Area 6 : News & Views

LATEST SITE NEWS

Our deepest sympathies go out to all families affected by this Christmas tragedy.

EARTHQUAKE / TSUNAMI / TIDAL WAVE DISASTER:

please see also TSUNAMI - TAMILNADU & the NUCLEAR REACTORS [more info in our Newsletter of 1st April 2005]

INFORMATION SOURCES HELP AGENCIES & WAYS TO GIVE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION summaries and linked reports: here Mercy USA Salvation Army Direct news from the Sri Lanka Government site here. Sri Lanka President's Relief Fund here Direct news from the Indian Government site here. India Prime Minister's Relief Fund here Direct news from the Indonesian Government site here. CAFOD UNICEF Direct news from the Maldives Government site here. Special Maldives Government disaster relief fund account for foreign currency donations Direct news from the Thailand Government site here. please help former priest Joseph at the Bethany Children's Home caring for survivors in Tamilnadu) Bangladesh Government "Disaster Management" contacts here. No news at present on the main Bangladesh Government site here. Direct news from the Myanmar Government site here. Plan International No news at present on the main Malaysia ministry site here. RED CROSS / RED CRESCENT

RED R (relief personnel for humanitarian aid agencies) Action d'Urgence International (volunteer search and rescue teams) Tsunami Disaster Response American Council for Voluntary Interaction DEC appeals for funds (Disasters Emergency Committee UK) United Nations News Centre News from REUTERS AlertNet Foundation

27th December 2004: EARTHQUAKE / TSUNAMI / TIDAL WAVE DISASTER: We have just received this e-mail from Joseph Benziger (a former priest) of the Bethany Children's Home (featured on the site here):

WE ARE ACCOMMODATING HOMELESS VICTIMS OF THE EARTH QUAKE IN OUR CHILDREN'S HOME.
PLEEEEEEEEEEASE MAKE HASTE TO HELP US.
THANK YOU.
Joseph's direct contact details are here - please help if there is any way you can.

27th December 2004: EARTHQUAKE / TSUNAMI / TIDAL WAVE DISASTER: We have not yet heard back from EAST COAST RDT who work in coastal villages in Tamilnadu (said on Yahoo to be the worst-hit region in India) - see their webpage about the CHILD FISH WORKERS IN TAMILNADU here.

26th December 2004: EARTHQUAKE / TSUNAMI / TIDAL WAVE DISASTER: Our thoughts are with the many thousands of victims of this disaster.

For details of the RED CROSS / RED CRESCENT support for this Christmas tragedy, and their Appeal to help 500,000 people, click here.

See also the WHO site here for health updates as this crisis continues.

22nd December 2004: ANDY'S GUIDE TO POKÉMON: We're delighted to say the "Cheats, Tips and Shortcuts" area is up to date in time for the Christmas holidays! and we've also today added a new item (KYOGRE's Pokédex details) along with a set of BRAILLE LETTERS (pictures included) for the Ruby/Sapphire games.

A very happy Christmas to all of you :)

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17th December 2004: ANDY'S GUIDE TO POKÉMON: The index page is now on line for the new RUBY & SAPPHIRE area, and we've created pages for Ruby & Sapphire Towns, Gyms, Badges & HMs and the Ruby & Sapphire Pokédex. We'll be adding cross-links to the cheats, tips and shortcuts pages in due course.

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10th December 2004: SCHOOLS' COMPETITION: details only just received here - "DESIGN A FLAG FOR PLANET EARTH" - closing date for submissions is 24th December 2004 (Christmas Eve).

This design competition is "organised by European Schoolnet and hosted by The European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA)" and is open to "Pupils aged 5-19 years old from EU countries, Norway and Switzerland".

"Pupils may make the flag design using any media - collage, photography, painting, drawing or any other. Winners and runners-up of all three age categories (5-9, 10-14, 15-19) will be invited to Brussels to take part in Earth & Space Week (12-20 February 2005), and receive prizes as part of a special ceremony, attended by European top political leaders, scientists and the press. A special programme will also be prepared for winners, runners-up and their guests, which could include meeting an astronaut!" [this whole paragraph quoted from literature provided to us]

We're advised more details are available here and here.

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8th December 2004: Our sincere thanks to Kevin Revill at Force 9 for fixing our Newsletter mail-send-program; we've now been able to send out the mailing to everyone on the original Newsletter subscribe list. Thank you all for bearing with us on this one :)

5th December 2004: AESOP'S FABLES - All 220 fables for this area are now on line - well-known ones like "The Hare and the Tortoise" and less-well-known ones such as "The Traveller and his Dog". Click here for the Index.

2nd December 2004: This one's for Newsletter subscribers! Yesterday everything was all set to send out our December mailing - but neither of the Newsletter-send facilities will *work* (no apparent reason, though it's being looked at). It may take some time to sort this out! In the meantime, you can read the Newsletter on line here. Hopefully the technical problems will be sorted fairly shortly :)

1st December 2004: The December 2004 Newsletter is now on line. It's fairly long! but should give you details of most of what's been achieved here during the pagebuilding blitz since December last year :)

14th September 2004: Masses of new vocabulary now going on line in our free-to-print French worksheets area; Michael Tipper's latest feature article, "How to Motivate Children", is now on line in Accelerated Learning; and the new area for Projects Helping Kids has been subdivided into continents to minimise page loading speeds.

