Readable, teachable news.
Friday, April 26, 2024
University students continue to protest in Montreal.
The students had started out protesting a tuition hike.
However, the protests have grown and broadened to be about more than tuition.
The Royal Visit — Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are touring Canada.
They are taking a four-day tour of the country to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
“I’ll Have Another” did indeed have another, just last Saturday.
Canadian-owned horse, “I’ll Have Another” (yes, that’s its name) won the 137th Preakness Stakes.
Blazing down the stretch, “I’ll Have Another” pushed hard with each powerful stride to cross the finish line first — winning by only the length of its neck.
It was a very close and exciting finish. The horse was jockeyed by Mario Gutierrez.
The jockey is the person who rides and directs the horse in the race.
The debt problem in Greece is causing problems for the country again. And, once again, there is fear these money problems could spread to other countries around the world.
This time, some people in Greece have begun taking all their money out of the country’s banks because they’re worried about what will happen to the value of their money if Greece stops using the euro.
The euro is a currency, like the dollar, and it is used in many countries in Europe.
But Greece has borrowed a lot of money that it is having trouble paying back, and there have been talks about whether Greece should be allowed to keep using the euro.
On Tuesday, Brett Lawrie — a baseball player for the Toronto Blue Jays — lost control of his emotions during a game.
Lawrie was batting, and the umpire made a couple of calls that Lawrie disagreed with.
In Major League Baseball (MLB), there are four umpires including the home-plate umpire.
He is the one who decides if a pitch was a “ball” or a “strike.”
The pitcher pitches and when the ball crosses home plate the umpire makes a quick decision as to whether it was a good pitch (called a strike) or a bad pitch (called a ball).
If a batter gets three strikes against him he strikes out.
If a batter gets four balls against him he gets a ‘walk’ and is allowed to go to first base.
University students in Quebec have been protesting.
They have been told that the government is going to raise their tuition fees. In this case, “tuition fees” are the fees people pay to attend university.
Traditionally, Quebec has some of the lowest tuition fees in Canada. Only students in two provinces: Newfound and Labrador and Manitoba, pay less to attend university.
However, the increase will be the largest in the province’s history. The government intends to raise tuition by $1,625 by 2017. Students will pay $325 more each year for the next five years.
Student groups say the increase doesn’t go towards improving the quality of the teaching, and the hikes will force some students who can’t pay the extra money to drop out of school or take a second job. They worry that students who come from low-income families won’t be able to afford higher education.
England loves soccer. English soccer teams play in the Premier League (PL).
Two of the biggest soccer teams in the PL are two of the bitterest rivals: Manchester City, known as “Man City” and Manchester United, known as “Man United.”
Last weekend, one of the most exciting games in the PL took place… and it came down to the final moments. It was a game that would decide who took home the cup.
If Man City won its game against the Queens Park Rangers, Man City would end up with more points than its rival, Man United. In that case, Man City would win its first PL championship in 44 years.
However, a win wouldn’t come easy.
Queen Elizabeth II is the queen of 54 Commonwealth countries. 16 of these countries are called Commonwealth Realm countries and Canada is one of them.
When Elizabeth steps down or dies, her son, Prince Charles will become King. If he steps down or dies, his first-born son, Prince William will become King–even though Princess Anne is the Queen’s only daughter and is next in age to Prince Charles.
In other words, because she is female, the crown wouldn’t go to Princess Anne.
Since the beginning of the British monarchy, men have been chosen first to become the next ruler.
A woman can only be chosen when there are no men in the monarch’s direct line, (like a brother or a brother’s sons).
That is how Elizabeth became queen. Her father, King George VI, had two daughters and no sons.
Lots of companies use email to communicate with their employees.
Most companies create email “distribution lists.” A distribution list is a group email, that lets a company send a message to many employees at once, with just one email.
Aviva is an insurance company in the United Kingdom.
Recently, someone in the company sent an email to one of Aviva’s employees who was being let go, or fired. The email gave instructions to the employee about what they needed to do, now that he’d been fired.
However, the email was accidentally sent to everyone in the company.
Aviva has 1,300 employees around the world.
That means that 1,300 people who work at Aviva were all sent an email that implied they had been fired.
Everyone.
But it wasn’t true.
Some people at a software company wanted to find out what happens when people find a cell phone.
Do they keep it, or return it? What do they do with it?
They found out that half of the people people who find a cell phone returned it. However, in nearly every case, the “finder” first looked through the information on the phone, checking out the owner’s photos, emails and apps.
In his experiment, Scott Wright, who works for Security Perspectives Inc., left 50 cell phones in various places in five cities in Canada and the United States. He left them out so they would look like they had been accidentally lost.
Two countries in Europe had important elections last weekend – France and Greece. Both elections went against the conservative parties in power.
Experts are saying this could be a sign that more countries in Europe will protest against spending cuts by voting out current governments.
In France a new party and a new president were elected.
Francois Hollande is the head of the Socialist Party, and he was elected president, over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. (Incumbent means “currently in power.”)
