MyFirst.News

COP31, the United Nations' yearly climate summit, opened in Antalya, Türkiye, with nearly every country taking part. Sam and Leah explain why no country can stop Earth from heating up alone, why a deal only works if no country blocks it, and what countries are arguing about this year: using much more electricity, and whether that electricity can come from burning natural gas. They also explain why America's government isn't sending a team, while leaders of American states and cities are going anyway.

In Israel, people vote for parties, and whoever wants to be prime minister needs support from sixty-one of the one hundred twenty lawmakers. After a close election, nobody has that many. Sam and Leah explain why Israel's president is giving Gadi Eisenkot, the main rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first chance to build a government, and why the lawmakers who want him to try don't all agree on working together.

This year, more than five thousand people in America caught measles, a sickness the country once said it had stopped. Leah and Sam explain why. Measles spreads very easily, but two shots protect almost everyone who gets them, and when nearly everyone in a town is protected, the virus has a hard time spreading. Fewer kids are getting the shots now, and health experts from across the Americas are checking whether measles has kept spreading here for more than a year.

This week, about three million people in Paraguay opened their bank app and their money was stuck. Sam and Leah explain why. A bank lends out some of the money people save, so bank checkers make sure it always keeps enough to give back. Paraguay's bank checkers found a bank called ueno had lent lots of money to companies linked to its own owners and ran short. Most customers are being paid back. Critics say President Santiago Peña helped the bank, which he denies, and Congress is now deciding whether to remove him.

When Joshua Wong was in school, he got his classmates to complain about expensive school lunches. Now he's thirty, and a judge in Hong Kong has given him ten more years in prison. Leah and Sam explain why. Hong Kong is a city in China that was promised it could keep freedoms like free speech and protesting. After huge protests, China's government made a new law, and asking other countries to punish China's leaders became a crime. People disagree about whether Joshua broke a fair law or was punished for speaking up.

Late on election night, President Trump posted a picture of a red hat with one word on it: veto. Sam and Leah explain why. A new law needs three yeses: the House, the Senate, and the president. In Tuesday's midterm election, Democrats won more than half of both the House and the Senate, while the president is a Republican. So each side can now say no, and they'll have to make deals to get new laws made.

Today grown-ups across America are voting, but not for president. So how could their votes change what the president can do? Leah and Sam start with a permission slip that needs three yeses: the House, the Senate, and the president. They explain political parties, why the House and part of the Senate are chosen every two years, and what changes if a different party wins more than half of either group. They also explain why some results could take days to count.

Sam and Leah explain why Bolivia, a country with no ocean coast, declared a national emergency because of the Pacific Ocean. They start with how warm water makes rain and how wind pushes warm water across the Pacific, then show what happens when that wind gets weak: El Niño. This one could become one of the strongest scientists have measured, bringing drought to some parts of Bolivia and flood risk to others, and it can change winter weather in the United States too.

Leah and Sam explain why hundreds of thousands of young people marched through cities in Europe this weekend. They start with who pays for schools and what a protest is, then follow how French high-school students' marches over leaky ceilings and missing teachers spread to Italy, Germany and Portugal, what the students want now, what France has promised, and why the students say it isn't enough.

Sam and Leah explain the standoff at Poland's Constitutional Tribunal, the court that decides whether the country's laws follow its constitution. They unpack how a years-long dispute over who chose its judges led a newly elected judge to announce the suspension of the court's leaders on Friday, why those leaders call it an illegal takeover, why Poland's president flew home, and why even people who want the court fixed disagree about whether this move was allowed.