Our mission here at News Bites (a monthly children’s newspaper) is to Engage, Inform, and Inspire by bringing news, STEM, sport and entertainment to young people in a language they understand and in a manner they can easily relate to.
Hello, News Biters! You’re very welcome to another epic issue of News Bites. Right, let’s dive straight in. In this month’s feature, we’re celebrating our blue planet as World Oceans Day falls on June 8. Perhaps more than ever before, our wonderful oceans need everyone’s love and attention. As you know, a healthy ocean is vital to mankind’s very existence, and World Oceans Day is an ideal opportunity for us to learn more about our oceans –and how (and why) we can help to protect and conserve them. As always, we also travel back in time to bring you historical events worth knowing about on page 9, tour the world in Alphabet Atlas on page 11 (check out where the letter J takes us this month), and lace up our…
They are not cuddly like pandas, magnificent like lions or cute like kangaroos. They are not a ‘flagship species’ like those animals – that is, an animal with ‘star quality’ selected to represent an environmental cause. In fact, people are terrified of some of the larger reptiles, like snakes and crocodiles! And some are so small that they are hardly visible. These might be some of the reasons why the conservation of reptiles is not often given attention. We are horrified at the possibility of ‘saying goodbye’ to our old friend the elephant or our cousins the apes, but we’re not out campaigning to ‘Save the Turquoise Dwarf Gecko’ from Tanzania, beautiful and extraordinary though this tiny creature is. Yet reptiles have their fans and, for those who study them,…
Get Out of Jail Early We all know that reading is important. But, in the country of Bolivia, prisoners have discovered that reading can get them released from jail early! ‘Books Behind Bars’ is a programme based on a similar set-up in Brazil. Both these countries experience severe overcrowding in their prisons. Bolivia lacks the resources to offer education or other help to people in many of the jails, and the system is so slow in some places that people might wait years before going to trial. In 47 of Bolivia’s prisons, 865 inmates are now reading books and taking tests to check for understanding. Other than a bit of entertainment, what is to be gained by these inmates? Depending on how much they read, they can take hours, days,…
Meet Pigcasso You’re heard of chimps and gorillas who paint? Well, now meet Pigcasso, the painting pig! Pigcasso is a rescue pig living at a sanctuary for farm animals in South Africa. She has amazed the world by learning to paint – using her mouth to hold the brush, of course. She has held art exhibitions, appeared on TV shows, designed a watch named Flying Pig for Swatch watches – and now she has sold a painting, Wild and Free, for $24,500! That’s a record price for an artwork created by an animal. No, she doesn’t name her paintings, as some of the chimp artists who know sign language can – she leaves that to the owner of the sanctuary. But she signs each painting by dipping her nose in…
Prehistoric Perfection Scientists have discovered one of the best-preserved dinosaur fossils ever. And not only that, they believe this dinosaur was killed on the day the Chicxulub asteroid hit Earth – some 66 million years ago. The fossil even reveals the dinosaur’s skin, and it was featured in David Attenborough’s new BBC documentary, Dinosaurs: The Final Day. The fossilised remains of the Thescelosaurus (a small plant-eating dinosaur) are so good that the discovery led to Phillip Manning, a professor of natural history at the University of Manchester, calling it ‘absolutely bonkers’. Rural Navigators Researchers have recently discovered that people who grow up in the countryside have better navigational skills (that is, the ability to find one’s way from place to place) than those who grow up in large towns and…
JUN 12 1929 Anneliese Marie Frank, known as Anne, was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 12, 1929. Her mother was Edith Hollander Frank. Her father, Otto, owned a good business. Anne had a sister, Margot, who was three years older than her. The Franks were Jewish and quite well off. Life was good for them in Germany. All that was about to change, however. Germany in the 1930s Nazi Party leader, Adolf Hitler, became chancellor of Germany in January 1933. He soon set about making Germany the most powerful country in the world. Hitler didn’t like Jews. His Nazi government began bringing in laws to make life difficult for the Jewish community. Moving House Otto Frank decided to move to Amsterdam, and Anne came to the Dutch capital in…
