Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 117 i The Week Junior

At least 560 people have died following more than a week of bombing in Eastern Ghouta, in Syria. Many children trapped there have turned to social media to urge the world to help them. They have been sharing tweets, videos and Instagram messages to show how the attacks are affecting their lives. What is happening in Ghouta? Since 2011, there has been civil war in Syria (a civil war is when the people who live in the same country fight each other). The war is between people who support the president, Bashar al-Assad, and several groups, known as rebels, who no longer want him in power. The rebels have control of Eastern Ghouta, a neighbourhood on the edge of Damascus, Syria’s capital. The Syrian government, with the help of Russian…

SPOTTING AN EXPLODING STAR In 2016, Victor Buso pointed his telescope at the night sky to take photos. By chance, he caught the moment a star exploded, which no scientist has ever seen. In fact, it exploded more than 80 million years ago, but it took that long for the light to travel to Earth and be visible. His find was revealed on 18 February. EAST ANGLIA CHILDREN’S HOSPICE Staff at a charity shop in Norwich got a surprise when they were handed a box of fossils and animal bones that date back five million years. The East Anglia Children’s Hospices shop says it expects to raise a “considerable amount of money” when it sells the ancient remains. FEEDING THE HOMELESS When Salford City’s football match was postponed due to…

What you need to know ● 3 March is World Wildlife Day – an annual global event that celebrates and raises awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants. This year’s theme is big cats. These beautiful predators are under threat, mostly because of humans. To find out more about the event and how to get involved, head to tinyurl.com/TWJwildlife ● It’s not just big cats at risk. A recent report found that the number of wild animals has halved in the past 40 years. ● Canadian conservationist Harvey Locke is proposing a bold solution. In 2009, he founded an organisation called Nature Needs Half. It aims to preserve 50% of the planet for wildlife by 2050. More than 3,300 species of mammals, including Javan leopards and vaquita porpoises, are…

Janet Abreui, bird keeper, ZSL London Zoo Penguins are predators themselves as they hunt fish. Their feathers are used as a kind of camouflage called countershading. Their black backs hide them from above as they blend into the dark ocean bed underneath, while from below the white tummies blend into the light sky above. Do you love animals? ZSL London Zoo’s Junior Zoo Academy is a great way to learn about creatures from all over the world. Find out more at zsl.org/experiences…

How would you like to travel on a jet that can take off from anywhere and cruise at 460mph, while you sit in luxurious and comfortable seats? That’s the aim of Samad Aerospace, a new tech company in Bedfordshire. It has just released plans for its Starling Jet – an aircraft that can take off and land vertically, like a helicopter. The jet has engines that run on both diesel fuel and electricity – this means it is better for the environment than planes in use now. The benefit of a plane being able to take off vertically means that it can set off and land almost anywhere. This could cut journeys down by an average of two and a half hours because there would be no need to get…

On 25 February, Manchester City lifted the League Cup with a 3-0 win against Arsenal. It’s one of the major trophies of the English season and more than 85,000 fans at Wembley Stadium watched City cruise to an easy victory, thanks to Sergio Agüero, David Silva and captain Vincent Kompany, who scored the goals. Although it was City manager Pep Guardiola’s first trophy with the club since he joined in July 2016, City have won the cup, now known as the Carabao Cup, several times before. They’ve won it five times in total and three times since 2014. Weirdly, the League Cup has had many different names since it started in 1960, including the Milk Cup. All 92 Premier League and Football League teams competed for the cup in knockout…

What is your favourite artwork ever? When I lived in England, I loved to go and visit Paolo Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano (1438–40) whenever I was near the National Gallery in London. There’s so much going on, and yet it’s so still and calm to look at. Favourite film? Raiders of the Lost Ark. I hope my readers will feel a bit like Indiana Jones as they go trekking around the world, finding special treasures when they read A Journey Through Art. Which three words will explain this book? Adventure. Cultures. Travel. What makes you bored? I’ve never been bored. That’s what books are for. I also like to play tennis, make pottery and hang out with Ramsey, my Newfoundland dog. Ramsey doesn’t get bored either, as long…

100 Women 4pm on 7 March, Sky News It’s been 100 years since women in the UK were given the right to vote. To mark this occasion, Sky News will be airing a one-off live debate in which women of all ages and walks of life will talk about lots of issues, including wages and equal rights in the UK today. Unikitty! 6.30pm from 5 March, Cartoon Network One of The Lego Movie’s biggest breakout stars, Unikitty, is back with a brand new series. Delve into a joyous land filled with happy thoughts as you join Unikitty and friends on their exciting adventures – not to mention dance parties. Monster Family In cinemas, on Sky Cinema Premiere and Sky Cinema on demand from 2 March It’s bad enough that a…

