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CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
Welcome to "CNN 10" on this December 6.
Our show starts in southeastern Asia
in an archipelago located between the Indian
and Pacific Oceans.
This is what happened on Saturday on
the Indonesian island of Java.
Mount Semeru is the tallest mountain on the island
and its eruption has left entire villages covered with ash,
hundreds of homes destroyed and more than 1,000 people
without a place to live.
Mount Semeru is located on the Eastern part
of Java, about 430 miles from Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.
Officials say they started getting reports of falling ash
and the smell of sulfur at about 3 o'clock
on Saturday afternoon and footage from the government's
emergency response teams showed people
running and taking shelter as huge clouds of ash
descended around them.
At least 14 people were killed in the eruption,
nine are still missing, dozens were injured,
and officials say the mountain is still
dangerous because it's produced at least two pyroclastic flows.
These are mixtures of rock, ash and volcanic gases
and they're extremely hot and impossible to predict.
They're also more dangerous than lava.
People living as far as six miles away from Mount Semeru
have been told to evacuate.
They've taken shelter in schools, other public buildings
and mosques.
And emergency response teams have
been unable to reach some villages
because they've been cut off by mud and fallen trees.
They're asking for equipment and manpower
to support rescue efforts.
The Indonesian government is preparing to relocate
those who've lost their homes.
Experts say eruptions like this are common in Indonesia.
It's located in an area of high tectonic and volcanic activity
known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.
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CHAD MYERS: There's one thing you need
to know about the Ring of Fire, it produces
90% of the world's earthquakes.
The Ring of Fire includes about 450 volcanoes.
Many of them are submarine volcanoes,
meaning they're underwater, as are 75% of the world's
volcanoes in total.
Now the Ring of Fire is also called
the Circum-Pacific Belt. It's the result of plate tectonics.
The movement of the plates has created a nearly continuous
series of oceanic trenches and chains
of volcanoes stretching for 25,000 miles
in a horseshoe shaped pattern from New Zealand
past Japan, across the Bering Strait,
and down toward the tip of South America.
The plate movement also causes earthquakes.
Because many of these earthquakes occur in the ocean,
the Ring of Fire is also known for tsunamis,
produced when the ocean floor is either forced to rise or fall.
When a mega-thrust event happens in this region,
the water is displaced and the water pushes ashore.
Most tsunamis are only a few inches high,
but there are times that, that wave and that swell
can be as tall as buildings.
CARL AZUZ: Starting Monday, most people
planning to fly to the US are facing a new COVID restriction.
They need to show proof of a negative test
taken within one day of their departure to America.
Until now, that test could have been taken within three
days of their flight.
The new rules in place regardless of whether travelers
have gotten a COVID vaccine.
Those who can prove they've recovered from coronavirus
within the past 90 days won't have
to take the test, neither will children under age two.
This is part of an effort by the Biden administration
to slow the spread of omicron, a newly identified
mutation or strain of COVID.
It's not known yet how dangerous it is, how easily it spreads,
or whether vaccines are effective against it,
but President Joe Biden says the rules
are intended to give people more time to get vaccinated.
His administration has also extended a requirement
that travelers on planes, trains, and buses wear masks
and it's put a ban on travel from eight
countries in Southern Africa where
omicron was first identified.
The ban doesn't apply to US citizens.
Critics say travel bans aren't very effective
against the spread of COVID, but that they could make
other countries hesitant to report new mutations of it
if they're afraid they'll be, quote,
"punished" by travel bans.
Research on COVID mutations varies from country to country.
- In the past few months, the Philippines
has seen record COVID case numbers,
and as officials try to contain the virus on the streets,
inside this lab in Davao City, they're
fighting on a different front.
- The first rule in the war is that you have
to know your enemy and for us to know
our enemy in this pandemic, we have to sequence it.
