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1. 10 IDEAS FOR
THE SUMMER
Pg 4-5
CFN
Volume II, Issue 83 >> April 25 2013 >> Subscribe www.childfriendlynews.com >> Email childfriendlynews@gmail.com
Gir lions to find new home in mADHYA pRADESH
S
ome lions from Gir National Parkin (Gujarat) are all set to find new
homes in the Kuno sanctuary of
Madhya Pradesh. The move has been
ordered by the Supreme Court, the highest
court of law in India. The court has ordered
the shift be done within six months.
At the moment, the Gir National Park is the
only place you can see Asiatic Lions in the
wild. These lions once roamed across several
parts of Asia but have since become extinct
everywhere else except in Gujarat.
Even in Gujarat, the lions were rescued from
the brink of extinction (end of a species on
earth), and thanks to the efforts of wildlife
conservationists (people who work to protect wildlife), the number of lions in Gir has
been steadily increasing and there are now
more than 400 of them in the sanctuary.
Problem of Plenty
In fact, the programme to save Gir’s lions was
so successful that the sanctuary has more lions than it can hold. Over the past few years,
there have been several
cases of lions stepping out
of the sanctuary and wandering as far as the Diu (on
the state’s coast and a two
hour drive from Gir) in
search of territory.
Other than the space
problem, the Supreme
Court also felt that locating all the lions in one
place (Gir) increases the
extinction risk in the
event of a natural disaster or a disease outbreak
in the area. For example,
if a dangerous disease broke out among
Gir’s lions, the entire population of the big
cats could be wiped out in one go. The Court
feels that it is better to keep groups of lions in several places – that way, even if one
group dies out, the species is still protected
from extinction.
Gujarat unhappy
The Court’s decision is being opposed by the
state of Gujarat. Gir’s lions are a symbol of
the state and Gujarat would like to be the
exclusive home of these magnificent predators. It is possible that the state government
may ask the Supreme Court to re-consider
its decision by filing an appeal.
‘Catch a Summer Moment’ Photo Contest
T
he Child Friendly News ‘Catch a Summer
Moment’ photo contest is back again!
The rules are simple :
Email us any photo you took during the holidays that captures a summer moment – it
could be a place you visited, something you
saw on the street or any shot that captures
the spirit of summer fun
Advertisement
Along with the photo send us your name,
age, school and class, along with a short description of the photo
Last date for entries: July 1, 2013
The winner will get a prize from CFN and the winning photo will also be published in the newspaper.
Email your entries to
childfriendlynews@gmail.com
BAHRISONSo Kids
b o o k s h
p
Flat No 6, Khan Market, New Delhi 110003 Tel : 24694611
Happy
Holidays!
During the summer
holiday months of
May and June, there
will be no print issues of the newspaper. Owlie asks you
to look forward to
the next issue in July
2013.
2. 2
Features
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
CFN
Man is an artifact designed for space
travel. He is not designed to remain
in his present biologic state any more
than a tadpole is designed to remain
a tadpole.
— William S. Burroughs
A step closer to space
T
he world took a step closer to private spaceflights recently when Virgin Galactic completed a crucial (important) test for its spacecraft
‘Space Ship Two.’ The company, which is working out
of the Mojave Desert in the United States, is planning
to take people into space on joy rides.
On April 12, Space Ship Two passed a flying test in good
form, and this means that the company’s spaceflights
could begin real soon. During the flights, space tourists will travel to around 100 kilometres above the surface of the earth, high above the earth’s atmosphere,
into the realm (area) of space. They will experience
zero gravity or weightlessness and will be able to float
around Space Ship Two’s cabin, before beginning the
journey back to earth.
The two to three hour trip will cost more than a crore
of rupees! Over 400 people have already paid up to become the first tourist astronauts.
An AC jacket to
keep you cool
I
magine a jacket that, when worn, can work like
a mini-AC for your body, cooling it to 20 degrees
lower than the surrounding areas! So, when everyone around is sweltering at 40°C, you can chill at
around 20°C!