Folar iOS (£0.99) Long before smartphone cameras and apps such as Instagram came along, Polaroid’s instant cameras would not only take photos but print them out, too – people would wave the print in the air to help the picture develop. Are those days long gone? Not if a new app called Folar can help it. The app recreates those instant cameras, although instead of printing out your photos, you can save them for sharing in digital ways. There’s still some flapping about to be done, though. Once you’ve taken a photo, you swipe down to see it slowly appear on a virtual print – aprocess you can speed up by shaking the phone. It’s not just old-fashioned; you can scribble text and doodles on your photos before saving and…

How can I earn extra money? See if you can earn extra cash by doing household chores such as washing up, cleaning the car or vacuuming the carpets. Where should I save my money? Ask a parent or guardian to open a savings account for you – the best is a junior ISA (Individual Savings Account). You won’t get your money until you’re 18, but it will earn interest (extra money), growing more and more each year. Why is saving money so important? The earlier you start saving, the more money you’ll have to enjoy when you’re older. Learn more… ● An online piggy bank to help track money roostermoney.com ● How long to reach a goal? hootloot.co.uk/calculator1.html ● Make your money go further tinyurl.com/TWJ-budget…

Are you good at thinking up new ideas? Do you love solving puzzles and cracking codes? Innovation foundation Nesta and the Tata Group have launched a Cracking the Code competition and are calling on students to create an escape room – complete with maths puzzles and riddles. The winning team gets £2,000 for their school and the chance to turn their escape room idea into reality. Register through your maths teacher, get a team together (maximum six members, aged 11–14), and come up with a concept for an escape room that includes at least four maths puzzles before 15 March 2018. To find out more, head to mathsmission.challenges.org and get cracking.…

Follow The Week Junior on Popjam @TheWeekJunior You can download the free Popjam app from the App Store or GooglePlay. An iceberg that broke away from the Larsen Ice Shelf has revealed a world unseen for perhaps 120,000 years. You said... “Wow! That’s incredible!” @RobinDawn “Antarctica is so old. I didn’t know it was that old” @thedreamteam0409 “What a discovery!” @catlover_96 “That took them a very long time to find” @ultimatesuperstar10 On 17 February, the first dog-friendly cinema in Wales opened. We asked our Popjammers if they would take their dogs to the cinema... “Yeah, I would feed it hot DOGS!” @unicorn_lover137 “I would love to! I love my dog and she loves dog movies!” @DabbingUnIcOrn9 “My cat wouldn’t enjoy it there” @BritishTacoBoy “That sounds fun for dogs” @wittyhummingbird3372 Tell…

1 In which country were the Winter Olympic Games held this year? 2 True or false? The Beast from the East has brought cold weather from China. 3 How many cars were stuck in a traffic jam in China? a) 1,000 b) 5,000 c) 10,000 4 True or false? There are only around 60 Amur leopards left in the wild. 5 What is the name of the cowboy character in Toy Story that Bud Luckey animated? 6 From where were grey squirrels introduced to the UK? a) Australia b) France c) The US 7 True or false? China has a day’s holiday on International Women’s Day. 8 What’s the name of the early humans scientists think could speak and sail? a) Homo erectus b) Homo sapiens c) Homo flores 9…

When Neil Gaiman’s daughter, Holly, was little, she used to tell him stories. “She would climb up on my lap,” Gaiman remembers, “and dictate nightmarish stories to me.” She’d tell him tales of an evil witch, who meant harm to the little girl (also called Holly), who starred in the tales. Most parents enjoy hearing their children’s spooky stories, but for Gaiman they were inspiration. He is one of the world’s most imaginative storytellers, and he turned his daughter’s creepy ideas into a smash-hit book, Coraline. Gaiman has been a bookworm all his life. As a boy growing up in Sussex, he loved fantasy and would escape into the incredible worlds of writers like C.S. Lewis – who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia – and J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote The…

Until the end of the 19th century, if you saw a squirrel nibbling a nut or bounding from branch to branch, the animal was likely to be red. Grey squirrels didn’t arrive in the UK until the 1870s, when wealthy landowners took to bringing them over from the US to add variety to their estates. Today, the greys are everywhere while the native red species is in peril, and researchers think they might know why. In a series of experiments, designed to test different types of squirrels’ problem-solving abilities, greys have been found to perform far better than reds. The grey squirrels studied were in woodland around the University of Exeter; the red squirrels were in living around Brodick Castle on the Isle of Arran, Scotland. A new scientific paper,…

Asian elephant It’s been announced that a baby Asian elephant has been born at Dublin Zoo in Ireland. The yet-to-be-named calf arrived last month to parents Anak and Upali and weighed in at 90 kilograms. There are between 40,000 and 50,000 Asian elephants left in the wild. Air quality Although wood is a renewable source of fuel, new Government data has revealed that burning it in wood stoves at home can create more than twice the amount of harmful particles – known as PM2.5 – than road traffic produces. PM2.5 has been linked to health problems.…

