early as a result.

Monday9th May 2011

Tuesday10th May 2011

Protestors ‘Slut Walk’ over policeman’s Rape remark

By Russell Contreras in Boston

Chanting “We love sluts” and holding signs saying “jesus loves sluts,” around 2,000 protestors marched in boston yesterday, making the city the latest to join a series of protests known as “Slut-Walks”.

The protest movement, sparked by a Toronto police officer’s remark that women could avoid being raped by not dressing like “sluts”, came to Boston after similar events- mostly organised

through Facebook and Twitter - popped up in Canada, the UK and other partsof the US.

“We Wanted to do something to show our support,” said Siob-han Connors, 20, from Lynn, Massachusetts, an organiser. “We originally planned for a small event and expected about 30 people.”

By the time the march began about 2,000 people - some

dressed in lingerie with words “Slut” written across their stom-achs - were in attendance.

“I had watched the Toronto walk happen from afar,” said Jaclyn Friedman, author of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, Who spoke at the event. “When I heard it was coming to Boston, I just emailed the organisers and said, ‘How can I help?’

Wednesday11th May 2011

Circuses- Magority of Public would back ban on wild animals

By Martin Hickman

An overwhelming majority of the public backs a ban on wild animals performing in circuses. Seventyone per cent favour a ban, with 21 per cent opposed and 7 per cent saying they don’t know, according to an opinion poll for ‘i’ news paper.

The government is expected to announce within days that it has rejected a ban in favour of circuses’ voluntary self-regulations. Downing street is concerned about increasing “red tape”, according to animal-welfare organisations.

More than 1,000 members of the public were surveyed by ComRes on 3 May. More than 10,000 people have also signed The Independent’s online peti-tion calling for a government ban, while hundreds of twitter users have urged their followers to sign.

The three British circuses which use animals - the Great Brit-ish Circus, Circus Mondao and Peter Jolly’s - say they are well cared for, are not forced to perform tricks and have large enough enclosures.

Thursday12th May 2011

A Roman holiday for ‘quake’

If Rome’s usually bustling streets seem quieter then usual today it will be because hundreds of thousands of locals have decid-ed to vacate the Eternal City for 24 hours - on the off - chance there may be an earthquake.

Predictions of a disaster in the capital, attributed to long-dead pseudo-scientist, Raffaele Ben-

dandi, have been dismissed and even ridiculed by public safety officials for weeks.

But this hasn’t stopped many Romans planning a day off so they can so they can head for the country - just to be on the safe side. According to the newspaper La Repubblica, 20 per cent fewer people than

usual are expected to be pres-ent in Rome’s schools and offic-es today. This was confirmed by figures quoted elsewhere in the media, suggesting the number of days off requested by worker-sis up fifth, compared to 11 May last year.

Rumours about Bendandi’s predictions have been proliferat-

ing on social networking sites for months.

At the start of April, the civil protection agency began putting put out notices telling people not to panic after concern about the predictions started to swell.

By Ian Burrell

Friday13th May 2011

The Outback’s New Gold RushIn 1892, word of a sensational discovery spread across Australia and beyond. Two men digging for gold in the Western Australian desert had collected 540oz of the precious metal in a single after-noon. Fortune-hunters converged on the remote spot from all over the world, almost quadrupling the population of the “Golden West” within a decade.

The men who disembarked from ships, then walked hundreds of miles cross-country to the gold-fields, picked up most of the sur-face treasure within a few years. But the arid, inhospitable region has continued to yield gold, and now record prices have started a new rush, with thousands of Aus-tralians heading west in the hope of striking it lucky.

Conditions are somewhat better

than in the late 19th century, when water was scarce and there were frequent typhoid epidemics, but prospecting is still a chancy busi-ness. “You dig a lot of holes and find nothing,” says Rod Wilson, who lives in Coolgardie, only yards from the site where William Ford and Ar-thur Bayley first found gold. “Then you see a little sparkle on the ground and suddenly it’s payday.”

before the end of this year, has triggered a frenzy of activity around Australia, the world’s second-biggest gold producer af-ter China. Gold-mining companies are expanding existing operations, reopening mines that were aban-doned when the price was lower, and hunting for new deposits of the yellow metal.Consumers, too, are cashing in on the boom; the Perth Mint, which refines most of Australia’s gold,

has struggled in recent times to keep up with demand for coins and bullion. People are selling their jewellery, and even gold fill-ings. “Gold parties”, where friends gather to have their trinkets val-ued by an expert, have replaced Tupperware parties in the suburbs.The likes of Mr Wilson prefer to find their own gold. “Mainly I do it for the lifestyle,” he says. “You’re your own boss, and if you’re per-sistent, it pays its way. I’ll never be a multi-millionaire, but as long as I can stay alive and feed my ani-mals, I’m happy.”

Despite its romantic aura, digging for gold is “bloody hard work”, says another prospector, Glyn Morgan. “There’s nothing flash about it. You’re out in the stinking heat, with the flies. I’d be doing something else if I could. But you just get sucked into it.”

Aubrey Lynch, an elder of the Wongatha tribe, says: “As a child in the 1940s, I can remember walking around with my mother, speccing [scanning the ground] for gold. We were speccing for gold to live on, to go and buy tucker [food]. We also told the mining companies where our people had been picking up gold, then the companies went out and got themselves tenements.”

At 71, Powell is still out most days searching. “I can’t get rid of the gold fever,” he says. “I can’t shake it; it’s like a bloody disease. I’ve often said to myself why don’t I get a little boat and go fishing? But I just keep going out prospecting. When I finally get to the cemetery, I’ll still be digging, as long as they bury me standing up.”

