Learning English from the News

Just weeks after hundreds of grocery stores in France were hit by cyber-attacks, shops in Belgium, Sweden, Ireland, Luxembourg and Estonia have also been attacked.

The attacks, which increased temperatures in fridges and freezers across Europe, have forced stores to throw away lots of food. In some cases, fridges in stores got to 50C, and some supermarkets in France have experienced fires.

Since these attacks on fridges and freezers, people are concerned about how much we use or rely on things that are connected to the internet that could potentially be controlled and hackers.

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Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, a left-wing candidate in Brazil, has been elected as president for the fourth time after a second round of voting. His victory came as a surprise to many after he lost the first round of the election.

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Gen Zs, those are people born between the late 90s and early 2010s, are protesting different issues, such as the quality of their education, job opportunities and voter rights. There have been protests in many countries including Albania, France, Italy, India and Spain. Learn more about this story with Becca and Georgie.

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14 people have been killed and over 300 injured in two attacks on Riyadh international airport in Saudi Arabia over the weekend. There were also a series of other attacks earlier in the week. The Houthis, a militant group in Yemen, said they were behind the attacks, and that they are targeting Saudi Arabia over its support for government forces in Yemen's civil war. A Saudi government minister has said the country will have a ‘serious response’ to the attacks.

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Pupils say that they are protesting because their schools are not being well funded. Since protests began, over 6,000 people have been arrested and a number of students and police officers have been hurt.

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An independent review into mental health has found a rise in mental distress among children and young people, with anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders among the most common issues.

Head of the review, Professor Peter Fonagy, says that accusations that young people are overly sensitive are wrong. He says it is now “harder to be young” due to challenges such as economic and employment uncertainty and problems caused by social media.

Some are unsure about the new data as some of the sources rely on self-reporting. There is also an argument which says that the higher mental distress numbers could be because of changing attitudes and greater awareness, so more people feel able to report their problems.

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US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping will meet in a summit at the White House this week for the first time since 2023, following on from a President Trump’s visit to China earlier this year in which a truce was agreed.

Before the truce was agreed, both the US and China had imposed high tarrifs on products coming in from the other country. The truce will end in November and many experts say that the two countries will try to extend their truce and make more agreements on trade.

Alongside trade tariffs, there are other potential disagreements between the two leaders. For example over AI and the war in Iran. There are talks about a warning system for AI that Trump plans to share with Xi.

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Head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, published an essay explaining how he feared that humans could lose control of AI systems. Following recent hacking incidents Amodei said that it is possible that AI systems could attempt to take over the entire internet.

Meanwhile, AI experts have raised fears that AI systems could decide in future to kill all humans. These experts have said that the risks include: cyberattacks, biological warfare and disruption to economies.

These statements have been criticised. Some have said that the fears are exaggerated while others have suggested that AI companies are overstating the potential impact of AI, so that their companies maintain a high value. Others have suggested that they want regulators to block their competitors.

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A transplanted pig kidney has worked inside a patient for a record nine months. Learn about this news story in simpler English with Becca and Phil.

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More than 1,000 people have been confirmed dead after last week’s flash floods on the border of Nepal and Tibet, according to Nepal’s disaster agency.

Almost 4,000 people are still missing. Rescuers are trying to reach hundreds of workers who have been trapped in a large network of tunnels at hydropower sites.

Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah said on Monday that 279 people had been rescued from the sites.

A key cause of the deadly floods is thought to be a glacier collapse in the Himalayas. A glacier is a large area of dense ice.

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