TEXT I
CHILD LABOR
1 Most of us would be
horrified to support a business that exploits children. But you may have done
just that on your last shopping trip.
2 Perhaps you spent your
money on a handcrafted carpet, without knowing it was made by a seven-year-old
child laborer from India, where children are forced to work for 12 hours a day,
six days a week for very little pay. Maybe you just bought a soccer ball for
your son or daughter, without realizing your present was produced by
five-year-old hands inside a dark and silent factory in Pakistan.
3 Around the world today,
some 250 million boys and girls between the ages of five and fourteen are
exploited in dangerous conditions, according to the International Labor
Organization - ILO.
http://www.unicefusa.org/issues97/jan97/labor.html
TEXT II
The greenhouse effect [TO DISCOVER]
by Joseph Fourier in 1824. It refers to the rise in temperature that the Earth
experiences because certain gases in the atmosphere (water vapor, carbon
dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, for example) trap energy from the sun.
Without these greenhouse gases, heat would escape back into space and the
Earth's surface would be up to 30 °C cooler.
In common parlance, the term
"greenhouse effect" may be used to refer either to the natural
greenhouse effect, due to naturally occurring greenhouse gases, or to the
enhanced (anthropogenic) greenhouse effect, which results from gases emitted as
a result of human activities. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate
change is that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is
attributable to human activities."
The increased amounts of carbon
dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the primary
causes of the human induced component of warming. They are released by the
burning of fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture, etc. and lead to an
increase in the greenhouse effect.
(Adapted from
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/greenhouse. html,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming)
TEXT III
Wheelchair Tennis
Learn about this Summer Paralympic sport
APRIL 27, 2012
By TIME For Kids Staff
ELIZABETH DALZIEL—AP
Number one ranked wheelchair tennis player
in the world Esther Vergeer serves against Australia's Daniela di Toro during a
wheelchair tennis match at the 2008 Paralympic games in Beijing, China.
Wheelchair
tennis is one of the fastest-growing wheelchair sports in the world. Brad
Parks, an American athlete who was injured in a freestyle skiing competition, invented
the sport in 1976 while using it as a method of therapy. Wheelchair tennis was
first seen as an exhibition sport at the 1988 Paralympic Games, but it became a
full medal event at the 1992 Games, in Barcelona, Spain. The London 2012 Games
will be the first time the competition will be held in a new stadium created
just for wheelchair tennis, called Eton Manor.
Rules of the Game
There are currently six events: men’s
singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles, quad singles and quad
doubles. Quad players have an impairment that affects three or more limbs.
The
rules of wheelchair tennis are similar to the standard game. One big exception
is that the ball may bounce twice, with only the first bounce required to be in
bounds on the court. Matches are played to the best-of-three sets, with the
match winners advancing for the gold.