Today in the UK, men and women are treated more equally than ever before. Yet many people believe that the rights women and men have at work, in the home and in society are still a long way from being completely fair. For example, in the UK, some women are paid less than men for doing the same work. International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, is a way to draw attention to these inequalities and celebrate women everywhere. The first International Women’s Day was held on 19 March 1911 and was celebrated across Europe. It was the idea of a German woman called Clara Zetkin. She wanted one day a year when every country would stage events to highlight that women were treated unfairly. The past hundred years have…

Homo erectus was a type of early human that lived between 1.89 million and 143,000 years ago. They had bodies similar to modern humans and could use tools, and maybe even cook. Now, a professor called Daniel Everett has claimed that they could also sail and speak. Homo erectus fossils have turned up in southern Europe and as far as China and Indonesia. Everett suggests this is evidence that erectus was able to sail to these countries. “Oceans were never a barrier to the travels of erectus. He travelled all over the world,” he said. Everett also believes that to sail to these countries, erectus would have needed a type of language to tell fellow sailors where to go. “They needed to be able to paddle. And if they paddled,…

Name:Jesse It depends on which length you’re trying to measure. If you were to start inside the Earth at its very centre and travel outwards to its fattest part then your tape measure would have to stretch 3,963 miles. It would be double that if you were to go from one side of the Earth, through the centre and out the other, so 7,926 miles. But that’s nothing compared to measuring the distance all the way around the world at its fattest part: that’s 24,901 miles. Did you know that the distance from the Earth’s surface to the boundary with space (known as the Kármán line) is only 62 miles up from sea level? That is roughly the distance between London and Cambridge. Email questions to hello@theweekjunior.co.ukwith the words SCIENCE…

Girls Who Rocked the World by Michelle Roehm McCann and Amelie Welden (Simon & Schuster) You’re never too young to have an impact on the world around you. The women in this book all began making their mark before they turned 20. Find out more about their stories, as well as some of the powerful young women who are changing our world today. Amazing Women: 101 Lives to Inspire You by Lucy Beevor and Sarah Green (Little Tiger Press) Learn all about 101 remarkable women with this fun and inspiring illustrated book. Focusing on women from recent times, it includes fascinating female pioneers such as singer Beyoncé Knowles, politician Angela Merkel, writer J.K. Rowling and activist Malala Yousafzai, alongside many more. Women in Sport by Rachel Ignotofsky (Hachette Children’s Group)…

In 2009, Major Tim Peake took his first steps towards space when he was selected as an astronaut at the European Space Agency (ESA). Behind him lay a glittering career as an ace army pilot; before him lay a path to the stars and a place in history. With more than 3,000 hours of flight time on more than 30 different types of helicopter and aeroplane, Peake was certainly well qualified to make the ultimate trip. His astronaut training was a gruelling experience. Years of expeditions were designed to see how well he’d work in the isolation of the International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts have to be whizzes at what they do, but they also need to have the right personality for the job. They can’t freak out 240 miles…

Death Squared iOS Don’t be worried by the title; Death Squared started life as a fun puzzle game for consoles, before Nintendo Switch allowed users to play it on the go. Now it’s available for smartphones and tablets, too. The game features lots of cute, colourful robots, including bears, cats, mushrooms and sharks, which you have to guide through more than 80 levels, solving puzzles to complete each one. Death Squared is also designed for two people to play at once, moving each robot by swiping on one half of the touchscreen. You can play it alone, but it’s more fun with a friend. Discworld Dweenie stickers iOS (£0.99) Wizards, dragons and Death himself (WHO ALWAYS TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS) are the stars of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Now they…

“Every time I get some money, I split it equally into three jars: spend, save and give. When the give jar is full, I donate it to charity. My dad pays the money I’ve saved into a junior ISA for me. Today, I bought watercolours with my spending money. “Why is it important to save? Because if you spend it all on things you don’t need, you won’t have anything for when there is something you do need.” MONEY MOTIVATION Holiday money, Lego and phones are the top things young people save for, according to a recent survey.…

When I was born in 1970, British women couldn’t buy a house or borrow money without permission from their husband or father, and just 30 years before that, women weren’t allowed to work once they were married or had children. Today those rules sound ridiculous. Along with many women, I have a good job, I’ve bought my own home and I have children, too. However, women in the UK and around the world are still a long way from being equal to men, in terms of the opportunities that are available to them, the way they are treated and the amount that they are paid for the work that they do. To mark International Women’s Day (IWD), our feature on female firsts (page 12) celebrates some extraordinary women and describes…

