LONDON: The United States comes out on top in an authoritative list of international university rankings published yesterday, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University leading the way. MIT came top of the QS World University Rankings for the second year running, while Harvard displaced Britain’s Cambridge University to take second spot in the 2013 table. US institutions made up six of the top ten, with the remaining four places being filled by British universities. According to the study, graduates from Oxford and Cambridge were the most employable in the world.
Putin murder plotter jailed for 10 years
MOSCOW: Russia yesterday handed down a 10-year sentence to a man who confessed to plotting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin by blowing up his motorcade, the prosecutor-general’s office said. Prosecutors had accused Ilya Pyanzin of drawing up the plot as a member of an armed group created on the orders of Chechnya’s top Islamist rebel Doku Umarov. At a closed hearing, Moscow city court sentenced Pyanzin to 10 years in a penal colony with a harsh regime, the prosecutor-general’s office said on its website.
Britons become less religious: Survey
LONDON: The number of Britons who are religious has declined significantly in the last 30 years, a survey revealed yesterday. Just 52 percent of people said they belong to a religion, down from 68 percent in 1983, according to the latest British Social Attitudes survey. The percentage of people who class themselves as “Church of England/Anglican” has fallen from 40 percent in 1983 to just 20 percent last year. Some 48 percent said they had no religion, compared to 31 percent in 1983.
British deputy speaker re-arrested
LONDON: A deputy speaker in Britain’s lower house of parliament was re-arrested yesterday on suspicion of indecent assault and sexually touching two further alleged victims, police said. Nigel Evans, 55, a lawmaker in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, was initially arrested in May on suspicion of rape and sexual assault said to have happened between 2009 and March this year. Agencies
