International

World News 24^th September
People across the world are now less favourable to refugees and immigrants.  The worst attitudes are in South America where many people have come from Venezuela into Colombia.  People in Belgium and Switzerland do not have good attitudes to immigrants.
The German virus app was downloaded by 18 million people.  However, it may not be as effective as was planned as there are only about 15 million active users.  That is only about one fifth of the German adult population.  There are also some issues with the app because people need to make sure it is switched on.  In theory it works very well to react when people are tested positive.  But people are not so enthusiastic as they were in July when it was released.
We reported about the loss of ice in Greenland and in the Arctic.  There are also worries about Antarctic.  The ice is melting faster than predicted.  As it disappears and turns into water, the water level across the world will rise by up to 2.5 metres.  This will not be even across the world and will be a huge disaster for some places.  This will happen over a long period of time into the next century.  But it will not be easy to reverse this and grow the ice back again, even if they reduce global warming.
Going forward in time?  Tiny island of Niue in the Pacific Ocean, which is close to New Zealand is thinking of moving in time.  How?  Most of the people from Niue live in Auckland in New Zealand, which is the nearest big country.  But Niue is on the other side of the International Date Line, which means when it is Thursday in Niue it is already Friday in New Zealand.  Because the Earth revolves around the sun, there has to be a line which says which day is which.  The line is not straight and has put Niue on the yesterday side when it wants now to be on the today side so that it can link better with New Zealand.  So they want to move the time line to go forward by 24 hours.  Very interesting.