Regarding the way this is done, as mentioned above, it is Jquery. Jquery is just a Javascript library that helps you add some frontend functionality that would be quit cumpersome to do by writting all the necessary Javascript. Visit jquery.com or search for jquery tutorials and you will on your way.
The specific functionality is generally referred to as Lightbox or Thickbox (because of 2 jquery plugins that do this). Search for "lightbox jquery" and you will find a lot of articles on how to achieve what you want.
A couple I found: fancybox, Lightbox, Colorbox (my favorite)
To give you an idea. Using Lightbox plugin you can do it with the following code:
<!-- include jquery and lightbox -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.lightbox-0.4.js"></script>
<!-- include lightbox css -->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/jquery.lightbox-0.4.css" media="screen" />
<!-- the image you want to activate the zoom in -->
<a href="image1.jpg"><img src="thumb_image1.jpg" width="72" height="72" alt="" /></a>
<!-- javascript you need -->
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
$('a').lightBox(); // Select all links in the page
});
</script>
After saying all that. PLEASE don't copy that sites way of displaying news. It is rather annoying and in the future you will see that it does more harm than good. You need to have your news in text format so a user can read then the way they like, a search engine can find them. If you need a good example of a news site visit bbc.co.uk and get inspired by that. best of luck :)
