Good morning and welcome to Kid News. I'm Kim. Today is Wednesday October 14th, 2020 and we begin with an invention sure to get attention.

Engineer YouTube star and Star Wars fan James Hobson says he's created the first

ever real-life working lightsaber. It wasn't easy. Hobson and his team had to safely capture a beam of plasma, add

propane and oxygen, then safely send them all through a specialized nozzle.

Want color in that contraption?

A dash of table salt turns the light yellow.

Boric acid makes it green and stontium chloride red.

Not only does it look pretty amazing, but it's reportedly also functional.

It extends and retracts on command and burns at 4,000 degrees, hot enough to slice

through steel. Count on that being the focus of their next

video proving that what they've built is more than just some Jedi mind trick.

We're now just 20 days until election day, and early voting total so far are smashing records.

According to data from the U.S. Elections Project, more than 10 million ballots have already been cast,

compared to just 1.5 million by this time in 2016.

Some were mailed in, others counted through in-person early voting, which kicked off in Texas

yesterday and Georgia on Monday, where technical glitches and long lines left some people

waiting for more than nine hours. Why the rush? Many people

are choosing to vote early this time around to avoid crowds and COVID on election day.

Two vaccine makers are reporting trouble in their trials.

Yesterday, Eli Lilly paused its coronavirus antibody drug process due to a safety concern. No further information was given. That news came

just hours after Johnson and Johnson temporarily pulled the plug on one of its trials reportedly

because of an illness among one of its participants.

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