CNN 10 February 27, 2017

CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: CNN 10 is 10 minutes of world news explained and I'm your anchor Carl Azuz. Thank you for watching this Monday.

Thousands of Iraqi civilians, more than 2,300 over this weekend alone have fled the city of Mosul as the international battle rages on to take control of it back from ISIS terrorists. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq. It's also ISIS's last major stronghold in the country. So, ridding it of ISIS control would be a major setback for the terrorist group, though it still controls other parts of Iraq and Syria.

The battle for Mosul has been going on for months. Over the past weekend, dozens of ISIS fighters have been killed in the battle, dozens of civilians have lost their lives.

And the tool is cultural as well. The United Nations says ISIS has done a lot of damage to Iraq's heritage, destroying religious and archeological sites, partly because they don't fit with ISIS's interpretation of Islam, partly because the terrorists have made money by selling Iraq's antiquities on the black market.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the spring of 2015, the extremists meticulously documented their destruction of the ruins of the ancient city of Nimrud, founded in the 13 century B.C.

They took their sledgehammers to the city's famous winged bulls, the lamassu, reducing them to a pile of rubble. Iraqi forces recently retook Nimrud, just south of Mosul, we came to have a look -- lone visitors to a lone hilltop that hasn't seen a tourist in years.

(on camera): The scale of the vandalism that took place here boggles the mind. Only ISIS could ruins into ruins. By some estimates in northern Iraq, the extremist group destroyed or severely damaged around 80 sites, archeological ones like this one, as well as Muslim and Christian shrines.

(voice-over): Through the work lens of ISIS's logic, all idols must be destroyed. Their every action here nothing less than utter contempt, for Iraq's rich multi-millennial history, and that includes the remains of the vast Assyrian empire that once stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, the ruthless super power of its day.

The statues, the cuneiform inscriptions now lie in pieces exposed to the elements.

(on camera): In ancient Mesopotamia, ordinary structures like houses or shops were made out of mud bricks. With time, they simply turned into dusts. But for the statues of the gods and the kings, they used stone. The purpose was that they would last for eternity, that is until ISIS came along.

(voice-over): Archaeologists may someday be able to piece some of this together, but that won't happen until the war against ISIS comes to an end.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:

What happens on March 20th, 2017?

Is it the Vernal Equinox, Spring Solstice, Easter, or St. Patrick's Day?

The Vernal Equinox, aka the first day of spring, is on Monday, March 20th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: Regardless of what Punxsutawney Phil saw on Groundhog Day, spring has been in the air in Western Pennsylvania and states throughout the eastern and southern U.S. They've had warmer than average temperatures so far this year.

Though there was some heavy snowfall in the American West and North over the weekend, during a cold front that made things feel like they normally do in February, thousands of record high temperatures have been recorded this month, contrast it with a few dozen record lows. And forecasters say this week, they expect highs of 15 to 20 degrees above average for the East and Southeast.

Why?

One major factor is probably La Nina. It's a natural climate pattern that brings colder than normal ocean surface temperatures to the Pacific. But it results in warmer than normal temperatures in the American South. Government meteorologists say a relatively weak La Nina event has come and gone, but its impacts could continue through March.

Continuing now, a sort of spring theme. You might think bees are just smart enough to pollinate, make honey, maybe sting once in a while. New research at London's Queen Mary University suggests otherwise. That they're not only able to learn new tricks, but also improve upon what they've seen other bees do.

The insect's task was a sort of bee soccer, something they would not have to do in the wild. If they were able to drag the ball to a goal, they'd get a bit of sugar water as a reward.

Studies showed that after watching a demonstrator bee scored the goal and get the threat, the observer bees quickly learned how to do the same thing. What's really getting buzzed in all this, he-he, is that it wasn't just a case of copying another bee. In some cases, multiple balls were on the field, and bees watched the demonstrator dragging only the farthest ball back to the goal. But when given the chance to do it themselves, the observers would pick the closest ball to get the reward with the least effort.

One of the authors of the study concluded that bees are able to accomplish a lot more than scientists previously thought.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUBTITLE: NASA has released the initial findings of its Twins Study.

Identical twins Mark and Scott Kelly were studied to determine the effects of long-term space travel.

Scott and Mark were studied before, during and after Scott's nearly one-year mission in space.

They found that Scott's chromosomes lengthened while he was in space.

Increased exercise and reduced caloric intake were said to be possible causes.

On earth, Mark Kelly's chromosomes got shorter during the study.

Scott was also 2 inches taller when he returned and showed a slight decrease in cognitive abilities.

NASA researchers plan to release more complete findings from the study later this year.

