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CARL AZUZ: Hi I'm Carl Azuz.
It's good to see you as always.
A dramatic increase in violent crime
is challenging American cities from coast to coast.
In early December, ABC News reported
that at least 12 US cities saw more murders in 2021
than they'd ever seen before.
That number rose to at least 13 cities after Milwaukee,
Wisconsin joined the list Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Portland, Oregon, Louisville, Kentucky, Austin, Texas,
Albuquerque, New Mexico--
the problem was all over the map.
Experts and government officials have cited several reasons
for it-- problems rippling from the COVID pandemic,
underfunded and understaffed police forces, not enough
crime fighting resources.
The US government has set aside hundreds of millions
of dollars for law enforcement and community programs
aimed at curbing crime, and state,
city, and community officials have promised action locally.
There were cities whose murder rate
actually decreased last year according
to the Washington Post.
They included Boston, Massachusetts
and Dallas, Texas.
Pharmacies in those cities and all across the country
are expecting shipments of face masks
from the federal government.
Specifically, these are N95 masks.
Health officials say they give the best protection
against the spread of disease 400 million of them
are being distributed.
The Biden administration says it's
the largest deployment of personal protective equipment
in US history.
There's no charge for them, though critics
say this is a government program and would
be funded by tax revenue.
Some health officials have said the Biden administration needs
to do more to make COVID tests and masks available,
that it's been too focused on vaccines.
President Joe Biden says the N95 masks
are an important tool to stop the contagious
Omicron variant of COVID.
There are indications that it's slowing down in some places.
Infections and hospitalizations are decreasing,
and while it's infected both the unvaccinated
and the vaccinated, some health experts
are hopeful that Omicron might leave people with immunity
to COVID in the future.
Across the Atlantic, the future is uncertain for the nation
of Ukraine.
There's been a conflict taking place there in the eastern part
of the country since 2014.
People who want closer ties to neighboring Russia
have been fighting against the Ukrainian government,
which wants closer ties to other European countries.
Russia supports the side that wants independence.
NATO, an alliance of European and North American countries
support the Ukrainian government.
So you can see how there's international interest
in what happens here.
Russia has gathered tens of thousands
of troops near its Western border with Ukraine,
and though Russia says it has no plans to invade,
the Ukrainian government and its allies
are concerned that Russia will.
The US has sent weapons and military equipment
to the Ukrainian government.
In December, President Biden said
he had ruled out sending American troops into
a potential conflict there.
But last week, the US leader said
if Russia moved against Ukraine, the US would
send troops into the region.
And this week, America told nonessential staff
and family members at a US embassy in Ukraine to leave.
All sides involved have been holding meetings
to try to calm down the situation
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says
everything is under control.
But at the same time, his government
is also building up its military presence in eastern Ukraine.
CLARISSA WARD: The Ukrainians don't
want to contribute in any way, shape, or form to panic.
They're worried that the local population here
will get nervous if they see that the US is starting
to evacuate some nonessential personnel and family
members they're worried that that projects
an image potentially that there really is Russian aggression
expected imminently.
But while everyone is waiting for the diplomatic process
to play out and hoping that it bears some fruit,
there's no question that very real preparations
are being made on all sides for the possibility
of a military conflict.
NATO has just announced that it will be sending
additional resources-- ships, fighter jets to deployments
of NATO in eastern Europe.
That has already been greeted by the Kremlin
with a negative tone, saying that this
is increasing tensions.
The Kremlin also grousing about what they called
"informational hysteria" and accusing the Ukrainians
of building up military personnel and hardware
along the border with the Donbass region,
which is where those pro-Russian separatists are based.
It would come as no surprise to many
though that, of course, the Ukrainians are building up
their presence along their border
there because that is exactly where
many fear some type of incursion may occur if and when it does.
So I think it's a sense of people still hoping
that the diplomatic efforts might bear some fruit
but preparing in the meantime for the worst as well
CARL AZUZ: 10-Second Trivia--
which of these inventions was developed for the space
program in the 1960s---
floppy disks, memory foam, Explorer 1 satellite,
or carbon water filter?