At 1,345 metres tall, Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in the UK. Around 300,000 people visit it every year, and most people are impressed by its grandeur. Not everyone appreciates its scale, though. Last month, a 2014 online review went viral, after it was rediscovered by someone planning a trip up the majestic mountain. The reviewer complained that the mountain was “very steep and too high”, and that there weren’t any toilets or restaurants at the top.…

3 March 1966 The world in colour When the BBC starting broadcasting television, it wasn’t in the glorious colour we enjoy today. In fact, everything was in black and white. On 3 March 1966, the BBC became the first television station in Europe to broadcast regularly in colour. It promised four hours of colour television per week, and was overseen by David Attenborough, controller of BBC Two at the time. Three years later, the BBC and ITV were broadcasting in colour, and by the early 1970s, 12 million British households had colour televisions.…

Found in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean, this area gets its name from the multitude of twisted yew-tree roots and the maze of winding pathways. This ancient woodland is rumoured to have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to create the famous forests of Middle-Find out more at puzzlewood.net earth in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Over the years, it has also proved to be a popular location for filming a number of television dramas, such as Doctor Who and Merlin. Puzzlewood is home to foxes, badgers and a variety of birds.…

Scientists from the US have used a new scanning technique to reveal a drawing hidden under Pablo Picasso’s famous artwork La Miséreuse accroupie (The Crouching Woman). Painted in 1902, Picasso’s artwork shows a woman wrapped in a blanket crouching on the floor. It currently hangs in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Since 1992, curators at the museum have suspected that the painting concealed another drawing, but they didn’t have the technology to prove it or see it – until now. Using a technique called X-ray fluorescence, scientists from Northwestern University in the US scanned the painting to reveal its secrets. X-ray fluorescence uses different types of light to reveal the chemicals in different paints that were used to create the pictures. The scanner picks up on these…

Say “cheese” A dairy cow gets ready for a photoshoot at a beauty contest in Germany. Sky’s the limit A US pilot trains over a Welsh valley. Life on Mars Astronauts practise for a Mars mission in the inhospitable Negev desert, Israel. Blast off A rocket carrying a Spanish satellite lifts off in the US. Living dolls Two performers wear elaborate costumes to take part in a traditional folk dance in China. Total panda-monium Lumi the panda had fun in the snow at a zoo in Finland. Ski-lay race Athletes compete in a cross-country skiing relay race at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.…

This richly illustrated book tells the story of art and culture across the centuries, and all around the globe. Each section explores a different era – from the art of prehistoric and ancient civilisations, right through to modern and contemporary art. You’ll visit ancient Egypt, Florence during the Renaissance, Edo-period Japan, Vienna at the start of the 20th century and 1930s Mexico, among other locations. Along the way, you’ll discover artists, thinkers and cultural movements of many different kinds. There are maps, facts, examples of famous artworks, and a glossary of terms, as well as lots of wonderful illustrations from Lucy Dalzell, to bring each location to life. The final pages take you right up to the present day, and to finish with, you’ll even find a few ideas for…

Muppet Treasure Island (1996) DVD, Blu-ray, Disney Life, Amazon Video, iTunes Often overlooked in the admirable box set of Muppet films is 1996’s felt-filled adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Treasure Island. Just like 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol, this takes on a classic text and gives it a very Muppet spin. This one isn’t quite as famous, but it’s a very funny, musical film, boasting an early role for comedian and actor Kevin Bishop. It wasn’t always certain that Treasure Island would be that year’s Muppet film, though the writers also considered adapting the King Arthur story instead, before settling on this one. WOW! The first Muppets TV series ever made was filmed in the UK – not in the US – way back in 1976.…

It’s always exciting to receive money, whether it’s cash you’ve earned, pocket money or a birthday present. The amount you get is not important – it’s what you do with it that counts. Do you tend to fritter it away on crisps and sweets? Or do you save it for a while, only to blow the whole lot on clothes or gadgets? Here’s a much better idea: split your money into two jars – one for spending and one for saving. You’ll still be able to treat yourself, but you’ll also be putting some aside for your future. Someone who passionately believes in this is Rob Gardner. He founded a charity called RedStart Educate, which teaches young people how to budget, save and invest (putting money into a scheme or…

Teacher’s name: Mrs Fowler School: Cassiobury Junior School, Watford “We would like to nominate Mrs Fowler because she is the best teacher you can ever have. She is artistic, cheerful, funny and kind. Every time we enter the classroom for PSHE (personal, social and health education) she always has a joyful smile on her face and this brightens up our whole day.” Amina and Aleena, Year 6 If we pick your teacher as Teacher of the Week, we’ll send your school three free issues of The Week Junior. Send your nominations, along with a picture of your teacher and your school’s full name and address, to hello@theweekjunior.co.uk…