# Tuesday 29th September 2026. Spain housing protests. UK plot. France Pope. Brazil election. South Africa white genocide. Screen effects...

An episode of [Simple English News Daily](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1505603790), 28 Sep 2026, 8:44.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/op3.dev/e/adbarker.com/stream/K1GF85x83ZWP88Cz18NfA8bx/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75418752/29_09_26.mp3

Receive the free Friday newsletter : send7.org/newsletter World news in 7 minutes. Tuesday 29th September 2026. Today: Spain housing protests. UK plot. France Pope. Brazil election. Screen effects. Chile employment. South Africa white genocide. DRC killing. Korea prisoners. Uzbekistan young master. 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 Sign up for the free newsletter at send7.org/newsletter 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 Send7 World News in 7 Minutes.
[0:06] Speaker 1: I'm Stephen Devincenzi. Today is Tuesday the 29th of September, 2026.
[0:12] Speaker 1: Starting in Europe today. In Spain, there are ongoing protests
[0:15] Speaker 1: against a shortage of housing and rising rents. with hundreds
[0:31] Speaker 1: of people camping in tents outside Madrid's regional government building.
[0:37] Speaker 1: The protests grew last week after an 87-year-old woman was
[0:43] Speaker 1: evicted from the apartment she has lived in for 71
[0:48] Speaker 1: years after she was unable to pay the rent after
[0:52] Speaker 1: the investment company which owns the apartment dramatically raised the rent.
[0:59] Speaker 1: In the United Kingdom, police have said that they are
[1:02] Speaker 1: questioning five British men suspected of plotting to attack an
[1:08] Speaker 1: airbase used by the United States this weekend. Media reports
[1:13] Speaker 1: have said that a local farmer alerted the police after
[1:17] Speaker 1: he became suspicious of three vans close to the base.
[1:22] Speaker 1: The Iranian embassy in London has said in a statement
[1:25] Speaker 1: that it rejected and condemned speculation that Iran was involved
[1:31] Speaker 1: in a plot, and said that this story would fuel Iranophobia.
[1:36] Speaker 1: British police have not specifically said that they suspected a
[1:40] Speaker 1: connection to Iran. However, they have said that they are
[1:45] Speaker 1: investigating whether the men were working for a foreign state.
[1:50] Speaker 1: In France, Pope Leo has finished the first papal visit
[1:55] Speaker 1: to France. since 2008. On Saturday, over 700,000 people came
[2:02] Speaker 1: to the Pope's Mass in Paris. On Sunday, the Pope
[2:06] Speaker 1: led a candlelight procession in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes.
[2:11] Speaker 1: In Lourdes, he also met with survivors of child abuse
[2:15] Speaker 1: by Catholic priests. Yesterday, the Pope held an inter-religious meeting
[2:21] Speaker 1: and a Mass in the north-eastern city of Metz. The
[2:25] Speaker 1: Pope conducted all activity in French, one of the five
[2:28] Speaker 1: languages he speaks. America's Brazil has general elections on Sunday.
[2:38] Speaker 1: In the presidential election, opinion polls are showing an extremely
[2:43] Speaker 1: close race between President Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro,
[2:49] Speaker 1: son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. If Flavio Bolsonaro wins,
[2:55] Speaker 1: he is expected to pardon his father, who is currently
[2:58] Speaker 1: serving a prison sentence for attempting to stop the transfer
[3:03] Speaker 1: of power after losing the last presidential election to Lula.
[3:09] Speaker 1: In the United States, over 20 senior artificial intelligence researchers
[3:15] Speaker 1: have released a report warning about a possible intelligence explosion
[3:21] Speaker 1: that Geoffrey Hinton, who is often nicknamed the godfather of AI,
[3:27] Speaker 1: is one of the people who wrote the report. An
[3:30] Speaker 1: intelligence explosion would be a situation in which artificial intelligence
[3:35] Speaker 1: becomes much more capable very quickly through self-improvement, possibly leading
[3:42] Speaker 1: to AI that humans can no longer understand or control.
[3:47] Speaker 1: Speaking to journalists on Sunday, President Donald Trump said that
[3:51] Speaker 1: he wasn't worried about AI safety.
[3:54] Speaker 2: Is there any part of you that worries at all
[3:56] Speaker 2: about AI going rogue? Well, I don't worry about it.
[3:59] Speaker 2: I just, you know, it's a huge industry. It's really
