Readable, teachable news.
Thursday, August 28, 2025
The Olympics are about athletics and competition.
However, with representatives from so many different countries coming together in one city, it is often about “politics” and “political issues” as well.
In other words, different countries have different rules, laws and beliefs.
Sometimes, countries’ beliefs clash.
That has been the case in Russia at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Stephen Hawking is a physicist, an expert in the science called physics, and generally regarded as a genius for his work in helping us better understand the universe.
There is a strip of vacant stores along Eglinton Ave. W. in Toronto.
The street in front of the stores is under construction.
The stores are vacant (there is no one using them) partly because of the construction, which makes it hard for people to visit the stores to shop. And if there are no shoppers, there’s no point in opening a store.
But Toronto businessman John Kernaghan looked at the vacant storefronts and saw possibilities.
Watching the best-of-the-best compete for gold at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics is inspirational.
But beyond the performance of the athletes, there have already been many other inspirational moments at these Olympics.
Russian cross-country skier Anton Gafarov fell and broke his ski during the Men’s Sprint Free Semifinals.
In true Olympic spirit he tried to keep going, knowing that although he no longer had any chance of winning, he needed to finish the race he had started.
However, his ski was broken in half.
He would end up limping across the finish line in front of the world, not to mention his fellow Russians who were cheering from the sidelines.
People who were not born in Canada may have to follow new rules to become Canadian citizens.
A new bill has been put forward that increases the length of time people must be physically in Canada before they can apply for citizenship.
They can’t say they live in Canada and then spend too much time outside the country.
The government says they want people to have direct experience of what it’s like to live in Canada, before they become a citizen.
The new rules extend the age for being able to speak and understand one of Canada’s official languages.
Previously, people 18 to 54 had to speak English or French and pass a Canadian knowledge test with the help of an interpreter.
On Saturday, Mark McMorris won Canada’s first medal at the 2014 Olympics–a bronze in snowboarding.
That was quickly followed up by two more medals for Canada: Justine Dufour-Lapointe won Canada’s first gold and her sister, Chloe, earned Canada’s first silver medal.
McMorris is a native from Regina, Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan is known for having very flat terrain, yet McMorris was determined to be a world-class snowboarder.
The eyes of the world are on Sochi, Russia, where the 2014 Winter Olympics are taking place.
Last Friday, the official opening ceremony took the audience on a Russian journey. It began with the Russian alphabet, with each of the 33 letters highlighting a famous Russian person or achievement.
Later, the athletes flooded into the stadium, grouped according to country. Canada, with 220 athletes, has one of the largest teams in this year’s winter Olympics. The Canadians came into the stadium, a sea of red, behind flag-bearer Hayley Wickenheiser.
“It’s an amazing feeling being able to carry the flag and lead in this awesome powerful Team Canada,” Hayley Wickenheiser told CBC News. “I’m a very, very proud Canadian right now. It’s great to be Canadian in moments like this; you realize how lucky we are to live where we live. I hope everyone back home is proud and enjoys the games.”
The 2014 Winter Olympics begin today in Sochi, Russa. Canadians will be cheering for their favourite athletes.
But several Olympic contenders are receiving a little more attention than others.
They are recovering from major injuries and needed to add extra training so they’ll be fit enough to compete.
At least two slopestyle contenders from Canada are among this group.
Slopestyle is an event in which skiers or snowboarders try to perform the most difficult tricks while flying as high into the air as possible.
What would you do with the Canadian Senate? Change the way Senators are chosen? Get rid of it? Keep it as-is?
The Senate is a legislative body of the government that has almost the same powers as the House of Commons.
However, members to the House of Commons are elected; the prime minister appoints Senators.
And these tend to be people from his own party, who have done good things for his party.
Once they are in the Senate, they almost always vote as their party does in the House of Commons.
The Senate was started this way in 1867 when Canada was formed.
It was supposed to be a place for “sober second thought”—thinking carefully about the laws sent to it by the House of Commons and sometimes improving them.
Tiny pieces of plastic – each about the size of a grain of sand – are posing a huge threat to marine life in the Great Lakes.
For the past two summers, researchers from an organization called 5 Gyres have been collecting water samples from the Great Lakes.
They used fine-mesh nets to skim the surface of the water.
When they looked at what they had collected, they found thousands of tiny plastic beads, each less than a millimetre.
At first the scientists didn’t know where these “microbeads” came from. Then they used an electron microscope to compare them to products such as face and body washes or toothpaste that people use to help scrub and polish our skin and teeth.
