Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
On Saturday, Mark McMorris won Canada’s first medal at the 2014 Olympics–a bronze in snowboarding.
That was quickly followed up by two more medals for Canada: Justine Dufour-Lapointe won Canada’s first gold and her sister, Chloe, earned Canada’s first silver medal.
McMorris is a native from Regina, Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan is known for having very flat terrain, yet McMorris was determined to be a world-class snowboarder.
The eyes of the world are on Sochi, Russia, where the 2014 Winter Olympics are taking place.
Last Friday, the official opening ceremony took the audience on a Russian journey. It began with the Russian alphabet, with each of the 33 letters highlighting a famous Russian person or achievement.
Later, the athletes flooded into the stadium, grouped according to country. Canada, with 220 athletes, has one of the largest teams in this year’s winter Olympics. The Canadians came into the stadium, a sea of red, behind flag-bearer Hayley Wickenheiser.
“It’s an amazing feeling being able to carry the flag and lead in this awesome powerful Team Canada,” Hayley Wickenheiser told CBC News. “I’m a very, very proud Canadian right now. It’s great to be Canadian in moments like this; you realize how lucky we are to live where we live. I hope everyone back home is proud and enjoys the games.”
The 2014 Winter Olympics begin today in Sochi, Russa. Canadians will be cheering for their favourite athletes.
But several Olympic contenders are receiving a little more attention than others.
They are recovering from major injuries and needed to add extra training so they’ll be fit enough to compete.
At least two slopestyle contenders from Canada are among this group.
Slopestyle is an event in which skiers or snowboarders try to perform the most difficult tricks while flying as high into the air as possible.
The Seattle Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII in grand style. Seattle crushed Denver 43-8.
Seattle’s number-one ranked defence was commanding. In fact, the defense of Seattle kept Denver scoreless for the first half of the game.
Denver’s number-one ranked offence was pathetic.
It was the first time since 1990 that both the number one-offence and the number-one defence played against each other in the Super Bowl.
Peyton Manning, Denver’s quarterback did try his best, though. He set a record with 33 completions (the number of times a ball is successfully passed to a teammate). Nevertheless, he had a night to forget.
Sesame Street may be where the air is sweet, but these days it’s also where the food… isn’t.
The children’s television show has started a program to help get kids eating food that’s better for them.
The program is called, “Food for Thought: Eating Healthy on a Budget.”
About one in four children in the United States does not get enough nutritious food to eat, often because parents can’t afford it.
That’s about six million children, according to the Sesame Street website.
Super Bowl Sunday is nearly here.
On February 2, professional football’s biggest and most important game — the Super Bowl — will take place.
The Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks will be battling each other for league supremacy.
Denver enters the game with the league’s number-one offence. Seattle enters the game with the league’s number-one defence.
Denver has one of the best quarterbacks ever to play football: Peyton Manning.
He is the only player ever selected league as the National Football League Most Valuable Player four times. He’s expected to become the first five-time MVP when the league’s year-end awards are announced on Saturday.
From now on, many companies that want to sell clothing to the Ontario government will have to provide the names of the people who made the clothing.
The names and addresses will be put onto a website so if anyone wants to check them, they can.
The new rules apply to companies selling more than $5,000 of clothing to the government.
If they do not give the information, they may not be allowed to sell the clothing.
Last year, unsafe workplaces in Asia made the news. In one incident, there was a fire in a clothing factory in Bangladesh.
It turned out that some Canadian companies were buying products from the Bangladesh factory even though it wasn’t a safe place. In other workplaces, reports came out about children in factories doing the work, which is against the law.
The Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykola Azarov, resigned from his job on Tuesday.
Experts say this should help to ease some of the tensions that have been building in that country.
The tensions began in November when Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, made a surprise move to bring Ukraine closer to Russia rather than European Union (EU).
He asked Russia to lend Ukraine some money, rather than asking the EU for it. Ukraine needed the money to help its economy.
Many Ukrainians had looked forward to a closer association with the European Union because they felt it would bring democracy to their country.
The people of Mexico drink more soft drinks than people in any other country in the world.
Last fall, the government of Mexico made a decision to increase the taxes on soft drinks with sugar.
They said that soft drinks help to create health problems like obesity and diabetes. That tax is starting now.
In the past, Mexico has done other things to reduce sugar and fat in schools, like removing unhealthy foods from vending machines.
But some people say this kind of tax to make people healthier doesn’t work.
In 2011 another country, Denmark, put a tax on fatty foods for the same reason: to improve people’s health. But they removed it a year later because it caused more problems than it solved.
A tiny bunny has created a lot of debate.
The bunny at the centre of the controversy is made of bronze—and it’s in Nelson Mandela’s ear.
Following the death of the famous world leader, officials in South Africa hired two sculptors to build a monument in his honour.
Sculptors Ruhan Janse van Vuuren and Andre Prinsloo created a majestic, nine-metre likeness of Mandela, with his arms open wide as if to embrace the world.
