his week's UK news: 27 November 2009
Friday, November 27th, 2009


Television raises money for children

An annual televised charity event raised almost £22m for children’s charities.

Children in Need is run every year by the state broadcasting company, the BBC. The main channel shows a fund-raising show for a whole evening and well-known people do strange things.

This year, female newsreaders dressed up and danced like Beyonce.

Another unusual newsreader was on our screens. James Partridge’s face was badly burned in a car crash when he was a teenager, and he has had more than 50 operations. Channel 5 asked him to read the news every day for a week to challenge viewers.

There were fears that viewers might change channels to avoid seeing Mr Partridge. But the numbers of people watching stayed the same, and thousands of people downloaded clips from You Tube.


Working mothers pretend men are no help at home

Most mothers in the UK work outside the home. And they like to complain that they also have to do all the work at home because their husbands don’t help.

But new research says men are being treated unfairly. Dr Rebecca Meisenbach says women complain to each other that men don’t notice jobs which have to be done at home.

She says these complaints make women feel more female. She says it makes them feel less guilty about not being a full-time wife and mother.


U2 will play at Britain’s biggest festival

The Glastonbury festival is a three-day outdoor concert held on a British farm in June. It is one of the biggest music events of the year. This week it announced that its top act in 2010 will be U2.

People have talked about the Irish band playing at Glastonbury for 26 years. They have chosen to play at the festival’s 40th anniversary. They will fly in from their tour of North America to play.

It often rains a lot at Glastonbury and the audience spend three days sliding in mud. But all the tickets for next year’s concert sold out in 24 hours without anyone knowing who was going to play.


One in five children has already had swine flu

Blood tests have shown that lots more people caught swine flu in the summer than doctors thought.

One out of every five children has had the illness in the UK. In London and a central area of England, one child in three has been infected. Many did not realise that they had been ill.

Swine flu has come back but is not spreading as fast as doctors thought it would. Doctors now think this is because lots of people have already been infected but did not feel ill.

Source: englishuk.com

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