Area 6 : News & Views

LATEST SITE NEWS

24th December 2005: CHRISTMAS EVE 2005: Wishing all of you a happy and peaceful Christmas and a wonderful New Year :)

There is a message for visitors, on line here. Christmas 2005 is developing into an unexpectedly-difficult time for us! and this News page is unlikely to be updated for a while. We thought perhaps we should tell you about what has just happened here .....

There are also intermittent problems with our webhosting - Force 9 is currently investigating why site graphics and pages are sometimes failing to load. If you refresh pages they *may* re-load properly - we're hoping this will be fixed fairly soon :)

Ongoing support for Project HappyChild from our visitors will be greatly valued during this very complex time. Please do maintain your links to the site! and we'll be back to finish pagebuilding the rest of it when all the other matters are finally resolved. Thank you :)

15th December 2005: PREVIEW OF THE LARGEST EVER FUNFAIR IN LONDON: News just in that for a donation to STARLIGHT (minimum suggested donation £5/person or £20/family - 2 adults and up to 4 children) you can get a wristband for unlimited FREE rides on all children's and adult's fairground rides between 4pm and 8pm on Friday, 23 December 2005 ONLY. The offer does not include fairground stalls or refreshment units, but there are over 40 rides (normal cost £2 per ride).

See the STARLIGHT website for more info [click on "LONDON FUN FAIR FOR STARLIGHT 23rd DEC 2005 4-8pm"]. Please check with Starlight (telephone number on their site) as soon as possible on how to get your wristband - demand for this event is likely to be massive :)

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4th December 2005: HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE: Our review of the latest - awesome - Harry Potter film is now on line in Sol's Guide to Harry Potter, here.

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30th November 2005: GOLDEN JUBILEE BALLOON LAUNCH

Update just received from SENSE on the progress of their Great Jubilee Balloon Race:

Last week residents of towns across the UK and beyond were astounded when they noticed the descent of a number of bright orange balloons, which had been launched in Bristol and London by the national deafblind charity Sense, to mark its 50th Anniversary.
The balloons must have survived some dramatic wintry weather to reach their eventual landing places, as far afield as Ashford in Kent, Stonegate in East Sussex and Carmarthen in Wales. Five had even managed to travel as far as France - one has also been found in Portugal.
The balloons had not only travelled great distances but have also been found in a variety of unusual locations including the Ministry of Defence in Bristol. One lucky ticket holder has had two balloons found in France, the first at a Muscadet Vineyard and the second 240 miles away on the other side of France!
Diana Mackie, Press and PR Assistant

So keep an eye out for orange balloons! SENSE's update page here says the deadline for returning balloons is 4th January 2006. You can find details of other events in which SENSE is involved (including the Walt Disney World ® Marathon) on line via their website link.

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24th November 2005: KEYWORDS FOR LEARNING

Our thanks to everyone who has sent in list for wordsearches in recent months .... new areas include country music, composers, music, roads (Australian Highways), parables, ice skating, ice hockey, racing cars, transport, rocks, concert halls, plants (photosynthesis), chemistry (particle theory of matter) .....

All the new lists have now been added to the KEYWORDS FOR LEARNING area - no wordsearches as yet but the lists are on view to avoid duplication along the way.

We're planning to send the database to Mario in NZ for generating the wordsearches in a few weeks from now, so if there are any more lists out there, please send them soon :)

14th November 2005: USA STATE COUNTIES: Our huge index to USA State Counties is now completed - all counties are listed both alphabetically and by state, and there are now links from all 3138 entries! Not an entirely-easy area to build, but fascinating, now it's completed, to see how different areas of the United States have developed in vastly different ways.

Having finally tracked down all the Parishes in Louisiana - challenging in the extreme! - it was delightful to discover that New Orleans is back on track, with many shops and restaurants already open, and many more due to re-open in January 2006 - see the Louisiana page, Orleans Parish.

Another major discovery was the "gaps" in available websites, in North Dakota and particularly South Dakota, the final state we searched through. Eventually we discovered that stretching across this and other states are two million square kilometers within which are the Great Sioux Nation Reservations.

We've created a special area for this on the South Dakota page, with links to websites about 11 tribes and 9 other links to related areas including The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)'s plan to establish their own "Embassy of Tribal Nations" (funding help urgently needed) and the wonderful Native Wind project to "harness the inexhaustible wind resources of the Dakotas to generate renewable power".

The United Sioux Tribes wish to offer clean electricity to towns and cities, to mitigate air pollution and climate change - whilst dually generating funds to revitalise Native economies. There's a Native Renewables Energy Conference taking place in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday to Thursday this week, November 15-17 2005 (see here to download the brochure). The core message of the conference is: "Tribes and Cities can help each other".

At a time when the USA is facing many natural crises it is wonderful that the United Sioux Tribes are taking such positive steps to safeguard the country's future and restore a better overall climate balance.

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4th November 2005: FREE FRENCH WORKSHEETS: We're delighted to say that "WALL-TO-WALL FRENCH" is now - finally! - linked in and open for visitors. Five years from when we first started building the French area, and our deepest thanks to Rita for her dedicated work in checking all the content of the free worksheets and overview pages. The 800 linked worksheets are all "dual language" (English-French and French-English) and because all the vocabulary is structured and interlinked by "themes", you can explore the French language in a way that simply hasn't been possible before. The "Wall-to-Wall French" pages can be printed off or viewed on line for revision, as can the worksheets themselves.

