Azia: Hey guys, it is Wednesday, October 7. I am Azia Celestino and Channel One
News starts right now.
Let's start off with headlines. And first up, the top commander for American forces in
Afghanistan was called to Capitol Hill yesterday to answer questions about the recent
bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital.
Doctors Without Borders, a group of volunteer medical doctors, is calling the attack on a
hospital in the city of Kunduz a war crime. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan says
the strike was a mistake.
General John Campbell: We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility.
Azia: The bombing killed 22 doctors, staff members and patients on Saturday. General
Campbell told a Senate panel that Afghan forces requested the air strike during a battle
with Taliban fighters and that U.S. soldiers were on the ground near the attack.
The turmoil comes as 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be cut down to 1,000 by
the end of 2016. And the White House says they will retrain Afghanistan troops in an
effort to keep from repeating an attack on protected facilities.
Next up, President Obama announced this week that he is creating two new marine
sanctuaries in the U.S., making these the first new marine protection projects in 15
years.
Pollution, overfishing, and the effects of climate change are just a few of the major
challenges facing marine ecosystems in the U.S. and around the world. And world
leaders are addressing that issue this week at Our Ocean conference in the country of
Chile.
That's where the announcement was made that the U.S. will set up two new marine
sanctuaries, one off the coast of Maryland and the other in Lake Michigan.
Both areas are filled with shipwrecks which provide a safe habitat for marine life.
Being a sanctuary means those areas now have special environmental protections and
restrictions on human use.
Alright, fantasy football is feeling the heat after employees win big. But is it foul play?
That's, coming up.
If you are a football fan, then you may be anxiously following your fantasy football team.
And there are fantasy football websites that allow people to enter their teams to win real
money. But after an employee of one of these websites won some big bucks off of his
draft, many are calling a penalty. Arielle Hixson has more.
1|Page
Arielle: It is football season and the ads for fantasy football leagues are everywhere.
Fantasy football is nothing new, but these sites have a pretty new format, paying out
massive cash prizes on a daily or weekly basis, instead of the traditional season-long
fantasy leagues.
Now, the federal government doesn't define that as gambling. Instead, they call it a
game of skill not chance.
Brandon Robinson: This business is very unregulated. I mean seriously, we've come a
long way from the dorm room playing amongst your friends to now the corporate sphere
that is fantasy football.
Arielle: But the industry is now under a microscope with accusations of cheating, called
insider trading. That's when someone uses secret business information for personal
gain.
According to a report in the New York Times, a DraftKings employee admitted he
released early data on what specific players were most used in starting lineups ahead of
the NFL's third week.
Now getting that early information ahead of the curve could serve as an advantage.
That employee went on to win $350,000 later that week, betting on rival fantasy football
website FanDuel.
In a joint statement, the industry leaders, DraftKings and FanDuel, defended their
practices, saying, “Employees with access to this data are rigorously monitored by
internal fraud control teams, and we have no evidence that anyone has misused it."
But for the nearly 60 million people who take part in this game of skill, the question now
is whether they are getting cheated at the end of the day.
Arielle Hixson, Channel One News.
Azia: Coming up, the Mars madness continues.
Time to Get Your Geek On because it is Space Week, and we are continuing our look at
the race to Mars. But how will humans even get to the red planet when it is millions of
miles away? Keith Kocinski finds out.
Pascal Lee: First of all, it's a voyage. It’s a voyage of adventure. You know, I like
traveling, but this is going to be the mother of all camping trips.
Keith: A camping trip NASA has been planning for years, the space agency hopes to
send astronauts to orbit Mars in the late 2030's and set foot on the planet in the early
2040's. It may seem like a long time from now, but to get a mission like this off the
ground NASA has a host of hurdles to overcome.
2|Page
Lee: The challenge of going to Mars is to create space systems that are reliable
enough, that they won't need any spare parts or would have to be brought from the
Earth for the entire round trip.
Keith: Scientists not only need to develop a reliable rocket, but one that can accelerate
at eight to 10 times the speed of a bullet, while weighed down with fuels and supplies.
The private company, Space-X, is working on developing more powerful launchers. And
to help lighten the load, scientists at the NASA Glenn Research Center near Cleveland,
Ohio are working on a way to use and carry less fuel by tapping into the power of the
sun with solar electricity, making the fuel last 10 times longer.
Also, experts say much of what astronauts need to live on the red planet will be
launched years before they land.
Lee: What that means though is that there’s an infrastructure in Mars waiting for you,
and you want to be landing right next to that stuff.
Keith: Once they solve technology issues, there’s still the human side.
Lee: If you’re sending humans, what you have to do is to keep the human being alive all
the way to Mars without resupply from the Earth. The world record for single space
mission is 427 day. Total Mars mission would take anywhere from 600 to 900 days.
Keith: Outside of Earth's gravity and atmosphere, life is quite different. The Earth's
magnetic field protects us from 99.9 percent of harmful space radiation. Astronauts are
exposed to high levels of dangerous radiation, especially on a long mission.
When it comes to doing research on the human body in space, Johnson Space Center
in Houston, Texas is the place to go.
Mark: Imagine being in bed for six months because that's the easiest way to explain to
you how you would feel going space. You have balance issues, you have coordination
issues. You have loss of muscle strength, loss of cardiovascular fitness. So, pretty
much anything we do, we bending over and picking up a pencil, after space that
becomes extremely difficult.
Keith: Scientists say bones can lose up to 2 percent of their density per month living in
zero gravity, becoming weaker and much easier to break.
The machines here are replicas of ones used on the international space station where
astronauts workout a couple hours a day on average. And I found out it is tougher than
it looks.
You said this is, what, about 400 pounds right here?
3|Page
Mark: Yeah, about 400.
Keith: I’m not sure I can walk straight.
After feeling a little spacy from that workout, I was starving. Scientists say it is not only
important to exercise on a Mars mission, but also to have proper nutrition during the
journey. And that’s what they specialize in here at the space food systems lab.
Dr. Douglas: You want to keep your crew eating. You want to give them foods that they
like. That’s incredible important; the phycology of food.
Keith: In the 1960's, space food here started out looking like toothpaste and cubes but
food experts here have worked to make meals look and taste more like what you find at
home.
The food that we currently have, is it ready for a long mission to Mars?
Dr. Douglas: It’s a good starting point. We are looking at ways to stabilize our food
system. We are looking at new ways to process foods, new ways to package foods, and
we are looking at things like 3-D printers. Can you use a 3-D printer to customize a food
and create a very precise amount of nutrients in it overtime?
Keith: Space food is a lot better than I thought.
If everything goes as planned, scientists will have over two decades to address the
challenges of getting to Mars. So as Earth turns into a speck in the night sky, the red
planet Mars gets larger by the day, a future crew will be ready to land on the Martian
surface.
Lee: The truth is, it’s a godforsaken place that's unforgiving. It doesn't care about us. It
doesn't need us.
Keith: Tomorrow we look at how the crew might survive that harsh environment.
Keith Kocinski, Channel One News.
Azia: And to check out some more videos of Keith pumping space iron and grubbing on
space food, head to Channelone.com.
All right guys, we are out for now, but we will see you right back here tomorrow.
4|Page