Readable, teachable news.
Monday, December 23, 2024
Scientists recently found out there is 100 times more water on the moon than they thought there was.
Scientists discovered the water when they looked at some pieces of moon rock.
They found water in tiny samples of magma, which was trapped in crystal. Magma is a rock made from cooled lava.
Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield told Teaching Kids the News that the water is a very valuable discovery.
“It’s like finding diamonds or gold in a remote frontier,” Hadfield said.
It was one game, winner-take-all.
And in the end, Boston took home the Stanley Cup.
There wasn’t an empty seat in the Rogers Arena in Vancouver. The hometown crowd waved “rally towels” as their Vancouver Canucks skated out for their warm-up. The thunderous cheering of the crowd never let up. Canuck Goaltender Roberto Luongo shifted from side to side in front of his net.
The crowd took up the singing of O Canada.
If Vancouver could bring the Cup back home, the game would go down in Canadian history.
But it wasn’t to be.
Two major strikes are affecting services in Canadian cities including Toronto and Montreal.
A “strike” happens when workers, who are banded together in a “union,” decide to stop working until they get something they think is fair, such as raises, health coverage or money for their retirement.
A strike puts pressure on a company to talk to the union and possibly give the workers what they want.
Usually there is a “compromise,” in other words, the workers and the company get some things they want but perhaps not everything.
The company and the union try to find a solution that pleases both sides.
Conrad Black is a very famous, wealthy and powerful Canadian businessman.
Five years ago, Conrad Black was sent to jail because he broke several laws having to do with the money he made and owed.
He was convicted of obstruction of justice and mail fraud because he lied about how much money he really had, to pay off his debts.
He also tried to hide information from the authorities about the amount of money he made from selling his newspapers and real estate.
The judge sent him to jail for six-and-a-half years.
Late this month, Black is going to ask the judge to let him have some time taken off his prison sentence.
Since 2005, Canadian troops have been fighting in Afghanistan against terrorists.
Now, Canadian soldiers are ending their mission in Afghanistan.
Troops will start coming home in July, with some staying on for another three years or so—not to fight, but to train the army and police in Afghanistan so they can take care of their own people.
Canadian soldiers were first sent to Afghanistan in 2001. Their duties were not to fight.
They were to make sure Canada would be safe from terrorists, to show Canadian leadership around the world, and to help Afghanistan rebuild.
When Thessa’s birthday was coming up, she decided to throw a party. After all, it wasn’t every day a girl turned 16!
So, as many kids do these days, Thessa posted an invitation to her party on Facebook. She wanted all of her friends to come.
But she made a big mistake. She forgot to set her Facebook invitation to “Friends Only.”
More and more people saw the invitation and signed up to come to the party.
They sent it to their friends and told more people about it… and before long, more than 15,000 people had confirmed on Facebook that they were coming to the party.
There has been a serious outbreak of E. coli in Europe.
At least 2,200 people have gotten sick or shown symptoms and 22 people in Germany have died.
E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria normally found in the body.
Most kinds (or “strains”) of E. coli are harmless and even help the body.
The strains included in the outbreak, however, are a harmful kind, causing food poisoning.
Food poisoning from E. coli usually happens when people eat unwashed vegetables or undercooked meat.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was the victim of a practical joke, or “hoax,” on Tuesday.
Someone broke into the website of the Conservative party. (Harper is the leader of the Conservatives.) They posted a fake article about him.
The article said Harper had been rushed to hospital after he had choked on some hash browns at breakfast.
It said that his wife, Laureen, called 911 because the Prime Minister couldn’t breathe and that he was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Toronto.
If you took a university math exam, how do you think you’d do?
Paula and Peter Imafidon are nine-year-old twins. They live in England, and last year they became the youngest people to ever pass Cambridge University’s advanced mathematics exam.
A reporter asked them how hard they had to work in order to pass the exam. Paula said she treats math like a game, so it’s not really “work” to her.
Peter said the exam had some questions that “may seem difficult but are very easy once you get in the swing of it.” Of course, Peter is speaking as someone to whom math comes very easy—the questions are very tough, especially for kids their age.
The family’s other children, Anne-Marie, Christiana and Samantha are also exceptionally good at math.
Jane Austen wrote some very famous novels in the early 1800s. Pride and Prejudice is perhaps her best-known book.
Although she published just six novels, she has millions of fans all over the world. They adore her novels about romance and society.
An extremely rare manuscript of an unfinished novel, written in Jane Austen’s own handwriting, is going to be sold in England.
There are 68 pages, part of a novel called The Watsons. Jane Austen never finished it, possibly because her father died. She wrote the pages in 1804, when she was 29 years old.
Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was not published until 1811.
The Watsons pages are written in her neat and tiny handwriting with many edits in the margins. The manuscript was divided by Austen into 11 booklets.
