World News for Students of English

10-05-2016 07:00

People burned over 100 tons of ivory in Kenya. The confiscated ivory amounts to the tusks of about 7,000 elephants.

Kenya’s president set the eleven big piles of ivory on fire. African leaders and celebrities joined him. The president also gave a speech about the country’s plan to stop the ivory trade, a trade which means death to elephants.

Some people, however, do not agree with the burning of ivory. They say that destroying so much ivory could make the price of it go up and cause more elephant killing. Botswana, which is home to about half of Africa’s elephants, is against the burning, and its president did not come to the event.

Difficult words: ivory (the white material of an elephant’s tusks), confiscate (to take something with authority, often something illegal), tusks (the horns that come out of the front of an animal, such as an elephant), pile (a mass of something in one place).

You can read the original story and watch the video in the Level 3 section.