Sarfraz Manzoor has been following the fortunes of six young people who graduated last year. How well do they feel that university prepared them for today's economic realities? The class of 2009 left university knowing they were facing the toughest battle for jobs in a generation. The outlook for the 300,000 young men and women who were leaving university appeared decidedly bleak, with warnings that the number of new graduates out of work would be double that of the previous year, that students who had graduated from English universities would be the most indebted in history, and that up to 40,000 graduates would be still looking for work six months after leaving university. Check this out ...

It looks like a video packed full of the very latest in Hollywood special effects trickery. Dressed simply in jeans and a handful of different T-shirts, a young man sets off from Brooklyn Bridge in New York and walks across the full breadth of America – all without raising a sweat. 'Guy Walks Across America' has become the latest internet sensation and has already been viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. And this remarkable viral advertising campaign by Levi's was produced using an extremely time-consuming and painstaking technique. Every single frame of his epic journey through the short , two-minute video was filmed using the old trick of stop-motion photography. Each of its 2770 frames was posed while the model kept still and then photographed. Time-lapse photography gave the effect of movement on either side. The video can be seen in today's Video of the Week section on Younilife.comCheck this out ...

A family are celebrating after discovering the daughter they were told had died in a car crash is alive after a hospital mix-up. However, the news meant heartache for the parents of the girl's best friend - as it emerged it was their daughter who died in the accident. Abby Guerra’s funeral was due to take place today after her parents were told she had been killed in the crash along with another friend. However, on Saturday, hospital officials in Glendale, Arizona, announced the 19-year-old was alive and in a coma. A mix up at the crash scene had led to the talented young football player being mistaken for her best friend, 21-year-old Marlena Cantu. Abby had suffered severe head injuries, a broken back and punctured lung and was unrecognisable due to facial swelling and having her head shaved for a brain operation. Check this out ...

Gang violence in cities has reached such high levels that councils are ferrying teenagers around in taxis – because they are too scared to walk through dangerous areas. One inner London authority spent nearly £400,000 of taxpayers’ money last year putting youths into cabs because of fears for their safety. The local council in Hackney, which has one of the highest rates of shootings and stabbings in the country, ran up a total bill of £440,000. Of this, 88 per cent – an average of £1,060 per day – was accounted for by ‘vulnerable children’. Finn Greig, a former social worker in the borough, said the high bill reflected the large number of children aged between 13 and 19 who were given taxis because they were too scared to walk between the ‘territories’ used by gangs. Check this out ...

Sometimes it seems as if the expansion of the social networking phenomenon knows no bounds. And now scientists say even aliens might not be immune to Twitter. They could have been using cosmic 'tweets' to contact us for decades, researchers claim - but we have been missing them. While any 'lost in space' messages wouldn't exactly be restricted to 140 characters, as on the website, a study suggests ET is more likely to send out short, directed messages than continuous signals beamed in all directions. The reason? Because alien civilisations are likely to strive to limit waste and make their signalling technology efficient. 'This approach is more like Twitter and less like War and Peace,' said Dr James Benford, a physicist and president of Microwave Sciences. His twin brother Gregory, an astrophysicist at the University of California, added: 'Whatever the life form, evolution selects for economy of resources. Check this out ...

Workmen were so determined to put down double yellow lines that they hoisted a woman's car into the air and painted them underneath. They then replaced the vehicle the other way round - complete with a parking ticket. Sally Baker left her Peugeot 206cc on Little Quay Street in Manchester city centre because the road had unrestricted parking. But when she got back she found the vehicle was facing the other way with double yellows underneath. The fine was removed after the workmen were challenged. It was replaced by a note saying: 'Your car has been repositioned by the council.' At least two other cars - a BMW and a Mini - were also lifted up by a truck as the lines were painted on Little Quay Street and Atkinson Street, just off Deansgate. Sally, a 39-year-old accountant from Urmston, said: 'I parked on Little Quay Street having looked carefully for any parking restrictions in place.'To find out that the council moved my car, without my permission and then placed it on to double yellow lines they had just painted is disgraceful. Check this out ...

For every US soldier or Marine deployed in harm's way overseas, three remain in the US working to support the mission. But, as the BBC's Katie Connolly finds, missing the defining deployments of a military era can be difficult to come to terms with. When Jay Agg signed up for the US Marine Corps after the 9/11 attacks, he knew he risked being severely injured, perhaps losing limbs. He knew he might even lose his life. Yet, much to the surprise of many civilians, when his service came to an end in 2006 and he hadn't served in a combat zone, Mr Agg was sorely disappointed. Some might imagine that soldiers who don't get deployed breathe an enormous sigh of relief, pleased that they are remaining on safe soil, far from danger. Check this out ...

One hails from the landed classes, while the other was born into a pop music empire. But despite the very different backgrounds of these two Cambridge students, Isabella Hervey-Bathurst and Isabel Wilson have one thing in common - their head-turning looks. They were pitted against each other in the final of a competition to find the 'fittest' girl at the university. Miss Hervey-Bathurst, whose family owns spectacular Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire, beat Miss Wilson, daughter of music mogul Tony Wilson, by just 12 votes after 5,000 were cast. The upper-class 20-year-old - a third year social and political studies student at traditionally blue-blooded Trinity College - couldn't be reached for comment yesterday but friends said she would be 'amused' by the result. Her blonde rival, who is also 20 and in her third year studying medicine at Jesus College, said the competition 'shows that Cambridge students don't take themselves too seriously'. Check this out ...

Tens of thousands of people are set to miss out on a university place in the UK this year after record numbers applied. Some 660,953 applied to start full-time undergraduate courses this autumn, up 11.6% on the same point last year. And if last year's pattern is repeated, tens of thousands more will apply before the September deadline. Lecturers union, the UCU, fears up to 170,000 people could be disappointed, as a cap on places is enforced. But this is an estimate based on the number of places allocated in UK universities last year, with some additions for extra places in England. These extra 10,000 undergraduate places in England are mainly in science and maths departments, and some are part time. There are no equivalent figures available for universities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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Workmen painting white lines on a road left a gap for a dead badger because they said it was not their responsibility to move it. The animal had been killed about a week before on the A338 near Downton, on the Hampshire-Wiltshire border. Hampshire County Council said the workers did what they thought "was best" because it is the district council's job to remove carcasses. The badger has now been removed and the painting will be completed on Friday. The county council said there would be no extra cost to taxpayers because the company was being paid a fixed rate for the job. Businessman Kevin Maul was on his way home from work when he noticed the break in the lines. He said: "I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I saw this poor old badger who had been there over a week. Check this out ...