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1 March 2017


Been in the UK? Have you got a Golden Ticket?

In the last year, the UK has had a new GBP 5 note which is made of plastic, with one clear area. An artist called Graham Short cut the face of author Jane Austen into the clear area of four of the notes, making each worth around GBP 50,000. He then spent the notes in the UK's different nations. The man who is helping Mr Short with the project says it is like Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket.

Three of the notes have now been found and Mr Short says the other one could be anywhere in the world now. Have you got it?

Leicester football team's incredible year continues

Last summer Leicester FC was all over the news. The team had gone from the bottom of the Premier League to the top, beating lots of clubs with more expensive players. Everyone was talking about the coach, Claudio Ranieri, and how he was motivating his team. Just weeks ago, he was named Fifa's Coach of the Year.

But this season Leicester have been struggling and are in real danger of going back down to the Championship league. At the end of last week Ranieri was sacked. On Monday night the team played for the first time with a new coach – and won, scoring three goals. 

New Blue Planet show with David Attenborough

Blue Planet is one of the world's most watched TV nature shows, shown in 50 countries. It was made by the BBC, the UK's public service broadcaster in 2001, and looked at life in the sea. Now Sir David Attenborough, the 90-year-old and much-loved wildlife expert who presents the shows, has announced Blue Planet II.

The new series, which will be shown later this year, used new filming techniques and found new creatures. Cameras have travelled on the backs of sharks, and discovered fish which use tools. It has been made with TV companies in America, Germany and France and so will be shown in many countries.

How a pie stopped a footballer

The UK has a football competition called the FA Cup. Unlike most of the football played here, this mixes up teams from all divisions and can lead to some amazing matches.

One of these strange matches involved Arsenal, the Premier League club whose players are worth millions, and Sutton United. Never heard of Sutton United? That's not surprising, because most of the UK haven't heard of the club either.

Sutton's reserve goalkeeper is a man called Wayne Shaw, who weighs 23 stone. A betting company started a joke bet that he would eat a pie during the Arsenal match – and he did, when he knew that he would not be playing. However, this meant he could have broken strict rules on betting.

So he lost his job at Sutton Football Club, where he kept the pitch clean and ran the bar, and lost his place in the team. Now there is an investigation into what happened.

25 million books missing

Public libraries have been an important part of UK culture, but in the past six years they have been badly affected by lack of money. Over 300 libraries have closed, and thousands of people have lost their jobs.

Now we have learned that this is not the only problem for libraries. Staff are worried that 25 million books may have been lost during the past 20 years, and there is not so much money now to buy new ones. People think even more books may be lost, because there are not enough staff to count the books on the shelves and the computer database usually shows more books than there actually are.

 

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