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Hello there, my name's Emily and you're listening to Newstime.
Hey Emily!
And a big hello to Newstime listener legend, Hannah.
Hi Emily, my name is Hannah, I'm nine years old and I live on the Ndambe lands.
They are the traditional caretakers of the stretch between Noosa and the Pine River on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
News time is my favourite thing to listen to on ABC Kids Listen.
Bye.
How wonderful to hear how much you enjoy news time, Hannah.
I'm certain you'll give today's episode your seal of approval too.
That's a little hint as to what's to come.
If you love Newstime as much as Hannah, ask your adults to follow or favourite wherever you're listening, so you never miss a Newstime episode.
Well, today we'll learn the many ways the world's been having a ball watching the FIFA World Cup.
And then we'll separate feline fact from feline fiction in our wow of the week.
Well, shall we get things underway?
I'm feeling I'm ready to go, Maddie.
Story number five.
About 40 years ago, a team of geologists they're the people who study rocks were mapping rock layers in the very cold continent of Antarctica.
One of them, Dr Mike, found a bone in fossil form.
He pulled out a notebook and pencil and jotted down vertebra of large reptile.
Then he drew a sketch of his discovery.
It looks like an elephant and it's shaped as a rock.
It looks like a map of...
Antarctica?
The fossil was gathered up with all the other specimens and sent all the way to a collection in England.
But instead of being identified by scientists, the bone was put in a drawer and it sat there for almost 40 years.
They didn't know what it was because there's not much stuff in Antarctica.
Well, they'll probably have to, like, match the correct DNA.
A few years ago, the current manager of the collection opened the drawer and spotted the bone along with Dr Mike's sketches.
The manager was certain that the bone belonged to an ancient creature.
The scientists had to figure out if it was like a woolly mammoth or a dinosaur, and that would take a long time.
Well, it turns out it was a dinosaur fossil, a tailbone of the titanosaur.
It was one of the largest land dinosaurs to ever roam the Earth, about the same length as an Airbus passenger jet.
Wow!
And because it was found 40 years ago, that makes it the first dinosaur bone to ever be discovered in Antarctica.
Some fossils have been discovered since, but they're extremely rare.
Why do you think that is?
The dinosaurs just probably wouldn't be there because it's cold.
The polar bears will eat their bones and they're extinct.
And probably some of them died in ice and then they went into the ocean and they'll be seen again.
The main reason there haven't been many fossil discoveries in Antarctica is because of the continent's thickness.
At the time the titanosaur roamed around, it was a very different place to how we know it today.
It was warm and had plenty of forest.
Even though this bone was tucked away in a drawer for 40 years, that's nothing compared to the 80 million years it spent buried in Antarctica.
Story number four.
Have you heard of the sport boccia?
Is it like a contest?
For butchers.
Not butcher, boccia.
That sport when, like so, like there's a stick and then there's like a semicircle, that little disc thing and you have to get it on one, two or three.
Not quite.
Boccia is a parasport, which means it's played by people with a disability, including at the Paralympic Games.
It looks a little bit like a mix of lawn bowls and bocce, but where it's different is that players roll or throw a heavy leather ball as close as possible to a white ball called a jack.
You need plenty of strategy and skill to win.
Florence is a 10-year-old from the Gold Coast in Queensland and she lives with an acquired brain injury that affects her mobility and her speech.
Earlier this year, she was introduced to boccia and she just loves it.
It makes me super-duper happy.
I love doing sports and stuff.
Boccia is really fun and...
And you can play with lots of people and I'm really happy about that.
Boccia has been introduced in schools around the country so that the sport can be more inclusive.
It's like wheelchair basketball.
Being inclusive, like you have to be kind and if there's somebody who wants to join and your coaches, don't go get out of here, so that it's all fair.
Yeah, everyone deserves to play sport, and boccia is one sport that removes barriers for students with disabilities.
Florence is on a roll with boccia.
Her mum says that she's loved seeing Florence get so excited about playing, especially as it's something she can do for herself.
And even though she's 10, she's already got some very, very big dreams.
It would be cool if I could... and I can do a bunch of other things.
Aim high, Florence.
Who knows?
Maybe one day I'll be reporting on your Paralympic glory.
Good job.
Dream big and keep trying.
So now who?
A five-year-old named Neil has shown up in southern Tasmania and well, he's throwing a few tantrums.
It's kind of cute.
Cute is one word for him.
He's right now absolutely demolishing that mailbox.
And now he's going whoopee, whoop, whoop.
This isn't your average five-year-old.
Neil's a big boy, weighing 1,000 kilograms.
He calls a lot of ruckus.
Oh, sorry.
One thing I, like, completely forgot to mention is Neil is an elephant seal.
Mischief!
Scientists say that young male seals like Neil like to squabble with other seals to prepare for adulthood.
Because there aren't many male seals around.
Neil's been fighting with traffic cones, street signs, fences and mailboxes instead.
Where would it be going?
I'm going to destroy this world.
I love breaking the world.
Yes, it's naughty behaviour.
But Neil's become the talk of the town.