The data will be used to help astronauts travel safely on future trips, such as NASA's Journey to Mars.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: One of the twins, Mark Kelly, supports an idea that could let people into the stratosphere without using a single rocket. The stratosphere is part of earth's upper atmosphere. It's between around eight and thirty miles over our heads. And while private space flights are estimated to be in the range of a quarter million dollars, a high altitude balloon flight could lift you up, up and away for around $75,000, assuming you're not afraid of heights or not going to let that keep you from a pressurized capsule that floats 19 miles into the sky.

The projected ride would take an hour or two and give you one out of this world view.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUBTITLE: World View wants to launch you into space.

RACHEL CRANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tell me a little bit more about the decision to use sort of this old technology of balloons.

MARK KELLY, RETIRED ASTRONAUT: You know, I've always flew (ph) on a rocket ship, you know, flew inside (ph) airplanes. This is a little bit different.

SUBTITLE: World View develops high-tech balloons that travel into the stratosphere.

KELLY: It doesn't have a lot of moving parts. So, we feel we can fill the system that carry about six passengers up to the stratosphere and do it in a very reliable, and hopefully safe, safe way.

SUBTITLE: Balloons for their Voyager system are designed to carry people to space, while Stratollites collect information like satellites.

KELLY: We'll be able to do the same thing that a satellite could do, whether it's communication, or reconnaissance or scientific platform. To launch even the cheapest rockets costs, you know, $10 million or $20 million. We do it now at a fraction of the cost of launching in a rocket.

CRANE: When are you guys actually going to be, you know, transporting passengers, paying passengers, into the stratosphere?

KELLY: In later part of next year, we could be flying passengers up of 100,000 feet into the stratosphere. When I first got to look at the Earth for the first time, it's a round ball floating in the blackness of space, it was transformative. I mean, it really changed the way that I thought of the planet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: Horses, good. Horses on ice, better. Horseracing on ice, "10 Out of 10".

Across the frozen lake in Switzerland's St. Moritz, it's jockeys and horses against the elements in what's known as White Turf racing. It's held every year and dates back to 1907. It includes a few different events, one of them were unique ones being skijoring when the animals pull skiers across the snow at speed as high as 30 miles per hour.

Of course, they're all main events, but that last one's kind of a drag. Well, the number of competitors taking the reins jockeying for first right out of the gate, at a gallop, you can see how the faint hearted might shy away with a saddle expression saying, "I canter. I'll just have to say neigh."

I'm Carl Azuz for CNN 10.

CNN 10 February 24, 2017

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!

CNN 10 February 23, 2017

CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Kicking off 10 minutes of international news, I'm Carl Azuz. Welcome to CNN 10.

First story this Thursday, a clash in the European nation of Sweden. Riots broke out one night earlier this week in the neighborhood of the capital Stockholm.

A regional police chief says the violence might have been triggered by increased police pressure on criminals in the area. The neighborhood of Rinkeby is known for having high levels of unemployment. It's also known for having a high immigrant population.

Before the riots broke, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that immigrants in Sweden were responsible for an increase in crime across the country. Some Swedes praised President Trump for drawing attention to the issue. Some said there is no issue, that a recent increase in immigrants has not made Sweden less safe.

The country has accepted more refugees per capita than any other European nation. So, the debate is raging, even though the violence has calmed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mattias Karlsson is a leader in the right wing Sweden Democrats, the third largest party in parliament.

MATTIAS KARLSSON, SWEDEN DEMOCRAT PARTY: I think Sweden is a good example to put forward as a bad example. If you don't control the borders, if you have an irresponsible refugee policy, you will get problems and we have serious problems here in Sweden.

WATSON (on camera): Is it a -- is it a crisis here?

KARLSSON: Yes, I would describe it as a crisis. We have seen serious problems with law and order.

WATSON (voice-over): As evidence, Karlsson points to a riot that erupted in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby Monday night.

A police spokesman says officers fired at least two shots when dozens of rioters attacked police officers during the arrest of a crime suspect. Ten cars were torched in the unrest and one police officer suffered a bruise to the arm from a thrown object.

Hours later, the scene in this largely immigrant community looked very different.

(on camera): This is the center of Rinkeby. Now that we're here, I'm going to be honest, s a first time visitor, it's hard to believe that less than 24 hours ago, this was a scene of a full blown riot.

(voice-over): More than a dozen police officers deployed in the central square. Several shop windows were smashed, but families with small children appeared to be going about their business as usual.

(on camera): Is Sweden in crisis right now?

MAGNUS RANSTORP, COUNTER TERRORISM EXPERT: No, it's not at all in crisis. Look around. I mean, very calm, very quiet. Of course, isolated incidences that happened. But police are dealing with them.

