Tuesday 18th November 2025. Nigeria kidnapping. DRC mine. Ukraine France jets. UK immigration. Poland sabotage. Chile elections...

Good morning. This is Sen7. World News in 7 Minutes. I'm Niall Moore. Today is Tuesday the 18th of November 2025. Today we're starting in Africa. In Nigeria, armed men have kidnapped 25 girls from a school in the northwestern Keby state. At 3 a.m. on Monday morning, a gang of armed men attacked the government girl's comprehensive secondary school. According to police, they "engaged police personnel on duty in a gun duel" before climbing over the fence and taking the students from their beds. The gunmen then forced the students to walk into nearby bushland. Local police say they have sent military, police and vigilante units to the area to look for the kidnapped girls. The vice principal at the school, Hassan Yakubu Makuku, was killed while trying to protect the students. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least 32 people have died after a bridge collapsed at the Colando cobalt mine in the south of the country. According to the DRC's government mining agency, miners who were not meant to be there tried to force their way in. Soldiers guarding the mine responded by firing warning shots. Panicked miners then rushed across the bridge, causing it to collapse. Europe Ukraine has signed a deal with France to buy 100 fighter jets over the next 10 years as well as radar, drones and air defense systems. French President Emmanuel Macron called it a "historic deal" and a new step forward for France's relationship with Ukraine. The United Kingdom has announced strict new rules for asylum seekers. The new rules are designed to make it easier for the UK to deport illegal immigrants and to reduce the number of asylum seekers in the country. The UK's immigration policy is set by the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who has called changing immigration policy "a moral mission" because illegal migration is "tearing our country apart". The Polish government has blamed two acts of sabotage on a railway line running between Poland and Ukraine on "a foreign state". On Sunday two incidents were reported. The first, an explosion which Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said was "likely intended to blow up a train". The second incident was damaged to an overhead power cable which forced a passenger train to make an emergency stop. The Polish government has not said who it blames for the incidents, but Prime Minister Tusk called it "an unprecedented act of sabotage aimed at the security of the Polish state and its citizens". America's Chile's presidential election will go to a runoff vote in December after no single candidate won a clear victory in the first round of voting. In the second round of voting next month, voters will choose between the two candidates who got the most votes this time, Jeanette Harrah from the Communist Party and José Antonio Cast, who is from the far right. In Ecuador, voters have said no to a proposal to allow foreign military bases in the country. The United States did once have a military base on Ecuador's Pacific coast, but in 2008 the Ecuadorian government forced it to close. Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa campaigned in favor of the US once again opening a military base in the country, arguing that having US soldiers in the country would help Ecuador tackle drug gangs responsible for a dramatic increase in violence in recent years. In the United States, President Donald Trump has said that Republicans in the House of Representatives should vote to release their so-called "epstein files". President Trump has previously tried to prevent the files from being released, calling them a "democrat hoax". Now, in a social media post, Trump has said they should be released because "we have nothing to hide". Asia. In Bangladesh, the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. In July 2024, students across Bangladesh protested against a rule that reserved 30% of government jobs for the relatives of military veterans. The protests continued for weeks and turned very violent as Sheikh Hasina allegedly ordered her security forces to stop the protesters by shooting them. Ultimately, the protesters were successful, and Hasina was forced to flee to India. Now, a court in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, has sentenced Hasina to death for committing "crimes against humanity" by her order to use drones, helicopters and lethal weapons against the student protesters. Hasina, who is still in India, responded to the sentence by saying "let them announce whatever verdict they want. It doesn't matter to me. Allah gave me this life and only He can end it. I will still serve my people". This is the moment the court in Dhaka announced its verdict on Sheikh Hasina. For all these three counts, we have decided to inflict her with only one sentence that is sentence of death. In Saudi Arabia, 45 pilgrims from India have died after the bus taking them from the Islamic holy city of Mecca to the city of Medina caught fire. The Indian pilgrims were from the city of Hyderabad in the Indian state of Telangana. They had travelled to Saudi Arabia for the Umrah pilgrimage, which is a shorter version of Hajj, the largest Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. And Pakistan has begun a two-week mission to vaccinate more than 57 million children against measles, rubella and polio. To help with the effort, the World Health Organization trained more than 140,000 health workers to support vaccination teams and reach millions of children around the country. That's your world news in seven minutes. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends to find simple English news daily in their podcast app. I'm Niall Moore. Tomorrow you will be with Stephen Devon-Chenzi. Have a great day.