CARL AZUZ, CNN 10
ANCHOR: The battle for Mosul is where we start today's show. I'm Carl Azuz.
Thanks for watching CNN 10.
Mosul is the second
largest city in the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq. It's also a stronghold of
the ISIS terrorist group, which took over Mosul in 2014. Defeating ISIS here
would be a major setback to the terrorist but it's not easy. There may be only
a few thousand ISIS fighters left in Mosul, but they're using tunnels, roadside
bombs, explosive traps and guerilla warfare in the fight.
They're up against
force of tens of thousands. Iraqi troops supported by Americans and allied
airpower, plus, ethnic Kurdish fighters known as the Peshmerga. They're all
working to push ISIS out.
The battle for Mosul
has been going on since October. It was expected to take months and it is. The
reasons why are clear in the struggle to take over one key part of the city.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON WALSH,
CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Day four, and perhaps the
biggest push yet from the north into the plains around Mosul. Trying to
dislodge the determined and deranged remnants of ISIS, but the Peshmerga backed
with staggering air power.
But now common sight
of American special forces, who the Pentagon says are advising, not assaulting position
in front of the attack. The work was slow, destructive. Begging the question,
what becomes of the wreckage under new masters?
Suddenly, in the
sky, a hail of bullets. They've spotted a drone. Trace rounds dance around it
and finally take off its nose.
ISIS used them to
spot targets for artillery, even drop small bombs. This one tumbles down. Its
wreckage picked over. It's still unclear whose it is.
Yet progress down
the road is Khorsabad is agonizingly slow.
(on camera): This is
a source of so much of the fighting this morning, but still full of ISIS. And,
in fact, we've heard that Peshmerga have listened to those militants on their
radios this morning discussing how they should wait and only launch a
counterattack once the Peshmerga are inside.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: So, that
showed you one use of drones in warfare. You know they can be used in and for
entertainment.
The package delivery
company UPS, United Parcel Service, is testing out drones as deliverers.
They've been used along with U.S. trucks to get packages to their addresses.
The company says this would save on gas, that if every UPS driver could go one
fewer mile per day, it'd save the company as much as $50 million per year.
The drone that UPS
is testing could carry packages as heavy as 10 pounds. But at this point, it's
not yet proven that they can do this safely. There are concerns that drones
could replace jobs done by people, and using drones to deliver packages is
illegal in the U.S. Experts expect that to change in the years ahead though.
UPS is just one of
several companies testing and planning for drone deliveries.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ (voice-over):
Ten-second trivia:
Which of these types
of dinosaur is thought to have been the heaviest?
Triceratops,
Allosaurus, Velociraptor or Iguanodon?
Of these options,
Triceratops is believed to have been the heaviest dinosaur weighing between six
and eight tons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: Scientists
said a museum in Mexico had unveiled what's believed to be a new or at least
newly discovered species of dinosaur. It was found in Mexico's Coahuila desert
in 2007.
Its name translates
to "ancient horned face". Why? Because researchers identified a small
horn that distinguishes this species of dinosaur from other species.
Scientists are
hoping they will find more dinosaur species native to Mexico.
One other thing
about Yehuecauhceratops mudei, yes, I had to practice that, is that it's believed
to be smaller than triceratops. Ancient horned face is thought to have measured
around 10 feet long and weighed a third of its purported triceratops cousin's
weight.
The famous book in
film series "Jurassic Park" were based on the premise of taking fossilized
DNA from dinosaurs and cloning it to recreate the animals. Scientists have said
that real DNA doesn't actually last long enough for that to happen. But they
are making strides in editing DNA, possibly to bring back a species like the
woolly mammoth. There's a lot that's unknown about systems like CRISPR, what
long term effects they may have if they succeed and whether they're ultimately
be used for good or something else.
But they're
generating a lot of excitement in the scientific community.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RACHEL CRANE, CNN
CORRESPONDENT: How cool is it that you were working on bringing back the woolly
mammoth?
JOE GETSY, RESEARCH
FELLOW, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: It's really cool. It's very uncharted
scientific territory.
