[clock ticking]
[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Hi, my name is Carl Azuz.
And my game is objective explanations of world news.
Thank you for taking 10 minutes to watch today.
For the first time since America's troubled withdrawal
from Afghanistan, top US military officials testified
before Congress on Tuesday.
A big reason why this is so significant
is that lawmakers from both major political parties
have criticized the Biden administration for how
the withdrawal was carried out.
In April, US President Joe Biden ordered
America's military to leave Afghanistan where US
troops had served since 2001.
It was America's longest-running war.
The White House said unstable conditions in Afghanistan
could have kept American troops there indefinitely.
And the president said in terms of money and manpower,
it no longer made sense.
His original deadline to complete the withdrawal
was September 11.
That was moved up to August 31.
But as that date approached, Afghanistan's government
and military collapsed.
And the nation's former rulers, the Taliban,
took control of the country in a matter of weeks.
On Tuesday, the leader of US Central Command
said he'd been afraid something like that would happen.
So he advised President Biden against pulling
all US forces out.
He joined other military leaders in recommending
that 2,500 American troops stay in Afghanistan.
But in an interview with ABC News in August,
President Biden said he couldn't recall anyone saying that.
Yesterday afternoon, the White House
said leaving troops in Afghanistan past August 31
would have escalated a conflict with the Taliban.
US lawmakers have criticized the Biden administration
for completing the withdrawal while American citizens were
still in Afghanistan and for not saying for sure
how many Americans are there.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin
said efforts are still going on to evacuate Americans though he
said that was now the job of the State
Department, not the military.
Secretary Austin was also asked about long-range missions.
On August 29, the US carried out a drone strike that
was intended to kill a terrorist but instead
killed 10 Afghan civilians.
The military called that a horrible mistake.
And the Defense Secretary said Tuesday
that it's difficult but still possible
to carry out successful long-range missions without US
troops on the ground.
The Taliban, meanwhile, say the US
breaks international law when it flies
drones into Afghan airspace.
That group's swift takeover in the face of the failure
of Afghan's army took military officials by surprise
according to Secretary Austin.
What does it mean for Afghanistan?
- So we're now inside the green zone.
This is the area where all diplomats,
international organizations, were based.
And it's so eerie driving through.
It's now completely empty except for Taliban guards.
So just up here, these are the gates to the US embassy
here in Kabul.
And the Taliban guards are telling us
that nobody has been in here since the US
left this embassy just days after the Taliban took power.
So you can see through here this appears
to be sort of the first layer of security
to get into the embassy.
And now it's just completely abandoned.
So essentially, as you saw there,
that green zone has basically been completely abandoned.
And that's part of the reason it's difficult for the US
to go about evacuating the roughly
100 Americans who remain on the ground
because there is no embassy.
There is no American footprint here.
I will say on the streets of Kabul,
things feel a little bit calmer.
You do see women on the streets.
You see fewer Taliban on the streets.
But make no mistake.
There are some very troubling signs that the Taliban have
not changed their true colors.
Women are now part of the transitional government here.
Women are not allowed to go to school, girls
after sixth grade, and so on and so forth.
So even though the traffic might be flowing in Kabul,
and I might be wearing a slightly looser headscarf,
there is still a very high level of fear here on the ground
that things are going to take an ominous turn.
CARL AZUZ: 10-second trivia.
What is the longest mountain chain in the world?
Himalayas, Alps, Andes, or Rockies.
Stretching 5,500 miles down South America,
the Andes mountain chain is the world's longest.
[music playing]
MARIA JOSE SANIN: When we think of palms,
I'm sure most people think of beaches.
Wax palms like cooler environments.
They've developed and evolved tightly
with mountain evolution.
So in part, we owe having wax palms
to the evolution of the northern Andes mountain chains.
[music playing]
Many different landowners are protecting palms
in the different areas where they grow.
But for the general public, for just anyone,
being able to experience a cloud forest, these enormous wax
palms that completely alter the slope silhouette,
is a fascinating view.
