Hello there.
My name's Emily and you're listening to Newstime.
Hi, Emily.
Hello.
And hello to Newstime listener legend, Akayla.
Hi, my name is Akayla and I live on the Gold Coast.
Hello from the land of the Yugambeh people.
On this week's Newstime, we'll hear how sport is helping refugees feel like they belong.
We'll meet a new species of insect that's lacking table manners.
And in our Wow of the Week, we'll find out why a jet plane has travelled to Australia by boat.
It's good to be back.
Shall we get this countdown going?
I'm ready for takeoff.
String number five.
If you switch on your television every now and again, you might see a box in the corner with someone inside doing a very important job.
People are talking about some hand signals.
It's like when you wave your hand and that's how you say hi in sign language.
Yep, this is Australian Sign Language, better known as Auslan.
Some TV shows place an Auslan interpreter in the corner so that people who are deaf can understand what's being said.
There's a whole lot of ABC Kids favourites, like Bluey and Fizzy and Suds on iview that you can watch in Auslan.
Auslan is also helpful for people watching the news.
So they can tell other people who know sign language what is happening.
Every day on social media...
A service called Auslan 90 shares the news in Auslan.
Deaf.
Journalists work hard to bring the top news stories from Australia and around the world to the deaf community, who aren't able to hear the news on the radio or in podcasts like Newstime.
Auslan 90 is Australia's only daily news service in Auslan.
But come the end of June, Auslan 90 will be shutting down.
Oh, no.
Why?
Well, Auslan 90 costs money to make.
You've got to pay the journalists who research and share the news and the others working behind the scenes.
And unfortunately the money provided by the federal government to make Auslan 90 is about to run out.
It would be sad to not have much money.
Some people who watch Auslan 90 each day have said that because Auslan is their first language.
Losing the news service would mean they would miss out on a whole lot of world events.
While they could watch other news bulletins with subtitles, they're not always easy to keep up with.
Because if the news is not there anymore, the people who are there will not know what the weather is.
The government has said that they recognise the need for accessible news.
Without Auslan 90, there would only be one Auslan-interpreted news bulletin a week on the ABC News channel.
Deaf Connect, the group that makes Auslan 90 has asked the government for more funding so that their news service can keep informing Australians who depend on it.
Hmm.
What are some of the harder things about moving to a new community?
It's tricky because you work with your old place.
It's hard to move furniture.
Moving to a new house is never easy, but moving to a whole new country can be really challenging, especially for refugees.
Refugees are people who have been forced to leave their home country because of war or disaster and seek a new home somewhere safe.
The Queensland city of Toowoomba has the highest number of Yazidi refugees in Australia.
Yazidis are an ethnic minority group from places like Iraq and Syria.
Many people who live in Toowoomba have been working hard to welcome the refugees into the community.
You can ask what their favourite thing is and then you can play together.
That's a great way to connect.
Another way has been through the sport of hockey.
I don't know how to play but I know what it means.
So you hold like a paddle stick and then there's a little like dot on the floor and then you have to hit it in a goal to score.
That's the one.
A few years ago, a Toowoomba resident called Jesse started a program called Belong in Hockey.
Jesse says, every Friday morning, refugees learn to play hockey, have morning tea with locals and then spend time learning English.
They're able to be introduced to the sport in a really welcoming environment with volunteers and young role models to help support them, because when they come to Belong in Hockey, they improve their language skills, they improve their confidence and that actually enables them to be able to get work.
When you score, they might be happy that you scored, so you can say well done, and then you can become friends.
One teenager named Chinna left Iraq with her siblings and arrived in Australia two years ago.
She says belonging hockey has really helped her.
It's very hard when you came to a different country and you don't know anything about it.
The Valentines, yeah, they help us a lot.
Not just playing the hockey.
They help us how to make new friends there, how to meet other people in different countries.
There are plans to grow Belong In Hockey to include other communities like First Nations groups and people with disabilities, so that they can all know that everyone belongs.
Just outside of Darwin, in the Northern Territory, a new insect has been discovered.
And, well, it's certainly something to behold.
Ew.
It looks weird, like a cockroach, but it's furry and ugly.
I don't want to look at it anymore.
Don't judge a book by its cover.
A British ecologist named Daniel was walking through Charles Darwin National Park when he came across the insect with two very furry back legs.
He knew straight away it was a brand-new species.
It has a black tail and tarantulas furs.
It looks like the floor of the forest.
It maybe lives in a forest.
Yeah, this insect was discovered among leaf litter in the national park, so that might explain why it's taken so long to be found.
Camouflage. it camouflages into the country.
It isn't just its furry back legs that make this bug unique.
It has a particularly brutal way of hunting its food too.
The insect can ooze out a liquid material that's very attractive to ants, so that when ants get close enough well, how do I say this?
The insect stabs the ant in the back of the neck and sucks it alive.
