Tag: Canada

News

2011 – Year In Review (Part II)

Every year, news editors across Canada vote for the “newsmaker of the year” – the person who dominated the headlines.

For 2011, that person was Jack Layton.

A whopping 90 per cent of editors polled said they thought the NDP leader was the newsmaker of the year.

Layton helped to build his political party up from just 19 seats in 2003 when he took over as leader, to 103 seats last year — enough to make the NDP Canada’s national opposition party for the first time in history.

Layton died from cancer in 2011 and the country mourned for this great “representative of the people.”

Entertainment News

G’bye 2011, Hello 2012 (Year In Review, Part I)

There were many fascinating news stories in 2011.

Today and tomorrow TKN takes a look at some of the most significant news stories from the past year.

Protests and dissent

The year 2011 may be known as the year of “dissent” – the year people protested. In a number of Arab countries — including Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria and Libya — people took to the streets to protest against their governments and many leaders were ousted.

It was known as the Arab Spring.

There were other protests closer to home. In North America and many other places around the world, young people rose up to protest the growing difference between the rich (the one per cent) and the rest (the 99 per cent).

Entertainment Kids

Justin Bieber Is Home For The Holidays

Justin Bieber came home for the holidays on Wednesday night – to Canada.

The Stratford, Ont.-born teen idol spread plenty of good cheer while visiting Toronto.

One of the first things he did on arriving in the country was to hold a benefit concert and raise $500,000 for Bieber’s Believe charity, for the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, Sunnybrook Foundation and Project Medishare.

The concert, held at Toronto’s historic Massey Hall, was taped for a TV special that aired on MuchMusic and CTV last night. It was called Justin Bieber: Home for the Holidays.

Lighter Technology

Google Offers Holiday Easter Eggs

If you type the words “let it snow” (without the quotation marks) into the search engine Google.com or Google.ca*, you probably won’t be surprised when Google gives you back a list of links to the classic Christmas song.

What might surprise you, however, is that it will also start snowing on your computer screen!

Eventually, so much “snow” will fall that your screen will fog up. But don’t worry, you can click on Google’s “defrost” button to clear it again. You can also use your mouse to “wipe” the screen clean.

News Sports

Maple Leafs, Raptors, and TFC Sold

Some of Toronto’s most popular sports teams including the Maple Leafs, Raptors, and Toronto Football Club have new owners.

They have been bought for more than $1-billion by Rogers Communications and Bell Canada, two Canadian companies that sell phones and TV and internet services. Bell and Rogers also own the country’s two main sports-only channels, TSN and Sportsnet.

News Politics

Harper And Obama Agree On A New Border Plan

Canada and the United States are working together to make it easier for people to travel across their common border.

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, agreed to a “cross-border plan” to make it easier and quicker for Canadians to travel to the U.S. It will also help companies in both countries to do business together.

Harper has agreed to a “common perimeter”–a type of border all around North America–so more careful checking can be done on who and what comes across the borders from Canada. Canada has also agreed to get more information about people when they come into Canada from other countries and to put in American-style bomb detection machines for checking luggage.

News

Subaru Canada Apologizes To Truckers

The car maker, Subaru Canada, has had to take one of its radio ads off the air.

The ad tells people that “roads are an unpredictable place, so drive with confidence.”

It then tells people that Subaru cars are very safe.

To demonstrate what it means by “unpredictable place,” the ad describes a truck driver who hasn’t slept in two days and is nearly asleep at the wheel.

The trucker is also described as eating a bag of ketchup potato chips while he’s driving.

News Politics

Gap Between Rich-Poor Growing: OECD

Canada’s rich people are getting richer and the country’s poor people are getting poorer.

That’s because the gap — or distance — between the amount of money the richest and poorest people earn at their jobs is widening.

The richest Canadians earn 10 times more than the poorest.

That means if the average rich person earns about $100,000 a year, the poorest earns only about $10,000 for a whole year.

A new report by an international organization called the OECD* said the same thing has been happening in many countries including the United States.

It has been happening since the 1990s, before the new millennium.

News Politics

Who Will Fill Jack Layton’s Shoes?

The New Democratic Party (NDP) is going to elect a new leader.

The NDP is Canada’s official opposition party.

The leader of the NDP was Jack Layton. He passed away last August from cancer.

It will be hard to fill his shoes, because he was well respected and liked not just by members of his own party, but by Canadians across the country.

There are nine candidates vying to be leader of the NDP.

On Sunday night they held a leadership debate.

A debate is when candidates talk about the issues, and say why they think they’d make the best leader.

Kids Lighter News

Lady Gaga’s Message To One Toronto School

Students at the Etobicoke School of the Arts had a special guest at their anti-bullying assembly last week.

Lady Gaga sent the Toronto school a specially recorded video message.

The student council president, Jacques St. Pierre, is a huge fan of Lady Gaga.

He had sent emails to several celebrities, asking them to help launch the school’s anti-bullying campaign.

He was thrilled when Lady Gaga read his email and responded.

St. Pierre was the only student at the school who knew about the video until the assembly.