Audrey Goetz

6.3 Earthquake In Afghanistan

On October 7th, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 shook the western Herat province and Herat city, leaving Taliban officials estimating 2,000 people killed. The damage continued as it leveled whole villages in the Herat province. The destruction of their homes affected around 4,200 people, leaving many homeless (CNN). The earthquake was considered among the most destructive in the country’s recent history. 

Failed rocket hits Gaza hospital

Tuesday brought about a shock as a rocket hit the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital parking lot in Gaza City. While Hamas was quick to blame Israel for this explosion, evidence soon surfaced from the IDF and US intel that it was actually a failed rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists (DW). The death toll is not clear, but Hamas officials put it at around 500. However this information was released 15 minutes after the explosion. US intel puts it around 100-300 people dead. The hospital itself suffered little structural damage as the location of the hit was the parking lot. 

Biden’s visit to Israel

President Biden on Tuesday visited Tel Aviv, Israel to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was viewed as the US strongly supporting Israel and its right to defend itself. After meeting up with the prime minister, Biden was then supposed to continue on and go to Amman and discuss humanitarian aid to different leaders from Arab nations (NPR). However this was put on hold after the Gaza hospital blast. The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas canceled the meeting, calling for three days of mourning. 

Jim Jordan loses vote

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan was unable to muster enough votes last week to keep in the Speaker race, with 20 Republicans and every Democrat refusing to vote for him. This comes after the ousting of the former speaker of the house Kevin McCarthy, which the CHAT covered earlier this month. This effectively froze any upcoming legislation until a new speaker came forth (Newsweek).  More recently, Mike Johnson has become the new speaker of the house this Wednesday.

China real estate in trouble 

Many Chinese citizens recently invested their money into companies like Country Garden and Evergrande, companies  which would then take the money and build more apartments around China. However the problem soon arose that the two largest building companies had no way of paying back that money, leaving them to have a combined debt of $500 billion (New York Times).This has left Country Garden with over 400,000 apartments sold, but not finished. In China, almost every citizen invested in apartments because there were so many being built. Many citizens are not getting paid back or receiving that money in full from building companies.