For high school students in China, the pressure of taking the gaokao, or national college entrance exams, can be difficult enough to manage by itself. But for Wang Li (pseudonym), tackling the test was another struggle to cope with amid her own personal turmoil from her parents' planned separation. While she was frantically preparing for the exam four months ago, she learnt her parents were planning to divorce.
Statistics from courts confirmed a post-gaokao divorce boom last week following the exam's conclusion on June 8. Many parents facing irreconcilable differences agree to delay their divorce until after their child has taken the all-important exam in the hope that their breakup won't affect their child's gaokao performance.
The Chaoyang district court in Beijing has seen a spike in divorces after the exam each year from 2008 to 2011, with the annulment frenzy usually lasting until August.
Last year the number of divorces filed 20 days after the exam was more than twice as high as the figure for 20 days before it, according to the Chaoyang district court. Elsewhere at southern Beijing's Daxing district court the figure is even higher, with 145 divorces filed 20 days after the gaokao last year compared to 38 filed 20 days before.
School's out, divorce is in
Wang, a 17-year-old high school graduate from Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, was a model student who regularly topped her class in many subjects. However, all that changed in February, when she overheard her parents discussing their divorce after the gaokao, spiraling Wang into depression.
Her grades soon plunged and she even threatened to her parents that she would drop out of school if they went ahead with their divorce, the Chong-qing Morning Post reported earlier this month.
The Chongqing Morning Post reported that Wang's parents settled their differences and agreed not to separate after undergoing marriage counseling, resulting in the improvement of Wang's studies.
But not all couples are able to rescue their marriage from the rocks, with divorces often inflicting long-term mental anguish on children already struggling to cope with the pressure of the gaokao.
The Beijing civil affairs bureau told the Global Times it did not have figures for the number of divorces made citywide after the gaokao this year. However the Legal Mirror reported that an employee from the Haidian district marriage registration office said an average of 20 couples daily had filed for divorce after the exam, with more than half aged in their 40s.
"We used to get mostly young couples filing for divorce, but lately there have been more middle-aged ones," the employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Legal Mirror. "They often go through it quickly without fighting like young couples. It seems they have agreed to separate long before."
Source: english.people.com.cn
Heidi Klum and Seal Divorce; GroundForDivorce.com Announces Free Report - YAHOO!
With super model Heidi Klum’s divorce to singer Seal officially underway, divorce planning site GroundForDivorce is launching a new free report offer aimed to help couples looking for a similar, smooth divorce proceeding.
Houston, TX. (PRWEB) June 18, 2012
After Heidi Klum’s divorce proceedings against husband Seal became official and the couple announced plans for a cordial split to benefit their three children, divorce planning site GroundForDivorce announced a new report for couples looking to do the same. Despite the massive media attention surrounding the celebrity couple’s divorce, both Heidi Klum and Seal have made attempts to make the divorce as amicable as possible. Singer Seal has also made several public appearances discussing the divorce and the couple’s plans to look out for the well-being of their children.Once many of the millions of couples dealing with divorce in America, saw the way in which Heidi Klum and Seal handled their divorce, the former power couple had many couples looking to handle their divorces in a similar manner. The public’s interest in the Seal and Heidi Klum divorce has sparked a new free report for separating couples from divorce planning experts, GroundForDivorce. The comprehensive guide was created to help couples like Heidi Klum and Seal, who attempt to handle divorce without extensive repercussions and move on from this difficult time. The book covers topics regarding children of divorce, finical planning and divorce acceptance.
The company just made the public announcement regarding the launch of the report, which is currently being offered for free on the company website.
For more information on this new free divorce planning guide and a look at Seal’s approach to handling divorce issues, visit http://www.betterbehavedkids.com/.
Graham Herbert
groundfordivorce.org
561-544-7411
Email Information
Source: news.yahoo.com
Murphy's Law: Olympic legacy continues - Yahoo! Eurosport
Olympic Club teased us, just as it has for decades.
For three rounds of US Open golf on the classic hillside golf course nestled between the Pacific Ocean and Lake Merced, the sun shone, and the cypress and pine trees contrasted prettily with the blue sky above. The scene radiated a pleasantness, and even though the golf holes were brutally difficult, there was a sense of a party, a happening, a good time.
And then came Sunday.
The fog rolled in from the ocean, and rolled in hard. It wafted through the cypress and pines and hung low over the Lake Course. It snuffed out the sun. The final round of the 2012 US Open would be played in a gloom, a moist overcast that foretold grim things ahead. The supernatural, historic forces that rule golf history here were in effect.
Olympic Club US Opens are not joyous occasions, or coronations it turns out. History dictates that there will be blood, and in 2012, it would be that of Jim Furyk.
He needn't feel shame. This is how the script is written here. Ben Hogan lost a playoff to Jack Fleck at Olympic in 1955. Arnold Palmer blew a 7-shot lead here in 1966. Tom Watson gave away a back-nine lead to Scott Simpson in 1987. And Payne Stewart saw Lee Janzen zoom past him on Sunday, despite having trailed by as many as seven shots in 1998.
While Furyk is not a legend like Hogan or Arnie or Watson, he was the titan of the leaderboard on Sunday. He was the one-time PGA Tour Player of the Year, a US Open champion, a man who was ranked in the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings for much of the past decade. He is a seven-time Ryder Cup team member who has won 16 times on the PGA Tour.
He was the man with the two-shot lead on the back nine, and now he is the latest to view Olympic's gruelling layout as a cemetery with flagsticks.
"It was," he said afterward, trying to come to grips with three bogeys in his final six holes, "my tournament to win."
