Thank you for taking ten minutes out of your Thursday to watch CNN Student News. I'm Carl Azuz at CNN center.
Our first story center on state of emergency in the east African nation of Ethiopia. This is one of the poorest country on the planet.
More than 29% of Ethipia's people are estimated to live below the poverty line.
The nations economy has grown rapidly in recent years. But that's coincided with a rise in in ethinic tension, Why?
well the country has diverse combination of ethnic groups. The largest, the Oromo ethnic group makes up about a third of Ethiopia's population.
Another, the Amhara's make up 27%, the but smaller Tigre ethnic group reported dominates the goverment.
And that;s one reason why some other groups are protesting. The goverment declared a state of emergency recently in response to the loss of lives and property in the protest.
but sign of instability remain.
The Ethiopian goverment in Addis Ababa intruduced a state of emergency in the country because of growing concers about security following several protests.
This is the first time the state of emergency has been declared in Ethiopia in the last 25 years.
The death of at least 52 people in a religious festival has led to increased ethnic tensions within the country.
The activist claim that at least 500 people were killed, but the goverment denies this. This comes after one of Ethiopia's largest ethnic group has been fiercely protesting against the goverment.
The Oromos make up over one third of the country's 100 million population. And yet, None of Ethiopia's past or current leadership has come from the Oromo region.
Protests started in April 2014, when the goverment anounced plans to expand the capital Addis Ababa into Oromo territory.
Although the govenment abandoned these plans, the protest has snowballed. At the 2016 Olypices, the Ethipian runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed the finising line with this hands raised
and his wrists touching as if they were handcuffed. This has become a powerful protest about the treatment of the Oromo people by the goverment.
The goverment of Ethiopia, in trying to stop the Oromos from protesting too much, are forgetting that the Amharas and the Tigres also want a slice of power.
It's very difficult for a goverment that's been used for the last 25 years to know opposition within parliment,
to acctually face up to the fact that this may actually be splintering into a serious ethnic fight within Ethiopia.
In Northern Irag a battle is looming. Iragi troops with the support of US force are planing an attempt to retake the city of Mosual from the ISIS terrorist group.
Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq, ISIS took control of it in 2014.
Officials believe the terrorists are planting mines and explosives around the city to complicate the fight. The lasting damage that ISIS has left in towns near Mosul could be a sign of what's to come.
A lake of fire, thick black clouds obscuring the sun in the town of Al Qayyara, south of Mosul.
ISIS set this oil well on fire months ago. The purpose was to obscure the view of aircraft overhead.
But ISIS is now gone, and this fire continues to burn right on the edge of a town in which many people are now living.
And in its shadow lives Khalil, who takes us to his somewhere in the midday darkness.
The smoke has stained 2 year old Arbeda and his sister. Khalil and his wife cover the children with a sheet a night, scant protection from the toxic fumes.
That well is really hurting us, Khalil says, the wind has changed direction and now it's all blowing on us.
He said they have no where else to go. We could barely stay with him for 10 minutes.
Engineer Hussein Salim and his team are trying to put out the dozens of fires but it's a time comsuming process.
It took 30 days to put out one fire, he says. In the main street some shops have reopened, also here the smoke hangs heavily on residents.
its another ISIS, says Shaalan, it's cancer.
Daesh, as they call ISIS here, left behind a poisonous legacy of death, destruction and disease.
The world health organization, part of the United nations, is asking goverments world wide to put a new tax on sodas.
It wants soft drink prices increase by at least 20%. Public health experts say sugar, like what's found in many soft drinks, is mostly to blame for rising global obesity rates.
The WHO says 39% of the plainfiff's adults were overweight in 2014 and that a new tax on sugar drinks would prevent obesity and diabeted and cut healthcare costs.
But would higher prices mean lower calorie choices when people want something to drink? That seems to be true in some places like the city of Berkeley, California.
A voter approved tax there reported led to a 21% drop in the comsumption of sugary beveages. The results havent been the same everywhere.
The nation of Mexico put a 10% tax on sugary drinks in 2013, and the wall street journal reports that those sales decreased at first,
they started rising again recently. The US beverage industry says that the Mexican tax put burden on those who could least afford it and that is caused thousands of jobs to be lost in Mexico's soft drink industry.
Up next, science and agriculture. Some researchers are looking beyond pesticides, beyond genetically modified seeds.
instead, they are literally coating seeds with bacteria in the pursuit of growing more crops and better crops.
The process is still being tested, it's not definitively proven to work. There are still question about safety for consumers,
but one of the companies testing microbiomes believes they're the future of agriculture.
