1. Israel-Hamas Middle East Conflict 

The armed Palestinian militant group, Hamas, invaded Israel on Oct. 7, causing much death and destruction. Hamas also took hostages, including 14 Americans. Israel responded to the incursion with air strikes on the Gaza Strip, making it, once again, a battleground for Hamas and Israel.  The US has also sent aid, including two aircraft carrier groups, to Israel. Israel instructed nearly 1 million residents to leave their homes in Gaza before it invaded and killed

anybody that remained. The nearby countries including Lebanon (which houses a paramilitary group called Hezbollah) and Iran supported Hamas. Recently, there was a temporary cease-fire between Isreal and Hamas to release prisoners from both sides according to The Wall Street Journal. “It has created this new dynamic where most Israelis still feel that Israel has to get rid of Hamas, but the fact is, there is a new mechanism where Israel and Hamas can actually negotiate through mediation,” Mairav Zonszeinsaid to Wall Street Journal. Mairav Zonszeinsaid is a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution think tank  

2. Disney and ESPN to offer online sporting bets 

Disney has struck a deal with Penn Entertainment to bring gambling to ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network), allowing people to gamble on an app called ESPN Bet. Disney did this to attract a younger male audience and make a profit from online gambling. According to the Wall Street Journal, some Disney executives have said that bringing betting to ESPN might ruin Disney’s brand name as a kid’s show.  “My job is to protect the brand at all costs,”  James Pitaro, CEO of ESPN, said to the Wall Street Journal. “I am the custodian of the ESPN brand, and we needed to make sure that whoever we went with on this journey was someone that we could trust.”

3. Scientists use a gene editing tool to make chickens more resistant to bird flu

Scientists used a new gene editing technology called CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short Palindromic Repeats) on chickens to make them resistant to the bird flu, an illness that can also infect humans. This experiment suggests that genetic engineering could lessen the death count of the Bird Flu, and could also end the use of vaccines on domestic birds. However, there are risks associated with using gene editing techniques, such as creating a more resistant strain of Bird Flu. “The research is proof to the concept that we can move toward making chickens resistant to the virus but we are not there yet,” Wendy Barclay, a scientist of the study, said at a news conference.

4. Speaker of the House ousted from Congress 

Former speaker of the House Kevin Mcarthy was ousted from Congress following a 216-210 vote in the House on Oct. 5. This started when fellow congressman from Florida, Matt Gaetz, forced a vote to impeach McCarthy as he worked with Democrats to elude a government shutdown. Congress recently elected Mike Johnson from Louisiana to fill the speaker role.

5. Psyche rocket launched 

NASA recently launched a rocket to an asteroid named Psyche to evaluate the composition of rocks from the beginning of the solar system. It will take the rocket approximately 6 years to reach the asteroid. Once it arrives at Mars it will use its orbit to slingshot to the asteroid. It will arrive at the asteroid in 2029 and will take 2 years orbiting closer and closer to the asteroid to study its contents, according to CNN. If it is confirmed to be a metal-rich asteroid, it could contain 10 quintillion dollars worth of rich metals, according to Forbes.

6. The Biden administration is allowing for border wall construction 

In a shocking turn, the Biden Administration is expanding the south border wall due to an influx of illegal immigrants crossing the border. The Biden Administration said that they will be expanding the border wall 20 more miles. This decision was something President Biden promised he would not do when he was running for office, and is now receiving backlash from his own party for the expansion.  President Biden replied saying that he had no choice and the lawmakers wouldn’t let Biden use the money intended for the wall for something else. “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,”  Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary, said to NBC.