Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Last Sunday Kateri Tekakwitha (known as Lily of the Mowhawks) became a saint in the Roman Catholic religion. She is the first North American First Nations saint.
More than 1,000 Canadians attended the “canonization” ceremony, conducted by the Pope Benedict XVI (16th) in the Vatican City in Italy.
Many of the people at the ceremony wore feathered headdresses and beads and sang songs to Tekakwitha.
Lance Armstrong “has no place in cycling,” the president of the governing body for cycling said this week.
And with those words, the organization took away Armstrong’s seven Tour de France victories. They also banned him for life from competing in cycling.
Even though Armstrong came in first in those races, he used banned performance enhancing drugs to help him compete and win races.
So the International Cycling Union (UCI) is erasing him from the sport’s history books.
Picture this. You’re on a plane, flying from Vancouver, B.C. to Sydney, Australia.
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.
Last March a fire all but destroyed a very special playground in Toronto.
The city’s High Park children’s castle had been lovingly built by volunteers. Its destruction resulted in an overwhelming community response–including a day-long community celebration.
Celebrity contractor, Mike Holmes, stepped in with his crew to offer to lead the rebuild–an elaborate new playground structure.
Holmes filmed the rebuild for his television show, Holmes Makes It Right. It’s scheduled to air later this month.
The description for that episode reads:
When a beloved castle playground in Toronto’s High Park is damaged by fire, “Mike Holmes is fuming.
“He leads a legion of crewmembers, engineers, architects and firefighters into battle against extreme heat and construction challenges, all while the clock is ticking.
“With help from the community, Mike and his team overcome major setbacks to rebuild a brand new castle that’s fit for any King or Queen, teaching kids that they can rise above any obstacle and build their own kingdoms.”
The European Union, a collection of countries in Europe, has been awarded an important prize — the Nobel Prize.
It was given the honour for keeping peace for more than 65 years.
That is a very big accomplishment, especially because the Second World War began just 21 years after the First World War ended in 1918.
But not everyone is happy to see the European Union receive the prestigious prize.
That’s because even though Europe is not at war, it is struggling with a different kind of problem.
Many countries in Europe, including Greece, Spain and Italy, are having trouble paying down their debts.
Their governments borrowed too much money and now they must cut back on the amount of money they spend to pay their workers and for things like roads, hospitals and schools.
Football quarterback Peyton Manning’s comeback season continues to develop.
Manning missed all of last year with a serious neck injury.
He is back in the National Football League (NFL) and playing quarterback for the Denver Broncos.
Manning has accomplished much in his career.
He has been a four-time NFL Most Valuable Player and a Super Bowl winner.
Last Monday he had a night to remember, adding to his historic NFL career.
On Monday night, the Premier of Ontario did something surprising. He quit his job.
It was shocking, because most people didn’t see it coming.
Dalton McGuinty has been the Premier for nine years.
He is also the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, a position he has held for 16 years.
At the same time as he resigned, he also “prorogued” the legislature. That means he stopped all business taking place in the Ontario House of Commons.
Most of the work MPPs were working on has been cancelled until a new session is called.
No one knows exactly why McGuinty quit, and so suddenly.
Some people say he intends to run for leader of the federal Liberal party—in other words, take over the national Liberals so he can run for Prime Minister in the future.
Other people say he quit because his provincial government is in the middle of many difficulties including contract negotiations with some unions.
Ikea is a large chain of stores around the world that sells furniture and home accessories.
Recently the company came under fire for removing all of the images of women from the pictures in the Saudi Arabia edition of their catalogue.
In the Ikea catalogue, families are shown using and enjoying Ikea’s products. In the Saudi Arabia version of the book, none of the families show women in them.
In other editions of the catalogue, women are featured in the photos.
The images of women were digitally removed from the pictures in the catalogue. This is known as airbrushing or photoshopping.
Ikea said they shouldn’t have removed the images; they regret having done it.
Ikea prints more than 60 versions of its catalogue and sends them all over the world.
Lots of people go skydiving. They jump out of an airplane, with a parachute, and sail down to Earth.
But on October 14, Felix Baumgartner took it to new heights.
Space.
Well, near-space, anyway.
Baumgartner rode in a helium balloon 39 kilometers above New Mexico.
And then he jumped out.
It sounds simple, but it was far from it.
Beth Feeback, who lives in North Carolina, knows how to find a good bargain. In fact, she recently turned $10 into $34,375.
Feeback shops at Goodwill, a thrift store, where people can buy used clothing and items cheaply.
In her spare time, Feeback paints folksy pictures of large-eyed kitties.
Last April, Feeback was combing Goodwill for a nice warm blanket. Instead, she stumbled on two large paintings that she felt she’d be able to paint her kitties on–after painting over them, of course.
She paid $9.99 for the paintings and took them home. It wasn’t until five months later that she fetched them to recycle them into cat paintings.
But something caught her eye on one of the paintings.
There was a sticker on the back of the canvas that said that the painting–a red diamond with blue and white stripes–had come from the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina.