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28th October 2005: ANDY'S GUIDE TO POKÉMON: As promised, all the new Cheats, Tips & Shortcuts went up on line at Andy's Guide to Pokémon in time for half term :) and thanks to everyone for the e-mails now flooding in. Glad you found the new stuff useful :)

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28th October 2005: USA STATE COUNTIES: Work is still progressing on this area (next few weeks, probably) but there are over 1000 USA State Counties linked in now, and we're starting to link the listings in from our Schools USA page. The links give a fascinating insight into what life is *really* like in different areas of the USA, and you should be able to locate school boards and local schools via most of the county links.

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10th October 2005: FREE MATHS RESOURCES: Our thanks to Kaiya Williams (who first wrote to us in May 2005 about this resource) for details of updated internet addresses for the free maths practice books and lesson plans available on line from the "Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching". Links to all workbook sets (years 1-6, 7, 8, 9, GCSE and advanced level) have been added from the Maths index page here [select relevant age group]. You may also want to refresh the selected Maths Key Stage page (on the site here) before you try the link to CIMT, as many of our index pages are cached (and not always immediately updated) by major servers due to the very high traffic levels.

9th October 2005: EARTHQUAKE DISASTER: Our thoughts are with all those affected by the major earthquake in Pakistan and surrounding areas - BBC News updates here. Please help if you can.

5th October 2005: PLACES for PLAY: Details of a new book from PLAYLINK, about designing play areas for children, are now on line on our Charity Booklists page. The new "Places for Play" online photo exhibition is due on line here, mid-October 2005.

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5th October 2005: FREE FRENCH WORKSHEETS: We're extremely pleased to say the final batch of French vocabulary worksheets is now on line - IR verbs and RE verbs - see the Index to all worksheets here. We still have a few of the special links to put in, for the ER verbs, but other than that the French verbs and vocabulary worksheets are now, largely, completed. It's been a very long haul! just over five years since this area was first mapped out. All going well, the linked "Wall-to-wall French" area should be on line fairly soon :)

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5th October 2005: NEWSLETTER: We'd just like to express our thanks to Kevin Revill for the time he gave up to fix our Newsletter-send script :) all Newsletters were sent out on Monday 3rd October.

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30th September 2005: NEWSLETTER: Project HappyChild News for October 2005 is now on line - please click here. Newsletters will go out to subscribers as soon as the send-script can be re-enabled.

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14th September 2005: FREECYCLE: "CHANGING THE WORLD ONE GIFT AT A TIME"

On a lighter note, take a look at the Freecycle network. This covers the UK, right across the USA, Canada and Germany, and their "International" page includes countries across the globe, ranging from Australia and New Zealand to Argentina, Trinidad, the Philippines and Spain [Freecycle operates in over 50 countries so far].

Basically Freecycle allows people to give away items to those living near to them (all items advertised have to be *FREE*). There are endless groups within the UK, USA, Canada and Germany, and the UK alone has well over 100 groups. If there isn't an existing group in your area of the world ... then maybe start one, to make it possible for people in your local area to join.

If you're under 18 we'd request that you ask your parents to join Freecycle (rather than you signing up). Freecycle enables making contact with people in your local area, to give things away or receive them, but obviously we don't recommend *any* situation where you yourself meet up with strangers. See the Freecycle FAQ page for more about the risk/liability factor.

The Freecycle project is however a *wonderful* concept and will potentially make a whole lot of difference to people across the world, particularly those on low-incomes or otherwise disadvantaged. Our congratulations to Deron Beal, of Tucson Arizona, who founded this amazing organization.

The Freecycle FAQ page also has a list of organizations to which donations may be made for the Hurricane Katrina relief funds.

10th September 2005: HURRICANE KATRINA: News just in of a website with offers of over 100,000 beds available for Hurricane Katrina Survivors - click here. The CNN Safe List is here, and the Hurricane Katrina Survivors site is here [includes advice for doctors and nurses planning to help] - also click on their "Links and Lists" drop-down menu for specific links for affected states. They also have a contact telephone number for prisoner re-locations, and a page for reuniting pets with owners here.

State resources for Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida can be found on another site here [scroll up page for volunteering opportunities etc.]. Links to all counties in Texas (seemingly taking in the largest percentage of survivors) are on line here.

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4th September 2005: With so many major problems arising from the major hurricane devastation, we've put on line in the "countries" area of the site here, links to all the separate USA States websites - click here - where details are given of relief being organized by individual states. If Hurricane Katrina isn't shown on the main intro page on each state site, try the link for the Governor.

Latest news from Biloxi and Gulfport can be found here.

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1st September 2005: HURRICANE KATRINA

Our prayers are with all those affected by Hurricane Katrina,
particularly those in New Orleans and Biloxi
and Gulfport in Harrison County, Mississippi.

More pictures and a link to the Red Cross donation site here.

BBC News reports re President Bush's return to Washington
to coordinate the relief effort here, and the FEMA site is here.

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.