Furyk spoke in an antiseptic press area, in front of a handful of reporters who were gently poking and prodding his golfing corpse. Down the hill from the area, a 26-year-old rising star named Webb Simpson was being handed the US Open trophy, only his third professional win, in only his fifth Major start. Simpson's 68 meant the Wake Forest product had come all the way back from six shots back of Furyk earlier in the day. The memories of Janzen, the "other" Simpson in 1987, Billy Casper in 1966 and Fleck in 1955 hung in everyone's brains.
Fleck and Casper, in fact, were on the 18th green for Webb Simpson's ceremony, adding to the layers of history. If Olympic had a heart, Furyk would have stumbled into the Grill Room bar outside the interview area, only to find Arnie and Watson calling him over to a table, a cold one waiting to dull his pain.
"I don't know how to put that one into words," Furyk said. "I had my opportunities and my chances, and it was right there."
Though Simpson's hat trick of birdies on Nos. 6, 7 and 8 had caught Furyk's eye on the manual scoreboards dotting the Lake Course, and though Furyk's bogey on the par-3 14th left him tied with Simpson atop the leaderboard, Furyk arrived at the 16th tee in decent shape, knowing he had the birdie-able 17th ahead. Heck, he could even birdie 16 if he played it right. The gallery knew as much, and a fan shouted to Furyk, "Driver's seat, baby! Driver's seat!"
Alas.
Where Hogan's demise was the thick rough left of 18, and where Payne Stewart rued a tee shot that came to rest in a divot, Furyk will always lament his tee shot on the 16th hole. The famously endless par-5 played at 671 yards on Saturday, then played a stunningly shorter 575 yards Sunday. USGA executive director Mike Davis threw a curve ball at the field, testing the players' preparedness and their ability to adjust. Furyk wasn't ready for it.
He admitted the yardage threw him off, and intimated it may have contributed to his awful 3-wood – yanked hard left, way hard left, some 200 yards into a grove of trees, Olympic Club jail.
"There's no way to prepare for a hundred yards [change]," Furyk said. "To get to a tee box where the fairway makes a complete 'L' turn … I was unprepared and didn't know exactly where to hit the ball off the tee.
"I just didn't handle it very well."
He added, "But the rest of the field had that same shot to hit today, and I'm pretty sure no one hit as [lousy] a shot as I did."
It was an awful shot at the worst time. Ghosts, golf gods, goblins in the fog, choose your description. Furyk met an Olympian grave.
That the mild-mannered Furyk would use a profanity in place of "lousy" indicated his level of frustration. The back nine began to betray Furyk's stoicism. His second at No. 12 fanned into a bunker and he took an air swing of anger with his golf club. He begged his tee shot at No. 15 to sit, bending his knees, pushing his palms downward as if asking a dog to stay. His tee shot on 16 led to an almost spastic reaction, a wild club drop, followed by another air swing of rage away from the tee box. His weak 4-iron at No. 17 killed his chance at birdie, and his shoulders slumped.
Afterward, he admitted the "taste of honey" of a back-nine lead made the pain that much worse. He marvelled how his style of play – with a lead, pound fairways and greens and make somebody catch him – suited a US Open advantage, and wondered how it went so wrong.
"One birdie wins the golf tournament," he said. "I've got wedges in my hand and reachable par-5s … I didn't close it out."
And when his last chance, an attempt to hit it close at the famous No. 18, in front of that gigantic natural amphitheatre of fans, leaked into a greenside bunker with an impossible lie, Furyk crouched over and took a faux bite of the shaft of his pitching wedge. Clearly, he was addled, disappointed, crushed, vexed.
He felt just like his forebears here, those big-name Sunday leaders who died a cruel and public US Open death. The fog rolls on, and so does Olympic's legacy.
Source: uk.eurosport.yahoo.com
'Happy brother-in-law's day!' Woody Allen's estranged son Ronan posts sarcastic Father's Day message on Twitter - Daily Mail
By Sarah Bull
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It's definitely not your usual family set-up.
And as families around the world celebrated Father's Day yesterday, Woody Allen's estranged son Ronan posted a sarcastic message on his Twitter page.
Ronan, 25, tweeted: 'Happy father's day - or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law's day.'
Sarcastic: Woody Allen's son Ronan Farrow tweeted 'happy brother-in-law's day' in reference to his father's relationship with his adopted sister
Controversial: Ronan's message was then retweeted by Allen's ex-wife Mia Farrow
The message was then retweeted by Allen's ex-wife Mia Farrow, who added the word: 'Boom'
Ronan's tweet makes reference to the fact that Allen, 76, is married to Soon-Yi, who was the adopted daughter of Farrow and her second husband Andre Previn.
Speaking previously about the relationship, Ronan, who now works for the Obama administration, has said: 'He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law.
'That is such a moral transgression.'
Estranged: Woody and his son Ronan haven't spoken since the early 1990s
Boom! Mia Farrow retweeted the message with an added comment of her own
Allen was seen giving adopted daughters Bechet and Manzie a hearty hug in Beverly Hills over the weekend.
The 76-year-old movie maker was also accompanied by his 41-year-old wife for the day out.
While Allen seemed in good cheer, Manzie did not seem to be in the best of moods, even though she was visiting one of the city's poshest hotels at the Beverly Wilshire.
Happy family: Allen was seen giving his daughters Becohet and Manzie a hug in Beverly Hills on Saturday
Walking on: Allen's wife Soon-Yi chatted with a friend as she pranced around the grounds
VIDEO: Showbiz roundup! 'Nude' Katy and Cheryl most desired girly kiss…
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Who can blame him? His father betrayed the whole family when he ran off with the adopted sister of his own children. We keep getting our knickers in a knot over gays getting married when it is THIS kind of thing that is the problem.
- JR, Chicago, USA, 18/6/2012 22:14
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