# Monday 17th August 2026. Europe wildfires. France social media ban block. Hungary Danube sinking. Polish bus crash. Mexico seaweed...

An episode of [Simple English News Daily](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1505603790), 16 Aug 2026, 8:56.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/op3.dev/e/adbarker.com/stream/K1GF85x83ZWP88Cz18NfA8bx/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74152592/17_08_26.mp3

Become a supporter at send7.supercast.com for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, transcripts, vocabulary lists, worksheets, quizzes and more... The price will go up in September, so lock-in your lower price in August! World news in 7 minutes. Monday 17th August 2026. Today: Europe wildfires. France social media ban block. Ukraine-Russia attacks. Hungary Danube sinking. Polish bus crash. Mexico seaweed. US floods. Trump Hormuz. DRC Ebola origins. Morocco Ceuta border. Indonesia earthquake. Lebanon Israeli strike. Yemen Houthi attacks. Australia gun buyback. Library late return. With Stephen Devincenzi 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 seven World News in seven minutes.
[0:06] Speaker 1: I'm Stephen Devin Cenzi. Today is Monday, the seventeenth of
[0:10] Speaker 1: August twenty twenty six. Starting in Europe today, Belgium is
[0:22] Speaker 1: fighting its biggest wildfire ever recorded. Firefighters from Germany and
[0:28] Speaker 1: Luxembourg are helping to try to control it. In Croatia,
[0:34] Speaker 1: they have also been severe wildfires this weekend, with hundreds
[0:37] Speaker 1: of people forced to leave their homes and one person
[0:41] Speaker 1: reported to have died. There are also currently ongoing wildfires
[0:46] Speaker 1: in Greece, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Slovakia and Serbia. France's
[0:54] Speaker 1: top court has blocked a new law which would ban
[0:58] Speaker 1: children under fifteen from using social media. The court said
[1:03] Speaker 1: that the law violated rights of freedom of expression. President
[1:08] Speaker 1: Immanuel Macron has asked his government to rewrite the law.
[1:13] Speaker 1: Ukraine conducted a major drone attack on the Moscow region
[1:18] Speaker 1: this weekend, with Ukrainian officials saying that they hit a
[1:21] Speaker 1: military airfield and a rocket center being used to support
[1:26] Speaker 1: Russia's satellite internet network. Ukraine also hit a warehouse of
[1:31] Speaker 1: the wild Berry's online retailer. Various reports suggest Ukraine has
[1:36] Speaker 1: now damaged or destroyed around twenty percent of Wildberry's warehouse capacity.
[1:43] Speaker 1: Russia said that six people were killed in Ukrainian drone
[1:46] Speaker 1: strikes this weekend. Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine
[1:51] Speaker 1: killed at least seven people this weekend, with a Russian
[1:54] Speaker 1: attack also destroying a book market. Hungary has aybarately sunk
[2:01] Speaker 1: two barges in the Danube River in order to raise
[2:05] Speaker 1: water levels near the Pax nuclear power plant, which requires
[2:10] Speaker 1: water from the Danube for its cooling system. The plant
[2:14] Speaker 1: is working at only twenty five percent capacity because of
[2:17] Speaker 1: a lack of water. Also in Hungary, a bus of
[2:22] Speaker 1: Polish tourists crashed yesterday, killing at least ten people Americas.
[2:30] Speaker 1: In Mexico, authorities are attempting to remove masses of sargassum
[2:36] Speaker 1: seaweed from the Caribbean coast. In Quintana Roue State. Over
[2:42] Speaker 1: one hundred million kilograms of the foul smelling seaweed have
[2:46] Speaker 1: been removed in order to attempt to maintain a normal
[2:50] Speaker 1: tourist season, which relies on beaches. In the United States,
[2:56] Speaker 1: severe storms have caused floods in the Midwest, cutting the
[3:00] Speaker 1: electricity of around a million people in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
[3:06] Speaker 1: and Kentucky. Indiana has recorded six deaths related to the storms.
[3:12] Speaker 1: Also in the United States, during a political rally, President
[3:17] Speaker 1: Donald Trump said that the US would declare the Strait
[3:21] Speaker 1: of Hormuz to be a US territory, although it isn't
[3:25] Speaker 1: clear what he actually meant by that.
[3:28] Speaker 2: And after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very
[3:33] Speaker 2: badly defeated, pretty soon, I'll be declaring the Hormos straight
[3:43] Speaker 2: a territory of the United States.
[3:49] Speaker 1: Africa, the current ibola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of
