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changes are coming to the communist
nation ofcuba and why that's significant is the
first story we're explaining this
Wednesday
I'm Carl Azuz. Welcome to our viewers
watching worldwide
the caribbean country that's 90 miles
away from u.s soil has a turbulent
history
in the 20th century cuba went from being
controlled by one dictator to being
controlled by another
fidel castro who led the revolution to
overthrow cuba's government in 1959
aligned his country with the communist
soviet union
cuba became a communist country itself
its government took control of private
businesses in all aspects of cuban life
that combined with the cuban
government's human rights abuses
soured relations with the democratic
united states it put a trade embargo on
cuba
limiting americans ability to do
business with the communist country
and pressuring cuba to make democratic
reforms when the soviet union was on the
brink of collapse in 1990
it stopped its support for cuba the
island lostbillions of dollars in soviet economic
help every year
and that crushed cuba's economy in more
recent years
its government has tried to improve
conditions by loosening some of its
economic controls
while still keeping its grip on
political power over the past
10 years cubans have been allowed to buy
electronics and cell phones
buy and sell used cars and stay in
hotelsthe country is in the news now because
it just announced that cubans will be
able to start their own businesses
or get jobs in most fields of work
previously
cuba's government would only allow
private workers in certain fields
like barbering repairing tires or posing
with tourists
and it still plans to prevent people
from working in 124 different kinds of
jobs
though it didn't specify what those jobs
are a cnn correspondent on the island
says the cuban government will probably
keep total control over health care in
the mediastill the change will open up more than
2 000 different fields to cuban workers
it's a major economic reform it could
lead to more opportunities and hope for
cubansbut the british broadcasting corporation
reports that the changes are likely to
happen
slowly as a lot of the country's current
private workers are in the tourism
industryand that's been hit hard by the
coronavirus pandemic and the u.s embargo
ten-second trivia which of these
internet browsers was launched
first internet explorer mozilla safari
or netscape
in 1994 the netscape navigator started
helping people with an internet
connection browse the world wide web
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netscape also introduced something
called ssl
secure sockets layer which became the
first internet standard for protecting
people's private information
this of course gave rise to online
shopping because before
ssl people were concerned that sensitive
info
like credit card numbers wasn't safe in
cyberspace
in fact in amazon's early days folks
commonly called the company to give
their payment info over the phone
though online shopping has dramatically
changed how people shop in recent years
it carries an additional challenge for
retailers
there are more returns of things ordered
online than things bought in the store
you might be surprised at what happens
when you ship something back
pre-returns their customers insurance
policy for shopping online
but what happens to those returns after
you give them back
might surprise you so customers really
believe that the product just goes into
the black hole or
ends up being resold to another customer
in many instances that's not the case
in reality many of these products never
return
anywhere instead they may end up here
or even here you know easily
25 of all these returns get destroyed
in fact returns have become such a
headache for retailers
that in some cases they're just
refunding customers and letting them
keep or donate the unwanted items
the cost of getting the product back
from the customer is much higher
than traditional logistics getting the
product to the customer
turns out free returns are far from it
there's a very large disparity between
the amount of returns that
happen from consumers that buy products
online versus in the store
in a brick and mortar store we typically
get somewhere between five and ten
percent returns
but online we get north of 30 percent
returns
in 2020 the coronavirus pandemic pushed
online shopping
and returns to record highs cbre
a commercial real estate service
estimates that americans will end up
returning70 billion dollars worth of online
purchases post holiday season
that's a staggering 73 percent growth
from the previous five-year average
here's why that's a problem
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the entire returns business in and of
itself is just extremely complex
big retailers already use data to
improve the shopping experience on the
front end
walmart believes data should play a
bigger role in the returns process too
we're constantly digging into the data
to understand why customers are bringing
stuff back
and we actually can solve a bigger
portion of
the end of the life cycle of the product
by stopping the return from ever
occurring so if i know that i have an
item that is low quality
we work with the manufacturer to fix it
or we quit selling it that's because
accepting a return isn't always easy
either
a warehouse optimized for fulfilling
orders now has to receive a product and
inspect it
then someone needs to decide whether it
can be resold or not
in the end an online return can require
up to 20
more space and labor than one made in
store
those costs are part of why optoro a
return solution company
estimates that returning a 50 item can
cost a retailer
59 of its sale price
often the math just doesn't add up look
the best return is the one that never
happens but when it does happen it's
about stopping the return
or finding alternate ways where the
customer brings it back
to handle the iron to handle the return
and that's where liquidators come in
so this is a product that came in one of
these pallets liquidators like this one
are the middlemen between retailers and
resellers
we short organize process and figure out
methods
to get them to the right home and that's
that's really what we do here
they buy returned merchandise then sort
and evaluate it before auctioning it to
discount stores and authorized resellers
you'd be able to resell them at a profit
because you would be purchasing them
at a real fraction of what the actual
cost is
but some returns never make it to a
liquidator
products ending up in landfills
customers don't really even think of
thatas part of the purchase process every
year returns produce an estimated
5 billion pounds of waste in landfills
it's generally risky to remind consumers
how
potentially wasteful their consumerism
is
so in general retailers are hesitant to
lean too heavily
into those kind of awareness campaigns
the solution is complicated but walmart
for one says online shopping could
actually help reduce the number of
returns made
my customer goes online and tells me i'm
returning this item
for these reasons i'm more apt to
harnessthe information than i am if you just
walk into a store and drop it off
and it's not just data tools like better
sizing predictions for clothes and shoes
can help reduce the likelihood a
customer purchases the wrong size
ai chat bots can help answer customers
questions quickly
and keep labor costs down for retailers
even augmented reality is helping
customers try out products before they
buy
it's been unmanaged for years return
rates were allowed to grow
the rate of sales but if you effectively
manage this thing
you can control your fate of where this
is going absolutely
in an odd way this is a partially
self-correcting problem
as the return problem gets bigger for
all these retailers
there's more financial resources
available to fix the problem
so there's a happy outcome where less of
this stuff ends up in a landfill just
because there's more money to be made by
keeping it
out of the landfill
four score and seven years ago well
actually a lot less than that was when
an artistically inclined man in new york
became dedicated to the proposition
of sculpting snow his latest effort has
neighbors and passersby stopping staring
and snapping pictures
robert shot says conditions were just
right first
there was snow he wasn't traveling he
was healthy he didn't have to commute to
work in the city
and while his sculpture may perish from
the earth his community's admiration
lives on
what a great way to be lincoln the past
to the present maybe in future years
he'll be biden his time
trying to trump his previous efforts
bringing barack such a george's
tradition that takes a clean ton of time
but still pushes him to regain afresh
each year by car turning out sculptures
that never get gerold
presidential ponds they command respect
want to give a shout out to the conrad
schools of science the students watching
from wilmington delaware
as we're well aware I'm Carl Azuz for
CNN