Arielle: Hey guys, it is Monday, January 25. I am Arielle Hixson, and I hope you are ready to start your week because Channel One News starts right now.
Today we are starting off with Old Man Winter. He came in with a force over the weekend, hitting the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions with record snowfall. The blizzard crippled many states; even Washington, D.C., schools are still closed today.
From above it looked peaceful, but on the ground, it was chaos and destruction. Fatal accidents, flooding, tons of snow and the complete shutdown of major cities, including
New York City.
Twins Emily and Kayla Gilligan were supposed to see the Broadway show “School of
Rock” for their 18th birthday.
Are you disappointed that it is canceled?
Emily and Kayla Gilligan: Yeah, yes.
Arielle: How long had you planned it?
Emily and Kayla: Couple months probably. Yeah.
Arielle: Eighty-five million impacted, thousands of flights canceled, over a dozen deaths and thousands without power. In Kentucky and Pennsylvania, epic traffic jams
— some stuck for an entire day. And even though the dig-out has begun, it will take days.
Some states saw at least 30 inches of snowfall, while others were breaking the two-foot mark. Now, trust me, guys; that is a lot of snow.
All right, coming up: five years after the Middle East uprising.
Arielle: It all started in the country of Tunisia: protests that eventually spread across the
Arab region to six countries. It was called the Arab Spring, and through these protests, people in several countries were able to take down long-time dictators.
Today marks five years since protests began in Egypt. Maggie Rulli takes a deeper look at what happened and where the country is now.
Maggie: It was called the Facebook Revolution: thousands of young people armed with signs and smartphones in Egypt demanding change, using social media to organize.
Ayman Mohyeldin: What happened in Egypt, you really have to begin in Tunisia, because that's ultimately where the Arab Spring began. And it was the first kind of, you know, social awakening, if you will, in the Arab world in the digital age, so it spread much faster than I think anybody would have anticipated.
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Maggie: Millions around the world watched the movement unfold, including Mohamed
Soltan, a student at Ohio State University.
Mohamed Soltan: So I remember American history class, sitting there, front row: I have my iPhone under the table, and I'm watching the protests hit the streets of Egypt. I can ’t tell you how
— it’s one of the best feelings of my life. I needed to be there for it.
Maggie: So he packed his bags and joined the masses in Tahrir Square, a famous landmark in Cairo, Egypt's capital.
Mohamed: Muslims, cops, liberals, Islamists — everybody. Everyone that wanted freedom, everyone that wanted social justice, everyone that wanted to see positive change, positive reform in the country. And it ’s the most historic part of our generation, our youth.
Mohyeldin: They wanted to see progress; they wanted to take control of their own destinies in shaping their governments and their leaders and their rulers and holding them to account.
Maggie: They were united in the fight against a common enemy, President Hosni
Mubarak, who had been in power for 30 years.
Women: Mubarak must go, must go!
Teen: Don't he have any dignity? What Egyptian people are saying to you, they don't want you. Why are you still here?
Maggie: Mubarak was considered a corrupt dictator but had been an ally to the U.S. for decades. Egypt is the largest and most powerful Arab nation, and U.S. officials say we needed Mubarak to help keep the peace in the region.
Mubarak spent billions of dollars on fancy palaces while two out of every five Egyptians were living on $2 a day or less.
Protestor: People, they're so separated and segregated from those who make the decisions that the Egyptian people are strangers in their own country.
Maggie: Two-thirds of Egypt's 80 million people are under 30 years old, and they make up 90% of the unemployed in Egypt.
Michael Rubin: Many of the street vendors you see in Egypt may have college degrees, but they have no hope of finding a job, no hope of really meeting their ambitions in life.
Dalia Abbas: The way we are living right now isn’t the way we should be living.
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Maggie: Tensions boiled over into protests, and the government's response was violent. Thousands were arrested and hundreds killed, but after 18 days, Mubarak finally stepped down. Egypt erupted into celebration, and Mohamed was right there in the front row.
Mohamed: The tears of desperate prayer just turned into happy tears. The sky was the limit; anything is possible.
Maggie: Many called it a new age, but what came next wasn't what was expected: a power struggle, like a game of musical chairs. First the military was in control; then a new president was elected with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that wants more laws based on the religion of Islam.
Al-Amir al-Deen: They are not the most popular group, but they are the most organized one. And we are about to organize ourselves in order to face them in a fair and free election. So please, don ’t. We will not see a new Iran!
Maggie: Protests broke out against the Brotherhood, and the military took over again.
Mohamed: When the military comes atop tanks and with guns to remove him, that to me was a big no-no.
Maggie: So protests broke out again. More than a thousand were killed in violent clashes, and tens of thousands were arrested. Mohamed, a U.S. citizen, was one of them.
Mohamed: Armed gunmen in civilian clothes just break the door and barge in. So before
I knew it, I'm on my knees; I'm getting slapped up.
Maggie: Mohamed and his three friends were charged with going against the Egyptian government. Mohamed's father, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was arrested later. After a few months behind bars, Mohamed stopped eating.
Mohamed: I was using whatever was left out of my will power or my will to regain my pride and eventually regain my freedom.
Maggie: He says he lost 160 pounds and nearly died. After almost two years in an
Egyptian prison, the U.S. government was able to bring him home.
Mohamed: I was so scared that this was all a dream and the moment I go to sleep and wake up, I was going to be back where I was. I still struggle with that a little bit.
Maggie: Today Egypt is led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a military general turned president.
While Egypt is no longer in chaos, the military says strict rule is needed because it is facing new terror attacks in the country.
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Mohyeldin: The gains that were achieved during the 2011 revolution, a lot of them have been reversed and set back. A lot of voices that were talking about change and reforming and progress have certainly been silenced, and new voices have kind of come into the light that are, I would describe as antidemocratic.
Maggie: Experts say that many of the countries who toppled their leaders during the
Arab Spring are now worse off.
Mohyeldin: It was driven by young people to try and reform their societies. Has it succeeded? Not in all cases. Is the process over? Absolutely not. It ’s going to take some time, but I think the forces of that movement have been unleashed now across various parts of the Arab world, for good or for bad.
Maggie: These dreams of a free and democratic Egypt, do you think they are possible?
Will they happen?
Mohamed: Yeah. I'm very optimistic. The future is ours; the history is yours. The future is ours. Time is on our side; we are going to come out on top.
Maggie: Maggie Rulli, Channel One News.
Arielle: To see more of Maggie's interview with Mohamed, hear about his time in prison and what was the first thing he ate after 16 months of no solid food, head to
ChannelOne.com.
All right, coming up, we check out some students who are building battlebots.
Arielle: It is a competition that brings classmates together for something a bit more scientific than sports. Take a look.
This is a stadium, and there are a lot of fans, but this is definitely not a basketball game.
It is the FIRST Robotics competition, where teams of high school students face off against each other with their game-playing robots. These students at Angleton High
School in Texas are getting ready for their first competition. They are calling themselves the Juggerbots.
Eleventh-grader Brian Neal is on the electronic side of things.
Brian Neal: I think this will really help me get into a nice college. It helps to get noticed.
Arielle: Clint Smith
— mechanics.
Clint Smith: I'm kind of mind-boggled that I'm doing this. Last year I used to sit in my room and play video games after school, but now I'm building robots.
Arielle: And Nicole Williamson is on programming.
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Nicole Williamson: I want to be, like, an engineer when I grow up, and this experience is, like, a good experience for me.
Arielle: They will have about six weeks to build their robot before the first round of competition. Whew, good luck to them.
All right, guys, have a wonderful Monday, and we will see you tomorrow.
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