Domestic:
New Supreme Court Term – The Supreme Court began a new term on Monday, with many major decisions on its docket. Issues such as gun rights, government power, race and free speech are all on their docket this term. Some judges face scrutiny for their conduct off the bench. For the past three years, the Court’s conservative majority has contributed to many conservative victories on affirmative action, abortion and gun rights. However, their most recent term which ended this summer featured the occasional liberal victory, so the question for this term will be whether that bipartisan behavior can continue or if we’ll see the 6-3 voting behavior resume.
Sam Bankman-Fried Trial – The trial for the founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, got underway this past Tuesday with a jury selection almost a year after the collapse and bankruptcy of FTX. A group of 50 prospective jurors will be cut down to a panel of 12 jurors and six alternates, who will sit in and judge the trial for the next six weeks. Bankman-Fried is accused of embezzling funds from customers since FTX’s founding in 2019 up until its bankruptcy in November 2022. Prosecutors believe he used that money to prop up his hedge fund Alameda Research, buy luxury properties and donate over $100 million to U.S. political candidates. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, acknowledging that he did not take proper risk measures but denying any accusation of stealing funds.
International:
Malaria on the uprise – After declining to a historic low in 2015, malaria cases and deaths are back on the rise. Between 2000 and 2015, malaria cases dropped by a third worldwide, and mortality was cut in half. However, after hitting a record low of 575,000 malaria deaths in 2019, malaria deaths rose back up in the following years reaching 620,000 in 2021. Climate change has brought mosquitoes that carry viruses causing dengue and chikungunya to spread to areas they have never been in before. This past summer, the United States was hit with its first locally transmitted case of malaria, something that hasn’t happened in 20 years. One of the major reasons these diseases are spreading so rapidly again is because of how adaptable mosquitoes are. Not only are they adapting immunity to the insecticides used to kill them, but more and more mosquitoes are outside and biting in the daylight rather than their usual strategy of getting indoors and biting at night. Scientists are continuing to develop insecticides to combat mosquitoes, but it is a race between insecticides and mosquitoes as to who can resist each other first.
This past week, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to scientists who have reached the top of their field. Tuesday, the Nobel Physics Prize was awarded to Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for creating ultra-short pulses of light that can give a snapshot of changes within atoms, potentially leading to better detection of disease. Krausz compares the discovery to a fast-shutter camera taking sharp snapshots of fast movements. This discovery allows scientists to observe the movement of electrons, something that was once thought impossible. L’Huillier and Agostini are both French and were congratulated by French President Emmanuel Macron on social media. L’Huillier herself is the fifth woman to receive a Nobel Physics Prize and was notified of her award in the middle of a lecture (which she then continued). This was the second Nobel Prize awarded this week after Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and her American colleague Drew Weissman received the medicine prize for mRNA molecule discoveries that aided in the creation of COVID-19 vaccines. On Friday, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced.
