[clock ticking]
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CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
It's good to see you, and we hope
your Thursday is going well.
US President Joe Biden departed Wednesday for
a high-stakes trip to Europe.
He's scheduled to visit Belgium and Poland.
And the big focus will be on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
What will it take to bring the war there to an end?
That's a question Western leaders
don't know the answer to.
And when asked what he'd say to them on this trip,
the president responded--
- I'm going to say that to their face.
I'm going to say all I have to say.
I'm going to say it when I get there.
CARL AZUZ: His first stop will be in the Belgian capital
for a meeting of all 30 leaders of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, or NATO.
This is an alliance of European and North American countries.
The United States is a member and the biggest
contributor to NATO.
It was established in 1949 as a guard against the Soviet Union.
And today, NATO countries are on guard against moves by Russia.
What's made the current conflict such a challenge for NATO
is that Ukraine is not a member.
That means the NATO countries that border it
and the ones that support it are not required to defend
Ukraine from Russia's attacks.
Russia doesn't like the fact that
several countries to its west have
joined NATO in recent years.
Ukraine's government wanted to.
That's a big part of the reason why Russia says it launched
a military operation there.
So what can result from NATO's meeting this week?
Part of it's symbolic.
The in-person gathering intends to show
that NATO is unified in opposing the Russian invasion.
NATO's expected to announce new sanctions, penalties on
Russia's economy over the war.
But even though experts say the current ones have hurt Russia,
they haven't stopped its moves in Ukraine.
So it's unclear if additional sanctions will.
The alliance will be sending more
weapons and equipment to Ukraine to help in its fight.
But one thing NATO countries say they're not willing to do
is to send their own military forces
to fight on Ukraine's side.
They don't want to be directly involved in combating Russia.
After the NATO meeting, President Biden
is scheduled to visit Poland and discuss
the millions of Ukrainian refugees who've fled there.
The US is expected to announce more assistance for refugees.
Next today, the same storm system
that spawned dozens of reported tornadoes in Texas
has taken a toll on Louisiana as it made its way east.
Officials in New Orleans say a twister hit their city
on Tuesday night, killing at least one person
and injuring several others.
But authorities say accurate weather
warnings had prompted a lot of people to take shelter.
And that probably prevented the outcome from being much worse.
The day before, hundreds of homes
had been damaged in Texas.
And the day after, millions of Americans
were under the threat of severe weather
as the system continued east.
But Wednesday morning brought us the first real look at
the destruction in New Orleans.
- Just adjacent to the Lower Ninth Ward, east
of New Orleans.
And we're getting that first glimpse of daylight,
and giving us and revealing to us as well as the residents
here the true nature of the devastation that
was left behind by this powerful tornado that struck him
out 7:30 local time last night.
Let's take you to the air, show you
what it looks like from above.
And you, too, at home can get an idea of just how bad it was.
In fact, we talked to the St. Bernard Parish President
earlier this morning.
And he told CNN that when you guys see what happened over
overnight, once that daylight hits the damaged scene,
you're going to see that-- well, it's was truly a miracle.
And he was referencing of course the limited amount
of injuries that occurred with this powerful tornado.
And unfortunately, there was a confirmed fatality.
But that number, of course, with the devastation
that we're seeing behind us could
have been much, much higher.
I want to show you the nature of a tornado.
As a meteorologist, we studied this in depth.
We understand damage patterns.
And this is very characteristic of a powerful tornado.
It is indiscriminate in what it destroys.
Look behind me here.
You can see homes completely untouched, virtually untouched
by this tornado.
And then you can see clearly what is a school bus behind me
that has been flipped.
It has traveled at least 100 yards from where it was
parked earlier this morning.
And then here, directly behind my right shoulder,
is a home where the roof has been completely lifted off.
We talked to some residents who actually rode out this tornado.
It was a mother and father of two children
that were 6 and 8 years old.
They lived just down the road, within this narrow neighborhood
of Arabi in St. Bernard Parish.
They told me that they could actually
feel the pressure drop within their ears
as the tornado approached.
