World News for Students of English

28-08-2019 07:00

There are currently hundreds of fires in the Amazon rainforest. The rainforest covers over 2.5 million square miles, so people have to use satellites to find the fires.

However, when they find a fire, it is difficult to fight it. There are few roads and the rainforest is so big that many fires cannot be controlled.

It is normal to see some fires in the Amazon, but right now there are 83% more fires than this time in 2018. The president of the International Association of Wildland Fire said that this year’s fires “are a catastrophe of global proportions.”

The Brazilian government is trying to deal with the wildfires, but the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, said that he does not have the resources to fight the current wildfire outbreak. He is thinking about sending soldiers to help fight the fires.

Difficult words: association (a group of people who work together on something), resources (money, people, cars, etc.), outbreak (the quick start of and growing of something bad).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.