Two years of COVID-19

[ 21-12-2021 07:00 ]
It’s been two years since patients in Wuhan, China, first began
experiencing strange breathing problems. Nobody knew that it
would be the start of a global illness which we now call
COVID-19.
It was late in 2019 that the world first heard of a mysterious
virus identified in China; however, health officials weren’t too concerned. The number of sick
people around the world grew quickly, and in January 2020, there were sick people in the US
and in Europe.

There were shortages for everything, and purchases of some things including toilet paper were
limited. Then, fear and panic affected ordinary people and health care workers who thought they
might get sick at work.

Leaders around the world tried to learn what to do to stop the spread of the disease, and
hospitals quickly filled up. It was not clear how to test for the virus nor how to treat it, and the
mortality rate was really high.

For two years, waves of the virus hit multiple peaks, with a big change in December 2020. At
that time, scientists developed three vaccines, which was an amazing breakthrough in medical
technology. Now, hospitals are experiencing yet another peak from mostly unvaccinated
patients.

Teenagers and Instagram

[ 13-12-2021 07:00 ]
Instagram said on Tuesday that it would be stricter about the
topics that it recommended to teenagers in the photo-sharing
app, and it would nudge them toward different topics if they
dwelled on one for a long time.

The decision is to better protect teenage users, and it comes in the time when Instagram and its
parent company Meta both are in trouble for the ways that their services present danger for
younger users and cause body image issues for teenage girls.

Released company documents showed that the company knew long ago that Instagram had
harmful mental effects on teenage girls.

Instagram said that early next year, it would introduce its first tools for parents and guardians to
see how much time their teens spent on the app and to set time limits.

It also said that it would continue its pause on plans for a version of Instagram for children, a
project that they stopped because of the growing opposition.
Turtles and Plastic
[ 21-12-2021 15:00 ]

Global currents deposit marine debris from all over the world
on Kenya’s beaches which is a big problem for turtles.

A report found that 23% of juvenile and 54% of

post-hatchling turtles ingested plastic, suggesting that young
turtles are more likely to die than the adults by eating plastic.

Hassan Mohammed from the World Wildlife Fund said that turtles sometimes confuse plastics
for food, thinking that they are jellyfish. Moreover, when there are a lot of plastics around
hatching sites, turtles are unable to lay eggs and when baby turtles hatch, they cannot reach the
ocean.

Out of every 1,000 turtles hatched, only one grows into adulthood, according to the WWF.

New Zealand tobacco ban

[ 15-12-2021 15:00 ]

New Zealand’s plans to ban young people from ever buying

cigarettes in their life is one of the world’s toughest
crackdowns on the tobacco industry.

Starting in 2027, anyone up to 14 years old won´t be allowed to

legally buy cigarettes in the country.

The government also introduced new controls over tobacco, including significantly limiting
where cigarettes can be sold and removing them from supermarkets and corner stores. At the
moment, 13% of New Zealand’s adults smoke, with the rate much higher among the
indigenous Maori population, where it is almost a third of adults.

Doctors and other health experts in the country welcomed the world-leading changes that will
limit access to tobacco and lower nicotine levels in cigarettes.

Some experts believe that the law will help people to quit smoking or to switch to less harmful
products, and make it much less likely that young people get addicted to nicotine. However,
others have warned that the changes may create illegal trading for tobacco, and the government
will need more resources to enforce border control.
Serbia protests
[ 09-12-2021 07:00 ]
Thousands of protesters in the Serbian town of Novi Sad
blocked main roads and bridges on Saturday to express their
anger over lithium mining plans.

It was the second such nationwide protest called by

environmental groups as there is growing public
dissatisfaction with the autocratic leadership of Serbian president Aleksander Vucic.

People have criticized him for not fighting widespread pollution and ignoring environmental
concerns over lithium mining. The Serbian government already passed two laws to help a
lithium mine by company Rio Tinto begin to work.

There are big amounts of lithium, a key part for electric car batteries, around the western town
of Loznica, where the Anglo-Australian company is buying land. However, it’s still awaiting final
approval from the government to begin mining.

Protests showed up despite police warnings and an intimidation campaign by authorities. The
protests come months ahead of national elections in 2022, with critics of the protests accusing
organizers of creating problems to undermine Vucic before the elections.

