News articles in

This map highlights the countries that news stories in issue 36 refer to. To increase its size click anywhere on the map. You will then have three sizes to choose from. read more ...

On 7th March the people of Northern Ireland voted to elect the 108 members of their assembly or local parliament. It meets in a part of Belfast, the largest city in Northern Ireland, called Stormont. For nearly 30 years thousands of people died in read more ...

The Louvre is the best-known art gallery and museum in Paris, capital of France. Its building is an old palace. It was lived in by the royal family before the French people overthrew them during a revolution in the late 1700s. It has been a museum since read more ...

If Osama bin Laden – the leader of the Islamic militant group known as al-Qaeda – is still alive he celebrated his 50th birthday on 10th March. No one has seen him since 2001 so some people think he is dead. Bin Laden is probably the world’s most wanted read more ...

Nikolai Sutyagin, aged 60, lives at Arkhangelsk, in north west Russia. He lives in a very untidy house made mostly of old planks. It is 44 metres (144 feet) tall. That makes it half the height of Big Ben in London and nearly three times taller than the read more ...

On 5th March there was a total eclipse of the Moon. This means that the Moon passes into the Earth’s shadow. So for a few minutes the Moon cannot reflect the rays of the Sun to Earth and most of its light seems to be blotted out. A total eclipse happens read more ...

On the 8th and 9th of March leaders of the 27 member countries of the European Union (EU) met to discuss global warming. Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, led the meeting. Most scientists think that carbon emissions – or greenhouse gasses – are causing read more ...

The European Union (EU) began in 1957 when six nations formed the ‘Common Market’. Today it has 27 member countries. Celebrations are planned because 2007 is its 50th anniversary year. The EU is holding a birthday party on 25th March. Germany is hosting read more ...

Princess Lalla Salma is the wife of King Mohammed the Sixth of Morocco. On 28th February their second child, a daughter, was born. The new baby, Princess Lalla Khadija, is sister to Crown Prince Moulay Hassan who was born in 2003. King Mohammed the Sixth, read more ...

Chocolate is good for you — Scientists from two universities in Finland have been studying the health of a group of businessmen born between 1919 and 1934. They have been asked what sort of sweets they eat, if any. The 860 (out of 1,367) who said they eat read more ...

On 5th March the National People’s Congress (NPC) began its annual meeting in Beijing, the capital of China. Held in the Great Hall of the People, the meeting lasts for two weeks. There are 3,000 members of the NPC. China is a communist country which read more ...

General Ali-Reza Asgari is missing. Iranian officials have now admitted this after three weeks of rumours. General Asgari, aged 63, is a former deputy defence minister. He had several senior jobs in the Iranian government up until 2005. When he was read more ...

Rioting began in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, on 2nd March. The unrest continued for two days. Over 650 people were arrested. The trouble started when police were ordered by a Copenhagen court to raid a building called the ‘Youth House’ early in read more ...

George W Bush – president of the USA – made a seven-day tour of Latin American countries between 8th and 14th March. He visited Brazil, Uruguay, Columbia, Guatemala and Mexico. Latin America includes countries in North and South America – including the read more ...

The Taliban have captured Daniele Mastrogiacomo – an Italian journalist – who was working in Afghanistan. At first Taliban officials accused him of spying for the British troops fighting the Taliban in the south of the country. They said they would free read more ...

In the USA teenagers can start to learn to drive at age 16 in most states. Although they can drive at 16 sometimes there are limits on where they can go in a car and what they may do until they are 17 or 18. Young American drivers have nine times as many read more ...

Vesuvius is an active volcano near Naples in southern Italy. On average it has one major eruption each century – with many smaller emissions of smoke, ash and lava in between. Vesuvius’s most famous eruption was in AD 79. Then the top of the volcano blew read more ...

Silbury Hill, in the UK, is the largest prehistoric, man-made monument in Europe. Archaeologists estimate that it was built over 4,500 years ago. The hill, or mound, is 40 metres (150 feet) high and has a perfectly round base. No one really knows why the read more ...

On 8th March a cyclone hit the north of the state of Western Australia (WA). Cyclones – called typhoons or hurricanes in other parts of the world – are very strong winds which move in tight, circular movements and do a lot of damage. It is usual to give read more ...

The Afar desert is on the borders of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Danakil depression is part of the desert. It is one of the world’s most inhospitable places. Temperatures often reach 50 degrees centigrade (122°F) and it is more that 300 metres (975 feet) read more ...

HAVE YOU SEEN . . .? Alex Fletcher (played by Hugh Grant) was part of a successful British pop group in the 1980s. But the group broke up and Alex, who now lives in New York, in the USA, hasn’t had a hit for a long time. The only work he can get is read more ...