Innholdsfortegnelse for 198 i The Week Junior

The world’s oldest travel company, Thomas Cook, has shut down after 178 years of business, leaving employees and customers devastated. Many people have lost their jobs or had their holidays cancelled. The company’s closure also left more than 150,000 British holidaymakers stranded abroad. This has forced the UK Government to embark upon the biggest ever repatriation in peacetime. Repatriation is the act of returning people to their home country. Why did Thomas Cook close down? Thomas Cook was in a lot of debt, which means that it owed money to other people. The company was forced to shut down because it failed to find a way to repay the money. The company had asked the UK Government to lend it £250 million to help keep it in business, but the…

An investigation by Public Health England has found that although the amount of sugar in drinks has fallen by 29% over the last three years, the levels in food have gone up. When a tax on sugary drinks was introduced in April 2018, many manufacturers reduced the amount of sugar in their recipes so that they didn’t have to pay it. However, a target to cut the amount of sugar in foods by 2020 is unlikely to be met. Consuming too much sugar is bad for your health.…

Can you imagine spending a night under the stars in one of Britain’s most beautiful places? That’s exactly what a new study says every schoolchild in England should do. A report commissioned by the Government has said every schoolchild in England should get to spend the night in a national park. National parks are areas of land protected by the Government because of their “beautiful countryside, wildlife and cultural heritage”. There are 15 national parks in the UK: 10 in England, two in Scotland and three in Wales. Journalist Julian Glover was asked by the Environment Secretary to write a report on how to improve national parks and other protected landscapes in the UK that are known as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs). In his report, Glover identifies three…

Brittany Walsh, from the US, holds an unusual award: the Guinness World Record for the furthest arrow shot by a person using their feet. In 2018, she fired an arrow 12.31 metres. Walsh says she first saw the trick in an old photo of circus performers, and a friend dared her to try it. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Walsh said, “I was so scared as a kid of looking stupid in front of people, or failing, but the older you get, the more you realise that stuff just doesn’t matter.” The 32-year-old performs in front of audiences at theatres and circus shows, along with stilt-walking and trapeze. Walsh’s record features in the Guinness World Records 2020 edition, out now.…

Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, have discovered that ghost crabs growl at predators by grinding tiny teeth inside their stomachs. Most crabs rub their pincers together to make warning sounds. However, ghost crabs can use their stomach too, leaving their pincers free for nipping. ● LIFESPAN IN THE WILD: From two to three years. ● HABITAT: Tropical beaches, such as those on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. ● DIET: Insects, eggs from loggerhead turtles and vegetation. ● FUN FACT: The Latin name for ghost crabs is Ocypoda, which means swift-footed.…

Have you heard of parkour, flying disc, breaking and roller freestyle? They are all sports included in the recent World Urban Games held in Budapest, Hungary. The competition showed off a range of sports that are popular in urban areas and enjoyed by young people. More than 300 athletes from countries including Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the UK and the US competed. Parkour involves running, jumping and swinging around an urban-style course as fast as possible. In flying disc, two people throw a Frisbee between them and perform spins and twirls to music. Breaking is a street-dance contest in which performers are awarded scores by judges, and roller freestyle features skaters jumping and doing tricks on a course of slopes and curves. The other sports were BMX freestyle and 3x3…

Ever dream of making a game like Monopoly, Cluedo or Settlers of Catan? This fun interactive book gives you the chance to become a board-game designer. You’ll go through the process of choosing a theme, selecting and adapting one of 25 different rule sets, and then customising one of 50 boards to make your very own game that’s ready to play with friends or family. Add doodles, drawings and colour to your board, which can be easily pulled out of the book. Created by Kevan Davis, a designer of games and escape rooms, it will provide hours of entertainment, and includes lots of brilliant tips and tricks to help you design the perfect game.…

Ever since the release of Iron Man in 2008, film fans have been treated to lots of superhero films set inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This series of connected stories has introduced millions of people to some of the most popular characters in comic-book history, including Black Panther, Gamora, Hulk, Spider-Man and Thor. Marvel Universe LIVE!, a new stage production featuring many of these MCU heroes and villains, is now touring the UK. In the show, members of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy join forces against Loki, who has stolen the powerful Wand of Watoomb – a weapon fans might recognise from Doctor Strange. The superheroes must get it back, or the universe will never be the same again. Along the way, they’ll have to defeat…

The company behind Encyclopaedia Britannica is trying a new way to teach people about history: a game controlled by their voices. The game is Guardians of History, and it can be played using smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home. It’s been designed for families to play together, and its first episode is a time-travelling adventure set in ancient Greece. “It’s a blending of science fiction with facts from history, and choice-driven gameplay,” says Karthik Krishnan, the global CEO of Britannica Learning, which made the game. “As you go through those different paths, you also learn different things about history.” The company has created Britannica Insights too, a plug-in (add-on) for Google’s Chrome web browser that shows extra information from the encyclopaedia archives when you’re searching for topics online.…