Barbies and Gender

[ 04-10-2019 07:00 ]
Since the famous Barbie doll first appeared in 1959, it has
changed styles, but its body shape was always too perfect.
People accused its maker, Mattel, of promoting a beauty standard
which was unrealistic.
However, now Mattel has decided to offer a diversified line of
dolls that are gender–inclusive. Kids can choose the gender and personalize their dolls. They
can choose the colour of hair, the color of skin, the clothing, and the accessories. Some options
are more feminine and others are more masculine. Mattel also changed Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken,
and created a doll with a prosthetic leg and another in a wheelchair.

The doll’s price is $30.00. Mattel worked with doctors, parents and kids to create a doll “free of
labels” and to be more natural.
Rainbow flag
[ 30-06-2021 07:00 ]
The rainbow pride flag´s one of the most recognizable symbols
in the world; however, it wasn't always so ubiquitous.

Its predecessors included a lavender rhinoceros, the Greek

letter lambda and the pink triangle, all of which have their own
separate meanings and histories. However, they weren´t accepted by all of the LGBTQ
community.

The history of the rainbow flag starts in the 1970s with an artist and activist, Gilbert Baker, who
became fascinated with flags, and he found them very powerful. The very first rainbow pride flag
was designed and handmade by Baker and a group of volunteers for the 1978 San Francisco
Gay Freedom Day parade. Originally eight colors, the flag´s stripes stood for sex, life, healing,
sunlight, nature, magic, serenity, and spirit. After the parade, the rainbow pride symbol spread
beyond the city.

After Baker´s death in 2017, his rainbow flag´s continued to live on and change through
redesigns with black and brown stripes, that add visibility to the fact that the pride movement
was led by transgender people of color.

The world's biggest orchestra

[ 22-11-2021 07:00 ]
More than 12,000 musicians in Venezuela´s National System
of Youth and Children's Orchestras, known as ´El Sistema´,
performed Tchaikovsky´s ´Slavonic March´.

They performed for about ten minutes in an attempt to break

the Guinness World Record for the largest orchestra performance. The music piece was a tone
poem by Tchaikovsky in 1876 to celebrate Russia’s help in the Serbo-Turkish War.

Thousands of musicians came together on November 13, with performers ranging in age from
12 to 77. They gathered at the Venezuelan Military Academy in Caracas for the one-hour
concert, conducted by Andres Abreu, the 34-year-old nephew of acclaimed Venezuelan Jose
Antonio Abreu.

More than 250 supervisors observed the performance. The Guinness World Records will
determine within ten days whether the musicians set the record.
Harry Potter starts 20 years ago
[ 19-11-2021 15:00 ]
November 16, 2021, was 20 years since the release of the
popular film ´Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone‘.

The Hogwarts acceptance letter was one of the earliest props;

Graphic designers Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima
designed the letter. They also worked on the whole series. Designers achieved many of the
special effects through the analogue way with sets, props, and models built by hand.

Filmmakers wanted to get as much reality into the first movie as possible, and the first two
things that concerned them were flying broomsticks and floating candles. 20 years ago, the
development of CGI was much less, so it was much more challenging to make some scenes
look realistic.

However, the effort was worth it, as all eight Harry Potter movies grossed 7.8 billion dollars.

Doctors switch embryos

[ 15-11-2021 07:00 ]
A couple sued a fertility clinic in California, US, for switching
their embryo or unborn baby with another couple´s during an
IVF treatment.

IVF is a procedure during which a laboratory helps a woman's

eggs and a man's sperm come together to create embryos, and then the embryos are put into
the woman's body.

In 2019, Daphne Cardinal and her husband Alexander gave birth to and raised the other
couple´s baby for months before discovering the mistake. Alexander said that he immediately
suspected that something was wrong because the baby girl did not resemble either of them.
Two months later, the couple got a DNA test to confirm the infant wasn't their actual child.
Daphne said that she breastfed and cared for the child that she was later forced to give away.

The Cardinals are suing the clinic for not following their contract, not performing medical
procedures correctly, negligence, and fraudulent concealment. They say that they suffered
severe emotional damage as did their five-year-old daughter.
Special signal saves girl
[ 12-11-2021 07:00 ]
A 16-year-old girl was rescued in Kentucky, US, after using a
hand gesture. She learned the gesture from the social media
app TikTok to signal to other motorists that she was in trouble.

A motorist notified an emergency center that he observed a

young lady in a car, and she appeared to be in distress. When police checked the car, the girl
was still giving the signal, but the officers didn't know what it meant.

