A bad day for Arsenal

Football fans were astonished by the score when Arsenal played Manchester United this week. Arsenal managed two goals -- but Manchester United scored eight, three of them by Wayne Rooney.
Football observers said that the Arsenal side did not play well, and that Manchester were determined to exploit all the weaknesses they found.
Arsenal has promised all the fans who travelled to the match a free ticket for another away game.

British summer colder than usual

We have had some lovely weather in the UK this year, but most people think the last couple of months (our summer) has been cold and wet.
The official weather forecasters, the Met Office, now say that July was colder than the long term average but the first half of August was warmer. But they are waiting for more data before telling us how our summer compared with usual.
Children in England and Wales return to school this week, and so for many people the summer is officially over.

Why a coffee wakes you up

Researchers in London have found that coffee may make people perform better because they think it does.
Volunteers were given cups of either ordinary or decaffeinated coffee to drink. (Decaffeinated coffee has had the stimulant ingredient in coffee removed.) Researchers lied about which kind of coffee the volunteers were given.
Those drinking real coffee scored better on just one test. Volunteers who had been told they were drinking ordinary coffee -- but actually had decaffeinated -- scored better on two out of the three tests.
The researchers, from the University of East London, said the effect of people thinking they were drinking caffeine was as great or greater than actually drinking caffeine.

Carnival takes over West London

Rio hosts the biggest street festival in the world. The second biggest is held every August in London, and it's called the Notting Hill Carnival.
There had been worries about the carnival, since it came just three weeks after the riots which affected the city. But there has been no trouble since then, and the only major problem at the Carnival was the cold weather.
There were extra police at the event to ensure there were no problems, and many of the one million people at the event were very happy to see them there. One person said: "There's loads of police around and everyone's really happy. It's the best atmosphere."

Susan Young

Susan@englishuk.com