Innholdsfortegnelse for 209 i The Week Junior

On 9 December, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced that Russia have been banned from competing in all major sporting events for the next four years. This means the country’s athletes might not be allowed to compete at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, or the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. WADA is an organisation that works to stop doping in sport. Doping is the illegal use of drugs to improve a person’s performance at a sporting event. It is cheating. Why has Russia been banned? In 2015, a WADA investigation found evidence that the Russian government was helping their athletes to dope. This led to Russia’s anti-doping agency, Rusada, being kicked out of WADA. The ban lasted for three years, until Rusada was allowed back in 2018. Rusada…

An estimated £528 million will be spent by UK pet owners on their animal friends this Christmas, according to a study. On average, owners said they would spend £44 on treats and toys, and 92% of those who were asked said they did it so that their pet wouldn’t feel left out. Shops are selling a range of festive treats for pets, including turkey-flavoured mince pies. Dogs can’t eat regular mince pies because raisins and sultanas are poisonous to them.…

Most social media apps and websites have a common theme – people can comment on posts, or hit a button to “like” them. Yet some people are worried that social media can lead to stress and anxiety among its users. As a result, Instagram is trying something new; it’s started hiding the number of “likes” on posts in some countries. The person who has posted an image can still see who has liked it, but nobody else can. It is thought this could make people less upset if they can no longer compare the number of likes they’ve received with other people’s. Some people have said they are unhappy with the changes; artists who post photos of their creations online can no longer show others how many people enjoyed their…

On 28 December, Lucy Edwards will become the first blind presenter on BBC Radio 1. Edwards was just 11 years old when she lost the ability to see out of her right eye. Then, six years later, she lost sight in her left eye as well. She responded by making YouTube videos about her experiences, which led to a career presenting on TV and radio. This Christmas, different presenters will take over on BBC Radio 1, and Edwards will be in charge of the late morning slot on 28–29 December. When she found out, she says she jumped up and down “like a bunny rabbit”. Edwards will have her guide dog Olga by her side, and says listeners can expect “cute cuddly vibes and some amazing tunes”. Her advice to…

In 1843, Charles Dickens could never have known that his festive tale, A Christmas Carol, would still be popular more than 175 years later. It is regarded as the first novel with Christmas as its theme, creating a new genre (category) of books that still exists today. With Christmas Eve fast approaching (when the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future visit Ebenezer Scrooge), it’s the perfect time to take a look at the life of the famous author. A bumpy childhood Dickens, who was born in Portsmouth in 1812, had an unusual upbringing – at times enjoying the comfort of a rich life in London, and at other times overcoming extreme difficulties when his father was sent to prison. When his father was jailed, in 1824, Dickens was sent…

Extreme E is a new motorsport with a difference – it wants to help people understand the impact of climate change. Electric vehicles will race in remote places around the world that are affected by rising temperatures and extreme weather caused by human activity. The non-polluting electric off-road cars will race in locations including the Himalayan mountains in Asia and Brazil’s rainforest. Extreme E will also send scientists to these areas. They will study the problems and impact that climate change is causing. Motorsports such as Formula One often use planes to fly racing cars to each race, but Extreme E will use a redeveloped Royal Mail ship that used to carry letters and parcels. The ship will take the new Odyssey 21 cars and race equipment to the nearest…

This month, a story that started more than 40 years ago will come to an end. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the ninth and final film in the Skywalker saga, which began in 1977 with Star Wars. Written and directed by George Lucas, Star Wars told the story of Luke Skywalker and his journey to become a Jedi Knight. Over the past four decades, seven more films have been released in the saga, continuing the story of the Skywalker family. Now, The Rise of Skywalker finishes the trilogy that Disney started in 2015 with The Force Awakens, as well as the story that Lucas started back in 1977. The Rise of Skywalker is directed by JJ Abrams, who also made The Force Awakens, which introduced characters such as…

Millions of people enjoy watching Strictly Come Dancing on television every weekend. If you swing, sway and bop along at home as the stars perform a jive or rumba, then why not give Latin dancing a go? Latin dancing involves five main dances. These are the cha-cha, samba, paso doble, jive and rumba. They are classed as being different from ballroom dances, which include the waltz, foxtrot, quickstep and tango. You dance with a partner and perform steps and routines that you both learn, set to a range of energetic music. Unlike in ballroom dancing, Latin gives you more freedom to dance out of “hold”. Being in hold means a dance couple hold hands and make a close frame with their arms and elbows. Start by joining a beginners’ class…

Name: Alex “Last year, my friends and I started a new weekly school club named “Biscuits and Banter”. It is all about discussing current affairs. We start by watching that day’s episode of Newsround. Then we have a biscuit and we add extra headlines that we have heard elsewhere. A selected pupil picks a topic that the group discusses. We could talk about a range of subjects, from Brexit to the silliest headlines, or even what’s going on in Syria. I think other schools should start clubs like this because it is good for younger children to be involved and interested in the news. ” What’s going on at your school? Have you taken part in a sporting event, put on a show or done something fun to raise money?…