The signal, turning the palm outwards and closing the fingers around a tucked thumb, has been
demonstrated by users on TikTok and by non-profit organizations like the Canadian Women's
Foundation. The signal is a way for an abused person to tell someone that they're in trouble
without alerting the abuser or leaving a digital trace.

Police got the girl out of the car safely, and they arrested the driver, a 61-year-old man coming
from the same town as the girl.

North and South Korea conflict

[ 10-11-2021 07:00 ]
North and South Korea are technically still at war since the
fighting in the 1950s ended. However, it could all change very
soon, with South Korea´s outgoing president Moon Jae-in
leading the call to officially end the conflict.

As the Korean war slowly stopped in 1953, South Korean leaders refused to sign the armistice
with military commanders from the North, which left the peninsula divided. Moon wants a peace
agreement on the Korean peninsula before his time as president ends in 2022. In a speech to
the United Nations in September, he repeated the idea, and he called for a political declaration
that the Korean war was over.

North Korean officials responded to Moon´s proposals with interest; however, they called them
premature. International experts suggest that while a peace agreement is certainly possible, it
can only be made after North Korea agrees to denuclearization.
The Sallie House
[ 03-11-2021 15:00 ]
It looks like an ordinary small house; however, once you step
inside, it´s spine-chilling. The Sallie House in Atchinson,
Kansas, US, is said to be haunted.
The ominous happenings are said to have started in the
1870s when a doctor lived and worked in the house. Allegedly, one day a mother showed up at
his door with her six-year-old daughter Sally, and the doctor said she had appendicitis. The girl
died during the surgery, and now some people believe that Sally´s spirit torments those who
visit or dare live in the house.

In 1993, the Sallie House haunting grew more evil when a young couple moved in with their
baby. They would find their pictures on the wall upside down, balls and other toys would move
on their own, and at night, mysterious footsteps would be heard.

Investigator Elijah Bukos studied the house several times, using a special gadget to record, as
he claims, voices from the dead Sally. However, what's really going on in the house still remains
a mystery.

Young people watch climate change meeting

[ 01-11-2021 07:00 ]
Youth activist leaders from around the globe gathered in
Stockholm, Sweden, ahead of their journey to the United
Nations climate summit where they will let their voices be
heard.

Thousands of people marched in the city on Friday for the last Global Climate Strike before the
2021 Climate Change Conference, COP26, opens in Glasgow, Scotland.

People planned strikes in more than 500 locations around the globe, organized by Fridays for
Future, a youth climate movement started by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. She said that
she was fearful that Glasgow would not provide the action needed to solve problems. However,
youth activists‘ presence from around the world would remind politicians that their actions were
being scrutinized.

The activist added that young people were watching the world leaders, and they were not going
to let them get away with just talking, doing nothing and only pretending that the situation was
under control.
Dia de los Muertos
[ 29-10-2021 15:00 ]
Mexicans prepare altars ahead of the Dia de los Muertos, a
Mexican tradition that honors the dead.

They decorate an altar with photos and items used by family

who passed away. Mexicans leave food and drinks for their
departed loved ones, and many people believe that the dead return to visit them once a year.
Some families enjoy keeping the tradition alive, they continue using the items, they keep
memories alive, and in this way it keeps the dead people alive, too.

Held on November 2, Dia de los Muertos combines Catholic and native practices, and Catholic
communities celebrate it around the world. However, it has much less serious feelings than the
Catholic celebrations, as people portray it as a joyful celebration rather than for mourning. The
celebration is not solely focused on the dead, as it’s also common to give gifts and candy to
family and friends.

Breast cancer donations

[ 22-10-2021 07:00 ]
The pink ribbon is the official symbol of breast cancer
awareness, which the US celebrates for a whole month.

Breast cancer in women is nearly 20% of all cancer deaths,

second only to lung cancer. However, with almost 575 million
dollars, it receives the most government funding in the US. Despite all the funding, private
businesses still show pink for an entire month. We see the pink on products at the supermarket,
clothing stores, and even football team uniforms.

The focus on women's bodies encourages buying products, and the pink ribbon is nice and
pretty. However, there have been plenty of questionable products and events with no official
record of how much money was raised through them. The US government isn't allowed to
demand the charity spend a minimum amount of donations on their programs. So instead of
going towards research for treatment or a cure, some donations can go to the pockets of the
organization's board.