CNN 10 12/6/2021 ~ 12/10/2021

Go to cnn.com/cnn10 for the latest video 

Monday, December 6, 2021

In Indonesia, a volcanic explosion has left many people without homes, and many more covered in ash. The explosion occurred on the island of Java. The island is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area that sits along a fault line and sees intense volcanic activity. It accounts for the majority of volcanos around the world, most of which are underwater. As a result, the islands located on the ring of fire have frequent volcanic activity and tsunamis. The US has begun restricting travel to several southern African nations that have seen high numbers of cases of the Omicron variant, a new variant of COVID-19 that scientists still know little about. It has already started spreading in the US and other parts of the world, though Delta still remains the most dominant variant. Part of the problem may be that poor countries, which see the most mutations as a result of their poor safety measures, also don't have the money to sequence the virus efficiently. The labs that they have are constantly low on funding, so while massive labs in the UK are processing thousands of samples, they take months to process just a few, which allows variants to spread in the meantime. The last surviving member of the World War II paratrooper regiment known as the "Band of Brothers" recently passed away at the age of 99. He said that his most proud achievements from the war were his duty and bringing home the most men out of any platoon in his division.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

The makings of a new space race are heating up between the US and China. Back in the mid-1900s, the first space race took place between the US and Russia; the latter initially appeared to have an advantage but the US ultimately won by being the first to land on the Moon. Since then, the US has been the leader in space technology, but China has been ramping up its development and top officials say that they could catch up soon. Other players in the modern arena include the UAE, India, and the European Space Agency. Grocery stores end up throwing a lot of food away when it starts to get close to the expiration date and people no longer want to buy it. They have tried many methods to get people to buy the produce, most of which is still edible, from price markdowns to repackaging. A new startup has created an app called FlashFood to try to alleviate this problem. They enable grocery stores to put up daily listings of food that is near expiration but still edible so that people can buy it for immediate use at steep discounts. To date, they say they have eliminated as much as 30 million pounds of waste.

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

The Biden administration recently announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics scheduled to begin in just a few months. This means that athletes will still be allowed to participate under the US flag, but there will not be an official diplomatic delegation from the US. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that a full boycott like the one seen under the Carter administration did not feel appropriate at the current time. The move comes as pressure from a flurry of human rights violation claims against Beijing are mounting; several other countries are also considering diplomatic boycotts. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The surprise attack lasted just a few hours of the early morning but devastated more than a dozen ships along with thousands of sailors. It ended up launching the US into World War II and the eventual defeat of the Axis Powers. The President and First Lady participated in a wreath-laying ceremony and other memorials were held across the country.

Friday, December 10, 2021

The Chinese real estate corporation Evergrande has run into financial trouble. The once megacorporation grew during China's massive industrial expansion, taking advantage of the massive movement of the Chinese population into industrial centers. It also began to expand into other sectors, and its founder became the richest person in Asia in 2017. But this rapid expansion came with massive amounts of borrowing, amounting to over $300 billion dollars, and along with the pandemic's economic impact and the Communist government's crackdown on excessive borrowing, it could not keep up, leading to a recent default. The company reportedly sold several assets but is still deep in debt. If Evergrande does fail, it would be catastrophic not only for China, which has over 3/4 of its investments in real estate, but for the world at large because Evergrande has so many connections in so many sectors. People have been talking about robots and AI a lot recently, and a new one called Ameca recently made social media headlines. It can replicate human facial gestures to an exactitude where, if not for the metallic color, one might actually believe it to be human. And that's the application its creator hopes to see, to have it be able to greet people and talk to people who need help.

CNN 10 11/29/2021 ~ 12/3/2021

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Monday, November 29, 2021

A new variant of coronavirus has popped up - omicron. It was first identified in South Africa and initially appeared to have milder symptoms than other strains of the virus, based on observations of a small group of patients. Scientists don't know yet if it can infect people who have already recovered from a previous infection or people who have been vaccinated, though the UK claims it has caused breakthrough infections in vaccinated people. What is unique about this latest variant is the number of mutations it has - it has the most mutations out of those seen so far. Black Friday shoppers were up almost 50% from last year, when the pandemic caused many to stay at home. But that's still down around 20% from the year before that, which means many people are still buying online. A drawback from this is the high rate of returns, significantly higher on online purchases than in brick-and-mortar stores. The seemingly "free" returns are far from free, costing retailers a large portion of the original cost of the product, only to have many of them end up in landfill. Companies are working to reduce this through online tools, but in the meantime, liquidators are picking up some of the slack, buying returns from shipping companies, and sending them off to discount stores.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Inflation is still on the rise, and the Federal Reserve now believes that it is not going away anytime soon. New variants of COVID-19 are popping up, threatening to exacerbate the already strained supply chain and hiking up prices. Many people have seen the price of fresh produce go up - but the farmers say that their profits aren't going up. In fact, they're going down. The middle men who transfer all of the food are seeing higher costs because of a shortage of truck drivers and ships, so they are transferring the cost to farmers and consumers. White rhinos were on the brink of extinction. While the northern species is still down to just two female members, southern white rhinos have been restored to thousands, largely thanks to the work of a nature reserve in their native habitat of South Africa. But they are still constantly under the threat of illegal poachers there, who shoot them for their horns. A few dozen of them were recently transferred to a safer park in Rwanda, where the national park hosting them also hopes to draw more tourists with the new animals.

Friday, December 3, 2021

Tensions are ramping up in the European country of Ukraine. It borders both Russia and several NATO countries, and the country is heavily divided over the two opposing sides. Some Ukrainians want to join Russia; others want to join the EU. The latest argument is over Russian troop movements on Ukraine's western border. NATO officials say that the magnitude of the force is sufficient to invade Ukraine and that Russian propaganda is displaying similar tactics as those seen just before the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in 2014. Russia for its part claims that it is simply trying to protect itself against NATO advances, and the US says that it is prepared to levy new sanctions against the Communist nation if it does not back down. The 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled to kick off in Beijing in just a few months, and there is already controversy over it. The first is COVID-19; while China claims its strict safety measures are effective at preventing the disease, the Omicron variant is causing new concern around the world. The second is the increasing allegations of human rights abuses against the Communist regime. Events like the disappearance of tennis player Peng Shuai have raised new concerns and several countries are considering diplomatic boycotts of the winter games. In Major League Baseball, a lockout has occurred for the first time since 1994. That means players can't use team facilities until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached. The old one just expired, and the Players' Union and owners have failed to reach a new agreement, both sides accusing the other of failing to compromise. If a new deal is not reached, the lockout could have an impact on the 2022 season, which begins spring training in February of next year.

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!