[beeping]
American engineer, Charles Yost developed memory foam for NASA
astronauts in the 1960s.
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Freeze-dried foods, portable hand vacuums,
scratch-resistant lenses, smoke detectors-- not all
of these inventions were created for space exploration,
but they all saw improvements under space
programs that eventually made their way to store shelves.
Flash forward a few decades, the International Space Station
cost $150 billion to build, and it takes several billion
to maintain it every year.
Critics say it hasn't yielded enough scientific advancements
to justify its cost.
But a European astronaut has been
working to apply the research it has conducted to modern life
on Earth.
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THOMAS PESQUET: When you look at the Earth
from the Space Station, it's absolutely magical.
It glows in blue.
It has the most beautiful scenery
you could possibly imagine.
And when you take a step back and you see the Earth
in its entirety, you understand it
is just an oasis in the cosmos.
All around, there's nothing--
no life.
It's blackness, emptiness.
And there's just this blue ball with everything
we need to sustain human life and life in general,
which is absolutely fragile.
And it makes you want to cherish the Earth.
I'm Thomas Pasquet.
I'm an astronaut for the European Space Agency
I'm coming back from my second mission to space on board
the International Space Station.
It's a permanent laboratory that orbits the Earth.
Just like us on board the Space Station,
the Earth is a spaceship, and we are its crew.
It flies around the sun.
It has limited resources.
It has some protection means, but that can be overcome.
You don't control the amount of resources
that you have on board, but you have to manage them
And what you can control--
the way you care about the spaceship,
the way you maintain it because you want the flight to be as
long and peaceful as possible.
I'm an ambassador for the Food and Agricultural Organization
of the United Nations.
But during my mission on the Space Station,
we had a lot of research done on plants because space is
a harsh environment for plants.
By studying plants in the environment of space,
then we can study how they can resist to a drought or water
scarcity, and then we can feed all those results to research
being made on Earth and to create
some more resistant crops, the crops that
will resist to climate change.
We've also worked a lot on all our packaging.
Just like on Earth, we're trying to limit
the production-- the use of plastic-- the production
of waste.
And so we came up with edible packaging, which is just such
a fantastic and simple concept.
We need foam to protect everything from shocks
during launch into space, so what we did
is we turned that foam into food.
It's like gingerbread.
Now our packaging is at the same time our source of food.
It reduces the need to send cargo up.
It reduces the production of trash it's brilliant.
So hopefully, that technology can also transfer to packaging
on the ground, and then we can reduce
our environmental footprint every time we go
buy something in a supermarket.
If we set ourselves on the right path,
there's nothing we cannot do.
We built that unbelievable facility in space.
We're using it every day.
Peaceful cooperation between countries
that were not always friends.
So if we can transfer that model to the way
we deal with the environment, I think we'll get there.
I'm optimistic for the future.
If we can make a Space Station fly,
then we can save the planet.
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CARL AZUZ: Ice bites, ice jams, and ice pancakes sound
like new menu items at IceHop.
[chuckles] But these unique formations recently
appeared in Lake Michigan, not far from Chicago, Illinois.
And meteorologists say there of the ice pancake variety.
They form when chunks of ice start bumping into each other
as they float on the waves.
Eventually, they get these round,
raised edges, and Voila--
ice pancakes.
Mother nature commonly serves these up in the Arctic,
but it takes several days of subfreezing
temperatures for them to form in the lower 48 states.
For "con-ice-sseurs," they sound like an ice
addition to a dessert menu.
It might include ice box cookies, Apple "p-ice," pumpkin
iced latte, cold cross buns.
Unless you're a snowbird everyone loves frosting.
So let's go ahead and set the table with some fresh
"p-ice-tries" or chocolate chip "cook-ice" because that would
be the icing on the crepe.
From Springfield, Tennessee, we heard from Springfield High
School on our YouTube channel.
Thank you for your comment on Monday's show.
I'm Carl Azuz.
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