U.S. And Russian Give Differing Accounts Of An Incident Involving Warships; View Of A Celestial Event From Space; "Virtual Humans" Speak Up.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hi I`m Carl Azuz. And I`m happy to welcome you to CNN 10. Our first story of the week centers on what could be called a high stakes and dangerous game of chicken played out by warships in the Arabian Sea. It involves the United States and Russia but if you ask who`s responsible you`ll get two very different answers. Last week the U.S. Navy said one of its destroyers was aggressively approached by a Russian ship. American defense officials say this video show the Russian vessel coming as close as 180 feet from the American one before changing course. The U.S. Navy says it sounded the International Maritime signal for collision danger and asked the Russian ship to change its course but that because it delayed following the rules the Russian ship increased the chances of a collision before eventually turning away. Russia disagrees with that summary. It says the American warship broke international rules by making a move that crossed the Russian ship`s course and that it was the Russian ship that prevented the collision by maneuvering away. Something like this between the same two countries also happened last June. That incident was in the Pacific Ocean. The two warships involved came so close that the U.S. had to make an emergency move to avoid a collision but then as now Russian media said it was their country`s ship that suddenly changed direction to avoid hitting the American one. There have been a number of military incidents that American officials have called unsafe or provocative. A reporter from National Public Radio described them as cat and mouse games between the U.S. and Russia that were common during the Cold War. The latest near miss in the Arabian Sea came in a body of water where`s there`s a lot of maritime traffic and where a large amount of the world`s crude oil passes through.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The United States military is the world`s dominant fighting force. It`s annual spending is the highest in the world $649 billion in 2018. That is the equivalent of the next eight countries combined and two and a half times that of China the next closest country. The U.S. and Russia have the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. They amount to 93 percent of all the nuclear warheads in the world and despite limiting and reducing those warheads following the Cold War, today each country has some 4,000 nuclear warheads. In terms of military weaponry, the U.S. has more than 13,000 aircraft, more than 6000 tanks and almost 40,000 armored fighting vehicles. The United States has dozens of submarines that can stay submerged for extended periods of time and fire ballistic or cruise missiles at targets on land and sea across the globe. The U.S. has 11 active aircraft carriers and nine amphibious assault ships which are essentially smaller aircraft carriers. With approximately 1.3 million active duty troops in the Armed Forces and another 803,000 in reserve, the U.S. has military personnel on all seven continents in more than 160 countries across 4,800 defense sights.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All over the world, the United States Army is on the alert.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In terms of size, the U.S. is actually not the largest both China and India have larger numbers of active military personnel. While North Korea is much smaller than the U.S. in geographic size, it comes in just behind the U.S., Russia in fifth place with about 800,000 active military personnel. What distinguishes the U.S. is it has forces deployed farther and wider across the globe than any other country in the world.</s>AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. Leonids, Perseids, and Quadrantids are all the names of what? Constellations, Combinatorics, Animal orders or meteor showers? These are meteor showers that occur in different parts of the year. The Quadrantid meteor shower is typically visible in late January though the first one of 2020 hit its peak on January 4th. For observers on Earth who happen to catch it at the right time it looked like this, a series of shooting stars. But for an observer in space it looked more like this. There`s a lot going on in this picture. It`s a composite shot that was made from multiple images taken at the International Space Station. The green arc you see near the top are the northern lights. Below and to the right of your screen center are likely those of large cities and if you look closely to the left of center you`ll what looked like short light colored streaks. Those are the meteors not to be confused with meteoroids or meteorites.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We get questions here all the time about comets, asteroids, meteors, meteorites. What`s the difference? Well let`s start in space and work our way all the way down to the surface. A comet is a snowball. It`s a piece of ice. Now the ice is mainly frozen gas, not water but there could be dust and rocks and things inside the comet. Haley`s Comet, now NASA knows of about 3,600 other comets than that one out there. Closer in in the asteroid belt, these are rocks not gas. They could be metal as well but they are hard surfaces and sometimes they come out of the asteroid belt, get closer to the surface of the Earth or at least our atmosphere. If one or a piece of a smaller one called a meteoroid hits the surface of the atmosphere it turns into a meteor. It gets bright because it hits our atmosphere and begins to burn up. If it doesn`t make its way all the way down to the surface it turns into a shooting star. Now if it does make its way all the way down to the surface of the Earth and hits the ground and you can pick it up. That is a meteorite.</s>AZUZ: The term artificial human might sound like an insult, like that dude at the track meet who wouldn`t talk to you. But it means something very different at CES, the world`s largest technology show. This years event just wrapped up last week in Nevada. Fifth generation wireless technology, folding smartphones, self-driving cars were all part of it. So was artificial intelligence and while the virtual humans on display still have a long way to go before they`re ready for primetime. It`s easy to see why they`re getting a lot of attention.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, I am (inaudible). I am an artificial human. (inaudible)</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have smiles (ph) or perhaps surprised.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So what is a Neon?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s a new kind of virtual being that looks like a person real. Behaves like a human but we just (inaudible). Is Neon an AI system? No. Neon is more like (inaudible) that you talk to, is your friend that you build memory with. (ph)</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what are the use cases for something like this?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Use cases? It can be your next financial advisor. A Neon can be a hotel receptionist. He or she can be simply a friend.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what does that mean for jobs then?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Neon is not created to replace the human jobs. Neons are created to help where humans cannot reach, the language barriers. A Neon can be a doctor. Many more places that a doctor cannot reach.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So I`ll ask her to say a few phrases in different languages. Maybe something like this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, welcome to</s>CES. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now Neon doesn`t have any intelligence per say. They are behaving intelligent but they do not have a concept of the learning or memory. (Inaudible) learning.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can AI be dangerous?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s always goods and bads of anything (inaudible) how we use that. We do it today or someone else do it tomorrow. If we do it today, we want to ensure that from the ground up (inaudible) from the design that they will not misuse. (ph)</s>AZUZ: For 10 out of 10 today it seems two pandas was one two many at this nature reserve in China. So Xau Xing (ph) and Lu Lu decided to settle their differences in an epic panda battle. OK. Fake news. These are pandas at a Chinese nature reserve but they`re just playing and wrestling and generally having an awesome time in the first snowfall to hit their area. Seems people aren`t the only beings to want to play in the snow. When two bears test their panda might, no critic would do "panda fight". They hit like Rocky, strike like Rambo. Battles raging over "bamboo" in the trees or in the snow they wrestle in the "pandering" show. So who is wrong and who is right with panda bears it`s black and white. Thank you for watching. Today`s shout out is for Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School. It`s in New York City, New York. It`s great to have you commenting on our official You Tube site. That`s YouTube.com/CNN10. Our staff will be searching comments under today`s You Tube show for tomorrow`s shout out. I`m Carl Azuz for CNN. END