This is no tall story, for the ‘Personal Cooling Garment’ as it is called, is being developed by a government organization in Ahmedabad. The jacket is
made up of several layers. Between two of those
layers flows a coolant (a liquid that can cool things
down). The coolant is stored in a container that is
strapped to the wearer’s belt.
The jacket will be useful to fire-fighters and people
who work in extremely hot conditions. It could
also be used to save people during heat waves. The
jacket will be tested in real life conditions this year,
and will probably be sold in shops next year.
200 of the world rarest
orang-utans discovered
S
cientists have discovered a 200 strong population of the world’s rarest orangutans near a wildlife reserve in Indonesia.
The orang-utans belong to a sub species of the Bornean orang-utan, one of the
rarest apes in the world. Less than 5000 of these orang-utans survive in the wild, making the new discovery extremely important.
Did you know?
The Bornean orang-utan is just one of the
two kinds of great apes found in Asia. Like
other great apes, orang-utans are highly
intelligent and can use advanced tools.
Orang-utans share approximately 97% of
their DNA with humans – this makes them
extremely similar to (like) humans.
Tracking the Hangul
The hangul, which is Asia’s only link to the
European red deer, is found in the Dachigam National Park near Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir. Only around
175 hanguls are left in the wild, and in
order to study them and understand why
they are dying out, satellite collars have
been fitted on some of the deer. This will
help researchers track the hangul’s activity
and behaviour, which may give us clues for
saving the hangul from extinction.
3. To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make
man better than the beast
Features
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
—Ruskin Bond
CFN
N a t u r a l l y
S p e a k i n g
3
Powerful petals that drink the sun
T H E
B O O K
Lotus canopies could be used in large malls and buildings as decorative
elements that also generate their own power!
N O O K
Tigers for Dinner –
Tall Tales by Jim Corbett’s Khansama
BY Ruskin Bond
“Did you see him shoot a tiger?” Iasked
“Oh, Many times,” said Mehmoud. “A tiger a week –
that was nothing to the Carpet-Sahib!”
“Did the tigers come to the house or did
you go looking for them?”
Ruskin Bond’s short novel about his
family cook’s adventures in the company of the incomparable Jim Corbett
will have you laughing right through
the book. Man-eating tigers, lost cobras and crocodiles that kidnap humans – the book has them all. The
hungry young boy (Bond in his youth)
keeps wandering into the family kitchen to hear Mehmoud’s tall stories, all
the while wolfing down cutlets, mutton
chops and glasses of mango milkshake.
By the end of it you’ll be hungry for
more stories and food!
Told in Bond’s distinctive simple narrative style, the book is an easy and a
surprisingly short read!
Price: Rs.195
Available at: http://www.toptenbooksoftheweek.com
Top reads for
Kids and Young
Adults
1.
Beastly Tales from Here and there by Vikram Seth
2.
The Kingdom Of Fantasy (Series) by Geronimo Stilton
3.
The 39 Clues: Day of Doom by David Baldacci
4.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Series) by Jeff Kinney
5.
Gladiator: Fight for Freedom by Simon Scarrow
6.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
7.
Siachen: The Cold War by Rishi Kumar
8.
Tigers for Dinner: Tall Tales by Jim Corbett’s Khansama
by Ruskin Bond
9.
The Little Bird Who held the Sky Up with his Feet by
Paro Anand
10.Moin and the Monster by Anushka Ravishankar
To buy these books, go to www.toptenbooksoftheweek.com
(Photos courtesy: Monarch Power)
S
olar energy gets top marks from people who care
for the environment as it is a natural way of generating power for our homes and offices. Unlike power that comes from burning coal or oil, solar energy
doesn’t harm the environment.
But sometimes, it is hard for homes and offices to put up solar panels on roofs, plus these cost quite a lot. Another thing
– these panels don’t always look nice and may make a building look less pretty.
