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Canada’s Senate Scandal Grows Amid Accusations And Denials

Things have been heating up in the Canadian Senate.

Two days ago, Senator Mike Duffy made a riveting speech. He accused the Prime Minister and some other senators of bullying him into paying $90,000 back to the government when he didn’t think he should have to.

His accusations were part of a dramatic speech.

“The sad truth is, I allowed myself to be intimidated into doing what I knew in my heart was wrong, out of a fear of losing my job,” Duffy said in his speech.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has defended himself against the accusations.

Then yesterday another senator, Pamela Wallin, made a heated speech in the Senate. She accused 14 senators of leaking information about her.

It’s all part of a growing “senate scandal.”

News

Canada’s Economists Need To Improve Their Writing Skills: Report

It’s important to be able to write clearly. Some of Canada’s economists are finding out just how important.

An “internal report card” gave mediocre grades to economists at the Bank of Canada on their writing skills.

The Bank of Canada is Canada’s central, or main, bank. “Economists” at the Bank of Canada are in charge of making sure Canada’s economy is healthy.

Every once in awhile, organizations like the Bank of Canada take a look at how well they’re doing.

Just like school report cards, they grade themselves in many different areas so they can see where they need to improve.

News Sports

University of Toronto Goalie’s Hockey Dreams Come True

Many young Canadians play hockey. They dream of one day playing in the NHL on a professional team.

Last week, that dream came true for University of Toronto goalie Brett Willows.

One minute he was about to eat dinner with his friends at a restaurant called Noodle Bowl on Spadina Ave. in Toronto. The next, he was suited up as a Toronto Maple Leaf goalie, waiting to go in and play in a professional game.

Willows never got to play in the game, but for a little while, he was a Leaf.

When the Leafs’ goalie, James Reimer, got injured, they put in their other goalie, Jonathan Bernier.

But Bernier would need a backup, and that backup was Brett Willows.

So they called him. Willows ditched the Montreal Canadiens cap he was wearing, threw a $20 bill on the table to pay for the few bites of soup he’d eaten, and ran to gather his goalie gear.

Then he raced to the Air Canada Centre.

News

Greyson And Loubani Back Home In Canada

Canadians John Greyson and Tarek Loubani are home at last.

The two were in an Egyptian jail for more than seven weeks.

They were never charged with any crime. Egyptian security held them in jail under terrible conditions.

Many people fought for Greyson and Loubani’s release. Canadian politicians, friends and family members, Canadian officials and even people Greyson and Loubani will likely never meet—tried to convince Egypt to let the pair go.

The two were in Egypt so Loubani, a doctor, could volunteer at a hospital there. Greyson, a filmmaker, was going to film his work.

Lighter News

Silly, Catchy Viral Music Video Asks, “What Does The Fox Say?”

Move over Psy, there’s a new viral music video on the Internet that’s getting millions of people dancing and laughing.

Psy is a singer who created Gagnam Style, a music video which featured a catchy tune and an interesting dance.

Gagnam Style has been viewed more than one billion times, by people all over the world. It went “viral.”

A “viral video” is one that is seen on the Internet by many people, and then the link to it is passed along to many more people.

Every time someone shares the link, the number of people who see the video increases.

A new music video called, “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” has recently gone viral. At 123,000,000 views, it may even catch up to Gagnam.

The video asks the question, “What does the fox say?”

News

Author Alice Munro Wins Nobel Prize In Literature

One of Canada’s best-loved authors has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes an author can win. It comes with a $1-million cash award.

Alice Munro won the prize for her brilliant short stories.

Munro, 82, grew up in a small town in Ontario. Many of her stories are set in rural Ontario.

In making the announcement, Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, called Munro “master of the contemporary short story.”

Munro was surprised and delighted to find out she had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

She told CBC News that, “I never thought I would win.”

News Politics

“I Am Malala” – A New Memoir By Malala Yousafzai

It was a year ago this week that the world came to know young Malala Yousafzai.

The girl, who is now 16, was riding a bus on her way home from school in Pakistan.

Two men, who were members of a terrorist organization in Pakistan, came on the bus and attacked Malala. The group known as the Taliban, doesn’t agree with girls getting an education.

Malala had been writing online about the importance of girls going to school and about her own love of learning.

The Taliban wanted to stop Malala—but their actions created a world-wide outpouring of affection for the brave girl, who has since nearly fully recovered from her ordeal.

Malala was taken to a hospital in England, where she had a life-saving operation. She now lives and goes to school in England.

Animals News Science

Pipeline Worker Finds Massive Hydrosaur Skeleton

A massive dinosaur fossil has been unearthed in Alberta.

But it wasn’t an expedition of paleontologists who found it.

It was a pipeline worker.

A man was using a backhoe to move some earth for a pipeline that was being installed near Spirit River, Alberta. The worker hit something he thought was a rock.

He laid the piece of “rock” to one side, and kept digging, according to CBC News.

But it wasn’t rock at all. It was a huge fossilized skeleton—a tail, to be precise.

It was about two metres long.

The worker stopped digging and called in some experts.

News

Some Prominent Canadians Vying For Changes To “O Canada!” Lyrics

When you sing your country’s national anthem, you may think the words never change.

But for O Canada!, Canada’s national anthem, they have been translated and changed and changed again.

Now, some people are saying O Canada! should be changed yet again, to be more inclusive.

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and other prominent Canadians, including former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, want the line “True patriot love in all thy sons command” to be gender-neutral.

They say the word “sons” excludes women and the line should be changed to “in all of us command.”

O Canada! was first written in 1880, in French. The words were from a French Canadian poem.

O Canada! was translated into English in the early 1900s. The English words were changed in 1908, to a less exact translation of the French words.