1. To help his home city âbounce backâ after a
terrible storm, NBA player Kevin Durant has
donated $1-million.
The number of people harmed by a recent
tornado in the U.S. state of Oklahoma was
greatly reduced, thanks to a special earlywarning system.
On Monday, a major tornado hit Moore, a
suburb of Oklahoma City.
A tornado is a violent storm that usually looks
like a whirling funnel.
Residents were warned there was a big storm
coming, and possibly a tornado, days before it
arrived.
When it actually hit, sirens blared, giving
people a 16-minute head start to find shelter.
2. Jiroemon Kimura is the oldest living human being.
Kimura, who lives in western Japan, is 116 years old. Heâs the
last man alive who has lived in three different centuries.
The only other man who was alive before the 20th century
(before the year 1901) was James Emmanuel Sisnett, who died
last week at age 113.
Not only is Kimura the oldest man living right now, he is also
the oldest man who has ever lived whose birth age can be
verified. âVerifiedâ means proved to be true. There are other
men who have said they are older than 116, but there wasnât
any way to be certain of the truth.
Kimura worked for the post office until he was 65 and then
farmed until he was 90.
He isnât the only one in his family to live a long time: four of his
siblings lived to be 90 or older and one of his brothers made it
to age 100.
One of the strangest things about Kimuraâs age is that his
hometown of Kyotango, Japan, is reported to have 95
centenarians, even though the population of the whole city is
just 60,000. âCentenarianâ means âover the age of 100.â
3. A four-year-old boy named Robert Tufts is the
mayor of the small town of Dorset in
Minnesota.
He was given the job last August â when he
was only three â and will continue to be
mayor until this August.
The boy was awarded the position after his
name was pulled out of a hat.
Once a year, people who live in or nearby
Dorset can pay $1 to have their name written
on piece of paper and put into a hat.
Then a name is randomly drawn out of the
hat, and the person whose name it is becomes
the mayor.
Last year, Robert Tuftsâ name was pulled out.
A mayor is the person who is the leader of a
city, town or village.
Usually, people will vote for their mayor in an
âelection.â The person with the most votes,
wins.
Because Dorset has fewer than 30 people and
the mayor isnât actually expected to do very
much, the townâs residents have decided to let
4. anyone become mayor by picking out a
random name.
At the end of the summer, people will put their
names in the hat again, and another mayor
will be chosen. For now, however, Robert will
continue serving as mayor, where his main
duties are going to daycare and acting friendly
towards the other people in his town.
There are no rules about where you have to
live or how old you have to be to become the
mayor of Dorset, so anybody could win next
year.
Canadians arenât as fit as they should be. In
fact, only about 12 out of 100 kids get as much
exercise as they should.
So the Canadian government is going to lower
the amount of time they say people need to
exercise. Theyâre hoping that with an easier
goal, people will try harder to meet it.
The government says that:
* adults should exercise for 22 minutes a day;
* children should exercise for 60 minutes a
5. day; and
* people over 65 years old should have
moderate exercise for 22 minutes a day.
The health of Canadians would improve a lot if
everyone got this much exercise, say experts.