[Music] What's up, sunshine? Happy Friday. Yay. I'm Koi Wire with another Summer Friday edition of CNN 10, the best 10 minutes in news because of you. Happy 4th of July. Today is America's 249th birthday. That means next year it's going to be a quarter of millennia old. Hope you had an awesome week. Let's get you your news, knowledge bombs, and scintillating storylines before we head into the weekend. We begin with a whole new world for college sports where schools will soon be allowed to start cutting checks directly to athletes. And this is in addition to the scholarships many of the athletes may be already receiving. At the end of June, a federal judge formally approved a deal between the NCAA's big conferences and lawyers representing all division 1 athletes. So, as of July 1st, schools can pay their athletes directly. As part of the deal, the NCAA is going to pay $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who have competed in college at any time from 2016 to present day. Moving forward, the Power Conference schools can now directly pay athletes, which has always been an absolute no. There will be a cap that's expected to start at $20.5 million per school and it's expected to increase each year and that money has to be spread through all sports programs. Now, this is separate from the money that some athletes may be able to secure through name, image, and likeness deals. NIL deals are where brands or companies pay athletes for endorsing their products or services through things like commercials, advertisements, autograph signings, or appearances. But those NIL deals will now have to be approved by a new middleman, so to speak. Over the past few years, college sports has become like the Wild Wild West when it came to athletes committing to a school or transferring to another school strictly due to NIL money that was being offered. What's not debatable is that this new model does bring stability and fairness to uh student athletes in college sports. and we've we've been in an unregulated environment with no rules and no enforcement. We're now going to have a foundation and structure laying out those rules. The new structure provides our student athletes with more opportunities and benefits than ever before to make sure that NIL deals are fair moving forward and not strictly pay for play. The power conferences have set up a settlement enforcement committee called the college sports commission to enforce these new rules and guidelines. The NCAA is not going to be in charge of this new world. This new framework will finally help to put some guidelines in place for all of that. But lots of questions remain like, are college athletes now employees of the school? Can you put a salary cap on athletes that aren't unionized? Well, the NCAA and its schools are hoping that federal lawmakers will step in to help solve the remaining problems with these issues. What do you think? Do you think colleges and universities should pay their student athletes? Why or why not? How do you think this might affect the universities and all of their sports programs, especially the smaller sports programs like tennis, field hockey, wrestling, and how might this impact student athletes decisions on where they should go to pursue a degree? What types of problems could potentially arise for schools andor athletes? Discuss. This past spring in New Jersey, months of communication failures at Newark International Airport highlighted aging and insufficient equipment at air traffic control towers across the US. It also led to some controllers walking off the job and staffing shortages. The transportation secretary just announced some upgrades that should drastically improve some of the radiotoradio communications, but nationwide he says there is more to be done. I mean this is I mean this is real and you've actually lost controllers because they were so stressed when that happened. And so what I would tell you is what you saw in Newark, you will see variations of that through the airspace in the coming years unless unless we undertake this uh this mission. In the meantime, airline pilots need to be able to react instantly if or when they lose contact with a control tower. Our Pete Montene got an exclusive look at how this all works. Ready to go. I'm at the controls of a Boeing 737 Max simulator here at United Airlines Flight Training Center in Denver to see what pilots experience when air traffic control goes dark. It's the latest challenge for them after flights in and out of Newark faced repeat failures of radar and radio earlier this month. And we don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are. Along with me is Captain Miles Morgan, who heads training for United. Would you say that these issues at Newark have caused any sort of degradation of safety? Not at all. Um, safety for us, if you've got pilots that are operating into the airspace, it is safe for us to do so. We are 100% confident in that. This is some of the busiest airspace in the country. If air traffic controllers lose their radar scopes, traffic, Morgan says pilots can fall back on the plane's traffic collision avoidance system or TCAST. It calls out collisions in the making and can even issue instructions to climb or descend. So now, okay, I've stopped doing what I'm doing. I look, I see it on the screen, 700 ft above. I acquire it visually. Y and now I'm monitoring. I'm making sure, hey, I'm this is good. I'm we're we're at a good airspace. We're safe. The reason you're showing it this is to show that there are other layers here. There are other systems. Exactly. Correct. We have a lot of different layers and a lot of them rely on the external world, but we all have this internal system uh that our airplanes will talk to each other. But when controllers can't reach flights via radio, Morgan says pilots would