6 Thursday, March 7, 2013
MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM
Yakking about the news
A weekly wrap-up for young readers
Cuts on National Budget
At Yak’s Corner press time, political
leaders and President Barack Obama had
failed to come to any agreement on national
spending and budget cuts, so the sequester
(se-qwest-er) took effect, a mandatory plan
of various cuts in government spending.
It’s hard to picture what the $85 billion
in cuts will mean. But some of the changes
may include some national park shutdowns
later this month, longer lines at airports
if transportation workers are laid off, and
a variety of cutbacks in jobs in defense
work, research and other
government services. “We will
get through this,” the president
said. “This is not going to be
an apocalypse, I think, as
some people have said. It’s
just dumb. And it’s going to
hurt.”
Lincoln’s face on the pennies you’ll use.
President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget
does offer a plan to let the U.S. Mint change
the metals used in coins to make them less
expensive. Already, pennies now are made
almost entirely from zinc, not the expensive
copper.
According to Fox News, it costs 2 cents
to make a penny (including transportation
costs). That is down from 2.4 cents per
coin as a result of more efficient production
efforts, officials told Fox.
There is a group, though, working hard
to make sure the government here doesn’t
change its mind: Americans for Common
Cents. To learn more about the power of the
penny, check out their web site at
www.pennies.org.
Goldfish are considered an invasive species
or a species that is not natural to the lakes.
That is much like the fear of Asian carp
entering the Great Lakes. Invasive species
change the natural ecology.
AP Photo
President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders can’t agree on spending cuts, so automatic
cuts in government spending have begun.
Pluto Moons Named
Penny Power
of Lincoln
Americans love the Lincoln
penny – so don’t worry that
the presidential coin will
The penny is
disappear anytime soon.
here in the U.S.,
Some people have been
but Canada has
worrying, though, because
dropped the
Canadian coin-makers – the
penny.
government – have decided
to drop making the penny as they believed
it cost more to make to use. So in Canada,
businesses are encouraged to adjust prices
so they will be rounded up or down if
people are using cash, not credit or checks.
Something that may be $1.01, will be a dollar,
or $1.04 will be rounded up to $1.05 so you
could use a nickel.
That won’t be happening in the U.S. say
the folks from the U. S. Mint. You’ll see
Photo by Cathy Collison
Is it spring yet? Not quite, but these kangaroos
found a warm spot in the sun in the Detroit Zoo’s
Australian Outback exhibit.
Photo Courtesy of University of Nevada-Reno
A researcher holds one of the “monster” goldfish
found in Lake Tahoe.
Giant Goldfish!
The Yak loves goldfish, but he’s never
seen as big a one as was found recently in
Lake Tahoe. “During these surveys, we’ve
found a nice corner where there’s about
15 other goldfish,” environmental scientist
Sudeep Chandra of the University of Nevada,
Reno, told NBC’s LiveScience. The scientist
believes that the fish entered Lake Tahoe
after it was dumped in the lake from a home
aquarium. That’s not healthy for the lake.
How do you like the name Vulcan? That’s
a “Star Trek” name of a fictional planet on
the old television show. It’s one of the likely
names for one of the two moons around
Pluto, thanks to an online contest. The other
moon may get the second-place name,
which was Cerberus, a mythical threeheaded dog. The official naming decision
for the two moons still has to come from the
International Astronomical Union, says Time
magazine. More than 450,000 total votes
were cast.
The ballot was available in more than a dozen
languages. “Almost every country on the
planet has had at least a couple of votes
come in,” astronomer and online election
organizer Mark Showalter told the Los
Angeles Times.
Compiled by Cathy Collison