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CARL AZUZ: A troubling sign for the US economy
leads off today's edition of "CNN 10."
I'm Carl Azuz.
It's good to have you watching this Thursday.
We've talked a lot in recent months
about inflation, when prices go up for the things we buy
and the money we have doesn't buy as much as it used to.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics
just reported that the Consumer Price Index--
what people pay for a variety of goods and services--
it increased by 7% between December
2020 and December 2021.
That's the biggest jump in prices since 1982,
and it's reflected in the costs of used cars
and trucks, housing, and almost every category of groceries.
Between November and December alone, prices increased
by half a percentage point.
That was more than many economists had expected,
but it wasn't as much as the 0.8% increase
between October and November.
So what's causing this, and what does it mean?
The US government has said ongoing problems
with the supply chain.
The interrupted flow of the things we buy
continues to lift prices.
Experts say COVID-19 continues to have an impact
in some areas, especially with the rapid spread
of the Omicron variant of the virus.
And critics of government spending
say it has helped to drive up inflation.
A silver lining is that the money many Americans earn
has also increased over the past year,
especially in some lower income fields
like leisure and hospitality-- think
restaurant and hotel workers.
But the rise in prices has eaten into their wage gains.
And in many higher income fields, the rate of inflation
has been greater than the rise in wages.
So is there an end in sight to this?
It's hard to say.
For much of 2021, the Federal Reserve,
America's central bank, said it expected inflation
to be transitory, or temporary.
But by the end of the year, the Fed
had stopped using that term, indicating it felt inflation
would stick around for a while.
An economist interviewed by CNN expects
year-over-year price gains to continue at least
until the early spring.
- Inflation is the textbook term for prices rising over time
and purchasing power falling.
Think of a trip to the grocery store.
It sets you back $100.
A year from now, you buy all the same items,
but they now cost $103.
That's inflation-- 3% to be exact.
So what causes inflation?
A rise in production costs is one scenario.
For example, booming energy prices
can drive up the cost of transportation
or manufacturing.
Rising wages can also contribute to inflation.
If business owners have to pay workers more,
they might also raise prices to cover those higher labor costs.
Inflation can also happen when the demand for goods
exceeds supply.
Then businesses selling those items can increase prices.
Prices going up slowly is generally
considered a good thing, especially if wages rise, too.
It helps keep the economy dynamic and growing.
The US central bank has even a target inflation rate, 2%.
But inflation can quickly get out
of control when governments print too
much money to pay for spending.
When not enough real value underlies that paper,
prices surge.
That's called hyperinflation.
It happened in Germany, in Zimbabwe in the 2000s,
and most recently in Venezuela.
And it's the Fed's job to make sure the United States keeps
the inflation rate on track.
CARL AZUZ: 10-second trivia.
Which of these names has not been used for a NASA mission?
Euclid, Galileo, Kepler, or Ptolemy?
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Though he was a real astronomer and mathematician,
Ptolemy's name has not been used for a NASA mission.
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NASA has a Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.
And it studies-- you guessed it-- near-Earth objects.
That includes an asteroid set to pass by the Earth next Tuesday.
It's named 7482, or 1994 PC1.
I don't know why all the numbers.
They could have just gone with Earl.
And when scientists say it'll pass nearby,
it's a relative term.
The rock will actually be around 1.2 million miles away.
So 7482 or 1994 PC1 is not expected to hit
or threaten Earth in any way.
It's also not the biggest asteroid known to do this.
The one flying by on January 18 is about 6/10 of a mile wide.
The biggest asteroid fly-by on record
was made by an object estimated to be between 2 and 1/2 miles
and 5 and 1/2 miles wide.
It passed by in 2017.
Experts say people with clear weather
and a telescope might be able to see 7482 or 1994 PC1.
What if there is an asteroid out there that does threaten Earth?
NASA currently has a $320 million
mission that aims to see if it's possible
for a human-made spacecraft to knock
such a rock off its course.