As Neil's fame has spread, more people are trying to get photos and videos of him.
But wildlife officials have warned people to keep well away from Neil to protect both him and them from harm.
Maybe he should get two lions...
Just like a real celebrity, Neil has a team of traffic controllers following him around the clock, acting as a security detail.
The thing is, Neil is still growing up.
And once he's an adult, he'll be four times as heavy as he is now.
That's seriously so big.
Get it?
Story number two.
It's been a huge month of football with the world gathering for the FIFA World Cup.
Well, I only watched one game, Australia versus Paraguay.
There was lots of fighting for the ball.
My favourite thing about the World Cup was that Australia and the other team tied, and also we got to watch it at school and we didn't have to do any learning for the middle session.
Oh, double win.
Australia's team.
The Socceroos put on a mighty performance and made it through to the knockout stages along with 31 other teams.
Last weekend Australia played Egypt and, after tying 1-1, the game went to a penalty shootout which was won by Egypt 4-2.
That means that Australia is out of the competition.
Australia actually making it pretty far.
Yeah, the Socceroos can give it another crack in four years' time at the next World Cup, but the tournament is now up to the quarterfinals, which will be played all this weekend.
There's plenty of action off the field as well this year.
You might have seen a duck waddling his way through the streets of host country Mexico wearing a national team jersey.
The duck wanders around everywhere.
I think he goes for the swans.
This duck's name is Merlin and he only has eyes for Mexico's team.
Merlin went viral online and met with FIFA representatives for a photo shoot and even to film a commercial.
Merlin the duck, duck, duck, duck, duck.
The ducks like, go Mexico!
Let's do the salsa.
Sadly for Merlin, Mexico was knocked out of the competition by England.
But other countries have been shown great support, including Norway, whose fans sat down in the crowds and pretended to row a big Viking boat together.
All that support has seen Norway progress to the quarterfinals, where they'll face England this Sunday morning.
Vroom!
Even though Japan is out of the tournament, their fans did some incredible work.
They brought their own garbage bags into the games and once the on-field action was over, they collected any litter and handed their filled bags to stadium staff.
It's a ginormous stadium.
Why would you want to clean up?
For the Japanese people, it's become a cultural tradition.
They do it out of respect.
Japan are nice.
The World Cup has been so much fun, but the end is getting close.
Though we don't know who will be playing in it yet, the final is set for Monday, July 20 at 8pm.
5am Australian Eastern Time.
There might be some tired kids around Australia that day.
Okay, I trust you've tidied up any litter around you because it's time for our... Wow of the Week.
This story meant to go well because...
He was very cute and he camouflaged into some very dry bushes.
We live in a world where things aren't always as they seem.
Artificial intelligence is getting incredibly good at creating photos and videos that look real, even though they've just been created by technology.
Recently, a very short online video filmed nearly 10 years ago has divided people all over the world as to whether it's real.
It's a cat huddling under like dried up coral.
It's a cute ginger cat and he's so cute.
A wildlife photographer named Mohammed had filmed a small pale cat digging in the desert dunes of Libya, a country in northern Africa.
The cat is known as the sand cat, which is the world's only wild cat adapted to true desert conditions.
Its fur colour makes it incredibly hard to see against the desert sand.
Maybe because they blend into, like the drought stuff, because they're ginger coloured and they are camouflage.
Muhammad didn't think much of the video when he posted it.
But a few years later, he received a call from some scientists asking about the footage.
They didn't believe it was filmed in Libya and they wanted to find out if it had been recorded in another country.
And that's because nobody had ever seen a sand cat living in Libya.
Because they're rare.
Mohammed insisted that the video was real and he had seen sand cats in more than one spot in Libya.
Researchers got so excited that they did some exploration, and they've since found sand cats at 13 places across the Libyan Sahara Desert.
It's great news for the sand cat, which is considered a threatened species.
Very surprised that they just broke a world record for finding a sand cat in Libya.
These cats are so hard to spot, they've been given the nickname Ghost of the Desert.
But if they're so difficult to find, how might researchers track more down?
You can lure them here or you can go cowboy style with a rope and go, yee-haw!
Get a fish and cook it and then throw a rope and tie the fish to it and then throw the rope, and then the cats will come and then say meow meow meow, meow.
It's time to...
Have a delightful fish frenzy feast.
It's great to know that the sand cat video is legit and that Muhammad wasn't kitten.
I mean, kidding.
Alrighty, after all that time in the dunes, how about you rehydrate with some water?
Because it's time for today's quiz.
Question one, the titanosaur bone was discovered in which continent?
Antarctica.
Question two, boccia is a what sport?
Hint, it starts with the letter P.
Which state has received a visit with a side of mischief from Neil the Seal?
What's the name of the duck that's been waddling around in a Mexico jersey?
Merlin.
And question five.
The sand cat was given the nickname What of the Desert?
Ghost.
If you'd like to be a Newstime listener legend like Hannah, ask your grown-ups to head to the Newstime page on the ABC Kids Listen website.
Thank you.
You're so welcome.
You've certainly got better manners than that seal named Neil.
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