This week's UK news: June 3 2011
3 June 2011


Former boy band take UK by storm

In the 1990s there was a very popular boy band called Take That. In 1995 singer Robbie Williams left, and eventually the band split up. They got back together as a four-piece, but last year Williams agreed to appear with them again.

Now this band of middle-aged singers and dancers are playing one of the biggest concert tours ever seen in the UK. The tour, which has sold out, plays at stadiums in the UK, Ireland and Europe for 36 nights, including several nights in European cities. The band also play a record-breaking eight-night run at Wembley Stadium in London.

Take That are famous for songs like Everything Changes and Back For Good.

British pig invades the US

Peppa Pig is a cartoon about a little pig and her family made for children aged 5 and under. Peppa has pink cheeks, lives with Daddy Pig and Mummy Pig, and likes to jump in puddles.
Peppa is so popular here that there is a Peppa Pig theme park and the sale of Peppa Pig toys makes more than £200m a year in the UK alone.

Now Peppa is shown on the US children's channel Nick Jr and her creators have just signed a deal to sell toys in America. This could mean that the little pig is worth £1bn. 

Olympic tickets one step closer

This week people who applied for London Olympics tickets found out whether the money had been taken from their credit cards, but still don't know exactly what events they will be going to see.

Hundreds of thousands of people failed to get any tickets at all. These included Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who will be hosting the Olympics but wanted to take his family to some events. Other people got far more tickets than they wanted. One man managed to buy £11,000 worth but is wondering how he will pay for them.

A good time to watch birds in the UK

There are some spectacular birds to see now in the UK. In Wales there are ospreys and their chicks, and there are peregrine falcons high on the spire of a church in the city of Bath. The UK's bird charity, the RSPB, sets up a telescope in the street for people to see the birds.
There are other places to spot peregrines, and in Somerset there is a very rare bird called a bittern, which has a distinctive booming call. This had disappeared altogether from the UK but now there are 82 males. Finally, on Salisbury Plain there is the heaviest flying bird in the world, called the great bustard. This have been brought back to the country from Russia, and the first chicks have been born in the past two years. There may be around 20 great bustards in the wild now.

 

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