09/05/2014 Newsround

weekend's action. Good morning, guys. Wecome to

Friday, with me, Ricky, and a bit of this on the way: A first sneak-peek

at what Aardman Animations are doing to build-up World Cup fever.

Plus, the latest twist in the tale of the mountain that's up for sale.

This is Newsround. But first this Friday, to plans to

search for new medicines under the sea. Scientists say ocean

exploration could hold the key to finding new drugs to treat anything

from infections to cancer. They think studying the genetic make-up

and chemicals inside things like starfish could help them develop new

life-saving drugs. Searches are already under way off the coast of

Scotland, and the European Union is planning to put almost ?120 million

into finding out more. Historically this isn't a place that people have

looked, so they haven't exploited it and there's a whole raft of new

technologies that are allowing one to screen more methodically, more

scientifically. Next, to new measures to try to

tackle internet piracy. Big players in the entertainment industry have

been in talks with UK internet providers about the issue. As part

of the plan, providers will send letters to customers thought to be

downloading illegally. They're expected to be sent out in 2015.

Next, the chairman of the English FA has been forced to defend new plans

to try and improve the fortunes of the England footy team. A special

commission has been looking into how to produce more top-quality English

players in the future, and presented its ideas yesterday. They include

stricter rules on the number of foreign players teams can sign as

well as having a new league for Premier League B teams. That was

heavily criticised by lots of people, prompting this response from

Chairman Greg Dyke. They're difficult proposals and you

cant possibly be sure that everyone's going to buy into them,

but, the question I asked to the people who don't buy into them -

well, what do you want to do? The analysis in this document is pretty

damning for the future of English football and English boys'. If you

don't want to buy into this, what do you want to do? It's not enough to

say we do nothing. Well, the current England team is

just five weeks away from the start of the World Cup in Brazil, and

these tiny footballers will appear in short films on the BBC, starting

this weekend, to help build up the football fever. They were designed

by the company behind Shaun the Sheep, and Match of the Day

Kickabout's Radzi went to get sneak-peek at how they were created.

Danny, this looks incredible. All these shots of Brazil, what exactly

is it? It is a journey to Brazil and we follow these for little football

figures all the way from the UK all the way over to Brazil and their

destiny is to get to the stadium to see the World Cup live. This kind of

sums up the flavour of result for us, there's lots of colour, the

street art, the football, the beach. How did you get it to work?

Presumably the characters themselves can't walk and talk themselves.

We'll be using a method called CGI, which is computer-generated imagery.

And what that means is we will be creating the characters in the

computer and then we'll be putting them into a live-action real film

scene and try to make them look as though they're in the same

environment. When I think of Brazil, I've got a really strong image in my

head, did you have that? I did, yes, especially because in Brazil they

are notoriously known for having so much passion about football and

football and football! They absolutely love it, and they breathe

it and when we got there it just lived up to all our expectations.

You would go to Copacabana beach and you would just see balls flying up

in the air morning till night, and yes, it was fantastic. It was

amazing. And to find out how the finished

videos look, check out Match of the Day Kickabout, Saturday morning at

7.30 on CBBC. One of Europe's biggest sporting

events gets under way in Northern Ireland later. When it comes to

cycling, the Giro d'Italia is only second to the Tour de France. In

Belfast preparations have been under way for months to get the city

ready, and today the racing finally begins. Belfast beat off competition

from other cities to host the tournament and many landmarks have

turned pink to celebrate. Two-day Belfast road to overcome a

race track. The colour pink is absolutely everywhere. That is

because this race is known as the fight for pink. The leader wears a

pink jersey and in recent days that colour has just gone crazy in this

city. Even the famous yellow shipyard cranes have been left up

pink at night in honour of the race. -- let up.