WATSON (voice-over): Magnus Ranstorp is a counterterrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College.

RANSTORP: I'm not denying that there are integration issues. But what I think is wrong to do is to conflate immigration, crime and terrorism, because those linkages are not that strong.

WATSON: During the peak of the European migrant crisis of 2015, more than 160,000 new arrivals crossed Sweden's borders. Sweden has since tightened border controls, reducing the flow of migrants by imposing temporary passport checks at the border.

In a four-year period when Sweden granted asylum to more than 100,000 refugees, crime grew by 7 percent. Meanwhile, state figures show the Muslim immigrant community in Sweden is increasingly under attack.

Like much of the rest of Europe, this Scandinavian country is grappling with immigration, assimilation and the threat of Islamic extremist terrorism, very complicated challenges at the heart of a growing global political debate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: Yesterday, astronomers announced that they've discovered seven Earth-sized planets all orbiting the same star. The findings were published in a journal "Nature". NASA says this is a record number of these kinds of planets orbiting this kind of star. It also believes that three of the planets are in what's called the habitable zone. Scientists define that as the space around the star where a planet is most likely to have water.

This isn't exactly in our neighborhood. They say the star is 40 light years away and it'd take a human spacecraft millions of years to get there.

So, how did researchers identify planet at that distance? Well, examining stars with the telescope based in Chile, they saw shadows occasionally interrupting the star light. They say that these shadows indicated that planets were passing between the telescope and the star, like eclipses. What they're hoping to do in the future is determine the planet's atmosphere and whether they really have liquid water.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:

Where would you find the world's deepest blue hole, a sinkhole filled with water?

Lake Okeechobee, Atlantic Ocean, Arctic Ocean, or South China Sea?

Researchers say the world's deepest blue hole which sinks almost a thousand feet deep is located in the South China Sea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: That title used to belong to Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas. It's a location popular with free divers. This is like a marine extreme sport. Free divers literally take a deep breath then descend into the depths without a breathing apparatus.

It's dangerous. Free divers can get lung damage. They can black out or die from doing this. But for those willing to take the risk, their love for the sport goes well below the surface.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN SUNNEX, PROFESSIONAL FREE DIVER: I'd be lying if I said I've never been scared.

I've had two occasions where I sort of thought, you're not going to make it.

But as long as you keep your composure, everything seems to work out.

My name is Jonathan Sunnex. I'm 30 years old from New Zealand. We're in Long Island, in the Bahamas, at the beautiful Dean's Blue Hole. I'm a professional free diver.

Competitive free diving is where we compete to see who can swim the farthest, deepest, or hold their breath for the longest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jonathan Sunnex.

SUNNEX: The current world record is 128 meters. We've achieved things that doctors once thought were impossible.

We're exploring the capabilities of the human body, pushing ourselves to see what the human body can really do.

I feel like I'm just getting started.

We couldn't design anything better. This is like the free diving Mecca. People come from all over the world. It is the place to dive.

We're here in preparation for Suunto Vertical Blue, which is one of the most freediving competitions in the world

One of the things that lured into the sport was the whole science behind it. Before I dive, I'll go through a whole preparation and that will include stretching of the body, stretching of the lungs, the diaphragm, intercostal muscles. Packing is adding extra air to your already full lungs while using the mouth as a pump.

I would estimate that I would pack at least an extra liter into my lungs. And then I'll come down to the beach. I'll visualize my dive.

While I'm still making my deepest dives, what goes through my mind is always positive thoughts, positive energy, so like a form of meditation, to very deep within yourself.

The physical sensation I get through diving, it touches in all senses. What you can see, what you can hear, or maybe even it's the lack of noise.

During dives, our heart rates drop down to below 30 beats per minute. When we're going down to deeps where we've got basically the length of a football field above us, it's not the sort of place where you want to have any sort of negative thoughts.

When I make it to the surface after a big dive, it's almost a spiritual experience.

It's quite a famous quote. A scuba diver will go on the water to look around, and a free diver would go underwater to look inside himself.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: For "10 Out of 10", waiting patiently is not a trick this dog knows. When her owner ran inside to pick up some fast food, Diamond, her name is Diamond, decided to make a little scene, barking and honking for her owner to hurry up, and she didn't just do it once. No, Diamond seemed to take a shine to the car horn and the word on the street is that she's been spotted doing this in other places around her home town in Ohio.

At least she can't get a ticket for noise pollution. We don't know why she's so doggedly a-paws her owner's absence, why she was so honked off, why she just hates to terrier. But we can say she is truly a diamond in a ruff!

I'm Carl Azuz and that is CNN 10.