How are we gonna feed what is estimated to be 10 billion people by 2050? to get there, we need to increase our current productivity by 70%.
The ability to achive that with our current rates of genetic gain and in yield improvement are not achievable.
And so we need to look for new ways, we also need to do it in a wat that's sustainable.
For decades innovations in agriculture have allowed our food supply to keep pace with population growth.
But at what cost?
The technologies that have given to the productivity improvement we've seen in agriculture are generally things like agricultureal chemicals, chemicals fertilizers,
things what arguable arent good for us and arent good for the planet.
What if there was a better way? A startup called Indigo is attempting to create a more productive and more natural way to grow crops without the agricultural chemicals,
a method that could revolutionize the industry.
We attempt to solve that problem by harnessing the plant's natural microbime. The microbes that evolved over ...
What is a microbiom exactly?
Well, in human, a microbiome is a community of microorganisms that includes the bacteria naturally occuring in and on our bodies.
The bad bacteria, but also the good bacteria that help the important function like difestion and reproduction.
The basics of what we do at Indigo is a realization that the same concept is true in plants.
Those same beneficial microbes live in and on plants.
And until recently, werent fully understood. But rapidly developing technologies like gene sequencing have allowed scientist to realize of the full potential of the plant microbiome.
According to Indigo, the microbimo could be the key to growing natural supercrops.
We've acctually tested in all different climate conditions. And we consistently see a 10%+ yield benefit.
A 10% increase would be a whole decade leap forward in terms of productivity.
The innovations that we've had that've gotten us to now have been really important. Without those innovations, we wouldnt have been able to feed the last billion people.
We can now do better and I think the future of agricuture will look back and think about the times when we put insecticides on hundreds of millions of acres,
and think thank goodness we dont have to do that anymore.
Officials in little Rock, Arkansas called their city's Broadwat Bride structurally deficient. This is how it got revenge.
Cuts to the bridge, explosive charges, and 93 years of age could not bring it down.
Officials are working to replace the structure, but they needed to remove it first.
It took six more attempts. Pulling the bridge with cables from two tow boats before the steel finally came crashing down.
Makes you wonder why they dont make all bridges this tough. After all it's strength spanned decades.
ALl that time it could be trusted. Even though gravity was its arch enemy, it took blasts and boats to cause the causeway to give way,
and all that acctually happend over several hours. You just saw the abridged version. Im Carl Azuz, we're back tomorrow.
Our first story center on state of emergency in the east African nation of Ethiopia. This is one of the poorest country on the planet.
More than 29% of Ethipia's people are estimated to live below the poverty line.
The nations economy has grown rapidly in recent years. But that's coincided with a rise in in ethinic tension, Why?
well the country has diverse combination of ethnic groups. The largest, the Oromo ethnic group makes up about a third of Ethiopia's population.
Another, the Amhara's make up 27%, the but smaller Tigre ethnic group reported dominates the goverment.
And that;s one reason why some other groups are protesting. The goverment declared a state of emergency recently in response to the loss of lives and property in the protest.
but sign of instability remain.
The Ethiopian goverment in Addis Ababa intruduced a state of emergency in the country because of growing concers about security following several protests.
This is the first time the state of emergency has been declared in Ethiopia in the last 25 years.
The death of at least 52 people in a religious festival has led to increased ethnic tensions within the country.
The activist claim that at least 500 people were killed, but the goverment denies this. This comes after one of Ethiopia's largest ethnic group has been fiercely protesting against the goverment.
The Oromos make up over one third of the country's 100 million population. And yet, None of Ethiopia's past or current leadership has come from the Oromo region.
Protests started in April 2014, when the goverment anounced plans to expand the capital Addis Ababa into Oromo territory.
Although the govenment abandoned these plans, the protest has snowballed. At the 2016 Olypices, the Ethipian runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed the finising line with this hands raised
and his wrists touching as if they were handcuffed. This has become a powerful protest about the treatment of the Oromo people by the goverment.
The goverment of Ethiopia, in trying to stop the Oromos from protesting too much, are forgetting that the Amharas and the Tigres also want a slice of power.
It's very difficult for a goverment that's been used for the last 25 years to know opposition within parliment,
to acctually face up to the fact that this may actually be splintering into a serious ethnic fight within Ethiopia.
In Northern Irag a battle is looming. Iragi troops with the support of US force are planing an attempt to retake the city of Mosual from the ISIS terrorist group.
Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq, ISIS took control of it in 2014.
Officials believe the terrorists are planting mines and explosives around the city to complicate the fight. The lasting damage that ISIS has left in towns near Mosul could be a sign of what's to come.
