# Wednesday 19th August 2026. Zambia election result. Nigeria Plateau attack. Ukraine missile strike. Russia drone assault...

An episode of [Simple English News Daily](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1505603790), 18 Aug 2026, 8:16.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/op3.dev/e/adbarker.com/stream/K1GF85x83ZWP88Cz18NfA8bx/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74270327/18_8_26_v3.mp3

World news in 7 minutes. Wednesday 19th August 2026. Today: Zambia election result. Nigeria Plateau attack. Ukraine missile strike. Russia drone assault. UK Ukraine support. UK Cambridge academic vigil. Pakistan Khan hospital. Indonesia daycare trial. Afghanistan female employment. US cryptocurrency fraud. US Ethiopia immigration. Colombia earthquake losses. Milky Way ancient merger. With Juliet Martin Become a SEND7 supporter! • Ad-free listening • Bonus quiz episode every Friday • Daily transcripts (written by us, not AI!) • Vocabulary lists • Wednesday worksheets • Ask questions in Ask Me Anything episodes • 10% of our profit goes to Effective Altruism charities. You can become a supporter at send7.supercast.com For more information about SEND7 visit send7.org/contact or send an email to podcast@send7.org

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Good morning. This is send seven world News in seven minutes.
[0:07] Speaker 1: I'm Juliet Martin and today is Wednesday, the nineteenth of
[0:12] Speaker 1: August twenty twenty six. Starting in Africa. Today, in Zambia,
[0:27] Speaker 1: President Hakkeyin Day Hitchilemma has been re elected for a
[0:32] Speaker 1: second term. Hitchilemma received around sixty percent of valid votes.
[0:40] Speaker 1: Opposition leader Brian Mundubilay received around thirty eight percent of votes.
[0:48] Speaker 1: During the counting of the vote, reports of violence against
[0:53] Speaker 1: polling staff and the theft of ballot papers caused the
[0:58] Speaker 1: Electoral Commission to pause proceedings. In Nigeria, at least twenty
[1:07] Speaker 1: five people were killed in an overnight attack on Monday
[1:12] Speaker 1: in Plateau State. According to local reports. Violence in Plateau
[1:19] Speaker 1: has been linked to disputes over land grazing rights and
[1:25] Speaker 1: resources Europe. In Ukraine, yesterday, a Russian missile attack killed
[1:37] Speaker 1: ten people in a village in Kkiv, in a location
[1:42] Speaker 1: with a post office and stores surrounded only by residential buildings,
[1:48] Speaker 1: according to President Vladimir Zelinski. Zelinski said that Ukraine would
[1:55] Speaker 1: respond to the attack. Also yesterday, Ukraine launched one of
[2:02] Speaker 1: its biggest assaults on the Moscow region in Russia, with
[2:08] Speaker 1: six hundred and twenty drones launched, according to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
[2:14] Speaker 1: According to reports, at least three people were injured in
[2:19] Speaker 1: the region. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said that
[2:26] Speaker 1: the United Kingdom will continue to support Ukraine after the
[2:32] Speaker 1: Russian embassy accused it of deliberately opting for an escalation
[2:38] Speaker 1: of the crisis by supplying attack drones to Ukraine.
[2:44] Speaker 2: This is the UK doing what it has long said
[2:48] Speaker 2: it would do, which is to support Ukraine one hundred
[2:52] Speaker 2: percent against this illegal war led by Vladimir Putin. We
[2:59] Speaker 2: are providing support so that Ukraine can defend itself and
[3:03] Speaker 2: that's been the British position all the way through this conflict.
[3:09] Speaker 1: Also in the United Kingdom, thousands of people attended a
[3:14] Speaker 1: vigil on Monday for University of Cambridge academic Jason R. Day.
[3:21] Speaker 1: Our Day was found dead last week after being accused
[3:25] Speaker 1: of plagiarism. He denied the allegations but acknowledged that he
[3:31] Speaker 1: had made mistakes. His family has said that he was
[3:36] Speaker 1: a victim of misinformation and harassment. Our Day had been
[3:42] Speaker 1: Cambridge's youngest black professor. Asia Pakistan's Supreme Court has ordered
[3:53] Speaker 1: that former Prime Minister Imran Khan should be moved from
[3:58] Speaker 1: jail to hospital. Kahan, who is seventy three years old,
[4:04] Speaker 1: has been in jail since August twenty twenty three. Following
[4:10] Speaker 1: appeals by his family, the court said that he would
[4:14] Speaker 1: be moved to Shifa International Hospital to ensure health and
[4:19] Speaker 1: safety of the prisoner. In Indonesia, the trial of eleven
[4:26] Speaker 1: daycare workers began yesterday after children were found tied up
[4:33] Speaker 1: at a day care center in April. Caregivers from the
[4:37] Speaker 1: center have been charged with neglect and abuse of children,
[4:43] Speaker 1: with one hundred and forty four child victims. According to police,
[4:49] Speaker 1: there were thirty two suspects in the case. According to
[4:55] Speaker 1: the United Nations International Labor Organization, the proportion of women
[5:02] Speaker 1: in Afghanistan's workforce has fallen to five point one percent
[5:08] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, compared to sixteen point five percent
[5:14] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. The Taliban, which took control of Afghanistan
[5:19] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, has placed restrictions on women's education
[5:26] Speaker 1: and employment. Afghanistan now has the lowest level of female
[5:32] Speaker 1: employment of any country apart from Yemen the Americas. A
[5:42] Speaker 1: United States citizen has been deported from Fiji after being
[5:48] Speaker 1: accused of running a one hundred and sixty five million
[5:52] Speaker 1: dollar cryptocurrency ponzi scheme. Edward Zimbardi has been indicted on
[6:00] Speaker 1: twelve counts of wire fraud and twelve counts of money laundering.
[6:07] Speaker 1: According to prosecutors, he offered investors a guaranteed twenty five
[6:13] Speaker 1: percent monthly return rate. Also in the United States, a
[6:20] Speaker 1: federal court has allowed President Donald Trump to end temporary
[6:26] Speaker 1: protected status for over five thousand Ethiopians. In June, the
[6:33] Speaker 1: Supreme Court allowed the status to be removed for people
[6:37] Speaker 1: from Haiti and Syria. Colombia's President Abellado de la Sbaa
[6:46] Speaker 1: has said that economic losses from last week's earthquake could
[6:51] Speaker 1: reach thirty trillion pesos around nine point six billion euros.
[6:59] Speaker 1: The earthquake killed two hundred and eighty people, injured more
[7:04] Speaker 1: than four thousand, and has left one hundred and forty
[7:08] Speaker 1: three missing. And scientists have discovered that the Milky Way,
[7:16] Speaker 1: the galaxy that Earth belongs to, swallowed a smaller galaxy
[7:22] Speaker 1: around eleven point eight billion years ago. Using the Hubble
[7:28] Speaker 1: and Gaia telescopes, researchers have estimated that the smaller dwarf
[7:34] Speaker 1: galaxy contained stars with five hundred million times more mass
[7:40] Speaker 1: than our sun. This is the Milky Way's earliest known
[7:45] Speaker 1: galactic merger. That's your world news in seven minutes. If
[7:52] Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends about us.
[7:56] Speaker 1: You can get in touch with us in a voice
[7:58] Speaker 1: message at some and seven dots dot org, or by
[8:01] Speaker 1: sending an email to podcast at senseven dot org. I'm
[8:07] Speaker 1: Juliet Martin Sen seven. We'll be back on Friday. Have
[8:12] Speaker 1: a lovely day,

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