The World of English

Venezuela surprises the baseball world at the 2000 Little League Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

Overcoming obstacles, it seems, was nothing new for the Little League Baseball team from Maracaibo, Venezuela, representing the Latin American region at the 2000 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. The team's flight to the United States was delayed more than 12 hours, so the team arrived late and tired in Williamsport for the start.

Rule Britannia? In the 19th century, Britain was one of the most powerful nations on Earth. This was due to the size of its Empire. With territories on every continent, the colonies comprised 25% of the world's area and population. That is why people used to say: "The sun never sets on the British Empire."

Peter Gentle

As a new fund-raising plan is announced to raise $4 million to build the Little League Baseball Leadership Training Center in Kutno, the first outside the USA, we review the recent Little League World Series.

Each spring millions ofyoungsters begin their annual journey on the road to Williamsport with dreams of playing in the Little League World Series. In villages and towns on every continent except Antarctica, boys and girls aged ten to twelve take to ball fields in the hope ofqualifying for this mostprestigious tournament of all.

It's been a tough year for Blair's Britain, especially in the English Lakes, where the tourist industry, the farmers and the sheep alike have had little say in their survival.

England may be famous for its beautiful seashores and undulating hills, but it is not that well known for its mountains. Indeed, the country's highest mountain, Scafell Pike, in the scenic northern Lake District in the county of Cumbria, is only 3,184 feet (978 metres) high - probably not very impressive to anyone from the Alps or Carpathians.

With his amazing clockwork radio, British inventor Trevor Bayliss has built a machine that could save the lives of millions of Africans.

After the film Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, was released in 1999 house prices in that area of west London shot through the roof. Everyone suddenly wanted to live there. But was the film a realistic portrayal of that part of London - or was it simply the product of the imagination of Britain's most successful screenplay writer in recent years, Richard Curtis?

William Wales (aka Prince William) is reaching the end of his first term at St Andrew's University in Scotland, which we profiled last year (5/2000). What's it like trying to be a normal student getting an education fit for a king?

Life can be tough being an apprentice monarch - especially a British one - when the eyes of the whole world are focused on you. And even more so when your mum was Princess Diana, "England's Rose", whose every move and word was examined and blown out of proportion by a sensation-seeking press.

The Little League Baseball European Training Center in Kutno, Poland, is putting the finishing touches to a five-year project that germinated back in 1996 and will live on for years to come.

It seems like only yesterday that I made my first visit to Kutno, Poland. In fact it was in January 1996. During my stay town officials drove me to a large wheat field on the outskirts of town. That day, snow blanketed the field that was to be the future site of the Little League Baseball European Training Center.

If somebody told you that the tomato you're eating contains a gene taken from a fish would you continue eating it? Like animal cloning, the genetic modification ofcrops is a a hot topic at the moment, especially in Britain, where many people are protesting against it. Recently even Prince Charles joined the campaign.

Why does football breed hooliganism? Looking at the nature of the phenomenon we ask whether it can ever be eradicated.