Kids News - Articles for Grades 6-8

Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego — Spanish for fire volcano — came alive on Sunday, June 3, billowing gas, fire and ash more than 15,000 feet in the air. The volcano’s most violent eruption since 1974 caused widespread chaos and destruction. The initial death toll of 110 increased to over 300 on June 17 after officials, citing dangerous conditions, abandoned the search for the 200 residents who have been missing since the deadly incident. In contrast, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, which has destroyed over 700 structures since it began erupting on May 3, has yet to result in any casualties. Experts say the reason Volcán de Fuego is deadlier than Kilauea has to do with the formation of the two volcanoes....

Unlike other professional sports organizations such as the NBA, NFL, or MLB, FIFA, the governing body of association football, or soccer, has traditionally been resistant to adopting technology on the field. "We shall rely on human beings," former FIFA President Sepp Blatter said in 2002. "Players make mistakes, coaches make mistakes and yes, sometimes referees make mistakes. But football is passion, football is emotion. Football has a human touch."...

Professional surfers in pursuit of the perfect wave will no longer have to depend on the whims of nature. Instead, they can head over to the farming town of Lemoore in Southern California, which is home to the world’s first wave pool dedicated to competitive surfing. Originally named after its founder, American surfing legend, 11-time world champion Kelly Slater, it was rebranded WSL Surf Ranch after the World Surfing League acquired a majority stake in 2016....

An almost complete dinosaur skeleton, auctioned by Aguttes at the Eiffel Tower in Paris on June 4, is making headlines after it sold for an astounding $2.3 million, much higher than the $1.4 million to $2.1 million estimated by the French auction house. The steep price paid by a French art collector was justified given that the 150-million-year-old fossil, believed to be that of a new dinosaur species, is the only one of its kind discovered to date....

On Thursday, May 31, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani stunned the world when he beat crowd favorite and veteran competitor Naysa Modi to win the coveted Scripps National Spelling Bee championship. His winning word? Koinonia, an obscure word of Greek origin, which means “an intimate spiritual or Christian communion.” The Texas eighth-grader’s opportunity came unexpectedly in the first championship round after Naysa mixed up the single and double “s” in bewusstseinslage, a German-derived word which means “a state of consciousness or a feeling devoid of sensory components.”...

Pesky as they may be, ants are truly incredible creatures. In addition to talents like predicting earthquakes and morphing into rafts to save themselves from drowning during floods, the industrious insects go all out to protect their own, often carrying wounded comrades back to the nest to heal. Now, researchers have discovered ants who explode and sacrifice themselves to save their colonies from predators....

The quest to discover life outside of Earth has spanned decades and a multitude of galaxies. However, while breakthroughs like the discovery of liquid water on Mars and “Earth-like” exoplanets have raised hopes about the existence of alien life, the distance has made it hard to prove. Now, scientists believe the extraterrestrial life we have been seeking for so long may be on the planet closest to us — Venus....

While Fridays are always the best day of the week, June 1 promises to be even more special. That’s because it also happens to be National Donut Day, which means it is your civic duty to consume one, or even a dozen, of the delicious fried treats! Surprisingly, the holiday was not established by donut manufacturers to boost sales, but by the Salvation Army to help raise much-needed funds for the needy....

Few people can resist the lure of a delicious ice cream scoop or two, especially on a hot day. The only thing that spoils the fun is that the treat is hard to savor slowly, like one would a piece of candy, without ending up with a sticky, melted mess. Now, researchers from Colombia's Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana may have found an unlikely ally to help solve this age-old problem — cellulose fiber extracted from banana plant waste....