[3:54] Speaker 1: the Congo was caused by a new transmission from animals
[3:59] Speaker 1: to humans, according to a new study published in the
[4:02] Speaker 1: medical journal Nature Medicine. Researchers from the DRC and other
[4:08] Speaker 1: countries say that the genetics of the current ibola strain
[4:12] Speaker 1: show that it was not a mutation from a previous
[4:15] Speaker 1: strain in humans, but started with a new animal to
[4:19] Speaker 1: human transmission. There is currently no vaccine for this strain,
[4:23] Speaker 1: called bundibugyo. However, a vaccine is being trialed. In Morocco,
[4:30] Speaker 1: border police dispersed migrants attempting to cross into the Spanish
[4:34] Speaker 1: exclave of Selta this weekend. There were reports of social
[4:39] Speaker 1: media messages calling for another mass crossing, as there was
[4:43] Speaker 1: two weeks ago. Reutter's has reported that Moroccan police arrested
[4:48] Speaker 1: one hundred and eleven people, mostly migrants from Sub Saharan Africa,
[4:54] Speaker 1: Asia and Oceania. In Indonesia, a seven point seven magi
[5:00] Speaker 1: nitude earthquake struck on Saturday close to the island of Flores.
[5:04] Speaker 1: At least fifty three people are known to have died
[5:07] Speaker 1: and thousands of people were forced to leave their homes.
[5:11] Speaker 1: In Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike on a house has killed
[5:15] Speaker 1: seven people, according to Lebanon's state news agency. Israel said
[5:20] Speaker 1: that it targeted Hesbola members after actions against Israeli soldiers.
[5:26] Speaker 1: In Palestine's West Bank, there is an ongoing standoff between
[5:31] Speaker 1: Palestinian villages and Israeli settlers around the village of Kuzra,
[5:36] Speaker 1: where Palestinians say that they have been trapped inside their
[5:40] Speaker 1: homes for a week after Israeli settlers blocked roads and
[5:44] Speaker 1: surrounded their houses. This weekend, some Israeli and foreign activists
[5:50] Speaker 1: attempted to deliver food to the Palestinian families, but were
[5:54] Speaker 1: stopped by the Israeli military. According to Reuters. In Yemen,
[6:00] Speaker 1: the WHO, the group which controls western Yemen, has continued
[6:04] Speaker 1: attacks on ports in Eastern Yemen controlled by the internationally
[6:08] Speaker 1: recognized governments WHO. These say that they are imposing a
[6:12] Speaker 1: blockade on Saudi Arabia. Australia has announced that people will
[6:17] Speaker 1: be able to give in guns for money in a
[6:21] Speaker 1: plan known as a gun buyback scheme. The Australian government
[6:25] Speaker 1: is attempting to reduce the number of guns in Australia
[6:29] Speaker 1: after an Islamist attack on Jewish people in Sydney which
[6:33] Speaker 1: killed fifteen people. Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi said that the
[6:38] Speaker 1: scheme will start to buy back guns in November.
[6:42] Speaker 3: Following the deeply any Semitic terrorist attack on Bondai Beach
[6:48] Speaker 3: on the four ninth of December twenty twenty five, National
[6:53] Speaker 3: Cabinet stood in solidarity and met the next day. We
[6:56] Speaker 3: agreed to action to eradicate any Semitism and to strengthen
[7:00] Speaker 3: gun laws across the nation. Our governments are progressing with
[7:05] Speaker 3: the national gun buybacked scheme, with neusatwaials of perse state
[7:09] Speaker 3: to open a scheme on the tecond of November two
[7:13] Speaker 3: and twenty six.
[7:15] Speaker 1: And also in Australia, a book has been returned to
[7:19] Speaker 1: a library one hundred and fifty years overdue. Ross Simmons
[7:26] Speaker 1: found the book while renovating his home. It was in
[7:30] Speaker 1: a box which had been enclosed inside a sealed fireplace.
[7:34] Speaker 1: Simmons thought that the book might have been taken out
[7:37] Speaker 1: of the Kiama Town Library by his great great grandfather
[7:41] Speaker 1: John Simmons, who had lived in that house one hundred
[7:44] Speaker 1: and fifty years ago. The library has said that they
[7:48] Speaker 1: will put the book, which is about Greek antiquities, in
[7:51] Speaker 1: its local history collection, but it won't be available to
[7:55] Speaker 1: borrow anymore. We are on a semi break at the moment,
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[8:08] Speaker 1: this is the best time to become a Sen seven supporter,
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[8:52] Speaker 1: you will be with Juliet Martin. Have a great day.

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