News articles in

This map highlights the countries that news stories in issue 49 refer to. To increase its size click anywhere on the map. You will then have three sizes to choose from. read more ...

General David Petraeus is America’s top military commander in Iraq. On 10th and 11th September he and Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, appeared before Congress, the American parliament. They reported on the war in Iraq. In 2003 the American read more ...

Rotorua is in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island. It is an area famous for hot springs, bubbling mud pools and spouting geysers. The Pohutu Geyser, for instance, erupts up to 25 times a day. The chemicals in the hot water and mud give Rotorua a very read more ...

Singer who became the world’s highest paid and best-known tenor Luciano Pavarotti was a world-famous opera singer. Some opera lovers think he was the finest tenor ever. He died of cancer on 6th September, aged 71. He was born on 12th October 1935 at read more ...

Two years ago a huge piece of ice broke off from a 4,000-year old ice shelf on the coast of Ellesmere Island which is part of Canada. Many thought it was another sign of the Earth’s climate getting warmer and melting the ice near the North Pole. Nicknamed read more ...

Morocco held parliamentary elections on 7th September. Many people expected the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) to win. The PJD is a moderate Muslim party which did well in the last elections in 2002. There are 24 different political parties read more ...

At the end of August vets discovered equine influenza in a number of racehorses at a breeding centre in the Hunter Valley. This is near Sydney, the largest city in New South Wales, a state in the south-east of Australia. The disease has also been found in read more ...

All-black school in Dublin — Over 25,000 Africans have settled in Ireland in the last ten years because the country’s economy is doing so well. Irish schools are already full so the government has asked a charity to set up an emergency new school in read more ...

Osama bin Laden – the leader of the Muslim militant group al-Qaeda – is probably the world’s most wanted man. Most people believe he was the person who planned and organised the attacks on America in 2001. The USA has offered a US$50 million (£25 million) read more ...

Last year the government of Panama held a vote on its famous canal. It wanted to make sure the people of Panama agreed that the country should spend US$5 billion (£2.5 billion) on widening it. The majority voted yes. On 3rd September, during a special read more ...

On 2nd September Taiwan held its annual Pig of God contest. The aim is to find the heaviest pig in Taiwan and then to kill it in a public ritual. The tradition is 30 years old. All over the country hundreds of pigs are force-fed sand containing lumps of read more ...

General Musharraf is the leader of Pakistan. He is both the country’s elected president and the senior general of the Pakistani army. Before General Musharraf seized control of the country in 1999 it was governed by one of two political parties. Nawaz read more ...

This year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting took place in Sydney, in Australia, during the weekend of the 8th and 9th September. The meeting was held in the famous Sydney Opera House. APEC has 21 member countries – including most with read more ...

Recently the USA, Germany and the UK have accused Chinese officials of hacking into their governments’ computer systems. Some experts believe the computer attacks have come from departments in the Chinese army. At the beginning of September, on a visit to read more ...

Properly known as a Yeoman Warder, the term ‘Beefeater’ dates back to 1485 when Henry the Seventh became King of England. He created the special group of trusted former soldiers to serve as his bodyguards and to keep secure his royal properties, including read more ...

Different groups disagree in many countries. Sometimes these disputes are settled democratically by people voting. In other cases they lead to fighting and war. Hundreds of people die because of these disagreements – some of which last for many years. read more ...

Most scientists now agree that a large asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago. The huge explosion it caused – and the dust and smoke in the atmosphere – changed the Earth’s climate. This caused the dinosaurs to die out. Experts think that the crater read more ...

Myanmar, previously called Burma, used to be a British colony. Since 1963 it has been run by a group of army generals – or military junta. In 1990 the junta allowed some elections to be held. It expected to win. But over 80% of the people voted for a new read more ...

More than 5,000 years ago there was land between the UK and Norway, Denmark and Germany where the North Sea now lies. It was flooded by melting ice during the millennia after the end of the last ice age. Scientists studying the sea bed – up to 138 metres read more ...

In July a group of 23 South Koreans travelled to Afghanistan. They belong to a Christian church in Seoul, capital of South Korea. Their government warned that religious missionaries should not travel to Afghanistan. Nonetheless their church arranged for read more ...

The stag beetle is Europe’s largest insect. It has a shiny black shell and big black antennae. In many countries stag beetle numbers are dropping because its habitat is being destroyed, although it is protected in the UK. The largest stag beetle of all, read more ...

HAVE YOU HEARD . . .? Calypso is a traditional form of folk music and song. It started in Trinidad, one of the Caribbean islands that comprise the West Indies. Calypso arrived there with the slaves brought from Africa in the 17th and early 18th centuries. read more ...