Keeping these in mind, a company in the United States has
designed a canopy (a cover that provides shade) in the shape
of a lotus. The ‘petals’ of the canopy imitate the lotus flower
and like the flower, can close and stay folded during strong
winds and bad weather.
Again, like the flower, which creates food and energy by using just sunlight and water, the Lotus canopy uses the heat
of the sun to generate energy that can be used to cool or
heat homes and offices. The company that makes it says
that the Lotus is cheaper than solar panels mounted on
roofs. Plus it’s pretty to look at and even gives you shade to
sit underneath!
4. 4
Special Report
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
One must maintain a little bit of
summer, even in the middle of
winter.
— Henry David Thoreau
CFN
2. Cook up a storm
1. Master the tools of the trade
In these days of electricians and carpenters on call, there is hardly any
need to pick up any tool to fix things
around the home. But there is nothing like a little independence. Pick
up blunt tools like a spanner or small
screw driver and learn to tighten battery compartments of your toys. You
could put these skills to good use
to build models using Mechanix toy
sets.
3. Get useful
During the school year, the routine of school, home-work and
classes takes up most of the day. During the holidays though,
you have enough time on your hands to do some chores (little
jobs) around the house. Depending on how old you are, you
could take the responsibility for some everyday chores. Here
are some ideas for what you could do:
7-9 years
Put away old newspapers and collect the
day’s papers from the gate/door
Clean your room
10-14 years
Make your own bed and clean the room
Put away your washed and pressed clothes into
the right cupboards
Help you parents clean out old cup-boards Help your parent clear up after dinner
Feed the family pet
Feed the pet and (if you are 13-14) walk the dog
4. Create a masterpiece
The long summer afternoons when it’s too hot to play outside
are a great time to learn a new art skill. It could be painting, embroidery, creating a piece of installation art, or even (for boys
above 12) learning to stich on a button or mend a basic tear.
No dainty desserts or colourful cup cakes please –
we are talking serious cooking here. This vacation,
if you are 9-10 years or older, make it a mission
to master one dish that features regularly on the
family dining table. It could be pasta, noodles or
even South Indian rasam! Learn the recipe, watch
the family’s master chef and practice, practice till
you can get that one dish absolutely right. Younger
cooks can aim to master one grown up dessert like
a trifle with store bought sponge or ice cream that
does not require use of the stove.
D
epending on which
part of the country
you live in, summer holidays have
already started, or are just
around the corner. Many of
you may have vacation plans
to visit family and friends either in India or outside the
country. Travel and holiday
homework aside, the long,
hot summer days are the best
time to learn new stuff and
pick up new skills. Here are
some ideas to get you going.
5. Master of the Game
10 thin
you sho
do th
summ
Summer’s a time for board games too. This year, pick one board
game that you feel you can absolutely master during the summer holidays. Remember, it has to be reasonably challenging –
Scrabble, Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit are good picks. Play them
with your family and friends, and by the end of summer, it should
be your goal to be able to beat most of them!
5. Special Report
Books and summertime go together.
— Lisa Schroeder
CFN
6. Climb your highest mountain
No, we are not saying that you should strap on your
hiking boots and get going. Rather, what we mean is
that, this summer, focus on one task/activity that you
find really challenging and master it. It could be learning
to cycle, swim, understanding a tough math concept or
even solving the Rubik’s cube. Give this one problem
your undiluted focus and crack it!
things
should
o this
mmer
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
7. Start from Scratch
Scratch is a programming language that was developed
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
the United States. It is an easy to use programming
language that has been specially created for 8 to 16
year olds. Scratch can be used to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art. You can even
share these on the web once you’ve finished.
Get an adult to get you started on Scratch and let your
creative juices flow.
Bonus: Your ability to calculate and analyse things will
also go up!
8. Read a Classic
Book classics don’t have be long, boring reads – in fact some
of them are downright exciting, and better than the ‘2 minute’
novels that you find so much of these days. Check out some
of these classics – and you won’t be bored for a minute, we
promise.