Michael Holmes filed this report just before the mission
launched last November.
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MICHAEL HOLMES: It's a space story seen several times
in the movies, like in the 1998 sci-fi film "Armageddon."
- The United States government just
asked us to save the world.
Anybody want to say no?
MICHAEL HOLMES: An asteroid threatens Earth.
The military, astronauts, even oil rig drillers
try to save mankind.
Some cities don't make it, but in the end,
the planet survives--
a Hollywood ending which NASA is hoping
to make a reality with its first planetary defense test mission.
Scientists say they have identified
the kilometer-wide asteroids like those shown
in the blockbusters, and there are no dangers of them hitting
Earth in the coming centuries.
But NASA says it wants to study what
could be done if an Earth-threatening
asteroid is discovered.
A mission called DART, the Double Asteroid
Redirection Test, that will send an unmanned spacecraft
into space.
And if successful, it won't be returning home.
Its destination-- a near-earth asteroid
named Didymos and its moonlet.
NANCY CHABOT: These asteroids are not a threat to the Earth.
They are not a danger to the Earth.
They are not on a path to hit the Earth
in the foreseeable future.
That makes them appropriate target for a first test.
MICHAEL HOLMES: Traveling at a speed of 6.6 kilometers
a second, DART will then deliberately
crash into the moonlet to try to jolt it from its regular orbit.
Scientists back on Earth will monitor the collision
using satellite imagery and ground-based telescopes
to see how much the moonlet changes course.
ANDY CHENG: If one day an asteroid is discovered
on a collision course with Earth,
and we have an idea of how big that asteroid is
and how fast it's coming and when it will hit,
that kind of information, then we
will have an idea how much momentum we need to make
that asteroid miss the Earth.
MICHAEL HOLMES: The targeted moonlet
is a little larger than one of the pyramids in Egypt.
NASA says there are 10,000 known asteroids that are just
as big or bigger that could potentially cause
major regional damage if they ever
hit the Earth, although none of them are tracking this way.
DART's kamikaze mission could provide
life-saving data if anything ever does get too close.
Michael Holmes, CNN.
CARL AZUZ: Back down to Earth, in Central England,
archaeologists working on a future high-speed railway
route recently made an amazing discovery from the past.
These are the remains of what's believed to be a Roman town
dating back to the year 400 BC.
Researchers think it was originally an Iron Age village,
but that afterward it expanded into a wealthy Roman
trading center.
How do they know this?
Well, the main road was a major clue.
It was more than 30 feet wide, when most Roman roads were
around 13 feet or narrower.
Historians say that indicates it was busy, with carts coming
and going stocked with fruit, vegetables,
animals, goods for trading.
In the town itself, they discovered kilns
for pottery, ovens for bread making,
living areas for people and animals.
A lot of activity was reportedly happening here.
People weren't just roaming around,
if you know what I'm saying.
And the artifacts discovered include
hundreds of Roman coins, jewelry,
and fragments of pottery.
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Deep sea explorers searching for a World
War II era shipwreck recently stumbled
across something else--
a rare type of squid.
This is a bigfin squid, a relatively mysterious creature.
And it was spotted almost 4 miles under the ocean's
surface, about a mile deeper than anyone
had seen a squid before.
That's significant because this is a predator,
and scientists say the fact that it
was this deep indicates there are other species down here
for it to eat.
There weren't too many there at the time, though.
They had to "squid-addle."
You won't see fish food hanging out at the mollusk.
They wanted to squid while they were ahead.
Guess you could magna-pin it on their deep "sea-ted" fear
of being on a cephalopod-cast.
I tried to think of a calamari pun for that,
but I just couldn't "calamarry" it to my script.
I'm Carl Azuz.
Today's shoutout goes out to Battle Creek High School
in Battle Creek, Nebraska.
Thank you for watching.
"CNN 10" returns tomorrow.
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