Author: Joyce Grant

Entertainment Kids News

Ontario Place Closing Until 2017

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One of Ontario’s most famous landmarks is closing.

Ontario Place will shut down for five years, to be transformed “into an innovative provincial landmark,” according to its website.

The attraction opened in 1971; at the time, it cost $29 million. It was created by the Ontario government to help revitalize the city’s lakefront area. Ontario Place is located downtown, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The provincial government built Ontario Place as a family-friendly amusement park for Torontonians and as a way to attract more tourists to the city.

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Kids News Sports

14-Year-Old Wins Golf Tournament

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Fourteen-year-old Lydia Ko has become the youngest person — male or female — ever to win a professional golf tournament.

The teen won the New South Wales Open golf tournament on Jan. 29.

Ko was born in South Korea but moved with her family to New Zealand in 2003. She is the world’s top amateur golfer.

Ko won the tournament by four strokes. That means that the person who came in second took four more shots than Ko did, to complete 18 holes of golf. (In golf, unlike most sports, the winner is the person with the lowest score.)

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A Uganda Little League Baseball team.
Kids News Sports

Canadian Little Leaguers Travel To Uganda

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In the African country of Uganda, there are two million orphans. Nearly half of the children have lost their parents from AIDS, a terrible and widespread disease.

Many children are very poor. Many live in slums.

However, some children in Uganda have found something great that helps them in their lives: playing baseball.

Uganda’s Little League team is very good. So good, in fact, that last year they beat the team that had held the regional championship for 11 years, Saudi Arabia.

It was the first time that an African team had won the regional tournament.

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News Science Technology

Toronto Teens Send Legonaut Into (Near-) Space

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Two teenagers in Toronto, Ont. have taken a giant leap – for themselves, and for one little Lego man.

The teens launched a Lego figure into near-space.

They hooked a helium weather balloon, a home-sewn nylon parachute and four cameras to the figure. And then they went out to a soccer field and let their contraption go.

The cameras were set to take pictures every 20 seconds.

When their figure came back to Earth, they looked at the pictures the cameras had taken.

They were shocked to see their little Lego figure, clutching his Canadian flag, with a picture of the curved horizon of the Earth in the background.

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News

New Facts Emerging About Italian Cruise Ship Disaster

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Since the Italian cruise ship sank off the coast of Tuscany on Jan. 13, many new facts have come out.

As you may recall from TKN’s article about the disaster, the captain of the 13-deck Costa Concordia cruise ship steered the boat too close to an island. Rocks tore a hole in the hull and the ship sank.

There were more than 4,200 people on board; some said that while they were scrambling to leave the ship, they saw the captain already in a lifeboat.

Since TKN reported on the story on Jan. 15 there have been many accusations against the captain, Francesco Schettino, who is currently under house arrest.*

He is accused of manslaughter (unintentional murder), causing a shipwreck and leave the ship when there are passengers and crew still on board.

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Arts Lighter News

Mahler Symphony Gets An Unwelcome Addition

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When you go to hear live classical music, it’s usually quite a formal occasion.

The audience is respectful of the musicians.

Usually people even clap only at certain times. That’s so the beauty of the music isn’t interrupted.

The New York Philharmonic is a very famous classical music orchestra.

So you can imagine what people in the audience were thinking when, right in the middle of the soft and beautiful ending of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 – someone’s cell phone started ringing.

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Kids News Politics

Toronto Kids Learn Lessons At City Hall

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Yesterday, some schoolkids in Toronto learned first-hand what democracy is all about.

Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, was proposing some cuts to the city’s budget.

He said many of the city’s services should go on the chopping block to balance the city’s budget, including closing down services at: 10 arenas, three daycares, three shelters, a city zoo and a farm on Toronto Island.

The city also proposed cutting services like swimming lessons at five swimming pools in Toronto schools. That could potentially lead to the pools being closed in the future.

The parents and kids at those schools went into action to try to prevent the budget cuts.

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Ellen DeGeneres and her Mascot
Arts Entertainment Lighter

Mascot Creator Helps Ellen DeGeneres Be In Two Places At Once

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In one episode of her popular talk show, Ellen DeGeneres bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t be in two places at once.

Lots of people wanted her at events, but her schedule was packed.

John Kernaghan was listening to her show that day.

He’s a Toronto-based mascot maker. His company, Hogtown Mascots, makes life-sized puppets that are used as “mascots” for companies and sports teams.

He decided to make it possible for the entertainer to be in two places at once.

John created a giant mascot costume that looked just like Ellen DeGeneres. And then he sent it to her.

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Breaking News News

Cruise Ship Runs Aground In Italy

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It began like any other cruise, with more than 4,200 people aboard the Costa Concordia.

However, the scene became tragic on Saturday as the massive ship ran aground a few hundred metres off the tiny island of Giglio near Tuscany, Italy.

Rocks tore a 50-metre gash down one side of the hull and the ship took on water.

By Sunday morning five people were dead and 10 unaccounted for. Two of the victims were French and one was from Peru. Another 30 people were hurt; two people were seriously injured.

Others on board were from Italy, Germany, France and Britain. There were 1,000 crew members on board.

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News Science

Stephen Hawking Turns 70

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Stephen Hawking turned 70 on Jan. 8.

Cosmologists – scientists like Hawking who study the origins of the universe – gathered in Cambridge, UK, to pay tribute to him.

Hawking was a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge for 30 years. He retired from that job in 2009. He still works for Cambridge, in cosmology research.

Hawking is a mathematical genius, who changed the way scientists think about the universe.

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