That's how powerful it was.
They took a mattress from their bed and hid
inside their bath to take cover.
And fortunately, all were OK here.
CARL AZUZ: 10 second trivia.
What was Salyut 1--
the first satellite, the first animal
in space, the first moon Rover, or the first Space Station?
[beeping]
In April of 1971, the Soviet Union put its Salyut
Space Station into orbit.
2 of the 10 people currently aboard the International
Space Station stepped outside for a walk yesterday.
One of these astronauts works for NASA.
The other is part of the European Space Agency.
Their jaunt was scheduled to last 6 and 1/2 hours.
And their mission was to do maintenance
and make some upgrades to the aging, $150 billion laboratory.
A hose that helps with temperature controls, a power
and data cable, and the replacement
of an outside camera were all on their to-do list.
It was the 248th spacewalk on the ISS.
And the US government intends to keep it running until 2030,
when the last visitors are scheduled
to leave the station ahead of its planned crash
into the South Pacific.
Gasoline prices in the US and beyond
have been at or near record levels for weeks.
They rose in America throughout 2021, according
to US government statistics.
And they spiked even higher after Russia
invaded Ukraine, which led to more
instability in the oil market.
The states of Georgia and Maryland
are temporarily suspending their gas taxes in an effort to ease
gasoline and diesel prices.
Several other states are thinking
about doing the same thing.
What exactly factors into the cost of a gallon of gas?
What's in a number, specifically that number,
the number everyone can't stop noticing these days?
Well nationally right now, the price of gas as we're filming
this is $4.30 a gallon.
Here in California, where we're filming this,
it's even higher, the highest in the country.
Right now, it's $5.70 a gallon.
So what goes in a gallon of gas?
Let's break it down.
Here in California, they publish a breakdown
of what actually goes in the cost of a gallon of gas.
So we're going to focus on that.
And they use $5.19 a gallon for that.
So those are the numbers that we're going to be using.
First up, taxes.
There's local, state, and federal.
And there's a wide variance in state taxes.
The median national excise tax is just over $0.25 a gallon,
while the lowest is Alaska.
It's $.08.
But here in California it's $0.51 a gallon.
Those costs go to things like maintaining
roads and infrastructure.
Then you have other local state taxes and fees.
That adds on another $0.13.
And then there's the national gas tax.
That adds 18.4 cents per gallon.
And this number actually hasn't changed in decades.
So across state houses and federal government,
people are calling for a gas tax holiday
to help keep the price of gas lower.
But others are arguing that, no, this is too important a revenue
source to cut.
Then add on $0.36 for the distribution, marketing, and
profits of the gas stations.
That money goes towards things like rent, wages, utilities,
the cost of the pump, insurance, advertising,
and then the gas station's profit.
All that is $0.36.
Then there's the cost of refining the gas.
That adds $1.12 per gallon.
That includes refining the gas, also transporting it,
and the profits for those companies.
Then we get to the biggest piece of the problem,
the cost of crude oil.
Right now, that adds $2.87 per gallon.
Now this is the largest and most volatile
part of what makes up a gallon of gas.
When you see the price of gas going up,
you can count on the cost of crude oil
having just gone up as well.
All of those factors go into what you pay at the pump.
[music playing]
One fun thing about working on an explainer show
is that we get to explain stuff like this.
On the left, inside the apparatus being towed,
is Dutch speed skater Kjeld Nuis.
He held the record for fastest speed skated on natural ice.
That was just over 57 miles per hour.
But he wanted to beat that.
And with the help of the giant windshield you see,
which kept the breeze from being a factor,
Nuis recently clocked a new record of 64 miles per hour
on skates.
Anyone who lives on the cutting edge
is going to lace up and toe-pick the place
to be a trailblazer or blade runner by carving out
time to put boots on the ice.
But why break your own record?
Because skaters gonna skate.
That puts us on ice.
Prattville High School gets today's shout out.
Thank you to our viewers in Prattville,
Alabama for subscribing and leaving a comment
on our YouTube channel.
I'm Carl Azuz for CNN.
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