Learning English from the News

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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AI has been hacking other companies during tests, causing fears over safety. There’s been a series of hacks by AI software in recent months. A hack is when secure technology is broken into in order to steal data or cause disruption.

The AI hacks have occurred during testing of security systems which have gone wrong. For example, in July, the company OpenAI said its AI models hacked a company called Hugging Face. OpenAI said it lost control of the models during a security test.

Many people are concerned about the recent hacks because AI has been able to get out of control and do things its creators didn’t want it to do.

But technology companies that develop AI say that they care about security. For example, after its AI models hacked a company during security tests, OpenAI has said it’s slowing down training some of its AI software to improve security.

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Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has gone on trial, accused of breaking state and federal laws around child privacy. The trial is expected to last around six weeks.

The lawsuit has been filed by 29 US states, representing more than two thirds of the country's population. This is the largest of a number of lawsuits against Meta relating to child safety.

This trial may require a payout of $200 billion in damages from Meta if they lose the case and the court could also force the company to make changes to its products.

Meta denies the allegations saying that it removes child accounts and that it is taking steps to improve teenagers' wellbeing on their platforms.

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Many parts of Europe will experience a solar eclipse, when the Moon blocks the light from the Sun, on Wednesday evening. It will be the first in Europe since 1999.

Total eclipses are rare events but in the next few years, there will be a few. Following this summer's eclipse there will be a total eclipse in Egypt next August, and a third in Australia and New Zealand in July 2028.

Looking directly at the Sun can damage your eyes, even during an eclipse. You can wear special eclipse glasses which block out most of the light so you can look at the Sun safely.

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