Planex News

The Chocolate hills in the Bohol province of the Philippines are a valley of densley-vegetated hills. In the dry season, the grass and crops go brown. From a distance, it looks like the hills are made of bubbly chocolate, thus getting their name. According to legends, the hills came into existence because of two giants who hurled rocks, boulders, and sand at each other. After their fight was over, this eventually led to a huge mess of hills – which is the Chocolate Hills we know today. The Chocolate Hills are a popular tourist destination in The Phillipines, and even feature on the regional flagof Bohol province, where they are the Bohol’s “main attraction”. These unique domed hills can be found in their hundreds in the towns Batuan, Carmen, and Sagbayan in Bohol They are listed as one of The Phillipines Top 3 geographical monuments and there are plans to hopefully include them in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Chocolate Hills are conical karst hills and similar ones can be seen i...

On Friday night, citizens of Hull got a mysterious visit by a pirate ship containing no driver. Some people reported that it only comes every 50 years, as they had seen it all those years ago. When some explorers started to join the crowd of confused people, they decided to board the ship and hunt down civilization. A long table was roughly nailed to the rustic floor of the living room. Over this hung a very expensive chandelier made with 102 wax candles that were still lit. Bowls of ripe fruit were scattered across the table. Two old wooden staircases lead up to various places, but the explorers decided to go up the right one. They then found themselves in a metal storeroom. Flashing yellow rectangular lights hung from chains above huge metal barrels. All of a sudden, the lights went off and eerie sounds echoed around the thik metal walls. A loud crackling sound came on, as purple fog lifted out of the ground. The ship was disappearing! In a rush, the five brave people sped out of the...

This is the story of the greek soldier Hercules. In the first bit of this 12-part story, Hercules went mad, and to pay everyone back, he became a slave to King Eurestyus. Last time, he fought this huge lion thing and made its skin into an invincibility cloak. “Now, Hercules.” began King Eurestyus one sunny morning. “I now want you to kill the dreaded Hydra in the Argos Marshes. He has been  terrorising my people for too long now.” He pointed at a man in a toga running away from a sign reading ‘Argos Marshes’. “OK, sir.” replied Hercules. “But is it a snake or a dog? People have sent letters to me that say both. I’ve got mixed messages.” the King lowered one eye as if to say ‘really?!’. “What do you think, dumbo!?!?” said Eurestyus, starting to get a bit annoyed. Hercules shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, just go!” exclaimed the king. With that, Hercules ran off. The soldier was getting tired when he reached a sign that read ‘Argos Marshes - One Mile’. “Nearly - There.” panted Hercules. ...

The Ancient Egyptians had many gods - both male and female. Here are just a few of them: Ra the God of the Sun. He was the most important God and was the lord of all the gods. He was usually shown in human form with a falcon head, crowned with the sun disc encircled by a sacred cobra. Ra sailed across the heavens in a boat called the 'Barque of Millions of Years'. At the end of each day Ra was thought to die and sailed on his night voyage through the Underworld, leaving the Moon to light the world above. Amun was the King of the Gods. He was combined with the sun god Ra and became even more powerful. Amun was then called Amun-Ra. Anubis was the God of Mummification (embalming and the dead). His role was as the "guardian to necropolis". Priests often wore a mask of Anubis during mummification ceremonies. Bast (Bastet) was the    Goddess of Protection and of household entertainment. He is thought to be the daughter of the sun god Ra Geb was the Earth God. The ancient Eg...

It has came to most of our readers a surprise to read about the mythical phoenix appearing and breaking our universe into small bits, but no. It is true. To flip your opinions upside-down I’ve decided to zoom in closer on the subject... It was on the 1st of November last year that lots of our readers explained to Toby News that every Friday for 6 weeks they were seeing a strange blue bird-like alien circling their nearby forests. Well now, that strange extra-terrestrial life form has come back after 14 weeks of hiding, and most of you said it looks bigger and tougher now. Your theories were in fact right, making Toby News the first press to know about ‘The Great Quackening’ as some of you called it, which is happening now in the Amindoromeda Galaxy, 1,208,000 light-years away from our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Scientists studying this Supergiant Galaxy have said “The phoenix must have been drawn to power - the icy supergiant galaxy, containing only abandoned meteorites must have sound...

After daring explorer Carl Hitston  travelled to Mexico to see if the mysteries of the Forn Ka Tek Temple were true, his photographers and editors lost track of him when he went to sleep in a cave. Forn Ka Tek is the ancient aztec capital, and people believed  if they discovered plants on the walls the whole city had been cursed by the fire god, Manka. When another citizen’s ivy overgrew when the home owner moved house, it crawled over to the temple which triggered a panic, causing the whole city to evacuate. Nobody has been to the area ever since. We got in touch after photographer Ace sent in a rescue helicopter to relocate Carl, and then noticed the whole city had been somewhat scorched and reduced to rubble. Had the legends come true? Well, not in Carl’s opinion, especially  as the temple hadn’t been damaged. But he did notice a name scratched on the left side: MANKA. When he explored inside, the walls strangely were hardly visible because of all the vegetation. Maybe...

“Where does religion really come from?” is a question that has been asked all over the ages. Well, in truth, nobody knows, but lots of people have tried to make up theories... There must have been lots of crazy theories, such as ghosts in a cave, Jesus in a pan of tomato soup, or 7 errors appearing on Adobe InDesign, but none of them have survived to this time. In fact, the only theories that survived are from Edward Burnett Tylor, James George Frazer, Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Clifford Geertz, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Max Weber. They all came up with their own theories, and, as you might be able to guess, not all of them were right. Half made Substantive Theories, and the other created Functional Theories.

By David Walliams, Illustrated by Tony Ross It’s about Prince Alfred, a sickly boy of twelve, who lives in the year 2120. His mum, the Queen, gets taken away in the night by their royal guards, and when young Alfred realises, he embarks on an epic quest to save her, only to be captured as well! When he escapes, he meets his long-lost grandma’s team, called the revolutionaries. They sneak into the House of Commons to indicate it’s time for revolution, but royal guards chase them back to Buckingham Palace where they get stuck in the London Underground. The queen, who also escaped, fires a torpedo to free the others, unwittingly dying in the end. They get back into the crypt, where Alfred’s nanny is waiting. She turns out evil, but Grandma stabs her in the back. Meanwhile, the Lord Protector, the king’s loyal subject, had killed the king, using his blood to try and turn a statue into a real griffin. Only royal blood can turn it back, but as the king’s dead he need’s Alfred’s blood. In the...

When you go to the cinemas to see a Pixar film, there are two things to be sure of: you’ll probably laugh and you’ll probably cry. But now Pixar marches onward with their new film, Onward. It’s about to brothers  - Ian and Barley - who live in a magical world spoiled with technology. On Ian’s 16th birthday, they are given a magical staff to save their father’s life for 24 hours. The spell goes wrong and the siblings only manage to conjure up their dad’s legs, sparking a race against time to bring the rest of him back.