[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
We're happy to welcome you to your midweek edition
of "CNN 10," where Wednesdays are halfway to possible.
We begin today in the Middle East, where the US secretary
of state is making a tour of three nations
and the Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
Attacks between Israel and the Palestinian territory of Gaza
recently went back and forth for 11 days
before a ceasefire was announced late last week.
It was the worst violence since 2014
between the Israeli government and Hamas,
the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza.
It says at least 248 Palestinians
were killed in the conflict.
Israeli officials say at least 12
people were killed in Israel.
The United States is a close ally of Israel.
The American government has said that Israel has the right
to defend itself, and that the US will make
significant contributions to rebuilding
the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
ANTHONY BLINKEN: Losses on both sides were profound.
Casualties are often reduced to numbers.
But behind every number is an individual human
being-- a daughter, a son, a father, a mother,
a grandparent, a best friend.
And as the Talmud teaches, to lose a life
is to lose the whole world, whether that life
is Palestinian or Israeli.
CARL AZUZ: During the violence between Palestinians
and Israelis in the Middle East, there were also
tensions in the United States between supporters
of the different groups.
Pro-Israeli and Palestinian marches were held.
And in cities across America, there were several attacks
on Jewish civilians, often, by people
shouting anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish statements.
Some of these are being investigated as hate crimes.
That's something else secretary Blinken discussed on Tuesday,
saying, the Biden administration finds
these assaults despicable, and says they must stop.
The US Secretary of State is scheduled
to visit Egypt in Jordan before returning to America.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic,
it's been more than a year since Americans
could visit Japan as tourists.
As we've reported, no international visitors
are allowed to attend the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo,
but athletes will still be coming in from around the world
if they're not in Japan already.
And the games are set to go on this July 23rd,
with the Paralympics beginning on August 24th.
According to Johns Hopkins University,
Japan has seen a decrease in new positive COVID tests
since its recent high of more than 7,500 cases
that was recorded on May 12th.
Overall, Japan seen only a fraction
of the cases and deaths that America has,
even accounting for the population difference.
And the Asian countries numbers are relatively
low despite the fact that 98% of its people
have not been vaccinated.
Japan, as a whole, is more resistant to vaccines
than the US is.
Still, US officials are telling Americans to stay
out of the Asian country.
And though Olympic officials say Japan's
done a good job of managing the risk so far,
some groups are still calling for another postponement
or cancellation of the games.
SELINA WANG: The US State Department is warning Americans
to avoid travel to Japan because of a surge in COVID-19
cases in the country.
It's issued a level 4-- do not travel advisory,
the highest cautionary level.
The CDC says that even fully vaccinated travelers
risk getting and spreading COVID-19 variants in Japan.
The US Olympic Committee says it's
confident that its athletes can still safely compete.
Japanese officials are downplaying
this advisory, saying it does not impact
US support for the Tokyo games.
But the contrast between what Olympic officials are saying
and the reality here on the ground is only growing.
Tokyo and large parts of Japan are still
under a state of emergency, only 2% of the Japanese population
is fully vaccinated, and the medical system is under strain.
In Osaka, doctors are warning of a medical system collapse,
with hospitals running out of bed space and ventilators.
At the same time, Olympic organizers
are only portraying complete and absolute confidence
that these games will go ahead safely.
CARL AZUZ: 10-Second Trivia.
A Scottish landowner named Lord Tweed-mouth
introduced what breed of dog?
Golden retriever, border collie, Irish setter, or Labradoodle?
In the 1860s, Lord Tweed-mouth breed a wavy-coated retriever
to a Tweed water spaniel to create the golden retriever.
The dogs and the bees are coming up next.
Both vastly different types of animals
are being tested for their ability
to detect COVID in humans.
When it comes to medical tests that diagnose COVID,
there are two main options--
the antigen or rapid test and the polymerase test.
Both collect samples by sticking a swab through your nose.
But one looks for COVID-related protein
fragments while the other uses enzymes
to seek out the genetic material of COVID-19.