At least six people have died after New Zealand’s White Island volcano erupted with little warning on 9 December. It is estimated that 47 people were on the island at the time of the eruption. As The Week Junior went to press, rescuers had helped 34 people leave, but eight people were still missing. White Island is home to the country’s most active volcano and is a popular tourist destination; regular ferry and aerial services connect it to the mainland. The eruption began at 2.11pm, a busy time when lots of people were visiting. Attempts to rescue people have been affected by clouds of ash and smoke, and the fear that the volcano could erupt again. On 3 December, a website that monitors White Island warned that the volcano could…

The results of The Week Junior’s election survey have been revealed, with climate change named by you as the most important political issue for the next leader to address. The survey was carried out between 29 November and 10 December. Climate change (the long-term changes to the world’s weather patterns, mostly caused by human activities) was selected by 60.7% of you as the most important problem for the new Prime Minister to deal with, beating Brexit, crime prevention, education, healthcare and homelessness. Brexit is the term for the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) – an organisation of 28 countries that trade together and follow the same rules. An overwhelming 87.3% of you said you thought the UK should stay in the EU. The survey was carried out…

The UK’s largest gold nugget, worth about £80,000, has been discovered in a Scottish river. The lump of metal, which weighs 121.3 grams, has been named the Reunion Nugget because it was in two pieces that fit together perfectly. It was found by a treasure hunter who hasn’t been named. The treasure hunter found it in May, but news of its discovery was kept quiet for months. It has also been decided not to reveal where the gold was found or who found it, to stop people from flocking to the river to search for more. However, information about how the nugget was found has been made public. The man who found it used a snorkel and hand tools to search the bed of the river, putting anything he found…

Thirty-eight years after her first medal at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, Christina Tham has made an amazing return to the sporting event. In 1981, when she was 12 years old, she won a silver medal in swimming, but after a few years of competing she gave up sport and decided to become a lawyer instead. However, in 2005 Tham started playing underwater hockey. The strange sport – which involves teams hitting a heavy puck along the floor of a swimming pool with short sticks – was included in the SEA Games for the first time this year, and the 50-year-old from Singapore won two gold medals with her team. After the victories, Tham said, “I never thought I could perform at this level again.”…

Prairie dogs are rabbit-sized rodents that live on the open grasslands of North America. Although their squeaky calls to each other sound simple and repetitive to us, they can communicate in great detail via these noises. Their squeaks tell other prairie dogs when a predator is approaching, as well as its size, shape, colour and speed. ● LIFESPAN IN THE WILD: 3–4 years. ● HABITAT: Underground burrows in open grasslands. ● DIET: Mainly seeds and grasses, and some insects. ● FUN FACT: Mating season is extremely short – for females it lasts for just a few hours on one day a year.…

Tornadoes are whirling storms created by the fastest winds on Earth, blowing at up to 300mph. They can strike without warning, devastating towns and uprooting houses – but if a team of researchers from the US state of Oklahoma is right, it might soon be possible to hear them coming. Tornadoes appear from vast thunder clouds called supercells, which can tower nine miles up into the sky. The storm cloud sucks up warm air, which swirls around as it rises, creating a spiral of wind called a vortex inside the cloud. In certain conditions, this vortex connects with the ground, forming a tight funnel of swirling cloud. This is the tornado. No one knows why, but tornadoes make a deep rumbling noise. The latest research is looking for a way…

The Egyptian government has shown off a large collection of recently discovered mummified animals. The mummies were found in an ancient tomb in Saqqara, near Egypt’s capital city of Cairo. Mummification is a process for preserving the flesh of a dead body. The ancient Egyptians mummified both people and animals to help their journey to the afterlife. This find, dating from around 30BC, contains dozens of cat mummies, along with 75 cat statues carved from wood or cast in bronze. Two of the mummified cats were lion cubs, and three others still being studied are also thought to be big cats. The tomb also contained snakes, crocodiles and a giant mummified beetle, three times larger than normal size. “I think it’s one of the most exciting finds in the world…

Google and Apple have both announced their lists of the best (and most popular) smartphone apps and games of 2019. It was a good year for video and photo-editing apps. An app called Video Editor – Glitch Video Effects – won the Users’ Choice App of 2019 award for Android’s Google Play app store. Meanwhile, Apple named the photography app Spectre Camera as its iPhone App of the Year. Apple’s iPhone Game of the Year was the adventure game Sky: Children of the Light; Google’s Users’ Choice Game of 2019 selections included Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Brawl Stars, Mario Kart Tour and Angry Birds Dream Blast. On its app store, Apple has published charts of the most popular apps and games of 2019 for iPhone. Mario Kart Tour was the…

