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.
In this episode
0:01 Opening
0:19 Israel's president gives Netanyahu's rival the first chance to lead
MyFirst.News is a daily news podcast for curious kids. Sam and Leah unpack one important true story each day in about five minutes—clearly, factually, and without graphic detail. Every episode ends with a question to discuss together. Grown-ups can read how it’s made.
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.
