What's up, sunshine? Welcome to the
show. I'm Koi Wire here with your daily
10 minutes of news. We are halfway
through the week and it is your word
Wednesday. So, listen up to see if the
vocabulary word you submitted helped us
write today's show. We are starting
today with the ongoing federal
government shutdown and the impact it's
having on a vital safety net program.
Now in its 36th day, it is officially
the longest US government shutdown in
history. As the shutdown drags on, so do
disruptions to many essential government
operations and services like SNAP
benefits for those who rely on
government assistance to afford food.
More than 42 million Americans need SNAP
or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program to buy groceries and necessities
each month. November payments were
initially paused due to the shutdown,
but President Donald Trump's
administration now says it will
distribute partial benefits following a
ruling by two federal judges, but the
payments will be half their normal
amount due to funding constraints. And
that's left many unsure whether they'll
be able to feed their families this
month. The prolonged lapse in government
funding has continued to stress food
banks, charities, and nonprofits set up
to assist Americans in need with federal
workers going without pay also turning
to those sources for aid. Turning now to
Egypt, which is celebrating its opening
of the world's largest archaeological
museum. The highly anticipated Grand
Egyptian Museum opened over the weekend
to some next level fanfare. We are
talking orchestras, flying dancers,
fireworks, and a drone show against a
backdrop of incredible Egyptian relics.
The billion-dollar project took two
decades to build. That's nearly as long
as it took to build the real great
pyramid of Giza. We had a pyramid, the
pyramids. Our Salma Abdelaziz has more.
>> Visitors will be welcomed by the more
than 3,000year-old statue of Ramsiz II.
But that's just one of the highlights.
There are over 50,000 restored artifacts
detailing life in ancient Egypt to
explore with the collection of King
Tutan Kamun as the main attraction.
I visited as part of a CNN team in 2018
and saw firsthand how conservationists
worked around the clock to restore
objects thousands of years old,
including King Tut's very degraded
sandals. We create a new technique by
using some special adhesive. As you saw
the its condition, it's it was very bad
and here I think it's [laughter] come
alive again.
>> Construction started in 2005 but was
delayed several times over the years.
First because of the Arab Spring and
later the CO 19 pandemic.
But now the museum is finally opening.
Pop quiz hot shot. What do grizzly bears
eat most before hibernation? Salmon,
rodents, berries, or insects?
This is a twofer. Grizzly bears chow
down on berries and salmon before
hyperagasia, an abnormally great desire
for food. Or for bears, the process of
accumulating fat reserves when they eat
for up to 22 hours of the day.
Grizzly bears have lost roughly half of
their global range since the 1800s.
Canada is one of their last strongholds,
but even there, they're considered at
risk. Today on CNN's Call to Earth, we
head deep into Bear Country to see the
innovative ways researchers are keeping
tabs on these giants and helping them
elude the harmful human impacts to their
habitats.
Bruce Mlen is used to bushwhacking his
way through the thick forest of British
Columbia.
But
>> I think this is a really good route. I
think I've got a good route this time.
Yes. Look at that.
>> For it's here that the wildlife
ecologist has studied grizzlies for more
than four decades.
>> Put my first radio caller on a grizzly
bear in 1978. It takes a lot of skill
and not everyone can do that or would
want to.
But today, he's not on a mission to
track down bears. Instead, he's looking
for what they've left behind.
>> It's quite remarkable what you can get
out of a root of a hair. A hair trap is
a way we catch hair. We attract bears to
a site with baits and then we string a
strand of barb wire around it. Inside
this gas can is very well-aged cow's
blood. It's quite smelly. They will
crawl under or over the wire, hopefully
leave a hair or two.
>> 30 years ago, Mlen and his team invented
this non-invasive hair trap method to
collect DNA samples from grizzly bears.
>> From that hair, we can tell the
individual, its gender, its species, uh
who's its mother is, who's its father
is, where it was born. You can learn
broad categories of its diet.
So, we have learned an awful lot about
how many bears there are. We know about
trends, which tells us which way the
population is going over time.
>> After crossing a lake
and blazing a trail through dense woods.
>> So, the hair trap is further along here.
>> Bruce has arrived at his first hair trap
site.
>> I don't think anything's been here.
Usually when you get here and a bear's
been here, it's knocked the bait pile
all apart and, you know, smack things
around, but
that's it. No, nothing came by.
A 2018 provincewide report estimates
that approximately 15,000 grizzly bears
roam the forests and coastlines of
British Columbia. While their overall
numbers have remained stable here since
the '9s, they still face threats like
habitat loss due to human development,
which has fractured the population.
We have [music] a large population.
Actually, most of the world's grizzly
bears are just north of here. But
there's a big fracture that grizzly
bears have not been crossing for a long
time. We're not looking at bear numbers
anymore. We're looking more at their
genes and finding out where they were
born.
Upon arrival, the second site looks a
bit more promising.
>> So, I go along each barb with the paper
because you can see much better against
paper than not looking for aha bear
hair. I'm pretty darn sure we have
enough of a sample.
Even in the age of AI, this decades old
tool remains vital for tracking
grizzlies and works [music] handinhand
with newer technology to uncover more
about their lives. We use, you know,
game cameras and hair traps at the same
time to to be even more effective.
Those are all linked in a geographic
information system which enables us to
predict where we'll find bears more.
[music] As grizzly bears have expanded
their distribution and humans have
expanded their distribution and there's
a lot more overlap now. This work is
important [music]
because many many people want to live in
this world and not have a huge impact on
the bears.
Call to Earth Day 2025 is tomorrow,
November 6, where we are embracing the
theme, guard your green space, and
urging individuals, communities, and
nations to take bold collective action
to protect the natural world that
sustains us. Sign up at
cnn.com/calltoearth
and share how you are guarding your
green space.
Today's story getting a 10 out of 10. A
brave new breed of backpackers blazing
trails in a whole new way. Move over,
Elton John. There's a Rocket Man
Renaissance. Some brilliant boffins,
that's scientists, y'all, at a Chinese
university have successfully tested a
jet powered backpack that can send
pilots zooming through the air at speeds
of nearly 60 mph for up to 5 minutes.
Would you do this? The PAC's twin turbo
jets can reach a maximum altitude of
nearly 5,000 ft. Could you imagine
rolling out to work or school like this?
Control is handled by the pilot's arm
movements, but future versions might be
capable of flying themselves using
autonomous tech. The developers say the
real world applications stretch to
infinity and beyond. Everything from
emergency rescues to special operations.
I will be out the rest of the week, but
I'm going to be leaving you in the hands
of the doctor, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Did you
know that in addition to being our chief
medical correspondent, he's a practicing
brain surgeon performing procedures
every week? So, here is your chance.
What questions might you have for the
health expert Dr. Sanjay Gupta? Send
your questions to CNN10 at CNN.com and
I'll tell the doc to be sure to answer
some of your questions over the next two
days. All right, superstars. Thank you
uh for those submitting words for your
word Wednesday. Our winner today is Miss
Addie and friends at TST Board of
Cooperative Educational Services in
Ithaca, New York. They submitted
elillude, a verb that means to evade or
escape from danger, enemy, or a pursuer,
typically in a skillful or cunning way.
Thank you for making us smarter today.
All right, I [snorts] have a shout out
today going to Miss Leftwitch and all
our wolves at Woodstock Middle School in
Woodstock, Georgia. Rise up. Go make it
an awesome day. And I want to thank you
for being the best viewers on the
planet. You complete me. I'm Koi Wire
and we are CNN 10.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[screaming]
Yo, what's going on?
>> Happy birthday
to you. Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear boy.
Happy birthday to you.