This week's UK news: 26 January 2015
j0314269
26 January 2016


Look round Buckingham Palace, watch Shakespeare on TV, eat smaller ice-creams and find out why beer is made with bread.

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

 

Get The Queen to show you round her palace

Want to look inside Buckingham Palace? You can get a guided tour with the Queen's expert staff, thanks to a new production by Google.

Look here on the British Monarchy You Tube Channel with your smartphone and you can take a virtual reality of several rooms of the Palace. You can see the hidden door the Queen uses to get from her private rooms to where she meets guests, as well as the Throne Room and several other places in the 775-room palace. The tour has been specially made for smartphones with 16 cameras pointing all round each room, so you can look at anything you want to. 

 

Popular ice-creams get smaller

Some of the UK's most popular ice-creams will be smaller this summer to help us all stay at a healthy weights. Products such as Cornettos, Magnums and pots of Ben and Jerry's ice cream will be resized so that each serving is no more than 250 calories. Similar changes have been made to the size of chocolate bars and children's ice creams already.

The companies say that they have cut the size of sweet treats because the Government wants action to help people not to become too fat. But there have been some complaints that the prices have not dropped enough to reflect the new size.

 

Lots of Shakespeare on UK TV

It is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death this year and the UK's public service broadcasting company is screening a festival of the playwright's work. There are around 100 hours of programmes, which include the full plays, the quoting of famous lines in other pieces of drama, and children's TV. The festival includes a live weekend from the Royal Shakespeare Company, a programme about the countryside, and another about people who are called Shakespeare. 

 

Now beer is made from bread

A new beer has been launched, called Toast. It is made from unsold bread that would have been thrown away. The UK is trying to cut down on the amount of food which is wasted, and Tristram Stuart, who makes the beer, is hoping to inspire people to use leftover food in different ways.

24 million slices of bread are thrown away every day by UK households. Official figures say 15 tonnes of food are wasted every year, and most of this is bread. Every bottle of Toast uses one slice of bread, and all the profits from selling the beer go to a charity which campaigns to reduce food waste.

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