Good morning, and welcome to Kid News! I'm Tori.

Today is Monday, October 9, 2023.

Depending on where you live, it's either Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day.

And we begin with a spooky pre-Halloween fright in California.

Up and down the state, spiders are falling from the clear blue sky.

They're wrapped in a fluffy, sticky white substance that looks a whole lot like the fake spiderwebbing that comes in a can.

This, though, is the real deal, and it's landing on cars, pets, and people, and while a bit shocking,

it's apparently a completely normal process called ballooning.

A professor of biology at San Francisco State tells The Chronicle newspaper

that the white stuff is the work of baby spiders whose survival depends on them getting away from where they're born.

To do so, they spend silk strands that allow them to get caught up in the wind and take into a new place to live,

where they're not competing with their siblings.

Relative peace in the Middle East has been shattered.

Over the weekend, the Palestinian group Hamas made a surprise holiday attack on Israel the worst in 50 years,

prompting the Prime Minister of that country Benjamin Netanyahu to declare all-out war.

At this point, he has the outrage of much of the world, including the U.S. behind him.

President Biden pledged his rock-solid support and issued a blunt warning.

Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.

The world is watching, and that includes New York State.

It has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and its governor, Kathleen Hocal,

ordered the Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, and all state landmarks to be lit up in blue and white,

the colors of Israel's flag in solidarity.

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