Sunday Roundup

As I type this, the British government has just pledged to financially support the International Committee of the Red Cross as it steps up essential help for those injured during Libya's week of conflict, with aid for up to 5,000 wounded, along with food and household essentials for another 690,000. The announcement comes as a quiet reminder that in amongst the headline-grabbing images of rebels waltzing their way round Gaddafi's glitzy mansion, this uprising, like the others that preceded it across the Middle East and Africa this year, this has not been a conflict without horrific casualties.
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As I type this, the British government has just pledged to financially support the International Committee of the Red Cross as it steps up essential help for those injured during Libya's week of conflict, with aid for up to 5,000 wounded, along with food and household essentials for another 690,000. The announcement comes as a quiet reminder that in amongst the headline-grabbing images of rebels waltzing their way round Gaddafi's glitzy mansion, this uprising, like the others that preceded it across the Middle East and Africa this year, this has not been a conflict without horrific casualties.

On Thursday, rescue workers who had battled their way through to Tripoli's all but deserted Abu Salim hospital, found themselves confronted with a grim scene: 21 surviving patients barely clinging to life, surrounded by up to 80 decaying bodies. The reality of that is nowhere better described than in Alex Thompson's blog for Channel 4.

With Libya dominating the front pages, only one man could challenge Gaddafi for column inches: the inimitable Steve Jobs, who resigned from his position of CEO at Apple. It sent share prices downwards and the tech community into a flurry of analysis, speculation and debate. Unsurprisingly, as someone who makes her living as an editor, articles such as Jeff Sonderman's 'How Steve Jobs has changed (but not saved) journalism', which debated Jobs' contribution to the media world, were the ones which peaked my interest most. However, I would urge anyone who hasn't yet watched his brilliant Stanford commencement speech from 2005 to head to YouTube now. Journalist, Apple junkie, tech genius, ad exec or whatever best describes you, you won't fail to be inspired - I'd imagine this ability to rouse admiration and kick-start sleeping ambition will be his legacy long after the iPad has been superseded.

All those boys grimacing at the GCSE stats, which saw girls racing ahead in the league tables pretty much every way you cut the numbers, should take note. Feeling somewhat jaded by the numerous photos of pretty girls jumping in the air with their results, HuffPost's Lucy Sherriff tracked down four 16-year-old boys to see what their plans were post-GCSEs. For the would-be Jobs in the bunch, maybe they should take heed of Eric Schmidt's keynote speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival this week, which lambasted the British education system for the "drift to the humanities" and not making computer science mandatory in schools. Using his own labels, why need be either a "boffin" or a "luvvy"? And why the need to denigrate the other side? Why indeed? In a world where the man behind the most sophisticated technologies is held up as an example to all, but where nameless individuals put personal risk aside to save lives in a gun-riddled hospital, we need boffins, luvvies, doctors and everyone in-between. Most of all, however, we need young people with ambition, drive and pride - and no GCSE can measure that.