A lake of fire, thick black clouds obscuring the sun in the town of Al Qayyara, south of Mosul.
ISIS set this oil well on fire months ago. The purpose was to obscure the view of aircraft overhead.
But ISIS is now gone, and this fire continues to burn right on the edge of a town in which many people are now living.
And in its shadow lives Khalil, who takes us to his somewhere in the midday darkness.
The smoke has stained 2 year old Arbeda and his sister. Khalil and his wife cover the children with a sheet a night, scant protection from the toxic fumes.
That well is really hurting us, Khalil says, the wind has changed direction and now it's all blowing on us.
He said they have no where else to go. We could barely stay with him for 10 minutes.
Engineer Hussein Salim and his team are trying to put out the dozens of fires but it's a time comsuming process.
It took 30 days to put out one fire, he says. In the main street some shops have reopened, also here the smoke hangs heavily on residents.
its another ISIS, says Shaalan, it's cancer.
Daesh, as they call ISIS here, left behind a poisonous legacy of death, destruction and disease.
The world health organization, part of the United nations, is asking goverments world wide to put a new tax on sodas.
It wants soft drink prices increase by at least 20%. Public health experts say sugar, like what's found in many soft drinks, is mostly to blame for rising global obesity rates.
The WHO says 39% of the plainfiff's adults were overweight in 2014 and that a new tax on sugar drinks would prevent obesity and diabeted and cut healthcare costs.
But would higher prices mean lower calorie choices when people want something to drink? That seems to be true in some places like the city of Berkeley, California.
A voter approved tax there reported led to a 21% drop in the comsumption of sugary beveages. The results havent been the same everywhere.
The nation of Mexico put a 10% tax on sugary drinks in 2013, and the wall street journal reports that those sales decreased at first,
they started rising again recently. The US beverage industry says that the Mexican tax put burden on those who could least afford it and that is caused thousands of jobs to be lost in Mexico's soft drink industry.
Up next, science and agriculture. Some researchers are looking beyond pesticides, beyond genetically modified seeds.
instead, they are literally coating seeds with bacteria in the pursuit of growing more crops and better crops.
The process is still being tested, it's not definitively proven to work. There are still question about safety for consumers,
but one of the companies testing microbiomes believes they're the future of agriculture.
How are we gonna feed what is estimated to be 10 billion people by 2050? to get there, we need to increase our current productivity by 70%.
The ability to achive that with our current rates of genetic gain and in yield improvement are not achievable.
And so we need to look for new ways, we also need to do it in a wat that's sustainable.
For decades innovations in agriculture have allowed our food supply to keep pace with population growth.
But at what cost?
The technologies that have given to the productivity improvement we've seen in agriculture are generally things like agricultureal chemicals, chemicals fertilizers,
things what arguable arent good for us and arent good for the planet.
What if there was a better way? A startup called Indigo is attempting to create a more productive and more natural way to grow crops without the agricultural chemicals,
a method that could revolutionize the industry.
We attempt to solve that problem by harnessing the plant's natural microbime. The microbes that evolved over ...
What is a microbiom exactly?
Well, in human, a microbiome is a community of microorganisms that includes the bacteria naturally occuring in and on our bodies.
The bad bacteria, but also the good bacteria that help the important function like difestion and reproduction.
The basics of what we do at Indigo is a realization that the same concept is true in plants.
Those same beneficial microbes live in and on plants.
And until recently, werent fully understood. But rapidly developing technologies like gene sequencing have allowed scientist to realize of the full potential of the plant microbiome.
According to Indigo, the microbimo could be the key to growing natural supercrops.
We've acctually tested in all different climate conditions. And we consistently see a 10%+ yield benefit.
A 10% increase would be a whole decade leap forward in terms of productivity.
The innovations that we've had that've gotten us to now have been really important. Without those innovations, we wouldnt have been able to feed the last billion people.
We can now do better and I think the future of agricuture will look back and think about the times when we put insecticides on hundreds of millions of acres,
and think thank goodness we dont have to do that anymore.
Officials in little Rock, Arkansas called their city's Broadwat Bride structurally deficient. This is how it got revenge.
Cuts to the bridge, explosive charges, and 93 years of age could not bring it down.
Officials are working to replace the structure, but they needed to remove it first.
It took six more attempts. Pulling the bridge with cables from two tow boats before the steel finally came crashing down.
Makes you wonder why they dont make all bridges this tough. After all it's strength spanned decades.
ALl that time it could be trusted. Even though gravity was its arch enemy, it took blasts and boats to cause the causeway to give way,
and all that acctually happend over several hours. You just saw the abridged version. Im Carl Azuz, we're back tomorrow.