The Week Junior

Tens of thousands of people took part in marches across the US on 11 June to call for the law on guns to change. The protests followed two recent tragedies in Texas and New York, which have pushed lawmakers to discuss changes to US gun laws. What is the current law on guns in the US? In US law, being able to carry a gun is seen as a person’s basic right. The right “to keep and bear arms” has been part of the US Constitution since 1789. A constitution is a set of laws and rules that set out how a country is governed. The US has more firearms (guns) per person than any country in the world. There are some rules about the types of guns people are allowed to own…

The situation is very different in the UK, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Unlike in the US, guns aren’t seen as a basic right. Instead, anyone wanting to own a gun must have a “good reason” – such as hunting or for sports. There are thorough checks before a person can own a gun. Certain weapons, such as those that can fire very quickly, are banned completely. Gun owners in the UK must have a special certificate, called a licence, that is issued by the police. Many people believe that the UK’s strict gun laws have made mass shootings extremely rare in this country.…

Refugee Week is an event that has taken place every year across the UK since 1998. Its aim is to celebrate the contributions that refugees have made to life in the UK. A refugee is someone who has left their home country because of war or the threat of violence. This year’s Refugee Week will run from 20 to 26 June. It is a chance for people to understand the issues facing refugees. From 17 to 26 June, a Refugee Festival will be held in Scotland. Its theme is “storytelling” because the organisers say people’s stories represent “the journeys their lives have taken and the places they want to go”. The festival includes a free open-air exhibition called Letters of Hope, which is a walking trail using letters and postcards to…

Malala Yousafzai and Vanessa Nakate joined a protest in Stockholm, Sweden, calling for more action on climate change. Yousafzai is a well-known campaigner who won the Nobel Peace Prize (an important international award) for promoting girls’ rights to education. Climate change is long-term changes in world weather patterns caused by human activities. Nakate is an important climate campaigner from Uganda. They joined Greta Thunberg and others at one of the Friday climate protests outside Sweden’s parliament. Yousafzai explained that the effects of climate change harm education for girls. “Due to climate-related events, millions of girls lose their access to schools,” she said. “Events like droughts and floods impact schools directly. Girls are impacted the most: they are the first ones to drop out of schools and the last ones to return.” Nakate…

OUTRUNNING HORSES A man called Ricky Lightfoot has won a “man vs horse” race in Wales. The race is 22.5 miles long but humans and horses take different routes. Lightfoot is only the third human to win the race since it started in 1980. He said that winning was “pretty good”. DISCOVERING DINO BELLY BUTTONS Researchers have discovered the first dinosaur belly button. It belonged to a type of dino called Psittacosaurus, which means “parrotlizard”. A 130-million-year-old fossil was used to build a detailed image of the dinosaur, showing a patch on its stomach that scientists say was the creature’s tummy button. TREKKING BY WHEELCHAIR A teenager with autism has become the first person to complete a trek of Hadrian’s Wall in a wheelchair. The wall is a Roman ruin along England’s border with Scotland.…

On 14 June, people around the UK marked the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which happened in 2017. What happened at Grenfell Tower? A large fire broke out on 14 June 2017 in Grenfell Tower, a block of flats in west London. The fire killed 72 people, including 18 children. The fire was caused by a fridge bursting into flames, and it spread rapidly throughout the tower block. A public inquiry (see panel) later found that the fire was made worse because the building’s cladding (material that covers a building to make it warmer) was flammable (likely to catch fire). A public inquiry is an investigation into an event, ordered by the Government. The building had no sprinkler system to put out the fire. The inquiry also found that the…