While you were sleeping…

Good morning!

Before you even woke up, ISIS gave Jordan until sunset to trade a terrorist for hostages.

Israel said Hezbollah militants sent them a verbal olive branch, while a U.S. agency says North Korea could be hatching plans to make nuclear bombs.

We learned that the pioneering inventor of the world-changing laser had died.

ISIS set a new deadline for hostage swap

Islamic militant group holding captive a Japanese reporter and a Jordanian pilot have extended the deadline for their demands until today at sunset in Iraq. They said in the YouTube video that the pilot would be killed unless a woman terrorist prisoner was released by Jordan, but they were not clear which hostage would be handed back in exchange.

Israel said Hezbollah doesn’t want violence

All was relatively quiet on the Israel-Lebanon border this morning as Israel revealed that Hezbollah sent a message saying they don’t want the violence to escalate any further. The message sent via U.N. peacekeepers was sent the day after some of the worst clashes in years.

North Korea could have been building a bomb

A nuclear reactor in North Korea that was inactive for a few months has been rebooted, according to a U.S. research agency monitoring the site, leading to speculation that the country is creatingplutonium that can fuel atomic bombs. The country’s ongoing nuclear bomb and ballistic missile tests have led to multiple international sanctions.

We mourned the inventor of the revolutionarylaser

Scientist Charles Townes changed the world when he invented the laser. Without his Nobel Prize-winning invention, we would be without many of the things we take for granted in science, medicine, telecommunications and entertainment, from laser surgery and nuclear reactions right down to your belovedBlu-ray player.