Like a vampire.
Scientists have given the insect a name which reflects both its distinctive qualities and honours the traditional owners of the land where it was found.
Our furry-legged friend is now known as the Larrakia feather-legged assassin bug.
Larrakia feather-legged assassin bug.
You got it.
There's no need to worry.
Nature is filled with quirky and strange creatures, and scientists are still finding out more about this one.
In fact, they're still yet to understand why its back legs are furry.
Maybe they're half bird but I'm not sure if they can fly.
Maybe they're tarantulas or ancestors.
I think an assassin bug would be more closely related to a spider.
Get it?
Spider.
Story number two.
On Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
A wheelchair user named Christopher is sitting in a park as a drone darts through the sky above him.
Christopher has cerebral palsy and is a quadriplegic, which means he can't use his arms or legs.
He's never given up on his dream of becoming a pilot.
In fact, he's the one flying the drone, just um holding onto something, and he's saying let's go this way or that way.
Good guess, but without the ability to use his limbs, Christopher says traditional drone controllers are completely unusable.
He says the best thing he can do with a traditional controller is knock it off the table.
So Christopher has developed some technology of his own to fly a drone and take pictures from the air.
I can leverage facial recognition, game controller inputs and accelerometer data on my iPad to control a drone, as if I had two working hands.
I feel like if he moves his head to the right or left, it would go to the right or left.
So if you put your head up, it will go really high?
Yep.
Christopher has been working on this app for more than six years.
He's now in the testing stage and has been asking people with disabilities to trial it so that it can be made better.
One student with cerebral palsy has been using the app to complete a course in filmmaking.
So he's sitting in the little wheelchair and then he will control the drone to see where he's going.
Christopher once told his university lecturer he wanted to fly like a black cockatoo and be a drone cinematographer, which is someone who makes movies using drones.
Through persistence and hard work, Christopher is well on the way to seeing his dream come true.
He says everyone has the right to learn to fly.
Really happy because he can fly like a bird.
Alright friends, we've soared all the way to our...
This story made me go wild because it's really old.
Earlier this month, a very, very large boat docked at Port Kembla on the south coast of New South Wales.
The boat lowered its stern door and a truck emerged carrying a very unusual and large item.
It looks like a tube with a window.
And a truck is going to the garage with like a cylinder thing on the back of it.
Well, my friends, that cylinder is the front section of a jet plane.
They're fixing it or they're just testing it out.
The jet had spent two months on this boat.
It floated across the sea all the way from Georgia in the United States.
I know what you're wondering.
Why didn't they just fly the plane over?
Because if they fly all the way from North America today, the plane will run out of gas.
Well, planes can comfortably fly that distance each day on a tank of fuel.
I feel like it was meant to go on a boat, because that might be a new plane and they're still testing how to drive it.
Good guess, but this plane is far from new.
This is an old luxury jet and it's a biggie, a Boeing 707 to be precise.
It's as long as eight giraffes lying down end to end and its wingspan is twice the length of a cricket pitch.
Though the plane is in excellent condition, it wasn't airworthy, which meant it couldn't be flown.
So instead, it had to make its way by sea.
Because it's very old.
As you can imagine, fitting a plane inside a boat wasn't easy.
The plane was dismantled into parts and soon, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, the plane will be rebuilt.
The aircraft has a star-studded history and used to belong to a celebrity.
Uh, Shakira.
Ronaldo.
Messi.
No famous footballers or pop stars.
This plane belonged to actor John Travolta.
I know him.
Yeah, he's been in a lot of movies and is a trained pilot.
He decided to donate the plane to the museum run by the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society because the plane was originally built for Australian airline Qantas.
I don't think it should go in the museum because it could break the whole museum.
I think it's safe to say that this aircraft has spent plenty of time inside over the past few months.
Now it's time to enjoy its retirement on the tarmac outside of the museum.
Alrighty.
I hope you've been listening very carefully because it's time for today's quiz.
Question one.
What's the name given to Australian sign language?
Auslan.
Question two.
What sport is helping refugees settle into the Toowoomba community?
Hockey.
Question three.
The new insect was given the name Larrakia Wattlegged assassin bug.
Featherlegged.
Question four.
What bird did Christopher, the drone operator, say he's always wanted to fly like?
A black cockatoo.
And question five.
Two months.
What an epic News Time.
It's so good to be back.
And don't forget, if you'd like to be a News Time listener legend like Akayla, ask your grown-ups to head to the News Time page on the ABC Kids Listen website.
Bye.
Thanks, Emily.
You're welcome.
Well, I'm off to investigate something that's on my mind.
If you can fit a plane inside a boat, could you fit a boat inside a plane?
News Time is an ABC Kids Listen podcast.
For other awesome podcasts to play, music to move to and stories and soundtracks for sleep.
Head to the Kids tab on the ABC Listen app.
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