Time: World on Alert as U.K. Reports Cases of Omicron COVID-19 Variant

By Jerome Delay

    The UK has become the latest country to report cases of the new omicron variant of COVID-19, which is believed to be more resistant against the protections provided by existing vaccines. The two reported cases were both linked to travel from southern Africa. The UK Health Secretary added more countries in the southern African region to the British travel restriction list, meaning that travelers from those countries will now have to quarantine

    Pharmaceutical companies were optimistic that they could update their vaccines for the new variant in due time. Despite all the travel restrictions already in place across the European continent, cases and variants are continuing to spread. Many variants are emerging from Africa as a result of the poor vaccination rate in the continent.

CNN 10 11/22/2021 ~ 11/26/2021

Go to cnn.com/cnn10 for the latest video 

Monday, November 22, 2021

California's giant sequoias have stood for thousands of years in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the only place on Earth where they grow naturally. But California's recent fires have put many mature sequoias in danger, with fires from the past two years destroying almost 20% of existing mature sequoias. The National Park Service is taking steps to ensure that fewer fires occur and that the trees, already weakened by drought, are not killed by the fires. NASA will be launching a mission called DART soon. It's objective is to fly to a moonlet called Dimorphos, which orbits the asteroid Didymos, and crash into it. NASA will then measure how much the moonlet moves as a result of the collision, and use that data to potentially protect Earth if a large enough asteroid was every found to be on collision course with the planet.

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

The city of Lahore, Pakistan ranks among the most polluted cities in the world, frequently battling with the notoriously polluted city of New Delhi for the worst air quality in the world.  There are a number of causes for this, including a multitude of factories, cars using cheap gasoline and engines, and farmers burning their fields to prepare for a new growing season. The residents of Lahore experience many side effects from the smog that hangs constantly in the air, including sore throats resembling those caused by COVID-19. Officials have taken several step to try to remedy the issue, from closing down polluting factories to planting new trees. But the prospect of a blue sky still seems to be far away. There is a lot of buzz around self-driving technologies like those in Tesla cars. But is the technology really ready yet? The answer seems to be no. Driving around regular city streets, cars like the Model 3 have difficulties in situations that are hard to prepare algorithms for. For example, a car and a pedestrian overlapping, hard to see boundaries, etc, and constant intervention is still necessary.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Midnight Library

By Matt Haig

    Nora Seed had so much potential. She could have been a rock star, an Olympic gold medalist swimmer, a glaciologist, a philosopher, or married her long-time boyfriend. But she did not walk those paths. But in this life, she still lives in her hometown of Bedford, working at a music store, mostly friendless. And her life seems to only get worse. First, she gets laid off because her boss believes she isn't fulfilling her potential. Then, she gets fired from her job teaching piano because she forgot to show up to a lesson. Then, she runs into an old bandmate, still bitter over the break-up that ensued when Nora began having mental issues. When she finally gets home, she finds that her cat has died. Feeling like a failure, she fires off some final social media posts, a sad call to her estranged brother, who also left her after their band broke up, and decides that her time is done.

    But when she wakes up again, it isn't in some post-humous world. Rather, she is in a vast expanse with a building in it - a library. In it, she meets Mrs. Elm, the former school librarian who nurtured her old dream of being a glaciologist. She tells her that Nora is in the Midnight Library, a library that contains the infinite possibilities Nora's life contained, each one caused by a different choice she could have made. She can choose any life to begin at exactly 12 AM on the day that Nora "died" in her root life. While she is in the library, time does not change, and it will stand until Nora finally dies in her root life. Once Nora chooses a life, she will stay here until she feels regrets and doubt about whether she wants to stay there. If that never happens, then she is permanently transplanted into that life, as if she had always been there.

    During her time in the library, Nora goes through many different lives, some of them reversing big decisions, some of them little ones. She even meets other people who are "sliding" through lives. But she can never seem to settle into one before regret sets in - even ones where her life seems like a dream.