On 23 September, world leaders and environmental activists, including Greta Thunberg, met in New York, in the US, to discuss plans to tackle climate change. Climate change means long-term changes in world weather patterns that are partly due to human activities. A few days before the Climate Action Summit on 20 September, millions of students across the world missed school to stage protests demanding that governments do more to protect the planet. Thunberg told the protesters in New York that they would make the world leaders “hear us”. At the summit, Thunberg told world leaders and business people that young people were watching them, and urged them to take immediate action. She said, “The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not.” The summit…

In one of the most dramatic days in the history of UK politics, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was found to have behaved unlawfully (didn’t obey the law). On 24 September, judges at the Supreme Court – the UK’s most powerful court – said Johnson had misled the Queen (caused her to have the wrong idea) when he asked her to prorogue (suspend) Parliament for five weeks. What has happened? A panel of 11 Supreme Court judges, known as justices, had to decide whether or not Johnson had acted properly ahead of Parliament being prorogued. Some people, including a former Prime Minister, claimed that Johnson had misled the Queen. The case was taken to the Supreme Court after courts in Scotland and England reached different conclusions. What’s the problem? The Prime…

Water-fight fans have been invited to put a historic building’s new defences to the test. The Hill House in Helensburgh, near Glasgow, has soaked up a lot of water in its 115-year history. In order to stop it “dissolving like an aspirin in a glass of water”, the National Trust for Scotland surrounded the building with a giant piece of mesh made from 32.4 million chainmail rings. On 28 September, at a “Douse the House” event, people are being invited to spray it with water to see if the mesh really is waterproof.…

Armentières, France Big cat captured in small town A black panther has been spotted walking across rooftops in a small French town. Locals in Armentières watched with amazement as the big cat crawled in and out of an open window on the second floor of an apartment building. A vet helped the authorities capture the cat, which was handed over to an animal charity. Weighing 20 kilograms, the panther had been kept as a pet and was not aggressive – just a bit scary. Texas, US Thousands rescued from floods Tropical Storm Imelda has hit the US state of Texas, bringing heavy rains and strong winds. Thousands of people had to be rescued and taken to safety on 19 September as sudden floods deluged parts of the state. At least…

For most people, drinking tap water is a normal part of everyday life. For Sarah Sinclair, it’s a career. The 29-year-old is one of 23 people working for Scottish Water who get paid to taste samples from across the country. Each year, the team drinks 15,000 glasses of water to check that everything smells, tastes and looks as it should. Sinclair told the BBC, “I can tell the difference between the water that comes from my tap at home compared with the one at work, or from restaurants and bottled water.” The tasters get sent 60ml samples of water from across Scotland, which they compare with bottled water to see if it is good quality. Sinclair added, “We don’t swallow, because we would become very bloated from the amount of…

An optimistic (hopeful) new report from an international group of climate experts says that it is possible to meet environmental targets that would stop more damage to the planet. In 2018, the world’s top climate change scientists said that to keep warming of the planet to less than 1.5º C and stop the most serious risks of climate change, humans need to cut dramatically their emissions of greenhouse gases. These are chemicals in the atmosphere that trap the Sun’s energy and are linked to climate change – the long-term changes in weather patterns largely caused by human activities. The new report, called the Exponential Roadmap, says that it is possible to cut emissions by half in the next 10 years. It points to 36 ways that this could be achieved…

Scientists from Japan have calculated how much spit a five-year-old can produce in one day. Fifteen boys and girls were asked to record how much time they spent eating meals and snacks, and sleeping over two days. They then had to allow spit to fall into a bowl over a five-minute period. After this, they were asked to chew rice, sausage, mashed potato, a biscuit, an apple and some pickled radish, then spit it out. Based on how much saliva the children had in their mouths over a five-minute period, and how much saliva came out with the chewed food, the researchers found the children produced about 500ml of spit a day.…

A type of kangaroo that lived in Australia for 12.5 million years before dying out around 30,000 years ago had a skull like a giant panda. This helps explain how it survived a harsh ice-age climate where food was scarce: it could crunch tough vegetation. Rex Mitchell, from the University of New England in Australia, wanted to investigate how short-faced kangaroos – which had big jaws and teeth – bit and chewed their food. While building a digital model of the skull of one species, called Simosthenurus occidentalis, he realised that it had “absurdly huge cheekbones”, a bit like those of a giant panda. These colossal cheekbones would have helped the ‘roo munch leaves and stems that were far tougher than anything today’s Australian plant eaters can cope with. It…

Anew play set to come to schools in 2020 wants to get young people thinking about digital privacy, cyberbullying and other internet issues. The play is called The Big Data Show, and it’s the work of a group based in Scotland called Civic Digits Theatre Company. They’ll be holding workshops in schools before the first performances next year. Audiences at the theatre shows will get to join in with the action, via games and information sent to their mobile phones. The theatre company say the play is “about knowing who knows what about you, what you are agreeing to when you download an app, how to live with the challenges of social media”. It tells the story of a famous court case in 1985, after hackers accessed Prince Philip’s email.…

