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With three weeks to go before our summer break, CNN STUDENT NEWS is happy to see you.
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I'm Carl Azuz at the CNN Center. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is planning to
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speed up its hiring of more than 700 officers, increase the use of overtime and use more dogs to
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help with security screenings. And this is why: Hours long wait at security checkpoints and airports
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across the country, missed flights, check bags missing their flights after a TSA computer slowdown.
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The TSA, which handles security of U.S. airline travelers, says it lost thousands of employees in 2014
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and that they haven't yet been replaced.
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But the number of passengers it has to screen has not slowed down. Officials say longer wait times
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are inevitable as traveler increases during the summer and that it won't take short cuts in its screening process
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that could make Americans less safe. So, bottom line: if you're planning to fly, factor in some extra time
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for security. Up next, a controversial instruction from the U.S. government to public school districts.
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It concerns people who are transgender, those who identify as the different gender than
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what's on their birth certificate. Without U.S. Census information on gender identity, we don't know
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how many Americans are transgender. Some estimates suggest it's somewhere around half of 1 percent.
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Last week, the Obama administration sent out a letter telling schools to allow transgender students
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to use whichever bathroom matches their gender identity. They wouldn't need a medical diagnosis or
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a birth certificate, only a communication from a parent or guardian about the students' gender identity.
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This is a directive from the federal government. It's not a law passed by Congress.
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But it threatens schools that don't follow it with the loss of government funding.
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We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States.
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The federal government calls them guidelines. But several states, including Texas,
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see them more as a threat.
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This goes against the values of so many people. It has nothing to do
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with anyone being against a transgender child.
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At a Friday morning press conference, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick says
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a line has been crossed by the federal government after the Department of Justice
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sent a letter on transgender bathroom use in public schools across the United States.
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I'm telling all the superintendents of Texas right now -- you have about three weeks left of the school year.
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Do not enact this policy.
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In the letter, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, "There is no room in our schools for discrimination
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of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex."
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Under the guidelines, public schools that receive federal money are obligated to treat students consistent
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with their gender identity, even if their records indicated a different sex, access sex-segregated facilities
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consistent with a student's gender identity and protect a student's privacy related to their transgender status.
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The action sets the stage for a legal battle that's been in the making since March.
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House Bill 2 in North Carolina began the recent controversy. The law requires transpeople to
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use the public restroom related to the gender on their birth certificate, not how they identify.
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North Carolina and the feds have traded accusations and lawsuits. Some states,
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including Arkansas and Texas, insist there's been government overreach.
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The feds say civil rights have been violated.
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This is not just a North Carolina issue. This is now a national issue.
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From North Dakota to southern Vietnam, get ready to go globe- trotting on the "Roll Call". Nedrose High School
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is up first. From the Rough Rider State, we're looking up to the Cardinals in Minot. Now to the capital of Utah.
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In Salt Lake City, thank you for watching from the Salt Lake Valley Detention Center. And from
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the Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, it's great to see our viewers at Starlight International School.
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Thanks for your request at CNNStudentNews.com.
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The queen's 90th birthday is greater than anyone's super sweet 16.
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Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is enjoying a series of celebrations.
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The one this weekend involved hundreds of horses and hundreds more musicians, dancers, performers.
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It's all in honor of the United Kingdom's longest reigning monarch. She reached that milestone last year,
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exceeding the reign of her great, great grandmother, Queen Victoria. Even though her position
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is largely ceremonial, the queen does not have much lawmaking power which rests with Britain's parliament.
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She's a revered person around the world.
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What took place over the weekend is only one of the celebrations she'll have.
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The Queen's two birthdays.
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The two birthdays date all the way back to George II in 1748. His real birth, it was in November,
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and he thought they might get cold and they might get ailed. So, I'm going to move it to June,
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where fingers crossed, the weather is going better. So, the queen's real birthday, 21st of April, 1926,
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when she was born. That celebrated with a quiet family celebration and she has her official birthday,
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usually second Saturday in June, and what we have is trooping the colour, big parades, big celebration,
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the queen in her carriage, all based in London here at Buckingham Palace. But this year,
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because she's 90, she has a birthday in May as well, and that's going to be much more fun, pop concerts,
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more shows. So we have three birthdays, actual birthday, the official birthday, and the fun birthday.
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And it's not just in Britain that the queen's birthday celebrated. It's across the commonwealth,
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including in Canada, where it's a public holiday and Australia, where it defers according to where you are.
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Some people are saying she's 90, it could be the last big birthday. But her mother did live to 101.
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So, hopefully, we're going to be celebrating a big 100th birthday in 2026.
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You know when you're Facebook, and stories pop on your trending feed. The company says that
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the employees who review those stories are not allowed to prioritize one political view over another.
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Here's why the company is talking about this. Last week, the technology news site Gizmodo published
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a report that accused Facebook of promoting a liberal news bias. According to the report,
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reviewers of the site's trending news section allegedly kept stories about conservative subjects
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from appearing in people's feeds, even though they were actually trending among users.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company is investigating the report and that
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it's found no evidence that this happened. And if it does, Facebook will take steps to address it.
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Ever wonder how a topic becomes trending on Facebook, you know the column "Hot Topics"
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to the right of your newsfeed? Well, here's how it works: according to Facebook's head of search,
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these topics are surfaced by an algorithm. Now, the idea is to flag most popular conversations
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happening on Facebook. And also there's this human element, the topics are reviewed by a team of curators
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who make sure they're actually trending in the real world. So, here are the guidelines: curators
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are supposed to weed out hoaxes, spam and duplicate topics. A former curator said there's transparency
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in these decisions. Employees actually have to write out the reasons they blacklist a topic.
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I'm also told that some curators may surface a conversation that might not yet be trending.
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This is during a breaking news event.
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So, here's a controversy. According to a Gizmodo report, former Facebook contractors say curators
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routinely suppressed stories about conservative issues. In a statement, Facebook says, no,
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they don't prioritize one viewpoint over another. But is the human element inadvertently biasing
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what we see on Facebook? People consume news from Facebook. The company has this power
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to serve as what we see and also what we don't see. So, this report raises an important question.
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Could the folks on the team have subconsciously or subtly steered away from conservative stories?
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And if so, what responsibility does Facebook have?
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Riley the retriever has been going to doggy day care for most of his five years of life. He loves it.
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How do we know? Well, when his owner left the house one day recently, Riley popped the lock on his fence,
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walked more than a mile through downtown Belmont, North Carolina, and took a seat outside Happy Dog,
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the daycare center, until someone let him in. Yes, he spent the day there and no, they didn't make his owners
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paid for it. Now, he makes one of his new tricks, they might have a bone to pick with his owners and
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make them retriever some cash. A puppy's play place can't throw its services to the dogs
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without digging up some funding. But the story is one doggone great endorsement on yelp! I'm Carl Azuz.
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CNN STUDENT NEWS is back tomorrow.