A pair of damaged underpants with a hole burned through through them has won one of the world’s top art awards. The acclaimed artwork was picked as the winner of the Turner Prize, which is given to the best piece of art made in the UK each year. It beat 107 other entries, including A Complete Waste of Thyme, which was a bottle of thyme that had been knocked over, and Thomas Cooked, which was a toy train inside a saucepan. The winning artist said, “I am singed with excitement and have always had a burning desire to win this prestigious award.” So is this real, or is it a load of pants?*…

On 7 December, more than 50,000 people around the world spent the night sleeping outside as part of The World’s Big Sleep Out. The event took place in more than 50 cities to raise money to tackle the problem of homelessness. The Big Sleep Out is organised by Josh Littlejohn who started it in Edinburgh four years ago. For the first event, around 250 people spent the night sleeping outside. Each year since then, Littlejohn has organised Big Sleep Outs in Scotland, but this is the first worldwide event. It is hoped that the event will raise around £38 million for homelessness charities, which house and help those in need. Littlejohn told the BBC it was his biggest achievement so far. It is thought that there are about 320,000 people…

France Huge strike affects schools and transport Schools, airports and railways have closed because of a major strike. A strike is when people refuse to go to work as a form of protest. Teachers, rail workers and air-traffic controllers all joined in. They were protesting against planned changes by the government to some workers’ pensions (money received by people after they stop working because of old age). Around 82% of train drivers walked out, leading to 90% of the country’s trains being cancelled. Miami, US £900,000 banana is gobbled up A £900,000 artwork, which consisted of a banana taped to a wall, has been eaten. The work is called Comedian and was made by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It was on display at a gallery in Miami, US. On 8…

A team of scientists from universities in the UK and Australia have worked out that by placing underwater loudspeakers in areas of damaged coral and playing the sounds heard in healthy reefs, they can attract fish back to the coral. Around the world, coral reefs are suffering. Warming oceans and pollution have combined to harm them. When reefs become less healthy, they sound and smell less attractive to young fish. Without new fish arriving, the reefs are slowly abandoned and the number of different species living there falls. Healthy coral reefs are busy places that buzz with the sounds of life. Tim Gordon, the lead author of the study, says that a healthy reef sounds “almost like static on the radio, or some people describe it like frying bacon, and…

A study by the environmental charity Greenpeace has found that the number of plastic “bags for life” being sold by supermarkets has increased. Many larger supermarkets have stopped selling flimsy single-use plastic bags, and now only sell sturdy bags for life. A 5p charge was introduced for single-use plastic bags in 2015, which has led to 90% fewer of them now being used. However, it seems that the attempt by supermarkets to cut plastic waste by switching to bags for life has backfired, because people are buying more of the heavier bags – which contain more plastic. Despite a charge of 10p or more for each one, the number sold rose to 1.5 billion in the UK, contributing to an overall rise in plastic use by supermarkets to 900,000 tonnes…

Croaking around A white tree frog in Jakarta, Indonesia. Flying carpet A protester is thrown into the air by friends in Baghdad, Iraq. Light up the night A festive display in Rothwell, Yorkshire. Water world Swimming in a glass-bottomed pool in Vancouver, Canada. A very nosy creature Paul the koala recovers at an Australian koala hospital after being rescued from a fire. Festive fun Hertha the polar bear plays at a zoo in Berlin, Germany.…

People often travel to the world’s most northern countries in the hope of seeing the aurora borealis (northern lights) – spectacular light shows caused by particles from the Sun reacting with gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The problem is that it can be hard to predict where and when the northern lights will appear, leaving some tourists disappointed when they miss out. Now, however, there’s an app to give them a better chance of seeing the lights. It’s called Live Aurora Network, and has been developed with the help of space physicist Dr Liz MacDonald, who works for the US space agency NASA. The app is linked to high-definition cameras at six locations – in the northern European countries of Norway and Iceland, and in the US state of Alaska –…

A man in Japan was arrested after calling the customer service line of the phone company KDDI around 24,000 times over the course of two years. Akitoshi Okamoto, from the city of Kasukabe, had been calling the line to complain. According to the company, Okamoto was particularly upset that his phone wasn’t able to pick up radio broadcasts. After he called 411 times in the space of a week, the company decided to turn to the police. There is a law in Japan to punish people who make it impossible for businesses to carry out their day-to-day work.…

The luxurious department store Fortnum & Mason has started selling Heinz Baked Beanz chocolate truffles. The truffle is on sale in the brand-new chocolate section of its shop in London. It contains tomato, haricot beans and white chocolate, and has been coated with toasted breadcrumbs, so that it tastes similar to beans on toast. The chocolate is a tribute to the fact that Fortnum & Mason was the very first shop to sell Heinz baked beans in 1901.…