CARL AZUZ: Out of the Atlantic, Hurricane Sam
is thundering over the sea.
It's currently a powerful category four storm.
Officials aren't sure where Sam's going to go.
They don't think it'll threaten the continental United States,
but the island of Bermuda could be in its path.
Those storms can form outside of hurricane season.
It officially runs through November 30.
This year has been an active with 19 named storms so far,
but it hasn't been as active as last year's
record-breaking season.
Understanding hurricanes, predicting
how they'll strengthen and where they'll turn
is an ongoing challenge for scientists.
But new tools are constantly being
developed, including the drone sailboat you're about to see.
Getting data from them reportedly
costs $2,500 per drone per day, but that
could still be cheaper than a plane or a boat
with a human crew.
LATOYA CANTRELL: This storm in no way will be weakening.
Time is not on our side.
RACHEL CRANE: Hurricane Ida grew from a category one
to a category four hurricane in less than a day.
This effect known as rapid intensification
leaves emergency planners little time to react.
- Your window of time is closing.
RACHEL CRANE: To help make better forecasts,
the company Saildrone believes its autonomous research vessels
are up to the challenge of finding
out what conditions cause storms to intensify so quickly.
RICHARD JENKINS: Going to try and send it
to the eye of a hurricane where no one's
ever managed to get before.
RACHEL CRANE: Traditionally, scientists capture hurricane
data by flying planes directly through them,
dropping probes into the sky along the way.
But in order to completely understand a storm,
scientists say more data needs to be collected
from the surface of the ocean.
RICHARD JENKINS: What drives a hurricane's strength is
a transfer of heat and moisture from the ocean
to the atmosphere.
We don't quite understand the dynamics of how that works.
RACHEL CRANE: In order to find out,
Saildrone deployed five ships into the Atlantic Ocean
and Caribbean, areas where lots of hurricanes
develop and are likely to hit land.
They're powered by the sun and wind,
can stay out at sea for months at a time,
and are built to take a beating.
RICHARD JENKINS: It's really designed to get hit by a wave,
tumble, submerge, and come back up and carry on sailing.
RACHEL CRANE: And I see a camera up top.
RICHARD JENKINS: This hurricane mission
is key to understand the spray, the foam on the water.
So we're hoping that we can see with the camera
what the water looks like.
RACHEL CRANE: The drone's sensors and cameras
can send data and images in real time back
to Saildrone's headquarters.
CHRIS MEINIG: These are measurements
of wind, temperature, humidity right
at that interface level that may help
the modelers understand the fundamentals of hurricanes
better.
That's never been done before.
RACHEL CRANE: And more accurate models
could allow emergency planners to give better direction
to residents back on land.
RICHARD JENKINS: We're hoping to get
really precise measurements, which really drives
our intelligence to predict the future strength of hurricanes
and then enable people to make preparations or move
out of the way with ample time.
RACHEL CRANE: Rachel Crane, CNN.
[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: With winter on the way, most,
red squirrels are hiding the walnuts they collect in pits
around their neighborhood.
One squirrel, however, is storing his collection
in a Chevy Avalanche.
It belongs to a man named Bill Fisher
who lives in North Dakota.
In just a few days, Bill removed 42 gallons of black walnuts
from the truck.
And there are some he can hear but cannot remove.
Bill says the squirrel was planning to do some car
camping over the winter.
Guess there are worse places to squirrel something away.
But if the AM General idea as the Sierra turns colder is
to have a Land Cruiser where you can "Tacom-an"
acorn or F-150 of them, why not pick up a Power Wagon so you
can Chevrolet up a few tokens of your Harvester so you could
store them by the truckload?
These puns are nuts, y'all.
And we're going nuts for Everett Area High School.
Shout out to our viewers watching
from Everett, Pennsylvania.
They subscribed and left a comment on our YouTube channel,
and you should too.
I'm Carl Azuz for CNN.
[music playing]