[4:02] Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution, maybe bigger. You know, they actually say
[4:05] Speaker 2: it could be bigger than the Industrial Revolution.
[4:07] Speaker 3: Who would think that?
[4:09] Speaker 2: And it is, in fact, bigger than the Internet. And
[4:12] Speaker 2: we're leading and we're building tremendous, you know, trillions of
[4:15] Speaker 2: dollars worth of places. And why should we give that up?
[4:19] Speaker 2: If something is bad, they have to fix it. And
[4:22] Speaker 2: if they don't fix it, that's why you have the
[4:24] Speaker 2: Department of Justice.
[4:26] Speaker 1: Children using screens for longer are more likely to have
[4:32] Speaker 1: lower academic achievement, emotional problems, and language development problems, according
[4:39] Speaker 1: to a massive study of 2.8 million children across 64 countries.
[4:45] Speaker 1: The review, published in the United States Journal, pediatrics journal
[4:49] Speaker 1: JAMA found that many developmental areas were affected by children
[4:55] Speaker 1: spending extended periods of time on digital devices or using
[5:00] Speaker 1: social media, with the effects being as severe as family wealth,
[5:05] Speaker 1: parental behaviour, or whether a child was born prematurely. Chile's president,
[5:13] Speaker 1: José Antonio Cast, has announced a $ 1. 3 billion plan, to
[5:18] Speaker 1: create 100,000 jobs. Unemployment in Chile is almost 10%, the
[5:24] Speaker 1: highest it has been since during the Covid pandemic in 2021.
[5:31] Speaker 1: Africa South Africa's new ambassador to the United States has
[5:36] Speaker 1: said that there is no genocide of white people in
[5:40] Speaker 1: South Africa, as the Trump administration has claimed. Rolf Mayer,
[5:45] Speaker 1: who is himself a white Afrikaner, said in an interview
[5:49] Speaker 1: with the BBC that the situation is misrepresented.
[5:53] Speaker 3: I mean, I'm an Afrikaner from South Africa myself, and
[5:59] Speaker 3: I can say that I've never experienced something of that kind.
[6:04] Speaker 1: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a politician from
[6:08] Speaker 1: the ruling UDPS party has been killed by a group
[6:12] Speaker 1: of people who also stole from him. and set his
[6:16] Speaker 1: house on fire, according to the UDPS. The party said
[6:21] Speaker 1: that Marie-Célestin Carondwa was attacked after appearing on a radio
[6:26] Speaker 1: show in which he spoke about the measures to prevent
[6:30] Speaker 1: the spread of Ebola. There have been many attacks on
[6:34] Speaker 1: healthcare workers over the last few months as rumours and
[6:38] Speaker 1: misinformation has spread about Ebola. Asia South Korea has received
[6:47] Speaker 1: two North Korean prisoners of war from Ukraine. North Korea
[6:52] Speaker 1: has sent thousands of soldiers to fight for Russia, and
[6:56] Speaker 1: approximately 6,000 are believed to have been killed, according to
[7:00] Speaker 1: South Korea. During a speech in April, North Korean leader
[7:05] Speaker 1: Kim Jong-un praised North Korean soldiers who committed suicide on
[7:10] Speaker 1: the battlefield. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly last week,
[7:15] Speaker 1: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that one of the captured
[7:20] Speaker 1: North Koreans attempted to kill himself when he realized he
[7:24] Speaker 1: was going to be captured by Ukrainian soldiers.
[7:28] Speaker 3: Recently, we sent two North Korean prisoners of war to
[7:32] Speaker 3: the Republic of Korea. These guys are not easy to
[7:37] Speaker 3: capture alive. One of them went here realized he was
[7:43] Speaker 3: going to be taken prisoner, tried to kill himself. And
[7:48] Speaker 3: he was shocked that fate didn't let him die.
[7:54] Speaker 1: Despite being allies, yesterday, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung criticized
[8:00] Speaker 1: Ukraine for talking openly about the transfer of the prisoners,
[8:05] Speaker 1: saying that Ukraine had agreed to keep it a secret.
[8:10] Speaker 1: And in Uzbekistan, British chess player Budana Sivanandan has become
[8:16] Speaker 1: the youngest ever WGM woman grandmaster, aged 11. That's your
[8:24] Speaker 1: World News in 7 minutes. If you enjoy this podcast,
[8:28] Speaker 1: I'm sure you will also like the free weekly email
[8:32] Speaker 1: newsletter which combines the week's news with learning English. Sign
[8:36] Speaker 1: up for free at send7. org slash newsletter have a great
[8:41] Speaker 1: day see you tomorrow

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