[clock ticking]
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CARL AZUZ: Hello, and welcome to Friday.
It is awesome, and we hope you think the same thing
about today's show.
I'm Carl Azuz.
First story today, the U.S. government says it's
made progress in an effort to relieve some
of the shipping problems that have clogged up
the international supply chain.
The government does not control that chain.
It's largely made up of private port
operators, trucking companies, railroads, and warehouses.
But the Biden administration is putting its support
behind a plan for the Port of Los Angeles to operate 24/7,
and for large companies like Walmart, Home Depot, and UPS
to ship more goods at night.
California's Port of Los Angeles is one of the most
congested ports on earth.
40% of all the containers shipped to America
come through here and at the Port of Long Beach.
Economic analysts and trade leaders
say this is a step in the right direction,
but that it won't make a major impact in supply problems.
It's estimated that round-the-clock operations
will increase container flow at this port by 10%.
The supply chain problems are complicated.
They've been made worse by a worldwide shortage in trucks,
computer chips, chemicals, and other goods,
and different COVID-19 restrictions,
which keep many transport workers from moving freely.
Other efforts are being made to address shipping problems.
Ports in the state of Florida say they have not
seen the delays that California's have,
so officials in the Sunshine State
are trying to encourage shipping companies to unload there, even
though that might mean sailing from the Pacific
through the Panama Canal to get to Florida.
So for some ships carrying billions of dollars in cargo,
it's a question of what takes longer and costs more--
waiting to unload on the West Coast
or sailing to Florida on the East Coast.
Organizations in Florida are rushing to hire more truck
drivers, who are needed to pick up the unloaded containers
and take them to warehouses.
The trucker shortage is said to be the weakest
link in the international supply chain, and the evidence of that
stretches to Georgia's Port of Savannah,
the nation's third largest behind those
in California and New York.
AMARA WALKER: What we're seeing here
is a major traffic jam of cargo ships,
as well as a major backlog of supplies.
If you just take a look at the view from our Mastcam,
you'll see this wall, this mountain of shipping containers
stacked as high as you can see.
We're talking about 70 to 80,000 of these steel boxes that
have been sitting here every day waiting
for somebody to pick them up, to get to their final destination.
And we're told that this is a 50% increase in the number
of shipping containers that the Port of Savannah
is now dealing with.
So why are we seeing this huge backlog?
Well, as you know, and as we've been reporting,
there's this major shortage of truck drivers
around the country, right?
And also, that's causing retailers
to leave their containers here.
And the Georgia Ports Authority has been calling the retailers
to remind them, look, your container
has been sitting here for 12 days, or weeks, actually.
We're told hundreds have been sitting here for several weeks.
So what we're being told right now, what's happening
is that there are seven vessels at the dock, in their berths,
being unloaded.
Most of these shipping containers
take about 24 hours or so to be unloaded.
That's not atypical.
What's atypical is the fact that there are 25 cargo
ships in the queue right now.
Many of them could be waiting up to as long as five days.
CARL AZUZ: 10-second trivia.
What city has the most fountains in the world?
St. Petersburg, Russia; Kansas City, Kansas;
Rome, Italy; or Florence, Italy?
[music playing]
No city on the planet has as many
fountains as Rome, where you'll find more than 2,000 of them.
Let's all go to Italy to see the bacteria.
Maybe not the most effective travel ad, but tiny organisms
that eat away at the nation's ancient artifacts
are also being used to preserve them.
Restoration is an ongoing challenge in
this richly historic country.
Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to preserve sites
like the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps,
and the ornate Trevi Fountain.
There's a legend that those who toss
a coin into this Baroque monument
will come back to Rome one day.
To ensure architecture like it is still standing when they do,
some workers are employing bacteria found deep inside.
[grinding stone]
BEN WEDEMAN: A laser burns away the grime
of 18 centuries caked on to The Arch of Septimius
Severus in the Forum.
Rome may be the Eternal City.
Its ancient artifacts, however, are not,
under unrelenting assault by the ravages of time,
pollution, acid rain, and the sweat and breath
of millions of tourists.
ALESSANDRO LUGARI: [speaking italian]
BEN WEDEMAN: Conservator Alessandro Lugari
and his colleagues are using the latest
technology to try to salvage the city's treasures.
"See the block?" he asks.
It's about four cubic meters, several tons,
and inside, there are billions of bacteria.
Bacteria that ever so slowly disfigures
and erodes the marble.
"We built a box so it would be dark," Lugari explains.
The temperature and humidity should
be relatively high, to recreate conditions on the outside
like those inside.
They then covered the outside of the marble
with enzymes, drawing the bacteria
out to the surface where it calcified,
strengthening the stone.
Increasingly, restoration work is being
done on a molecular level.
But of course, for Italy, the challenge
is huge because it has archaeological sites
on a monumental scale.
- [speaking italian]
BEN WEDEMAN: While some fight bacteria,
others are using it to eat away grease and dirt.
Microbiologist Chiara Alisi and her team at ENEA, Italy's
National Agency for New Technologies, search
for potentially useful strains of bacteria
in industrial waste sites, abandoned mines,
and from the distant past.
CHIARA ALISI: [speaking italian]
BEN WEDEMAN: "They've already been selected by nature
to develop potential abilities, which we can test
and study and apply," she says.
"This strain, we collected from an Etruscan tomb."
It's a complicated process, isolating individual strains
that thrive on the right kind of filth, sequencing the DNA,
and then putting them to work.
Silvia Borghini shows us the results in the Garden
of the Museo Nazionale Romano.
With a toothbrush, she removes gel
suffused with bacteria from a block of marble
once part of a fourth century Roman bridge.
The cleanest strip was covered for 24
hours with the SH7 strain.
SILVIA BORGHINI: [speaking italian]
BEN WEDEMAN: "It's easy to apply,
and afterwards the artifacts stay clean," Silvia says.
"It doesn't harm the environment.
It's not toxic for us or the flora in the garden.
It's perfect."
And therein lies the paradox.
A single-celled organism could help preserve
this city's ancient glory.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, Rome.
[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Takes some serious time, money, and enthusiasm
to build a life-sized X-wing, but for some die-hard Star Wars
fans in Russia, it was challenge accepted.
The builders say it took several months to construct,
and that in terms of the money they spent,
it was, quote, "a lot."
The cost was $5,000, according to the news
site Interesting Engineering.
The X-wing replica is made mostly of wood
and doesn't actually fly.
In fact, the starfighter doesn't actually fight stars,
its pilot doesn't actually walk skies,
it's nowhere near a galaxy far, far away,
and it took more than Obi one builder,
though it wasn't exactly a rebel alliance.
Still, when it comes to the question of do or do not,
Jedi got to say, the finished X-wing makes for one
great "Mandal-story-an."
Canon City High School-- shout-out to you, our viewers
in Canon City, Colorado.
We get a lot of requests for that,
but the one place we look for the schools we
mention is youtube.com/cnn10.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
I'm Carl Azuz.
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