CARL AZUZ, CNN 10
ANCHOR: We're grateful to have you watching CNN 10 on this last Friday in
February. I'm Carl Azuz at the CNN Center.
There's been a
change in U.S. government rules regarding gender and bathroom use in public
schools. We first reported on this last May. That's when the Obama
administration gave a controversial instruction to schools regarding students
who are transgender, people who identify as a gender that's different than
their biological sex at birth.
A recent university
estimates suggest around half of 1 percent of Americans are transgender, though
the exact percentage isn't known.
The Obama
administration recommended that U.S. public schools allowed transgender
students to use the bathrooms or locker rooms that correspond with their gender
identity. The government said this would protect transgender students from
discrimination and it threatened schools with the loss of federal funding if
they didn't follow the rules.
But more than 20
states sued the government, saying it was trying to illegally rewrite existing
law and forced radical changes on schools. The directive is currently tied up
in court.
The guidelines were not
a law passed by Congress, so they were subject to being reversed by any
succeeding presidential administration. And this week, they were.
The Trump
administration says policies on this issue should be in the hands of Congress,
state legislators or local governments.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN SPICER, WHITE
HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I made this clear and the president made it clear
throughout the campaign that he is a firm believer in state's rights, and in
certain issues like this are not best deal with at the federal level.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote in a statement, quote, "This is not a state
issue. This is an issue of equality for all and that transgender students have
the same right to a safe environment at school and in their community as
everyone else."
Supporters of the
new guidelines called them a victory for parents, students and privacy, and the
Trump administration says it remains committed to protecting all students from
discrimination and bullying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER:
Ten-second trivia:
Which of these
nations gained its independence most recently?
Afghanistan, South
Korea, Ethiopia or Paraguay?
South Korea gained
its independence from Japan in 1945, making it the most recently independent
nation of these options.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: And a new
study has projected that South Korea will be the country where people will live
the longest in the decades ahead. This was published this week in the medical
journal "The Lancet". It looked at life expectancy for 35
industrialized nations. It took into account child mortality rates, obesity
rates, health care, diets, cultural lifestyles.
Currently, the World
Health Organization says the global life expectancy at birth is jut over 71
years. The Lancet study expects that to increase by the year 2030 with South
Korea leading the way. It's projected life expectancy by 2030 almost 91 years
for women and 84 years for men. The researchers say unhealthier lifestyles
among men, which may include smoking or drinking alcohol, are reasons why they
don't tend to live as long. The scientists also say the gap between the sexes
is shrinking.
Other countries in
the top five for projected women's life expectancy are Spain, Portugal,
Slovenia and Switzerland. For men, Switzerland, Netherlands, Australia and
Denmark.
For the U.S.,
predicted life expectancy for men would be 79 1/2 by 2030, and for women, more
than 83 years.
Since the late
1960s, there's been an international treaty that establishes law in space.
What?
The U.S., the U.K. and
Russia agreed that space exploration should benefit everyone. That space should
be free to explore and use. That countries won't station nuclear weapons in
space, and that they can't occupy or claim certain parts of space as their own.
This all may seem a
little farfetched now, but when you consider the steps being taken toward
mining asteroids, you can see how property claims in space could come into
play.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RACHEL CRANE, CNN
CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Life in space is happening. But if we want to move
deeper into the dark and possibly colonize planets, it's going to take more
than rockets and spacesuits.
Our best chance at
life in space may just be asteroids.
CHRIS LEWICKI,
PRESIDENT AND CHIEF ENGINEER, PLANETARY RESOURCES: Asteroids are something that
we worry about threatening the Earth, but in truth actually, they are the
greatest opportunity that we have.
CRANE: Chris Lewicki
is an aerospace engineer who is obsessed with space. He's helped NASA land two
rovers on Mars. He and his company, Planetary Resources, are confident
asteroids hold the passport to the cosmos.
LEWICKI: More
focused on a single task, finding resources and asteroids, and bringing those
resources to a market that's going to start here in lower Earth orbit and grow
into the solar system.
CRANE: These are
more than just chunks of rock. Many are packed with metals that Lewicki wants
to mine for building materials. In fact, many of Earth's most valuable metals
can also be found in asteroids. But the real treasure in Lewicki's hunting is
water.
LEWICKI: The
discovery of oil and the way that it transformed the 20th century, we see the
water and the fuel on asteroids as providing that same transformational
capability for the 21st century.
CRANE: The idea is
to build orbiting gas stations that harness the sun's power, to split water
into liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen that would then be used for rocket fuel.
That way, spaceships wouldn't have to carry all their fuel with them and could
top off at that these cosmic filling stations, allowing them to go even deeper
into space.
(on camera):
Asteroid mining sounds kind of like a sci-fi fantasy. I mean, how realistic is
this?
LEWICKI: What's
possible is inevitable. Everything that was once sci-fi had to change at some
point in time.
CRANE: So, this is a
piece of an asteroid, right?
LEWICKI: Yes, it is.
CRANE: Could you
theoretically create a spacecraft or 3D printed spacecraft in space if you're
able to get your hands on these metals?
LEWICKI: Absolutely.
These are how we will build the future starships and the future colonies and
future habitats and space stations. We will use metals from asteroids to do
that and we use 3D printing as the technology.
CRANE (voice-over):
Lewicki and company have already launched a satellite to analyze asteroids and
they're gearing up to deploy another.
LEWICKI: We're in
our operations and system tests facility supporting the construction and test
of the Arkyd 6 satellite.
CRANE (on camera):
So, they're actually building your next spacecraft right now?
LEWICKI: We're
building our next spacecraft right on the other side of these windows.
CRANE (voice-over):
These mines may be up and running sooner than you think.
LEWICKI: That's
something that is, you know, not 10, 20, 30 years away. For us, that's a target
that's about three to four years away.
CRANE: There are 10
asteroids that Planetary Resources is considering mining. It's a dangerous job.
But luckily, the company's robots will be doing the digging.
(on camera): There
are a lot of people who are skeptical that you guys are going to be able to pull
this off. That asteroid mining will become a reality.
LEWICKI: I think
they're right to be skeptical. But it takes those people who do believe that
will happen to find out how to make it happen.
CRANE (voice-over):
Space mining won't be cheap. But some of the world's riches see the potential
and have invested in the company.
We're programmed to
go places we've never been, find refuge on land we've never touched. Could
asteroid mining, as impossible as it seems, help us reach the frontier that
seems most out of reach?
(END VIDEOITAPE)
AZUZ: A pushy pooch
yesterday, a hopping hound today, this show is going to the dog y'all. The
owner of this one says she had a hunch it wasn't just the cats who were
scarping their food. So, she set up a camera and left the area and you can see
that the dog is desperate to get in.
She seems to try a
short running star at one point, then abandons it. But eventually, now you
don't see her, now you do. It looks like she had room to spare.
Other dogs known to
make leaps like that include the jumping shepherd, the bounder collie, the
skip-perke, the pop-ehund (ph), the leaps-apso, the saint bound-snard, and, of
course, the leaper door retriever.
Yes, I kid around
with you, but what fun we have in these puns and we Beagle you, join us next
week or we're bark with more CNN 10. Fridays are awesome!
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