Tuesday 5th August 2025. Israel open letter. Ethiopian migrants. India rape conviction. UK China universities...

World news in 7 minutes. Tuesday 5th August 2025.
Today: Israel open letter. Ethiopian migrants. India rape conviction. UK China universities. UK gonorrhea vaccine. Ukraine corruption. US Texan lawmakers. Chile miners. Nigeria kidnappings. South Africa rhino horn.

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Since 2020, SEND7 (Simple English News Daily in 7 minutes) has been telling the most important world news stories in intermediate English. Every day, listen to the most important stories from every part of the world in slow, clear English. Whether you are an intermediate learner trying to improve your advanced, technical and business English, or if you are a native speaker who just wants to hear a summary of world news as fast as possible, join Stephen Devincenzi, Juliet Martin and Niall Moore every morning. Transcripts, vocabulary lists, worksheets and our weekly world news quiz are available for our amazing supporters at send7.org. Simple English News Daily is the perfect way to start your day, by practising your listening skills and understanding complicated daily news in a simple way. It is also highly valuable for IELTS and TOEFL students. Students, teachers, TEFL teachers, and people with English as a second language, tell us that they use SEND7 because they can learn English through hard topics, but simple grammar. We believe that the best way to improve your spoken English is to immerse yourself in real-life content, such as what our podcast provides. SEND7 covers all news including politics, business, natural events and human rights. Whether it is happening in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas or Oceania, you will hear it on SEND7, and you will understand it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning. This is send seven World News in seven minutes.
I'm Nil Moore. Today is Tuesday, the fifth of August
twenty twenty five. Today we're starting in Asia and Oceania.

(00:24):
In Israel, six hundred retired security officials have asked United
States President Donald Trump to stop the war in Gaza.
The group, which includes former heads of Israeli intelligence agencies,
wrote an open letter to President Trump saying quote Hamas

(00:46):
no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel. You have
the ability to steer Prime Minister net In Yahoo and
his government in the right direction. End the war, return
the hostages, stop the suffering. A boat carrying one hundred
and fifty four Ethiopian migrants has capsized off the coast

(01:11):
of Yemen. According to the United Nations Migration Agency, twelve
people have been found alive, sixty eight are confirmed dead,
and the rest are missing. Many people from East Africa
and the Horn of Africa travel on dangerous, overcrowded boats

(01:31):
across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, hoping to
find work in wealthy Arab countries. Hundreds of people have
died or gone missing in shipwrecks near Yemen in recent months.
In India, a former member of Parliament, pradral Ravana, has

(01:52):
been sentenced to life in prison for raping a member
of his domestic staff. Comes from an important political family
in India. His grandfather is the former Indian Prime Minister
HD deve Galda. In twenty twenty four, Ravana fled India

(02:13):
after sexually explicit videos of him were put on social
media by his former driver. At the time, Ravana claimed
that the videos were doctored, but when he returned to
India in May twenty twenty four, he was arrested and
charged with three counts of rape and one count of

(02:35):
sexual assault Europe. In the United Kingdom, a new report
has accused the Chinese government of interfering with UK universities.
The report, by a think tank called UK China Transparency

(02:55):
says that some Chinese students have been told to spy
on their class mates, and some Chinese academics have been
threatened for talking about issues that are sensitive in China,
like COVID nineteen or alleged human rights abuses against the Wigas,
an ethnic group from China's Xinjiang Province. A spokesperson for

(03:20):
the Chinese Embassy in London called the report groundless and absurd.
Also in the United Kingdom, the world's first vaccine for Gonerreea,
a sexually transmitted disease, is now available from the UK's
National Health Service. The vaccine is predicted to prevent one

(03:42):
hundred thousand cases of GONERRIEA in the UK over the
next ten years. Ukraine's anti corruption agencies say that they
have uncovered a major fraud scheme in the military. Four
people have been arrested, including politicians and soldiers in Ukraine's

(04:03):
National Guard. They are accused of using government money to
overpay for drones and other military equipment, keeping the extra
money for themselves. Just ten days ago, Ukrainian President Voladimir
Zelenski tried to bring the two anti corruption agencies that

(04:26):
uncovered this fraud under government control, but last week, after
public protests, he restored their independence. In a post on
x President Zelenski called the fraud quote absolutely immoral and
thanked the anti corruption agencies for their work. Americas. In

(04:51):
the United States, fifty one Democrat lawmakers from Texas have
fled the state to prevent a vote on a new
congressional map. The Republican Party in Texas wants to redefine
voting districts so that more areas have a Republican majority,

(05:12):
meaning that in next year's midterm elections, Republicans will win
more seats in the US House of Representatives. But the
rules in Texas say that a vote can only happen
if at least one hundred out of one hundred and
fifty lawmakers are present, so fifty one Democrats left the state,

(05:38):
making the vote impossible for now. The Democrat lawmakers will
get a five hundred dollar fine for each day that
they are absent, and the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton,
a Republican, has called them cowards who should be found
and arrested. The leader of Texas Democrats, Gene Wu, says

(06:03):
that the fifty one Democrat lawmakers had no choice.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
We tried to negotiate Republicans, We tried to targe to them,
We tried to reason with them. We try to tell
them that the public is very angry at what they're doing,
and they simply wouldn't listen. This was the only way
we could protect our constituents and protect the state.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
In Chile, a fifth body has been found by rescue
workers searching for trapped miners five men were trapped deep
underground last Thursday when an earthquake caused the tunnels they
were in to collapse. Emergency services worked throughout the weekend

(06:43):
to find and free the miners, but none survived. Africa,
in the northwest of Nigeria, eleven people have been killed
and seventy have been kidnapped by armed men on motorbikes.
The attack took place in the village of Sabongari Damri

(07:06):
in Zamfara State on Saturday evening. Attacks such as this
are relatively common in Zamfara State, with hundreds killed and
thousands kidnapped in recent years. These criminal groups, known locally
as bandits, often hold people captive for months, demanding a

(07:29):
ransom for their release. And in South Africa, scientists are
saving rhinos from poachers by injecting their horns with radioactive material.
This means that the rhinos horn is no longer valuable
to poachers because if they try to smuggle it out

(07:50):
of the country, customs officials would detect the radiation and
stop them. Though the radiation is powerful enough to be
detected inside a shipping container, it is completely harmless to
the rhinos. During August, this podcast is only released on

(08:11):
Tuesdays and Fridays, but we will be back in September
five days a week. If you enjoy Send seven and
you'd like to have access to all of our transcripts,
vocabulary lists, worksheets and world news quizzes, you can become
a supporter at sendseven dot org. During August, there is

(08:34):
a ten euro discount on becoming a yearly supporter using
the discount code August twenty twenty five. The next episode
will be on Friday with Stephen Devinchenzi. Have a great day,