• Roverandum by J R R Tolkien
• Call of the Wild by Jack London
• My Family and other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• Charlotte’s Web by E.B.White
10. Quality time at dinner
9. Manage your money
As you travel and go out with your parents in the summer, you
will no doubt be visiting a lot of supermarkets and shops to buy
daily goods like fruits and vegetables, clothes and things for
the house. With the help of an adult, learn to calculate the cost
of things you are buying, hand over cash and count the change
given back by the shop keeper. It’s a handy skill for life, plus it
will do wonders for your math.
5
Dinner is the one meal that the entire family probably gathers
for. We usually use it as a time for discussing the day’s news
and catching up on what happened at home/office. Take it one
step further and set up a schedule of dinner time topics every
week. The list could be wide and varied – it could be about a great
new movie, a sports event, a personality or even a website you
browsed on the internet. Your job is to come to the dinner table
fully prepared to discuss the topic, which can then be thrashed
out by the entire family. Be warned though – your enthusiasm
will likely be infectious, and soon your siblings, and even parents
could be competing with you to establish mastery of the topic!
6. 6
News
Mathematics is life, you have math
in everything, right from time to your
date of birth to the food you eat and the
air you breathe
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
CFN
Tragedy at the
Marathon
A
tragic (terrible) event unfolded last week at the Boston Marathon, one of the world’s famous long distance races. As runners neared the finish, two bombs exploded nearby killing
three people, one of whom was an eight year old boy.
United States police officers and detectives swung into action and
quickly identified two young men from Chechnya, a country near
Russia, as those behind the crime. One of the young men has been
killed while the other has been arrested. The bombing is an act of
terrorism, an incident planned by a small group in order to scare and
frighten the public and get attention for the group. The exact reason
why the boys bombed the race is not yet known.
In this photo, you can see the smoke from the bomb
explosions even as runners near the finish line
— Shakuntala Devi
Human computer
no more
S
he was called the human computer, someone who could
beat computers with her extraordinary ability to calculate at lightning speed. Shakuntala Devi, India’s famous
‘number’ wizard, died on Sunday due an illness at the age
of 73.
The amazing thing was that Shakuntala Devi never went to a formal school. She picked up reading and writing on her own. But her
most amazing skills were reserved for maths. Shakuntala Devi
was so proficient (good) at numbers that she could add 16 digit
numbers, multiple the result with an equally large number and
come up with the answer in an instant. She is even mentioned in
the Guinness Book of World Records for these feats.
World
I
india
It’s a green Delhi after all
n ten years from 2001 to
2011, forest and green areas within India’s capital
Delhi, have doubled in size.
Green areas include city parks
and places covered with trees
and shrubs. Almost 20% (that’s
one-fifth) of Delhi is covered by
forests or green areas – this is
the highest in the country. This
makes Delhi the greenest city
in the country, even greener
than Bangalore which is called
India’s garden city.
Delhi has a number of city
forests including the Central
Ridge, the Jahanpath forest
and Sanjay Van. The city also
has large parks and gardens
that are home to ancient trees
as well as large numbers of
roads that are lined with hundreds of trees. There are also
two bio-diversity parks, one
on the banks
of the Yamuna
and another
close to the
airport where
the trees and
plants
that
were
once
originally
found in Delhi
are being lovingly re-planted. All this is
increasing
Delhi’s green
cover inch by inch.
The news on the increase in
forest areas is literally a ‘breath
of fresh air’ for the capital’s citizens (people who belong to the
city) who are only used to receiving bad news on increasing
air and water pollution in their
city.
india
More trees, more birds
More trees means more birds. As
a result, Delhi has a big population
of native and migratory birds. In
fact, our capital is second only to
Nairobi, Kenya for the number of
birds found in an urban area.
7. When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of
the world.
