Woman has baby

This is the headline used by one of our magazines to describe the birth of the Royal Baby. The magazine makes fun of the news, and on Monday the Royal Baby was the only news - even though he hadn't yet been born and there was no information. So we've learned lots of other bits of news.

The baby's birth wasn't announced for four hours, allowing some private time for him and his parents. They had some pizza sent in after he was born. He is called George. His father, Prince William, had changed a nappy before they left hospital. And he is third in line to the throne. Since his great-grandmother is in her 80s, his granddad over 60 and his father 31, he is unlikely to become King George VI until he is elderly himself.

British man wins French bike race

For the second year in a row, a Briton has won the Tour de France.

Chris Froome, who won with Team Sky, follows Bradley Wiggins. Froome won the 22-day race by over four minutes, and got a great welcome in Paris as it was also the 100th anniversary of the race. Froome, who was born in Kenya, has overcome many problems to do well in cycling. These include having a parasitic disease which feeds on his red blood cells and affects his performance.

Harry Potter author's secret is out

A crime novel by a new author came out a couple of months ago, and sold around 8,500 copies.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith had done about as well as crime novels by new authors are expected to do. But then the real author's name was revealed on Twitter, by a friend of someone who worked in the lawyer's firm dealing with the book.

It was JK Rowling, better known for the Harry Potter series. The book then went to the top of the chart for hardback fiction, selling 17,662 copies in one week. It was also in third place in the overall fiction chart, which includes paperbacks and e-books. Rowling has said that she wanted to write as a man because she wanted to use a very different writing style. She said that the leak of her name had not been done to create publicity for the book. 

Weather in the news again

After weeks of sunny weather and the longest heatwave for years, the UK weather changed in a spectacular way. Monday was the hottest day of the year, with temperatures peaking at 33.4C/92F in London.

Then the thunderstorms arrived, dropping almost a month's rainfall on some areas and causing flash floods. Motorways flooded, as did the centre of Birmingham, and railway passengers in Manchester suffered delays. Electrical power was lost in some areas, and a church tower was damaged by a lightning strike. More thunderstorms are expected in the South this weekend.