    Eventually, she is on the verge of giving up. She is tired of doing this, feeling like an outsider stealing another person's life. And that, ironically, is the solution. Her root life is the one best suited for her, because it is her life - she "writes" it, so to speak. As the library collapses, Mrs. Elm gives her a blank book so that Nora can begin her own story.

    She returns to the life she had before, exactly the life that she was in the moment she tried to die for the first time, and realizes all the little things she had in her life to be grateful for, that her life has meaning.

CNN 10 10/18/2021 ~ 10/22/2021

Go to cnn.com/cnn10 for the latest video 

Monday, October 18, 2021

The US is changing its travel rules. Starting November 8th, fully vaccinated individuals will be able to travel to the US from most countries provided that they have a negative COVID test from the previous three days. This change removes countries like India, which had a high rate of coronavirus cases, from a list of restricted countries. US residents can also travel abroad, but need a negative COVID test from within one day of their flight home. The Indonesian island of Bali relies heavily on its tourism industry, which was disrupted due to COVID shutdowns last year. That put many people out of work, and people started to go hungry. One resident noticed this problem in his community and began a barter system called Plastic Xchange. People can pick up trash from local beaches, rivers, and even their own homes and exchange it for rice, which is a staple food in Bali. It is helping to control the plastic problem in Bali as well as ensuring people stay fed during the pandemic.

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Civil rights activist and former Secretary of State Colin Powell passed away on Monday after a storied career of service. He began in the Reserve Officer Training Corps, where he achieved its highest rank, went on to become a 4-star general after the Vietnam War. He went on to become the first Black National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State. He was so well liked that two different presidents awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the country. A 21st century space race is heating up as China sends a new group of astronauts to work on its space station. The US military believes that China's space agency is controlled by its military and has barred NASA from working with them, which means they are also banned from the ISS. Potentially because of this, the country has begun construction of their own space station, for which it has 6 more missions planned to get it into full operation in the coming years.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

The global supply chain problems are only getting worse as the holiday season approaches. Consumers are looking to star buying gifts and release pent up buying urges, but labor shortages and coronavirus restrictions are making it difficult for suppliers to stock their shelves. They're employing all manner of methods possible to try to get goods to warehouses and stores in time, but the problem stretches from ports to trucks. In Paris, there's a bit of a different problem - one between pedestrians and cyclists and cars. The government in Paris has been trying to move to greener forms of transportation and also encourage tourism along its major streets - that makes less space for cars, which along with lower speed limits, are causing big traffic jams and more than a few upset drivers.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

17 American missionaries are being held hostage by a gang in Port au Prince, Haiti. The poorest country in the western hemisphere was already struggling before this. The president was assassinated three months ago, leading to increased gang violence, and supply shortages along with corruption and lack of security enforcement have plagued the country for years. A "megapod" of over 100 humpback whales was recently spotted off the coast of Australia. The leader of the tour group that saw them said that sightings of these massive whale feeding have become more common over the past few years. In China, a new railroad was recently completed between it and one of its neighboring countries, Laos. China says that it plans to expand a railroad throughout Asia and parts of Africa in the coming years.

Friday, October 22, 2021

The US has seen three major spikes in COVID cases so far. One at the beginning of the pandemic, one in the spring, then a steep decline before another spike largely attributed to the emergence of the delta variant in September. Since then, cases have gone down, which is a hopeful sign. These spikes have not been uniform across the world. Russia, for example, is seeing a spike right now and has a lockdown scheduled for Moscow in the coming weeks. Halloween is fast approaching, and surveys indicate that around 65% of Americans plan to participate. While that's not a record, the amount of money people plan to spend - over $10 billion - is, and that's good news for retailers who saw a massive dip in sales last year during the height of the pandemic. Debbie Blount is a golfer and sophomore at Reinhardt University. But she isn't your average student - she's the first in her family to go to college, and she's 63 years old. Back when she graduated from high school, her family didn't have the money to send her to college, so she worked a variety of jobs, and eventually married a husband who got her into golfing. After her husband and father both passed away, she decided to take the opportunity to become a full-time student. She tried out for the university golf team and now attends the school with a full sports scholarship. Along with her golfing skills, she also brings the invaluable mentality of an experienced player to the team.