— John Muir
A
News
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
CFN
S P OR T S
Massive Earthquake in China
massive earthquake hit
south west China last
Saturday morning. The
quake killed almost 200
people while another 11,000 were
injured. It measured between 6.5
and 7 on the Richter scale that is
used to measure earthquakes.
Gold losing
its glitter
G
old is a big part of our
culture in India and everyone, men and women included, sport (wear) gold
ornaments. Due to the huge
demand for gold, the metal
has been getting costlier and
costlier over time. Last week
however, the prices of gold
crashed by over Rs.300, going
as low as Rs.2635 per gram.
Why did gold prices crash?
The answer is an interesting lesson in economics. Last
week, there was news that European nation Cyprus might
sell a huge amount of gold
owned by its government as it
needed the money. If that was
to happen, overnight, a large
amount of gold would be
available to buyers. When buyers have so much choice, price
usually falls, and that’s exactly
what happened to gold. We
live in such a connected world
these days that events in one
corner of earth can affect the
prices of things in the smallest towns and cities of India.
7
World
This photo taken from the air shows how the quake flattened homes in the Sichuan region in South West China.
One thought for the earth
A
pril 22 was celebrated as
Earth Day and you
may have participated in an event
in your school on the occasion. But there is more to
the event than one day of
making posters and having
discussions about saving planet earth’s
environment.
So, here 2 IDEAS for you to carry with
you all through your summer holidays
- Become your family’s eco warrior and ensure t h a t
fans, lights and, most important, ACs are switched off in
empty rooms
- Do your drawings, paintings and other summer art work on
recycled paper – use the blank side of a printed letter/mailer, old greeting cards and wrapping paper and get creative!
india
S P OR T S
World
IPL Update
S P OR T S
Half-way into the contest, here’s how the teams stack up:
IPL Points Table (as on Wednesday, April 25)
Position
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Team
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Chennai Super Kings
Sunrisers Hyderabad
Rajasthan Royals
Kings IX Punjab
Mumbai Indians
Kolkata Knight Riders
Pune Warriors India
Delhi Daredevils
S P OR T S
Points
12
10
10
8
8
6
4
4
2
Net Run Rate (NRR)
+1.254
+0.648
+0.104
+0.588
+0.343
+0.194
+0.021
-1.467
-0.954
‘Gayle’ Force
O
n Tuesday night,
Royal Challengers
Bangalore star Chris
Gayle smashed a century in
just 30 balls. This is the fastest century ever scored. Gayle finished match against
Pune Warriors with a total
score of 175 not out. Needless to say, Pune warriors
lost this IPL match.
S P OR T S
8. 8
OWLIE’S FUN PAGE
CHILD FRIENDLY NEWS
April 25, 2013
www.childfriendlynews.com
CFN
FIND THE HIDDEN OBJECTS
Can you spot the hidden objects shown below the image?
Unscramble these
T W S A E
Re-arrange the
alphabets to find
the word
MWMISNIG
Clue: All clues are
linked to the
summer season
N U S
DHIYAol
Name IT!
Answer: 1.Sweat
2.Swimming 3.Sun
4.Holiday
Sudoku Time
Try your hand
at this Sudoku.
Rememberthat
numbers 1 to 6
can appear only
once in each of
the six rectangles.
They can also
appear only once
in each row and
column of the
overall square.
Below are close-up images of things we eat/drink during summer. Can you guess what they are?
4
Answer: 1.Watermelon 2. Ice cream 3. Mango 4. Lemonade
Answer
Child Friendly News or CFN is an age appropriate newspaper for children in the age group 7-13. The
newspaper comes out every fortnight. Every issue is written using language that young readers can
understand on their own interspersed with pictures and imagery. Quick explanations of difficult words
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3
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and terms and boxed elements that explain concepts accompany every article — this is to help build
vocabulary as well as context understanding. Special reports take up one topic in depth while regular
columns on everyday technology concepts keep children up-to-date with the world around them.A
subscription costs Rs.500 for the year.
For more details and to subscribe, visit www.childfriendlynews.com