But what if there's an accurate way
to test people without using a swab
and without really having to wait at all for test results?
- Man's best friend could be a new ally in the fight
to contain coronavirus.
A new UK study says highly-trained dogs
in controlled conditions may be able to sniff out and identify
COVID-19 infections in humans.
STEVE LINDSAY: Our previous work with using
dogs showed that we were able to detect people
with malaria by their scent.
So we thought, well, at the beginning of the pandemic,
let's see whether our dogs could detect people with COVID.
- The results of an early-stage study,
which hasn't yet been peer-reviewed,
say dogs picked up the scent of COVID-19
on the clothing of infected people up to 94% of the time.
And they were even able to detect asymptomatic cases.
Standard PCR tests are the best tests for COVID-19,
but they can't beat the dogs for the speed of the results.
The pups are winning that by a nose.
STEVE LINDSAY: That's really a quite
very high level of precision.
They could detect people with low viral loads
just as readily as they could those people
with high viral loads.
- Six dogs participated in the study.
A group of Labrador's, golden retrievers, and cocker spaniels
trained for six to eight weeks to recognize
the scent of the virus.
Researchers say dogs could one day
be used in high-volume areas like airports and concert
arenas to screen for infections.
CLAIRE GUEST: This can make a huge difference as we start
to come out of lockdown, and people start to travel,
and will hopefully assist in getting us
all back to a more normal life.
- But critics say it could be hard for the dogs to match
their success in the lab and the real
world since some sensing-crowded areas quickly disperse.
There are pilot projects using COVID-19
sniffer dogs in airports underway
in Finland, Germany, and Chile.
CARL AZUZ: So that could become one way to do it.
Another would be just about as fast,
but it would involve insects.
Though it might take a microscope to get results.
Today, I learned that honey bees have tongues.
And when they stick them out of you, it's not an insult,
but it could be a way to determine
if someone has COVID-19.
Here's "CNN 10" contributor Tyler Mauldin.
TYLER MAULDIN: Dutch scientists, Carl,
are buzzing over a new way to possibly detect COVID-19.
Scientists at labs in the Netherlands
say bees could be the answer.
That's right-- bees.
Despite not being known for their sense of smell,
the scientists were recently able to train bees
to stick out their tongue when they
detected the infection's odor.
Odor?
Yes, the coronavirus, like many other viruses and diseases,
creates a chemical reaction within the body,
which, in turn, releases a smell that our human noses can't
detect.
But bees can sniff it out.
Bees can actually sniff out flowers one kilometer
or more than half a mile away.
The scientists are trying to leverage that skill.
So these scientists gathered up 150 bees
and exposed them to healthy and COVID-positive minx.
There have been COVID outbreaks on minx
farms that's why the scientists chose the animal.
Anyway, when the bees were exposed to minx with the virus,
they were given a sugary reward.
Much like dogs, after a little training,
the bees started expecting their sugary reward once
exposed to the COVID scent and began
sticking out their tongues.
The scientists later use humans in the experiment
and got similar results.
You best believe, Carl, the scientists
are trying to find ways to carry this out on a larger scale.
They say it could be very effective in diagnosing
positive patients in low income countries.
It's a bird.
It's a plane.
It's a UFO?
By definition, anything zipping through the air that can't be
explained immediately is an unidentified flying object,
and this fits that definition.
- Splashed.
Mark Barrier Reef.
CARL AZUZ: This video was taken aboard a US Navy ship
and recently leaked to the public.
The US Department of Defense says the footage is real,
along with some similar clips leaked
in the past 5 to 10 years.
So what is it?
If we UFOnly knew.
Of course, we could float some theories, air out some ideas,
hover over the subject, toss out some thoughts,
give props to the videographer, drone on with speculation.
All that could be pretty fly.
But if it turns out that everything was just
an optical illusion, all my airheaded ideas
would crash and burn.
I'm Carl Azuz for "CNN 10."
We want to give a shout out today
to QSI International School.
Our viewers watching from Tbilisi,
the capital of Georgia.
We have two shows left to go in our 2021 spring season.