CRANE (voice-over):
Your body contains 37.2 trillion cells. And within each is a copy of a code
consisting of more than 20,000 genes and billions of strands of DNA.
This code is your
genome and it determines everything that makes you -- you.
What if you could
modify that code, bring back instinct species, eliminate hereditary diseases?
That is precisely what molecular engineers and geneticists around the world are
working on.
GEORGE CHURCH,
GENETICS PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Genes are what we get and we're
stuck with them. The environment is the only thing we can change and there's
kind of a limit of how much you can do. But now, if we can change our genes,
too, really, in a much closer to total control of our biology and physiology.
CRANE: George Church
is one of many using a revolutionary gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9,
which allows you to modify DNA sequences.
CHURCH: CRISPR is a
way that you can design and target a particular part of your genome and change
it to something else. Or you can delete a gene. You can make all sorts of edits
very precisely.
CRANE: CRISPR is
kind of like having the "find, delete, replace" function for DNA.
No one actually
invented the process. It happens naturally. Scientists discovered that bacteria
alter their DNA to defend against viruses, essentially storing part of the
virus so they can identify, target and attack the virus if it comes back.
Researchers realize
the tools bacteria use to do this were Cas proteins, nature's genetic scissors.
Geneticists are now using these proteins to make their own targeted changes to
DNA.
(on camera):
Scientists have been messing with genomes for years. So, what's the big deal
with CRISPR?
CHURCH: This is
dramatically different. I mean, it's like 10,000 times easier.
This can be used in
agriculture where you can change any plant or animal. It can be used to
eliminate invasive species.
What's most exciting
about CRISPR is our ability to alter longstanding epidemics like malaria and
HIV.
CRANE (voice-over):
And that could potentially save millions of lives.
CHURCH: So, here we
grow human cells, elephant cells. We can do cloning procedures.
CRANE: It turns out
that you can make pretty big things by tweaking small strands of DNA. By making
changes to the DNA of the Asian elephant, researchers in Church's lab are
working to bring the woolly mammoth back to life.
CHURCH: The
difference between a woolly mammoth and Asian elephant is actually quite
subtle, at the DNA level.
CRANE (on camera):
When am I going to see a woolly mammoth in Jurassic Park?
GETSY: Right. So, an
actual full woolly mammoth I think is still a few years down the road. We can
just change one gene and then the next gene. And then, soon, we have thousands
of genes that are changed. The elephant cell will have the exact same DNA
sequences the woolly mammoth cell.
CRANE: Paint this
picture of what the future looks like as a result of CRISPR in your eyes.
CHURCH: I suppose
the wildest description would be that you have some 150-year-old people that
look like they're 20-year-old riding on a mammoth. It's wilder.
CRANE (voice-over):
But CRISPR is not without controversy. If you can make a mammoth, consider what
you can do with a person's DNA.
This past year, for
the first time, scientists in China used CRISPR in an unsuccessful attempt to
edit the genomes of human embryos.
(on camera): People
fear that CRISPR could lead to designer babies. How do we prevent that from
happening?
CHURCH: We shouldn't
be playing. We should be engineering. And I think that's what we are doing.
CRANE: Where do you
think the moral and ethical boundary is?
CHURCH: Safety. I
think safety is number one. Just like any getting new technology and new drug,
we should try to make it as safe as possible.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: At first, this
clip brings up a lot of questions.
"Why?" is
one of them. Another is "What's up with that penny-farthing in the
background?"
We can answer only
the most important. This is a Guinness World Record attempt for most finger
snaps in a minute. And though this Japanese college student slows down at the
end, he still snapped his way into the record books with 296 snaps, almost five
per second.
So, maybe snapping
the record wasn't exactly a -- even if it was. But if you thumb through the
index of finger-snapping history, he wasn't anywhere near the middle. Champion
has a nice ring to it and can't be belittled. So, put your hands together for a
digital display of excellence counted on one hand.
I'm Carl Azuz for
CNN.
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