To celebrate National Poetry Day on 3 October, The Week Junior asked poet Joshua Seigal for advice on how to write an amazing poem. He gave us some top tips. “Here is an idea for writing a poem about someone special to you. You can then give it to that person for their birthday or other special occasion, which will save you a bit of money, too. Start by thinking of a list of 10 special things. By things, I mean objects. These could be objects like your bed, your house or a teddy, or they could be more abstract things like the sky, a rainbow or even happiness itself. Once you have your list, see if you can turn each object into a description of your special person, thinking…

On 23 September, hundreds of people gathered at Stonehenge, an ancient stone circle in Wiltshire, to watch the sunrise and celebrate the autumn equinox. This event marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn in the northern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere is the half of the world above the equator – an imaginary line that divides the globe into two equal halves. Countries in the northern hemisphere include China, India, Russia, the UK, the US and all the countries in Europe. An equinox is a point in the year when the Sun is exactly above the equator, and day and night are of equal length around the world. The word equinox is from the Latin words aequus, which means equal, and nox, which means night. There are two…

Those of you who play video games might already know about loot boxes. In recent years, they have become a way for video-game companies to make more money. However, they are also a way for those who play video games to lose money. A lot of games that feature loot boxes are aimed at young people. On 12 September, Members of Parliament (MPs) published a report calling on the Government to pass a law banning loot boxes for children. This is because the MPs consider loot boxes to be gambling, and it is illegal for children to gamble. Some people support this proposal because they think loot boxes are dangerous. Others say they are no different to buying a pack of stickers. So what do you think? Are MPs overreacting…

A penguin from New Zealand that washed up on a beach in Australia, after a journey of 1,550 miles, is about to start its trip home. On 10 July, the Fiordland penguin was found near the mouth of the Kennett River on the south-eastern coast of Australia, around 90 miles from the city of Melbourne. Fiordland penguins rarely appear in Australia because it is usually too far for them to swim. They spend most of their time on New Zealand’s South Island and surrounding smaller islands. There are thought to be between 5,000 and 6,000 of them in the wild, and conservationists class the species as vulnerable. The underweight and exhausted penguin was taken to Melbourne Zoo where staff could look after it. At first, it was so ill that…

On 1 October a week-long national holiday begins in China. Golden Week is celebrated every year at around the same time to mark the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This year’s Golden Week is special because it is its 70th anniversary. Ceremonies, firework displays and parades are planned across the country, and millions of people will travel to spend time with their families. China’s National Day China’s National Day is 1 October. It is the day on which, in 1949, Mao Zedong officially declared the formation of the People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao, as he became known, made the announcement while waving a newly created national flag in front of 300,000 people in Tiananmen Square, in the country’s capital Beijing. This event marked the end of a…

Australian wombats (short-legged marsupial mammals that carry their babies around in pouches) are the only animals in the world known to produce cube-shaped poo. When researchers from Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere had a good look into it, they found that the wombat’s guts are specially adapted to turn their poo into blocks. Experts think the adaptation allows the wombats, which often live in dry environments, to extract every last drop of moisture from the food they eat.…

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a big hit for Nintendo’s Switch console when it launched in 2017. Now its hero, Link, is returning in a new game... that’s actually quite old. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was first released in 1993 for Nintendo’s Game Boy device. Now the company has remade it for the Switch, with better graphics and some zippy new features. You play as Link, stranded by a shipwreck on Koholint Island, a mysterious place guarded by a sleeping creature called the Wind Fish. Your job is to find eight magic instruments that, when played together, will wake up the Wind Fish and allow you to escape. Link’s Awakening isn’t quite as free-roaming as Breath of the Wild. It’s a far more structured…

You’ve probably made fun videos before, perhaps with friends and family at home or on holiday. It’s easy to do using a smartphone or tablet – but have you thought about making a video at school about an issue you feel strongly about? Making a school video should be fun and teach you something. It could link to a topic you’re studying; it could be part of a class assembly, or perhaps highlight a campaign that’s running in your school. It might seem a bit daunting at first, but there’s a scheme called LitFilmFest that helps young people to learn filmmaking skills. The scheme has lots of projects, such as Pupil Prime Minister, Pupil Parliament and Take A Stand Challenging Climate Change. You get tips about how to write a…

Woman swallows her ring An American woman had to have surgery after she swallowed a diamond ring. Jenna Evans had decided that gulping down the precious stone was the best way to hide it from thieves while she and her partner were travelling on a speeding train. It turned out that the thieves and the train were just a bad dream, but when Evans woke up, there was no sign of the ring. She had swallowed it in her sleep. She woke her partner to explain what she had done and they went to hospital, where an X-ray revealed the ring inside her stomach. Luckily, doctors were able to operate and return the ring to her finger. Snow in September Spectators at a sporting event in Japan were surprised to…