Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Canadian movie director James Cameron is known for doing some amazing things, in a big way.
He has directed some of the biggest movie blockbusters ever including Avatar, The Terminator and Aliens.
In 1997 he directed the film he is perhaps best known for, Titanic.
This year–100 years after the original Titanic ship sank to the bottom of the ocean–Cameron has gone down to the ocean floor himself, to the deepest point on Earth.
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.
April 16 was a very hot day in Boston, Mass. It was a record-setting 27 degrees Celsius.
It was the day of the 116th Boston Marathon.
A marathon is a long-distance race, covering just over 42 kilometres. On this day, many runners (16 per cent of them, in fact) decided to pass on the event because it was too hot. Many other racers posted slower than usual race times.
Except for one participant. Canadian Josh Cassidy, 27, set a world record.
Cassidy won the men’s wheelchair division. He raced in a three-wheel, high-tech wheelchair; he uses his arms to power it.
Cassidy finished with a record time of 1:18:25 (one hour, 18 minutes and 25 seconds). His time was two seconds faster than the previous best time, set by South Africa’s Ernst Van Dyk in 2004.
In 2010, new F-35 Fighter Jets were ordered by Canada’s Defence Department (the department that oversees the country’s military).The new jets were supposed to cost around $15-billion.
Now, however, the Auditor General of Canada has said that the 65 planes will actually cost $25-billion, $10-billion more than expected. The Auditor General’s office watches over Government spending.
NDP and Liberal MPs (Members of Parliament) have accused the Defence Department (part of the Conservative government in power) of “hiding” the extra $10-billion in their financial reports when the 2011 election was coming up. Some are saying that the Conservatives wanted to keep it secret so people wouldn’t see the real costs and not vote for them.
Now that it is in the open, some MPs have demanded that Canada’s Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, step down from his job.
The Defence Department has explained their position saying that their original estimate did not include many costs such as operations (day-to-day expenses), people to run the project, or a “contingency fund” (in this case, this refers to money set aside for unknown problems in the project). Some of that money was already recorded in other budgets.
An old photograph may solve the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart, the famous pilot who disappeared on a round-the-world flight 75 years ago.
Earhart was the first woman to fly alone across North America and back, and the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping.
In 1937, she and a navigator, Fred Noonan, set out to fly around the world. They had travelled more than two-thirds of the way when their plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. Ships and airplanes searched the area, but they were unable to find any trace of the plane or its crew.
What happened to them has remained a mystery. One theory is that the plane ran out of fuel and was forced to land on a tiny island called Nikumaroro, about halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
An organization called The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR; pronounced “tiger”) has been searching for Earhart’s plane. The group has an old photograph of Nikumaroro that was taken about three months after the plane disappeared.
Recently, they used new technology to make the picture clearer. Now they believe that a dark shape in the picture, sticking up out of the water, may be part of Earhart’s plane.
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.
There are exciting things happening in baseball, hockey, basketball, golf and soccer.
Major League Baseball (MLB) is just getting underway.
Every team is hoping to make it to the World Series in October.
But that’s about 150 games away.
The Blue Jays have a real shot at it this year, and that has some of the American teams nervous.
Will a Canadian team win against the Americans in “their” sport?
It’s happened before—in 1992 and 1993 when the Jays won the World Series. You never know!
The Republicans in the United States likely have their next presidential nominee: Mitt Romney.
Romney is the Republican who will most likely become the party’s nominee for president.
That’s because his closest rival, Rick Santorum, stepped down this week.
The Republicans have been going through a long and intense process of selecting their new nominee.
Romney—who will still have to be officially elected by the party’s members—would replace former president George W. Bush.
Unless something major happens to upset the apple cart, Romney will become the new nominee.
He didn’t think he was “too young” to do something, and he didn’t wait for someone else to help — he just jumped into action.
Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Wuitschick is being hailed as a hero after he saved the schoolbus he was riding in and its passengers.
Wuitschick and about a dozen other kids were riding in the schoolbus on their way to Surprise Lake Middle School, in Milton, Washington (near Seattle).
All of a sudden, the schoolbus driver had a seizure.
In this case, a seizure is a medical condition that caused the bus driver to uncontrollably twist around in his seat.
He lost control of the bus, which veered off the road, according to the Los Angeles Times news website.
Ralph Wilson Stadium – the home field for the Buffalo Bills football team – seats more than 70,000 people.
If the Bills do not sell every last ticket to a home game, the game is not shown on TV.
This is a rule put in place by the National Football League (NFL). It’s called a “blackout rule.” TV games are “blacked out” – not shown – if the stadium is not full.
