[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
It's a brand new week and we're happy you're spending
a few minutes with us today.
First up, attempts are being made
to evacuate civilians from war-torn cities in Ukraine.
Children are among the people hiding in basements
while fighting destroys the buildings above.
Russian and Ukrainian forces agreed to a cease fire
on Saturday to allow people to leave
the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha
using a safe evacuation route.
But the plan was shut down when fighting
continued, with each side accusing the other
of breaking the ceasefire.
They both said they'd try again on Sunday, though.
The mayor of the coastal city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov
says there's no power, heat, water, or internet.
Ukrainian government officials have been asking the countries
that support them to establish a no-fly zone, the goal of that
would be to keep Russian planes and helicopters from conducting
airstrikes in Ukraine.
If that won't happen, Ukraine's president
has asked for fighter jets, and the United States is reportedly
in talks with Poland to possibly provide those kinds
of planes to Ukraine.
But while America and several other countries
have given Ukraine weapons and ammunition for the war,
officials say they're hesitant on requests for a no-fly zone
and fighter Jets because Russian President Vladimir
Putin has said that would make them
participants in the conflict.
And the US and European countries
have said they don't want to directly get involved
against the Russian military.
They don't want the conflict to escalate beyond Ukraine.
The Russian leader has already called the Western sanctions,
the financial penalties on Russia,
the equivalent of a war declaration.
But while they continue to expand and hurt Russia
economically, they have not brought an end
to its invasion of Ukraine.
Shipments of international aid, surgical kits, trauma kits,
medicines, first-aid packages-- they've begun to arrive
in the Ukrainian capital.
Government officials there say thousands of people
have been going for days without electricity,
food, running water, or basic day-to-day supplies.
CLARISSA WARD: We are here on the northern western outskirts
of Kyiv at the entrance to a place called Irpin
and basically what you're seeing here
is people who have been under heavy bombardment
now for seven straight days, finally managing to flee
from this area of Irpin.
And if we pan over here, my cameraman Scott McQueeney
can show you the bridge here that connects
Irpin to central Kyiv has been destroyed.
That was destroyed by Ukrainian forces
to prevent Russian forces from moving on into central Kyiv.
But what you're seeing now is that people have to navigate
and cross on foot, this destroyed bridge
in order to get out safely.
Now since we've been here, we have
heard nonstop heavy artillery coming from that direction,
also that direction.
You can imagine how petrified these people are.
These people have been under bombardment
for seven straight days and are only just leaving their homes.
And they're leaving them reluctantly,
and they're leaving them with the knowledge
that they might not be able to go back to them.
And you can see many of these people are elderly.
[speaking ukrainian]
See them-- people are so exhausted.
They can barely walk, they're having to climb
this sort of twisted metal.
Many of them, as you can see, are elderly,
they're visibly distressed.
It's just an awful, awful scene.
And these people are the lucky ones.
[speaking ukrainian]
I'm just going to help her carry this bag a second,
excuse me while we try to--
[speaking ukrainian]
I know.
So, people are obviously incredibly
affected by the situation.
They're frightened, they're exhausted, they're on edge.
They've got their pets, they've grabbed whatever they can.
A lot of these people have no idea where they're going to go
once they cross this bridge.
They know that they're in relative safety
once they do it, but they don't have any idea
where they're going to go.
They don't have any idea where they're going to sleep tonight.
CARL AZUZ: On Saturday, the National Weather Service
in Des Moines, Iowa said a large and extremely dangerous
storm was moving toward a city five miles east of the capital.
It produced a tornado that tore through several counties,
killing at least seven people and seriously
damaging more than 24 homes.
Iowa's governor proclaimed Madison County a disaster area,
what that does is speed up help from Iowa state government
to the people who need it.
Yesterday, police said it was dangerous to travel
because power lines were down and debris and standing water
were blocking roads, so they encouraged
Iowans in the affected areas to stay home.
Their state is located in Tornado
Alley, a region of the US that sees the most twisters.
On average, two tornadoes strike Iowa in the month of March.
ALLISON CHINCHAR: This is a two-dimensional look
at a storm on radar, but meteorologists see a tornado.
But what is it exactly that meteorologists see?
Well, let's take a look.
The yellow and green colors you see here
are going to be your very heavy rain in the storm.
The red color indicates your hail core.
And then, all the way down there,
the purple circle, that's where your tornado is going to be.
Meteorologists often refer to it as the hook
echo because of the hook shape that it ends up taking.
But these aren't the only features we look for.
We also have to take a look at the winds inside the storm.
Imagine this flagpole was inside of our storm,
and the flag is going all the way up
to the very top of the cloud.
The thing is, the wind changes direction as you go up.
So this naturally creates that rotation
necessary for funnel clouds, and also even tornadoes.
So now let's take a look at the base of that storm.
What you have is, you have very warm inflow--
warm air coming into the storm and rising because that's
what warm air does, it goes up.
But you also have cold air coming down
from the tops of the clouds and sinking all
the way down towards the base.
Now together, these help to create wind shear down
near the perimeter, and that is what helps create some
of the more violent tornadoes.
Now, what if your tornado has been on the ground
for at least a little bit?
Then you start to get this--
the debris cloud.
Which is essentially a collection of all of the stuff
the tornado has been able to pick up.
Everything from dust, to trees, to even homes.
Ten Second Trivia.
Which of the Great Lakes has seen the most shipwrecks?
Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, or Lake Erie?
[beep] More than 2,000 shipwrecks rest in Lake Erie,
which has one of the highest concentrations in the world.
But it was in Lake Superior, the deepest Great Lake,
that a 130-year-old shipwreck was
recently discovered off the coast
of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
No one knows why the coal carrying
barge was named the Atlanta.
The capital of Georgia, which shares that name,
is hundreds of miles away.
But historians do know the ship was being towed during a storm
when the tow line snapped.
And so did the Atlanta's masts, which
left it impossible to sail.
Only two people out of its seven member crew survived.
Experts say the wreck is so well-preserved
because the waters of Lake Superior are so cold.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society
explored it using a remotely controlled submersible,
it plans to leave the Atlanta undisturbed
as opposed to trying to salvage it from a depth of 650 feet.
[music playing]
For 10 out of 10, what is two stories tall,
weighs more than a ton, and is covered
by more than 2,000 foam quills?
Percy the porcupine, of course!
Now you might be asking, but Carl, what?
This is a puppet, a gigantic inflatable one.
It was ordered by the San Diego Children's
Zoo for a new exhibit.
According to the Los Angeles Times,
it took five people to build Percy,
it takes five people to operate Percy,
and he's only a porcupine head.
Because when the project came to a head,
it was already ahead of the size of the others.
It was head and shoulders above them.
And fans who were "porcupine-ing"
away for their "noc-turn-e" to make a "ro-dent"
in their schedule by visiting such an "arbo-real"
treat, thought the whole idea was "quill-er."
From the island of Okinawa, Japan,
we heard from our friends at Kadena High
School on our YouTube channel.
Shout out to you!
I'm Carl Azuz.
[music playing]