Tag: international

Arts Kids Lighter

What Is Harry Potter Up To Now?

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Or more accurately… what is author J. K. Rowling up to?

The answer is: a mysterious new website called Pottermore.

A few weeks before the launch of the final Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2), Rowling put up an intriguing website at www.pottermore.com.

She also began a Twitter account, twitter.com/pottermore, which has more than 75,000 followers.

It offers no clues as to what the website will be about.

It merely has the words “Pottermore” and “Coming soon…” with J. K. Rowling’s signature.

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Lighter News

Will And Kate To Tour Canada

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Britain’s newest royal couple is coming to Canada this summer.

Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – also known as Will and Kate – recently got married in a very high-profile ceremony in England.

Now they are taking their first official royal tour as newlyweds, and they’ve chosen Canada as their destination.

While Will has been here twice before (in 1991 and 1998) it will be Kate’s first time visiting Canada.

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Kids Lighter

If You’re Inviting People On Facebook… Click “Private”

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When Thessa’s birthday was coming up, she decided to throw a party. After all, it wasn’t every day a girl turned 16!

So, as many kids do these days, Thessa posted an invitation to her party on Facebook. She wanted all of her friends to come.

But she made a big mistake. She forgot to set her Facebook invitation to “Friends Only.”

More and more people saw the invitation and signed up to come to the party.

They sent it to their friends and told more people about it… and before long, more than 15,000 people had confirmed on Facebook that they were coming to the party.

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Kids

Nine-Year-Old Kids Pass University Math Exam

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If you took a university math exam, how do you think you’d do?

Paula and Peter Imafidon are nine-year-old twins. They live in England, and last year they became the youngest people to ever pass Cambridge University’s advanced mathematics exam.

A reporter asked them how hard they had to work in order to pass the exam. Paula said she treats math like a game, so it’s not really “work” to her.

Peter said the exam had some questions that “may seem difficult but are very easy once you get in the swing of it.” Of course, Peter is speaking as someone to whom math comes very easy—the questions are very tough, especially for kids their age.

The family’s other children, Anne-Marie, Christiana and Samantha are also exceptionally good at math.

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Health News

Bixi Comes To Toronto And Ottawa

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Big cities like Toronto and Ottawa have a lot of traffic.

All of those cars, taxis, trucks and buses create a lot of pollution. They also make getting around the city very difficult. There are a lot of traffic jams in big cities.

Some people ride bikes in the city. However, lots of bikes get stolen. Also, it can sometimes be difficult to find an empty spot in a bike rack when you want to store your bike downtown. Those things can discourage people from riding their bike around a big city.

But because biking is a much healthier way to travel than using a car, the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa wanted to encourage people to ride a bike.

This summer, Toronto and Ottawa partnered with a company called Bixi to offer a new program which lets people rent a bike for short trips. People can ride to from one place to another downtown without having to own, use or lock up their own bicycle.

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News Politics

Saudi Woman Protests Ban On Women Driving

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A woman in Saudi Arabia was arrested last Saturday because she put a video on YouTube video of herself driving a car.

She was eventually released.

Manal al-Sharif was protesting the rule in her country that only men can drive. She was filmed by another woman writer who supports women’s rights.

In Saudi Arabia it isn’t clear whether it’s illegal for a woman to drive, or simply a traditional or religious custom. But Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world to ban women drivers. Many people in the country would like to see women driving but it must be approved by the King first.

Because there are strict rules that prohibit men and women from being around each other in public, women cannot take public transport like buses. So they must rely on male relative or chauffeurs to drive them anywhere they need to go.

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Arts

Group Of Seven Art To Travel To England

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The Group of Seven was a very famous group of Canadian painters.

Canadians are very proud of the work they did. Many Canadians feel their paintings captured the Canadian landscape in a very special way.

In October, 124 Group of Seven paintings and sketches will go to England to be the stars of a special exhibit called Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven.

The art will be shown in London, England. The paintings are very famous in Canada and are mostly outdoor scenes, many of them featuring Georgian Bay and Algonquin Park in Ontario.

The paintings are very important because they started a new trend in Canadian art.

However, the Group of Seven is not well known in other countries.

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Lighter

The Ugliest Couch In The World

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The world’s ugliest couch is voted on each year by thousands of people across the world on a website called The Worldwide Ugly Couch Contest.

Each month, people send in photos of what they think is the ugliest couch they have ever seen. It could be plaid, stained, ripped, or simply an ugly colour. They might own it, it might belong to a friend, or they might have seen it in a movie or on television.

No matter what the couch looks like or where it’s from, if someone thinks it’s ugly they can send a picture of it to the Worldwide Ugly Couch Contest website.

From January to October, the best ugly couches are posted to the site, and anyone can vote on which they think is the ugliest. At the end of each month, the couch with the most votes is picked to represent that month in the Ugly Couch Contest. At the end of the year, an overall winner is selected.

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Breaking News News Politics

Who Was Osama Bin Laden?

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Two weeks ago, US President Barack Obama went on television to make an historic announcement. He said that US troops had killed Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the terrible events on Sept. 11, 2001 (known as 9/11).

On Sept. 11, thousands of Americans and 24 Canadians died in terrorist attacks.

For many Americans and other people around the world, bin Laden’s death gave them a sense that justice had been done. On that day, hundreds of people went to “Ground Zero” in New York, where the World Trade Center towers had been destroyed, and cheered because bin Laden was no more.

bin Laden’s history

Osama Bin Mohammed bin Awad Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957. He was the son of a very rich man and inherited a lot of money from his family.

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News

World’s Last Remaining WWI Veteran Passes Away

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The last remaining veteran from the WWI has died. Claude Choules was 110 years old.

A “veteran” is someone who has fought in a war. WWI, or World War I, began in the summer of 1914 and ended in November 1918. About 70 million people fought in the war, and more than seven million of them were killed. More than half a million Canadians fought in WWI and 60,000 died. Another 170,000 Canadians were wounded in the war.

Choules pretended to be older than he was, when he signed up for the war at age 13. He tried to become a boy bugler, but was sent instead to a boys’ training ship. He served in the British Navy on the battleship HMS Revenge. From his ship, he watched as the Germans surrendered on Nov. 21, 1918.

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