This week's UK news: 11 January 2015
j0314269
11 January 2016


Every week, we summarise the news to give you some insight into what is happening in Britain, and what people are talking about.

David Bowie dies

The death of UK artist David Bowie has been the big news story here since it was announced. Bowie, who was born in London and remained in the UK during his early career, was a very influential rock musician. He released his first album in 1967 and his last, Blackstar, just three days before his death.

Bowie was influential because he constantly changed what he did, creating very new music as well as a new style. Lots of people have told the media how much their music meant to them, including Madonna, David Beckham, the UK's prime minister and the leader of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Famous steam train back on track

The Flying Scotsman has been voted the world's most famous train. It is a steam engine, built in 1923, which ran on the UK railway until 1963 and was the first to travel at more than 100mph. It then worked in the US and then Australia. It has now been bought and restored by the National Railway Museum. It has taken ten years and GBP 4.2m to get the engine back in good running order.

It will now spend two years as a working museum exhibit, travelling on the UK's railway lines so that people can see it and ride on it. The Flying Scotsman is currently on the East Lancashire Railway. It then goes to the National Railway Museum in York before spending time on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Prince George goes to nursery

Prince George's mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, has started to take her own pictures of her children for the media. Last week Prince George had his first day at nursery, a Montessori school near the family home in Norfolk. The Royal Family released a picture of the two-year-old Prince, with his rucksack, going into school for his first afternoon.

Huge Lottery jackpot in UK

This week there was the biggest-ever jackpot on the UK Lottery - GBP 66 million. This was because there has been no win for 14 weeks, because of a change in the way the game is played. The Lottery operators added an extra ten balls (numbered 50-59) which makes it harder to win. Even though the rules were slightly changed for the Lottery draw on Saturday, people still had a greater chance of being killed by a shark than of winning the top prize.  However, two people got all six numbers right and shared the prize.

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