World News for Students of English

02-06-2021 07:00

Australia’s rushing to legalize a dangerous poison in a bid to wipe out a plague of mice.

Millions of rodents have been destroying crops and stored grain across the country’s south-east. It’s a cruel blow to farmers in a region that’s already ravaged by wildfires, floods, and drought. According to the Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall, Australia was at a critical point and if the country didn’t significantly reduce the number of mice by spring, it would cause an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New South Wales.

The state government’s ordered 5,000 liters of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India; however, critics fear that it could kill not only mice but also the animals that prey on them in the wild.

Difficult words: plague (an unusually large number of animals or insects that cause a lot of damage), ravage (to cause severe and extensive damage to something), prey (to hunt and kill for food).

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