[clock ticking rapidly]
[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
We hope your Wednesday is going well.
We start today's show with a number--
200,000.
That's an estimate of how many large containers
are floating on ships off the coast of Southern California.
It's a record-sized backlog for the Port of Los Angeles,
along with the Port of Long Beach,
which is right next to it.
These two facilities bring in 40% of all the goods sent
to the United States by sea.
A port director says about two weeks' worth of work
is anchored off the California coast.
And retailers say the timing is particularly bad with Christmas
a little over two months away.
The holiday season is the busiest shopping period
of the year, and economic analysts say Americans
are eager to buy gifts.
But with the supply of goods so badly tangled at ports,
like the ones off California, some store shelves are empty.
Managers can't say for sure when their next shipments
will arrive.
And critics say the US government's
efforts to try to get things moving aren't enough.
Transporting goods is just one part
of this supply chain problem.
In some instances, factories haven't
been able to keep up with demand for the things they make.
Some have been closed on and off as cases of COVID
have come and gone.
Rules and restrictions have kept transport workers
from moving around freely or limited the hours
when they can do that.
And these challenges aren't just affecting the US.
As economies have bounced back from the shutdowns of the COVID
pandemic, demand for goods and commodities like oil
has increased tremendously.
There aren't enough containers to put things in.
There aren't enough ships to put them on.
And the higher need for shipping has resulted
in soaring costs to do it.
Here's how all of this is playing out for a slot car
company that's worried about having enough toys
to sell for Christmas.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: In this small New Jersey office,
a Herculean attempt is underway.
It's the unofficial logistics center for Carrera Revell,
working desperately to get their toys into the US
in time for this holiday season.
FRANK TIESSEN: OK, just giving you an update on the container
situation in the moment.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: President Frank Tiessen
is manning the operation.
Had you ever worked in logistics before?
FRANK TIESSEN: Only peripherally, not directly.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Why did you have to get directly
involved into logistics?
FRANK TIESSEN: Because of the global supply
chain challenges that we are facing.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Cargo vessels,
order numbers, and arrival dates all tracked with precision.
FRANK TIESSEN: Pretty much the first thing in the morning
is really checking the backlog in the warehouse.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Boxes of toys of the well-known slot car
maker are stuck in their warehouses
in China, waiting for a ride.
FRANK TIESSEN: We still have about 25,
30 containers, which are just missing,
which will not be here.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: That's 30% of their holiday product, just one
of many companies dealing with a supply chain nightmare.
With port congestion, containers shipped in May
are just arriving to Carrera Revell's US warehouse
in Atlanta, five months behind schedule.
ANGELA HIGGS: We have seen such a surge in the last 90 days.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Angela Higgs runs the freight forwarding
company for Carrera Revelle, tasked with receiving the toys
and getting them out to retailers as quickly
as possible.
ANGELA HIGGS: It's been one delay after another.
And we, of course, been pushing, and pushing, and pushing,
but these are-- delays are inevitable right now.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: With nearly every US port facing a backlog,
the warehouse is using all of them,
piecing together a working supply chain.
ANGELA HIGGS: We're just going everywhere we can.
Otherwise, these goods are not going to get to the stores.
And I'm not going to have anyone missing out on their toys
this season.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: To try to help with that,
President Biden announced two major ports in California
will move to operate 24/7.
But for Tiessen, the problem now moves from the sea to the land.
Does that help you guys?
FRANK TIESSEN: No, it doesn't help.
It just doesn't alleviate the problem, which we then have
once the containers are off aboard.
There are not enough trucks.
There are not enough freight trains
to move the containers inland.
Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN, East Brunswick, New Jersey.
CARL AZUZ: 10-second trivia.
In 1838, the first photograph of people
was captured in what city?
New York, New York; Paris, France;
London, England; or Gettysburg, Pennsylvania?
[beeping]
Louis Daguerre is believed to have captured the first photo
of people in Paris, France.
And here it is, the Boulevard du Temple, Paris.
The people we mentioned look like stick figures
in the bottom left.