As you're all aware, there's no time to send out newsletters right now, so your help would be appreciated in telling friends in schools about Schools Interchange where links are now in place to access over 200,000 schools across America, Canada, South America, the Caribbean islands, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the other islands in the "The British Isles". ..... Thank you :)

10th August 2004: Major clearance here! We have at last finished the "long-haul updating process" and the final upgrade area, the Project HappyChild Directory, is now fully on line, with the recent addition of SOS Children's Villages. Take a look through the Directory at the amazing range of different ways these organizations help children. Any help any of you out there who use this site, can give to any of the Charities, is always much appreciated :)

The Events Calendar has also had more new 2004 events added. Andy's Guide to Pokémon has - at last! - got all the Element Group pages in place for Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold and Silver Pokémon, along with more "cheats, tips & shortcuts" [that whole area upgraded] and the new Gold & Silver Pokédex is in place along with many pictures sent in so far by visitors, and a complete Gold & Silver walkthrough finally on line. The addition of the new Bart & Miss Walker story, "Fractions and Percentages" [along with related worksheets] completes over 4000 pages of free maths worksheets on line here at Project HappyChild.

Things are - at last! - somewhat easier here, with only five major resources now remaining to be completed - Andy's Guide to Pokémon; Sol's Guide to Harry Potter; Freeway French; Spellings, Sounds & Meanings; and Keywords for Learning (wordsearch puzzles). We only have about four months left! but everything is still more or less on schedule for completion in December 2004. We'll keep you posted :)

10th July 2004: Most of you will have read, further down, about our "year off" from updating this page. Much-needed time out, we might say :) But we *are* making significant progress, with major overhauls across all areas of the site, and gradually beginning to draw everything together.

We have actually *completed* two major areas, now - "Appeals and Projects helping Children" (worldwide) and Schools Interchange, enabling schools across the world to make contact with one another. A wholly-original network of links across all the continents, linking together just about every local government school-net in existence ..... if you follow the links from this amazing five-page resource, you can discover the websites of schools attended by around 50 million children .....

More news to follow, later!

2nd May 2004: SASSER WORM: Warnings of this new non-email-spread worm are coming in here from all quarters - see the Sophos page here, McAfee Virus Info Library here, Norton [Symantec] page here or F-Secure here for details of how to protect your computer.

23rd March 2004: REQUEST TO VISITORS:: A couple of weeks ago, we had a major computer crash here (it's taken a little while to get everything up and running again!) Fortunately the site itself was not affected (being securely housed on the Force 9 server in Sheffield) but certain parts of the data here have not been able to be recovered.

The major loss has been our mail records (dating back to 1998) ..... so we would ask any visitors who have sent in e-mails for the following areas - "cheats, tips and shortcuts" for Andy's Guide to Pokémon, or structured word lists for many categories of Keywords for Learning, if you would be kind enough to forward a copy of your previous e-mails? (from any date in the past). Please see the "contact" page below for details of how to re-send your e-mail/s.

Also, if you have subscribed for the Newsletter since 23rd November 2003, please could you let us know? We're sorry for any inconvenience! but just want to make sure that all our records are up to date. Similarly, although we aren't "answering" e-mails at present due to the high workload (see the December Newsletter) there are a few items we'd like to recover such as the e-mail from a Canadian stamp company offering to buy used stamps from charities who collect them. If any of you out there have sent information since November 2003 that you believe we should have on file here, would you be kind enough to send it to us again? Thank you :)

The pagebuilding is going well here! And we're delighted to have had so much support from visitors during our "year out" from normal site maintenance. Yesterday's visit level was the highest ever! - something over 23,000 on the visible counter, and Webalizer logged over 134,000 "hits". Our deepest thanks to all of you who continue to publicise the site :)

25th February 2004: NETSKY VIRUS: Masses coming in here - see the Sophos page here, McAfee Virus Info Library here or Symantec [Norton] page here for info and removal instructions.

27th January 2004: DOOM VIRUS: The appropriately-named Doom Virus has spread right across the Internet this morning (we've had over 500 copies so far) - see the Sophos page here, McAfee Virus Info Library here or Symantec [Norton] page here for info and removal instructions.

To minimise risk to your computer whilst viruses are around, you may wish to turn off the Preview Pane in your mail program ["View - Layout" in Outlook Express] to stop the e-mail opening up automatically; certainly be wary of anything carrying an attachment! - even from people you know :)
You can check the content of an e-mail (without opening it) by using "File - Properties".

JANUARY 2004: Happy New Year to all our visitors!

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We're not planning to update this page until 1st December 2004 - please see the December 2003 issue of Project HappyChild News which explains what's in progress here. We have a lot of work ahead!

Thanks go to everyone for your support for the site :)

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NEWSLETTERS - this website has been on line since 1998 - there have been a lot of Newsletters! The archive is here and the very last Newsletter is here.