Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Toronto is banning plastic shopping bags in stores.
Starting in January 2013, you’ll have to bring your own reusable bag to the store to cart your goods away.
More than 250 million bags end up in landfill every year, never breaking down into compost, according to a report by CBC News.
Plastic bags can also clog drainage systems and, when they are washed out to sea, can hurt fish and other marine animals.
The people who are rebuilding the High Park castle are getting some high-profile help.
Mike Holmes is a celebrity contractor. A contractor is someone who is skilled at the kinds of jobs needed to build or renovate homes. Contractors hire and oversee all of the work—for instance, electrical, plumbing, carpentry and design work.
Holmes became famous for his motto, “make it right.” On his TV show, he rescues homeowners from renovations that have gone wrong and he brings in workers who fix the house properly and “make it right.”
Holmes also does a lot of charity work. On one of his TV shows, he helps people in New Orleans whose houses were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Now he’s lending a hand to help rebuild the children’s play castle in the High Park neighbourhood of Toronto, Ont. Much of the wooden structure was destroyed by a fire last March.
If you were sitting outside on April 16 in Eastern North America, you may have seen a wondrous site. That day, millions of Red Admiral butterflies flew in – or perhaps “blew in” – from the southern United States.
Drew Monkman is a local natualist (“nature watcher”) and writer, living in Peterborough, Ont. He tracks the habits of animals including butterflies.
He told TKN that the April 16 migration was “completely unprecedented. (The Red Admiral has) never been seen in these kinds of numbers.”
He said on that day there were probably several million butterflies, most of them Red Admiral, but there were other species as well.
Drew Monkman is a naturalist and butterfly expert living in Peterborough, Ont.
Why did this happen? This year in the southern United States like Texas, where the butterflies began their journey, the winter was “amazingly mild,” said Monkman. This allowed more butterflies to survive the winter and reproduce.
Last year around this time, a royal couple visited Canada.
Prince William (second in line to the throne of England) had just gotten married to Catherine Middleton and the two spent much of their honeymoon touring Canada.
Next month Canada will get a visit from another royal couple—this time, it’s the father of the groom. Prince Charles is William’s father.
Charles is first in line to the throne. That means that when his mother—Queen Elizabeth—steps down, Charles will become king.
Charles will come to Canada with his second wife, Camilla.
Charles’ first wife was one of the most well-known and popular celebrities in the world, Princess Diana.
(Princess Di, as she was known, was killed in a car crash in 1997. When that happened, millions of people around the world mourned.)
Charles and Camilla will tour New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan from May 20 to 23.
Toronto’s mayor is involved in another bizarre situation. This time, mayor Rob Ford, had a confrontation with a reporter from the Toronto Star newspaper.
(You may recall a past TeachingKidsNews article when Mayor Ford was confronted by a CBC comedian on his property, and called the police. Here is a link to that article.)
In this case, the Star found out that Ford intends to buy some property next to his home. Ironically, Ford wants to buy the property in order to erect a security fence.
Star reporter Daniel Dale went to Ford’s home around 7:45 p.m. to look at the property and take some pictures of it.
One of Ford’s neighbours called the mayor and told him someone was snooping around his house.
Ford got very angry. He drove home and confronted the reporter.
It’s stinky and it’s huge—and it’s about to bloom.
The world’s tallest flower is set to bloom this week.
Its scientific name is The Amorphophallus titanium (Titan Arum for short).
The extremely rare flower is at the Niagara Parks’ Floral Showhouse, near the Canadian Horseshoe Falls in Ontario. When it blooms, it will be the 22nd of its kind to bloom in a botanical garden.
Titan Arum is also known as the corpse flower. That’s because of the stinky odour it gives off. It smells like rotting meat.
Its horrible smell helps the flower attract insects that it needs for pollination. (Lots of insects are attracted to rotting meat.)
Titan arum normally grows in the rainforests of Sumatra.
However, this one—and another one that is also growing and will bloom after the first one—was donated by a man who lives in New Hampshire, U.S.
Three students have won the chance to have science experiments they created carried out by astronauts in space.
The students won an international competition called the YouTube Space Lab Contest. Last October, students around the world aged 14 to 18 were invited to come up with ideas for experiments that could be performed on the International Space Station.
The space station is a satellite that orbits the Earth. It includes a research laboratory where astronauts from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada conduct experiments. Because there is no gravity on the space station, they are able to do experiments they could not do on Earth.
For the contest, students had to make a video explaining their hypothesis – the idea they wanted to test – and the method for doing the experiment. Then they posted the videos on YouTube.
Winners were chosen by people voting on YouTube, and by a panel of judges that included scientists, teachers, astronauts and journalists.
A plastic garden gnome is travelling around the world to help demonstrate how the pull of gravity changes in different locations.
Gravity is the force that attracts a person or an object to the centre of the Earth. It keeps us on the ground, and it also determines how much we weigh.
Gravity may be slightly stronger or weaker depending on where you are, which means things weigh different amounts in different places on Earth.
The difference is so small – 0.5 per cent or less – that most people using ordinary scales wouldn’t even notice it.
For example, if you weigh 40 kilograms, the difference would be no more than 200 grams higher or lower, depending on where you were.
But even such a small difference would matter to scientists who need to be very accurate when measuring amounts of chemicals for an experiment or comparing weights of different objects.
Last week Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, spent $138.98 on a new pair of black dress shoes.
Why? Because he was announcing a new budget.
Flaherty is in charge of presenting Canada’s budget, which is why he bought the new shoes.
It’s a tradition in Canada that the Finance Minister wears new shoes to present the budget.
According to Wikipedia no one really knows why, but it’s something most Canadian Finance Ministers have done since the 1960s. It’s a tradition.
This year, the federal government structured its budget to reduce Canada’s annual deficit to zero by 2015.
A deficit happens when a government spends more than it collects in a year.
March Madness can grip a sports fan from the second week of March through the first week of April.
March Madness is the nickname for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball Tournament. (When NCAA is said out loud, people usually say “N C double-A.”)
The tournament determines the national champion of college basketball.
