Our news for kids is interesting, relevant, sometimes quirky, always well-informed and about real people and happenings in a real world. News for kids delves deep into the ‘how’ & ‘why’ of news, giving children (and adults) a wider understanding of the events happening around them.
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The Kiwi is Australian!
The Kiwi is Australian! [Illustration by Shinod AP] March 14: The kiwi bird is one of the most common symbols of New Zealand. It is also the country’s national bird. And that’s not all. It features as an insignia on New Zealand’s coat of arms as well. New Zealanders consider the kiwi their most enduring national symbol and until now, they believed that the bird did not even exist outside New Zealand....
English and Indlish
July 15: Students are often rebuked for using what is known as ‘Indian English’ words. Perhaps these teachers need to know that many Indian words have actually become a part of an Oxford Dictionary. The Asian Age newspaper reported that the Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary of Correct English has a section on Indian English. The section has 2,500 words The fifth edition of the dictionary was released recently. Words like bandicoot, bungalow, jungle, chit, cushy, juggernaut are commonly known....
Animal Sense
February 14: So you live in a quake-prone region and want to be prepared the next time an earthquake strikes. Unfortunately, science has still not come up with a way to predict earthquakes. But there’s hope yet. Just visit your local zoo and observe the behaviour of the animals there. Astonishing but true. Animals remain even today, the best bet of alerting humans to an impending natural disaster. Animal Sense [Illustration by Shinod AP] Curious to know why?...
Asia's First Floating Museum
October 16: Wouldn’t it be exciting to visit a war museum of vintage aircraft on a huge ship floating in the ocean ? And when the ship in question happens to be INS Vikrant, the experience promises to be truly memorable. INS Vikrant is India’s first aircraft carrier and came into service in 1961. Once the hallmark of the Indian Navy, it has been decommissioned for some time now. This means that it is no longer in use....
The Bt Brinjal Battle
Where: New Delhi, India February 20, 2010 : India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh had announced that Bt Brinjal, a genetically modified (GM) plant, would be introduced for cultivation across the country. A storm of public protests followed. As a result, the introduction has been put on hold for the time being. On February 9, 2010, the government of India announced that it needs more time to take a final decision. Bt Brinjal is brinjal modified by the addition of a gene from ‘Bacillus thuringiensis’ (a bacterium)....
A safety net for cheetahs, vultures, dolphins
Where: Rome, Italy December 9, 2008 :The fastest moving mammal on earth is now moving – fast – towards extinction. The Guardian reports that cheetah is on a list of 21 names newly added to the United Nations Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals List 1 of endangered species. The Egyptian vulture is on this list too, because it is affected by the excessive use of toxic pesticides. A safety net for cheetahs, vultures, dolphins [] A species of Asian duck, which is eaten as a delicacy in its native region, three kinds of dolphins, some marine mammals and bird varieties are also on the list....
Vanishing Vulture
It’s the bird most commonly associated with death. Once a common sight in South Asia, the vulture, or nature’s scavenger, is one of the 78 species in India that is dying out. Faced with a mysterious virus and pesticide poisoning, the population of vultures today is said to be just 5 per cent of what it was (about 20 years ago) in the 1980s. A couple of years ago, the vultures of Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur numbered 2000....
Girl Power in Gaul!
Girl Power in Gaul! [Illustration by Shinod AP] March 27: Over 40 years ago, Belgian artist Alberto Uderzo and French scriptwriter Rene Goscinny, created a new comic series. It was all about the ‘mis’adventures of a diminutive warrior Asterix, his giant of a friend Obelisk, and their dog, Dogmatix as they battle the invading armies of the Romans in Gaul, as ancient France was known. Uderzo and Goscinny set the story in the year 50 BC, over 2000 years ago....
The Little Magician
The Little Magician [] Five-and-a-half-year-old Bhagyanath can tell a story real well, especially the one about how a teacher caught him sharing a Coke with his friends in the school canteen. “I hid the bottle inside a book and when the teacher asked me to show what I was hiding, I opened the book. There was nothing there,” says the bright-eyed boy.” Indeed, there wasn’t! The little boy on stage had just managed to make a Coke bottle disappear in thin air....
This Time Teachers are the Students
August 12: About 55,000 teachers in West Bengal are going back to school. They are going to be taught English so that they can teach the language to their students. The West Bengal government has realised that most primary school teachers in the state do not know the ABC of English. Rather, they don’t remember. The reason is not hard to find. For 20 years the government had banned the teaching of English at the primary level....