try a previously used radio frequency. Push this button. The previous frequency pops back up. Try the emergency backup frequency. This would be a backup if we couldn't raise it any other way. Use data link text messaging to communicate with the airline. And I could say need frequency and I and dial in a transponder code that signals that communication has been lost. Decades old redundancies that air traffic controllers are trained for, too. We were always prepared for it. The pilots are always prepared for it. Unfortunately, we're having to use those safety nets. So, I'm going to start putting some flaps in for you. Maybe to prove that flying is safe. Morgan even let me do the landing. A little flare. Perfect. Boom. not by worst as airlines insist the worst will not happen when air traffic control fails. I don't really worry when something um is a little abnormal. We're we're trained for all these abnormalities. It's not just this. It's we're constantly uh training for whatever could be going wrong and how to make a decision to rectify that. Pop quiz hot shot. Which country has the largest estimated population of sharks in its surrounding waters? United States, Brazil, Australia, or Thailand. If you said Australia or United States, we're giving you two thumbs up as marine biologists have tracked millions of sharks on both countries borders. Though, the city with the most sharkinfested waters globally. That's New Smyrna Beach in Florida. Now, to some rare behavior between two shark species caught on video. Observers captured video of tiger sharks and oceanic white tip sharks peacefully feeding together on a carcass despite conditions which pose the potential for aggression. And now researchers are wanting to know why. Check out this fascinating report. Sharks feasting together. A site rarely seen, but observers witnessed this fascinating gathering off the coast of Hawaii's Big Island. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to document the two of them um in a feeding aggregation together. The study published in Frontiers and Fish Science highlights the surprisingly peaceful feeding of at least 12 sharks from two distinct species, tiger sharks and oceanic white tip sharks. Sharks tend to be solitary hunters. Um they generally feed alone. We were really excited by the fact that everybody seemed to be getting along really well at the feeding aggregation. These two species are very different. Oceanic white tips are highly migratory while tiger sharks inhabit coastal areas year round. Yet the observer saw how social dynamics among the sharks allowed for this peacefully shared meal. The two were rarely together in space and time. there was kind of a um what you would call a social hierarchy which was kind of dominated by size. The study suggests sharks are not vicious and aggressive as often portrayed in movies. There were three people in the water documenting this event on camera um over 8 and 1/2 hours and at no point in time did any sharks bother any of the photographers. Researchers hope this provides a less frightening perspective of sharks while still reminding people to respect their space and avoid provoking or antagonizing them. [Applause] Today's story getting a 10 out of 10. Bright young whippers snappers, wise and witty elders and their pens. A pen pal program connecting some of Minnesota's youngest scribes with the state's wisest. Third graders at Crooked Lake Elementary spent the entire school year exchanging letters with senior citizens at nearby retirement communities. They traded questions. They shared ideas and created meaningful friendships, all without meeting face to face until now. I've looked forward to this all year because I think that their letters have been absolutely wonderful. It was really fun to learn about her story and just I couldn't wait to meet her and now it finally came. It was like kind of getting like a Christmas present, like getting something like cuz I've never had a pen pal before. So, this is my first time having a pen pal. When you're older, you don't have as many contacts, so it's it's good to receive greetings from pen pals. In their final week of school, students got to meet their pen pals. They showed them around their school. They ate lunch together. Their teacher, Miss Norton, said the year-long project was invaluable, and she hopes to keep it going. Really great opportunity for the kids to practice their writing skills. You know, organizing their thoughts in letters, editing, publishing, revising. Um, great opportunity for them to connect in the community with somebody that they wouldn't normally connect with. The power of caring. Make someone smile today. You never know when, but you might be the light someone needs. Rise up everyone. Follow me at Koiwire on the socials for some updates and announcements about the show. Play that Friday music. Nadair. Our shoutouts for the week are going to Miss McGertie and Miss Mageno at Thornton High School in Daily City. Check this stuff out. These awesome greeting cards they made through their recycled paper making class. The detail, the precision, the creativity. Stunning. Thank you. And this shout out goes to all my Panthers at Pilgrim Park Middle School in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. I mean, this swag bag is elite. We have some 3D printed models in here. We have a t-shirt that is signed by all 300 sixth graders at the school. Thank you for making us part of your day. Rise up, Panthers. Finally, my last shout out goes to all those wrestlers. Coach Rabine at Mcmmin County High School. Much respect. Now, I played football in the NFL, but I must say wrestling was the toughest thing I ever did. Keep working hard, study harder. Cheers to all of that. Thank you, McMen. You are more powerful than you know. I'm Koi Wire and we are CNN 10. [Music]