Saturday14th May 2011

Bus driver filmed using two mobiles

By Rob Hastings

An Italian bus driver has been suspended after he was caught on film using two mobile phones while steering with his elbows.

Video of the driver posted on the website of La Repubblica shows him holding one phone to his ear, deep in conversa-tion, while tapping away at a keyboard of another. The con-versation continues throughout the duration of the two-minute video, as he steers through traf-fic on the way to Rome’s Ciam-pino airport.

Using even one mobile phone while driving in against the law in Italy. Officials confirmed he had been suspended.

Tiger Ray - a new species of fish

Christine Dell’Amore, Nation Geographic

An exotic South American crea-ture earns its scientific stripes.

An amazon stingray known as a tiger ray has been recognised as a new species. For more than a decade, aquarium traders in the upper Amazon have caught the freshwater fish, whose name, Potamotrygon tigrina, is inspired by its orange-black colouration and banded tail. Vir-tually nothing is known about it. Traders who catch them in the wild probably know more about their biology than most scien-tists.

Sunday15th May 2011

Sunday15th May 2011

Patients’ lives put at risk by faulty medical implants

By Jonathan Owen

Thousands of Britons are suf-fering serious health problems or even dying because of faulty medical equipment, experts warn today. Implants ranging from hi-tech hip replacements and heart pacemakers to breast augmentations have been re-sponsible for injuries – and in some cases deaths – with pa-tients being used as “guinea pigs” by a largely self-regulated indus-try, according to researchers.

Scores of failing or inadequate devices remain available for doc-tors to use in operations – de-spite manufacturers being aware of the problems. One manufac-turer kept a metal hip replace-ment on the market till 2010 despite repeated serious criti-cism of it by doctors from 2007.

In a second example, a combined heart pacemaker/defibrilla-tor was recalled only after the reports of five deaths and 600 reports of a broken component.

The British Medical Journal criti-cises manufacturers for failing to monitor the safety of devices adequately. It has also criticised European regulators for not looking out for patients’ inter-ests properly. It says regulation is not “fit for purpose”.

“We have still not learned from past failures,” says Dr Deborah Cohen of the BMJ. “Nearly 20 years ago, the BMJ highlighted the dangers of early failure of unproved implants, yet the NHS is currently picking up the bill for faulty devices. Unlike kettles and toasters, which come with warranties, when devices do

not last as long as they ought to, companies are not necessarily held financially responsible.”The numbers of devices re-placed or discarded is not known, although analysts esti-mate the worldwide market to be worth an estimated £200m annually. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, responsible for monitor-ing medical equipment, received more than 9,000 reports of “ad-verse incidents” involving medi-cal devices – 1,885 of which involved serious injury and 202 resulted in death – in 2009, the latest figures available.

“The true extent of medical device recalls in the UK is cur-rently unknown,” said Dr Carl Heneghan, director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-based Medicine. “It is likely that

hundreds, if not thousands of patients each year are suffer-ing serious injury and/or dying. The current costs to the NHS are also unknown but it is likely to run into millions of pounds.” Patients are “acting as guinea pigs”, he said.

Details of some of the failures are highlighted in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary to be shown tomorrow night. BMJ researchers warn that patients will continue to be at risk unless better access to safety data is provided. They call for a registry of the highest-risk devices.

Butterflies off to a flying start

Monday16th May 2011

By Kunal Dutta

Three sodden summers brought many butterflies to the brink of extinction. But now Britain’s most endangered species are making a comeback thanks to 2010’s Indian summer and con-servation efforts.

Research from the Butterfly Conservation charity suggests the Adonis blue, wood white and the marsh fritillary have increased in numbers. The findings mark a success for

conservation efforts such as the Great British Butterfly Hunt, The Independent’s campaign, which drew the support of Sir David Attenborough.

Butterfly experts are cautiously optimistic that if Britain has a similar summer this year, some of the most threatened species could make a significant recov-ery after populations plum-meted in recent years because of bad weather, habitat loss and intensive farming. Continuous or heavy rain makes its hard for

butterflies to survive because the temperature is usually too low for them to fly.

Our pub gardens are beautiful

Tuesday17th May 2011

By Zoe Williams (the guardian)

No wonder we drink so much

The British Pub garden is both reassuring and reaffirming. it’s like a co-dependent friend: you have a qualm about your booze intake and the garden waves it away. Should i be drinking this pint, when its lunchtime and only tuesday? Well, clearly i should - otherwise why would they have designed me this perfect green space, with its charming wooden bench and my very own umbrella?.

China: Chemicals cause melons to explode

Wednesday18th May 2011

Fields of watermelons have been exploding in China after farmers gave them overdoses of growth chemicals during wet weather.

About 20 farmers around Dan-yang city in Jiangsu province were affected, losing up to 115 acres of melon.

Prices over the past year prompted many farmers to jump into the watermelon mar-ket. All of those with exploding melons were first-time users of the growth accelerator forchlo-rfenuron, although it has been widely available for some time, said China Central Television.

The farmers used it during a wet period and too late in the season, agricultural experts said.

Materials used:

Front cover : Mono Print

Page one : Photo Collage

Page two : Photo Collage

Page three : Pen Drawing and Edited Photos

Page four : Pen Drawing and Letterpress prints

Page five : Lino Print

Page six : Quick Vector Scetch

Page seven : Pen Drawing

Page eight : Lithograph Prints

Page nine : Pen Drawing and Watercolour

Page ten : Edited Photographs

Page eleven : Pen Drawing and Watercolour