Door knobs may become a thing of the past, with door levers taking their place.

That’s because Vancouver, a large city in British Columbia, recently changed its building code to say that new buildings will be built with levers instead of knobs.

The city’s building code is changing to levers because they are easier to open. People with arthritis, for instance, often find door knobs difficult.

Using levers will make doors as accessible to as many people as possible.

The post Door Knobs A Thing Of The Past? appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

Even though the number of students in Canada is going down, the number of students taking French immersion has gone up by 12 per cent in the last five years. That information is based on the 2011 census.

The trend is particularly strong out west. Over the past 12 years, the number of students in British Columbia and Alberta taking French immersion has risen steadily. The number in Saskatchewan and Ontario are also climbing.

French immersion is when a student whose first language is not French, studies in French.

The post More Canadian Kids Taking French Immersion appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

You’re flying over the Pacific Ocean. For the last 12 hours, your flight has been perfectly uneventful.

And then suddenly the captain’s voice comes over the plane’s speakers.

There is a boat in distress, the captain explains. And the plane is going to change course in order to help look for it.

That’s exactly what happened to 270 passengers on board Air Canada flight AC033 last Monday.

The captain was told there was a “vessel in distress” somewhere in the Tasman Sea, which is between Australia and New Zealand.

A yacht with one person aboard had left Sydney, Australia, about two weeks earlier. It had lost its mast, was very low on fuel and had been drifting.

The post Air Canada Flight Makes A Detour To Locate A Stranded Yacht appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

More than 31,000 people have complained to Elections Canada about the automatic voice-mails they received, directing them to go to the wrong polling station to vote.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says that his party had nothing to do with the robo-calls.

Representatives from the Liberals and the NDP have urged the people responsible to come forward.

The Liberals and NDP have also denied having anything to do with the potentially illegal calls.

Many Canadians want to know who placed the calls, and they want the party responsible for them to be held accountable.

The post Protests and Accusations – The “Robo-Call” Scandal Continues appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

Autism affects the brain’s development of social and communication skills.

People with autism typically have difficulty recognizing facial expressions and emotions.

The new video game, called FaceMaze, was developed to help kids with autism recognize what certain emotions look like, and what they mean—for instance, smiling, frowning or looking sad.

The video game looks and plays a lot like Pac-Man, a popular video game from the 1980s.

The post New Video Game Helps Kids With Autism appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

For 2011, that person was Jack Layton.

A whopping 90 per cent of editors polled said they thought the NDP leader was the newsmaker of the year.

Layton helped to build his political party up from just 19 seats in 2003 when he took over as leader, to 103 seats last year -- enough to make the NDP Canada's national opposition party for the first time in history.

Layton died from cancer in 2011 and the country mourned for this great "representative of the people."

The post 2011 – Year In Review (Part II) appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

But it’s his newest brother whose birthday he’ll probably never forget. That’s because on Aug. 21, Gaelan delivered his brother.

Around 2 a.m., his pregnant mother woke up and shouted for Gaelan. She said she was going to have the baby.

Gaelan wondered what to do, and worried that if he didn’t catch the baby as it came out it might get hurt.

So he went into action. He pulled the baby out by the shoulders. Then, without being told, he ran to the kitchen and got a pair of scissors.

The post 12-Year-Old Boy Delivers His Baby Brother appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

Crowds ran into the streets of Vancouver and people began smashing store windows, stealing things from stores and even overturning cars and setting things on fire.

The evening, which had started out with such high hopes for a Canadian Stanley Cup victory, turned into a horrible embarrassment for Vancouver and Canada.

Many people took photos and videos that night.

The police are looking through the footage so they can identify the people who did the rioting, and charge them.

The post Heroes Emerge From Vancouver Riot appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

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.

The post The Stanley Cup Drops Out Of Vancouver’s Clutches appeared first on Teaching Kids News.

They spent six years in Vancouver, and they didn't do very well. Every season they lost more games than they won. After doing so poorly, the fan support in the city gradually decreased so the owner, Michael Heisley, decided the team would do better with a change of scenery. He moved them to Memphis, where they are known as the Memphis Grizzlies.

This year there were rumours that the owner of the Vancouver Canucks (the city’s hockey team) wanted to buy the New Orleans Hornets basketball team to bring a basketball team back to Vancouver. However, that seems unlikely now.

The Toronto Raptors are now Canada’s only professional basketball team. The only member of the Vancouver Grizzlies still playing in the NBA is guard Mike Bibby, who plays for the Miami Heat.

The post NBA’s Grizzlies Making History For Memphis appeared first on Teaching Kids News.