Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
You may have seen pictures of Hawaii on postcards, with its beautiful beaches, lush gardens and fascinating volcanoes.
But the Hawaiian islands are also rich in history and culture.
On the north shore of Hawaii’s island of Oahu you’ll find the Polynesian Culture Centre. There, each group of Hawaiian islands is represented in the form of a mini-village from that particular island chain.
Canada has always done a lot of trading with the United States, the biggest buyer of the products and natural resources it sells.
But now companies in Canada are finding other countries to trade with, like India and China.
A new report written by experts at one of Canada’s biggest banks says that by the end of this decade — the year 2020 — Canada will only trade about 60 per cent of its goods with its neighbouring country, the United States. That’s down from 75 per cent right now.
Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, was caught off-guard by a comedy team called This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
One of the fictional characters on CBC’s This Hour is Marg Delahunty.
She plays a “warrior princess journalist” who often confronts politicians in a funny way.
She “ambushes” them and talks to them about the issues of the day. It’s meant to be funny but often insightful, too.
Last week she tried to ambush Toronto Mayor Rob Ford in the driveway of his home.
There are two sides to the story of what happened next.
According to Marg Delahunty (comedian Mary Walsh in real life), their camera crew ambushed the mayor at 8:30 a.m., in daylight, and in her typical loud-mouthed way she started offering the mayor some advice.
She was trying to tell him that “we bombastic buffoons should stick together.”
The body of Alan Billis, who died of cancer recently will be the first one in the modern world to be mummified like the ancient Egyptians were.
While he was terminally ill with lung cancer, Billis—a taxi driver in the UK—signed up for the procedure.
Dr. Stephen Buckley is a scientist who has been working for nearly 20 years to figure out how to mummify bodies in the same way Egyptian bodies like Tutankhamun’s were preserved.
His process was filmed for a television documentary on Britain’s Channel Four TV station.
The most recent country to be formed in the world is called the Republic of South Sudan. It was formed on July 9, 2011.
Before July, South Sudan was part of Sudan, a country in the north-east of Africa. (Sudan itself used to be part of Egypt, but became independent in 1956.)
South Sudan was formed following two civil wars, one in the 1970s and—following an 11-year ceasefire—another which began in the 80s. The southern part of Sudan demanded independence.
When the new country’s independence was declared, its citizens took to the streets of Juba, the capital, to celebrate.
Salva Kiir Mayardit (pictured here) is the president of the new country, which has 10 states.
The Ryerson University quidditch team is going to a tournament in Ottawa this weekend.
You heard right – the Ryerson quidditch team.
You may remember quidditch as the game Harry Potter and his friends play in the popular series of books by J. K. Rowling.
She invented the game, just as she invented Harry Potter’s world.
Fans of Harry Potter in England, the United States, Canada and other countries have created a “muggle”* version of the game.
One Ryerson player says it’s kind of a mish-mash of rugby, flag football, basketball and hide-and-seek all rolled into one great game.
Players don’t fly, of course, but they do have to run on the field with brooms between their legs. Not only is that difficult, but it can make the game a bit rough.
The population of the world is about to hit a new milestone.
As of Oct. 31, demographers say there will be seven billion people living on earth.
Back in 1804, we hit the one-billion mark. It took another 123 years to reach two billion.
By 2083, the population rate could be much faster or slower, depending a few factors including average life expectancy.
It is the poor who are always hit hardest by population increases, researcher John Bongaarts told The Globe and Mail newspaper.
There are more people drawing on the earth’s resources—food and energy, for instance.
More than 900 million people in the world don’t get adequate nourishment.
Many people enjoy the Fall because of the beautiful colours of the leaves, but to baseball fans, the Fall is especially wonderful because it also means the beginning of the World Series.
This year, the two teams competing in the World Series are the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers.
And while both teams are capable of winning the championship–the series is tied at 2-2–the Cardinals have shown they can score a ton of runs, thanks in large part to the play of their first baseman, Albert Pujols.
On Saturday, Pujols played one of the finest games of baseball ever played in the World Series.
Not only did he hit three home runs, he also collected six RBI (Runs Batted In), and hit two singles.
Pujols’ terrific day at the plate put him among baseball’s elite.
The former leader of Libya is dead.
Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled Libya for 42 years, had been forced to step down from office when Libyans took to the streets in protest of his brutal dictatorship.
For months, he and his followers fought off the rebels. He maintained to the end that he was still Libya’s ruler.
Then, he disappeared. No one could find him.
All that ended Thursday, when rebel forces shot him to death in his hometown, Sirte.
Gadhafi’s reign over Libya was at times colourful and brutal.
He often acted like an arrogant celebrity, having meetings with dignitaries in an enormous white tent which he set up wherever he went including large cities like Paris and New York.
He had female bodyguards who wore camouflage and high-heels and carried machine guns.
Cougars are becoming a problem on Vancouver Island, BC.
Last September, four cougars were spotted prowling through Victoria (the capital of BC), on Vancouver Island.
Vancouver Island has a growing population of deer who look for food in city gardens and the cougars are following them into the city.
Cougars rarely attack humans, but in the cases where it has happened it is usually because the cougar is hurt or startled.
Dieter Gerhard is a long-time resident of Victoria. “We have a very fat cougar living on the property next door to us,” he said. The cougar is attracted to the deer who come to graze nearby.