- In the battle against COVID, the lab
has the artillery it needs to sequence
the virus, this tiny machine, the problem
is that it can barely afford the ammunition,
the chemicals to actually make it work.
They cost about $900 for just a couple hundred test samples.
In a given month, they say thousands are needed
to fully track the virus.
- Recently, we started a crowdfunding campaign
and so far we raised around 400 euros.
You know, in the Philippines as well,
$1,000 is like two people's monthly salary,
so it's not insignificant here.
- That relatively small funding gap is a big reason why
developing countries are lagging so far behind in identifying
COVID-19 variants that might be more
deadly or more transmissible.
In the West, labs like the UK's Sanger Institute
are sequencing the virus on a huge scale,
using multi-million dollar machines like these.
According to GISAID, the global COVID variant database,
the biggest contributions are coming
from the richest countries.
Some countries haven't sequenced any genomes
at all, which means none of us know which variants
are circulating there, ready to potentially
spread across borders.
- If we don't get to do sequencing
in many parts of the world, then definitely
we're missing out on possible variants that are emerging.
- We know how rapidly new variants can take hold.
The Delta variant first emerged in India in April
and was the dominant variant worldwide by mid-July.
Omicron, the new variant first spotted in South Africa,
was declared a variant of concern in record time
and is predicted by some experts to become the dominant strain
in the days ahead.
Its emergence highlighting again the importance of real time
virus surveillance.
Getting the necessary technology out to all corners of the globe
is part of the challenge.
And this company, an hour North of London,
thinks they have an answer.
SCOTT MCLEAN: The technology to sequence
the virus in remote labs around the world
is being manufactured here on an industrial scale.
It's small and relatively inexpensive.
The challenge has been getting governments to actually use it.
CARL AZUZ: 10 second trivia.
The US Army's 101st Airborne Division
was activated during what war?
World War I, World War II, Korean War or Vietnam War?
The 101st was activated in 1942 while the US
was engaged in World War II.
At the time, the division's first commanding general
said though it had no history, the 101st had a rendezvous
with destiny and the paratroopers
have served in every corner of the world since then.
A specific group of men in this division
became known as The Band of Brothers,
first in a bestselling book by historian Stephen E. Ambrose
and later in an HBO miniseries.
They were the soldiers of Easy Company,
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment
of the 101st Airborne Division.
And the last surviving officer from the band of brothers
passed away on Friday at the age of 99.
His name is Colonel Edward Shames.
He was part of the first combat jump
into Normandy, France on D-Day.
His obituary says he was the first member of his division
to enter the Dachau concentration camp
after it was liberated in 1945.
He was also among those who entered
Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Germany as the war was ending.
Colonel Shames was remembered as a, quote,
"stubborn and outspoken soldier who
had the highest standards for himself
and the many served with."
Here's one of his reflections from an interview
he gave in 2014.
EDWARD SHAMES: There's two things that I'm proud of that I
did in World War II.
Number one was my battlefield commission
and the other was that I brought more men home from my platoon
than any other the 200 platoons in the 101st Airborne Division.
The rest is what I was supposed to do
and how I was supposed to do it.
CARL AZUZ: For some of us, it's hard enough to solve
a Rubik's Cube, like, period.
But if it comes easy, naturally and quickly to you,
check out what it takes to be a semifinalist in a fastest
hand competition when you got to solve a Rubik's Cube like this.
Juliette Sebastien from France, who provided this video,
holds a couple of European records
for getting the colors all lined up.
She says she's practiced with a Cube in her pocket
while walking around.
You can call her a true artist, a cubist.
Kind of like Rubens except Rubik's.
I guess to be successful you've got to block everything
else out, keep your head from spinning while your hand does,
make it your transmission to be monochrome automatic
and build your record brick by brick by taking
it 3 by 3 steps at a time.
Olympia High School, we see you watching
from Olympia, Washington.
Thank you for your request on our YouTube channel.
I'm Carl Azuz and that's "CNN 10."
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