Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Keller Laros is a professional scuba instructor who lives in Hawaii.
The shores of Kailua-Kona, on The Big Island of Hawaii, host some of the world’s most diverse and interesting aquatic life.
Laros estimates he has made more than 10,000 dives in his career.
On Jan. 11, he led a group of videographers and divers on a “Manta Ray Night Dive.”
However, the tour would be unlike any other trip he had ever been on before.
It is often said that a sign of greatness is making others around you better. If that’s the case, then there can be very few better than Canadian basketball player Steve Nash.
Nash is a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award in the National Basketball Association: for the 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 seasons.
Nash recently achieved another significant milestone in his career.
He surpassed the 10,000 career assists mark.
At nine years old, Quvenzhane Wallis is the youngest person to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
The Academy Awards (nicknamed “The Oscars”) are given to the best work in movies each year.
Best Actor and Best Actress are perhaps the most prestigious awards an actor can win.
Wallis was just five when she tried out (or “auditioned”) for the role of Hushpuppy in the film Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Some of Cirque du Soleil’s performers will soon have their feet on the ground.
That’s because the fantastical circus company is laying off 400 employees.
Cirque employs about 5,000 people around the world, doing more than 100 types of jobs including performing.
Most of the lay-offs will be at the organization’s Montreal headquarters, according to an article in the Globe and Mail.
Cirque du Soleil is a famous Canadian performing troupe. According to Wikipedia, they describe themselves as “a dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment.”
They were founded by two former street performers, Guy Laliberte and Gilles Ste-Croix, about 30 years ago.
When Chris Hadfield was nine years old, he watched Apollo 11 land on the moon and decided he wanted to become an astronaut.
That was in 1969, and about half a billion people around the world watched the same grainy images of the moon landing on TV.
It seems incredible, but with today’s technology and social media websites, people can see and hear what the astronauts are doing on the International Space Station every day.
We can watch videos of them, check out the view of Earth from the space station, and even have casual “conversations” with the astronauts.
The National Hockey League season is finally beginning.
After 113 days, the dispute between the owners and the players is over.
Fans have been without hockey since Sept. 15; that’s when the NHL season was supposed to have started.
After months of negotiations, players voted in favour of a new “collective agreement” to end the lockout.
Then to officially end the lockout, representatives for both the owners and players signed a document saying they agree to the proposal.
The 30 hockey teams that make up the NHL started training camps on Jan. 13.
There are seven Canadian teams in the NHL: the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Montreal Canadiens, the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers, the Winnipeg Jets, the Ottawa Senators and the Vancouver Canucks.
Training camp is a time for teams to put together their roster.
It also gives teams a chance to prepare for the upcoming season in hopes of winning the Stanley Cup.
This camp will be shorter than usual as there is a rush to get the season started. As a result there will be no pre-season games.
Last week, thousands of children in Toronto learned an important lesson about the seriousness of plagiarism, from the head of the largest school board in Canada.
Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s work and claim the ideas or writing as your own.
When you use someone else’s writing in a school report, for instance, you must let the reader know where the passage came from.
That’s known as “citing the source” or “giving attribution.”
Everyone wants to work somewhere that’s interesting and fun.
The people at Google have taken that concept to an extreme.
Their new Canadian headquarters in Toronto, Ont. have some features that make everyone want to come to work.
Google is the Internet’s most popular search engine (the software program that helps you find websites you’re looking for).
The company also makes many other software products such as Google Maps and Google Chrome.
Google also owns many Internet companies including YouTube and Blogger.
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield will soon become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station.
Hadfield and two other astronauts – Tom Mashburn from the United States and Roman Romanenko from Russia – docked at the ISS on Dec. 21, 2012.
Their Soyuz spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19.
It took them two days to reach the space station.
The space station is a satellite which orbits the Earth. The size of the crew varies from three to six astronauts at a time.
The crews stay on the space station for up to six months and then are replaced by other astronauts.
Hadfield and his crew will stay for five months.
This mission is Hadfield’s third trip into space and his second visit to the space station.
When he takes over command of the ISS in March, he will become the first Canadian ever to command a spacecraft.
Hadfield can already claim several “firsts” in space.
In 1995, Hadfield was the first Canadian to serve as “mission specialist” on a space shuttle.
He was also the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm while in orbit, and the first Canadian to board the Russian space station, Mir.
For nearly a month Theresa Spence, Chief of the community of Attawapiskat, has been protesting the way First Nations people are treated in northern Ontario.
Spence has not eaten any solid food for about 30 days. This type of protest is called a “hunger strike.”
During a hunger strike, people stop eating in order to make a peaceful protest about something they believe in. Spence is consuming only liquids, like water and broth.
Spence said she will not end her hunger strike until Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with her to discuss First Nations rights.
Last week, Harper said he will meet with First Nations leaders on Jan. 11.