Experts say there were probably others moving around,
but because it took several minutes back then
to capture a picture, only those who were
in place long enough showed up.
It's believed one was having his shoes shined.
Of course, there were no cars on the streets then.
Those wouldn't show up for decades.
Pedestrians, horses, and carriages would have
crisscrossed the City of Light.
And now there's some tension involving the modes
of transportation used.
Jim Bittermann takes us to the French capital.
JIM BITTERMANN: Out on the graceful avenues
and boulevards of Paris, a battle has been looming.
A century and a half after Baron Hausman
plowed through large parts of the city
to straighten out and broaden the narrow, twisted streets,
the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, a kind
of anti-Housman, has slowly been reducing
the size of thoroughfares for years, part
of her environmental plan to clean up air pollution
and make the city friendlier for bicycles
and other two-wheeled vehicles, like electric scooters.
The upshot is a growing battle between the Parisians who love
two-wheeled transportation--
I think it could be a good idea and not to have
cars in the town centers.
JIM BITTERMANN: --and the motorists who are
wed to four wheels.
- [speaking french]
INTERPRETER: It's a bit of a war of the bikes
and scooters against cars.
JIM BITTERMANN: High speed lanes along the Senne, which once
whisked suburbanites to and from Paris each day,
have been shut down to make room for joggers,
cyclists, and picnic tables.
All part of the Paris administration's
dream of ridding Paris as much as possible of cars.
- We want to transform public space.
And today, public space is occupied
by cars and car drivers.
We have half of the public space in Paris,
which is dedicated to cars.
JIM BITTERMANN: But it's not just the repurposing
of the public space.
Just as bad, say motorists, is the reduction
of the speed limit on most streets
in town to 30 kilometers.
That's just over 18 miles an hour.
The constant flashes of speed radar cameras
bear witness to how many motorists just can't bring
themselves to go that slow.
Drivers say the reduced speed limits
are just another way to strangle the cars out of the city.
The head of a motorists association
claims commuters have no alternatives to using
their cars, because public transportation is overcrowded
and often unreliable.
- For those who live around Paris, it's really unfair.
They need their car and they can't go to work.
It's something incredible.
JIM BITTERMANN: And so while Paris has taken major action
to rid the streets of automobiles
and make the city more bicycle-friendly,
going green is not proving to be politically very simple.
Jim Bittermann, CNN, Paris.
CARL AZUZ: From struggles over the future,
we are going back to the past.
A scuba diver in Israel recently made an amazing discovery.
He found a sword with a 3-foot-long blade,
along with stone and metal anchors and pottery fragments.
Because the artifacts were relatively close to a Crusader
fortress, experts believe they date back
to the Crusades, which were carried out
from 1096 to the late 1200s.
An Israeli historian says it's rare to find a sword
in such perfect condition.
It was probably buried under a deep layer of sand
without a lot of oxygen, and waves and currents
apparently shifted that sand recently
so the diver could see it.
With all the rocks and shells on it,
the sword currently weighs more than 11 pounds.
When it was new, 900 years ago, it probably
weighed between 2 to 4 pounds.
Archaeologists plan to look for more artifacts in the area.
[music playing]
At first glance, this is a lot to take in.
[non-english shouting]
If you guessed it has something to do with the balloon,
you guessed right.
This is the first ever Balloon World Cup.
Competitors stumble around a court that's
supposed to resemble a living room with a car in it
and hit the balloon in an upward direction,
but one that makes it hard for their opponent to get it.
If you hit it in a place that he can't reach, you win points.
This involved competitors from 32 countries,
including the Americans who inspired it when their home
balloon game went viral online.
So it's really blown up.
Now even if it looks a little "bal-loony,"
and predicting the winner is a toss-up,
no one competes "b-allone."
And losing could really deflate one's ego,
so hopefully a little air time will "heal-ium"
enough to where he wants to knock around another day.
Broadneck High School, shout-out to you,
our viewers in Annapolis, Maryland.
Thank you for watching the show.
I'm Carl Azuz for CNN.
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