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  • Fridays are awesome.

  • I don't usually say that on a Tuesday, but this is our last show of the week.

  • After today, we'll be off until next Monday for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I didn't want the Friday to roll around without you getting the chance to hear that.

  • Alright, let's get to work.

  • Last Thursday, when we told you about pollution in India, we mentioned it's not the only place in this region with the problem.

  • About 80 miles northwest of the Indian capital is the Pakistani city of Lahore.

  • It is frequently near and recently at first place in an international ranking of most polluted cities.

  • The likely reasons are similar to the ones that caused problems in India.

  • In the fall, after monsoon season ends, the rains and winds die down, so there's less moisture and movement in the atmosphere to sweep the pollutants away.

  • Meteorologists say winter temperatures can also keep smoke from rising, so more pollutants get trapped near the ground.

  • Some experts blame farmers for contributing to pollution because they typically burn off their old crops this time of year to prepare their fields for new ones.

  • The smoke from that can gather in the air.

  • Others say the issue is caused by low-quality fuel that's used to power cars and trucks.

  • Industrial pollution also plays a part.

  • Whatever the reasons are, some residents in Lahore are calling for the Pakistani government to take action.

  • That government says it has, that it's told factories and refineries to reduce their emissions, that it's banned low-quality gasoline, that it's planning to require less pollutive motorcycle engines, and that it's looking at ways to plant more trees in the city.

  • Will its efforts be enough?

  • Smog so dense you can only see a silhouette of this building that's just a few yards away.

  • On the streets, people are wading through the thick smog.

  • One resident says it's so bad people are covering their eyes and walking right into traffic.

  • This is Lahore, Pakistan, which regularly ranks among the most polluted cities in the world.

  • Now, this city, which we call the city of flowers, the city of gardens, is gripped by smog; it is engulfed in smog.

  • On Saturday, Lahore topped IQair's daily ranking of the world's most polluted cities again, a rank often challenged by New Delhi.

  • Residents cough, everything smells of smoke.

  • According to a paramedic at a local hospital, patients are coming in with sore throats because of the smog, not COVID.

  • As the haze grips the city in a chokehold, residents are getting desperate.

  • When we leave the house in the morning, the pollution causes irritation to the eyes.

  • It is hard to breathe.

  • The government should find a solution for this smog.

  • A local report says anti-smog squads have been deployed across Lahore.

  • They're identifying and sealing factories that aren't meeting the city's standards.

  • In neighboring New Delhi, smog towers in some areas are sucking pollutants from the air.

  • Residents are now asking the government to install more as the smog continues to affect people's health and livelihoods, like this rickshaw driver's.

  • The whole day I drive around without any passengers. There's passengers; they prefer cabs.

  • I asked them, "Where are you going?"

  • They say, "No, there's too much pollution, we'll take a cab."

  • Despite some measures to fight smog, the increasing pollution makes the site of a clear sky still a distant dream.

  • 10-second trivia: Which inventor is famous for his contributions to the alternating current electrical system?

  • Edison, Marconi, Nobel, or Tesla.

  • It was the eccentric genius Nikola Tesla who discovered the rotating magnetic field in the 1880s.

  • As more and more carmakers offer increasingly autonomous modes, which means computer-assisted driving, you might be wondering if fully self-driving cars are just around the corner.

  • In our special on this topic almost three years ago, we said experts predicted that a city with driverless cars was still decades away.

  • Is that still the case?

  • There have been several advancements in autonomous technology.

  • The Tesla electric car company, for instance, is regularly updating its software, but there've been a number of accidents blamed on this as well.

  • And a CNN reporter recently found that in some areas, the tech has a long way to go.

  • Oh, we've got a situation in front of us; whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, no, we're going on the wrong side of the road.

  • Whoa, whoa, whaoh, no, no, no, it wanted to hit the truck.

  • This is a Tesla Model three.

  • So, we are turning on the full self-driving data.

  • Okay, the car is now officially, technically, sort of driving itself.

  • Whoa, whoa, that was a really sharp turn the car just tried to make.

  • Oh, we've got a situation in front of us. Whoa!

  • Okay.

  • What we just had in front of us was a UPS truck coming onto our lane, we had a guy in front of us with a cargo bike

  • To avoid hitting the guy on the bike, the car seemed to want to put us straight into a giant UPS truck.

  • I would prefer not to hit a UPS truck today, so I took over.

  • It does seem to need an interruption every couple of blocks or so.

  • Sometimes if the car is hesitating a little bit, I have to intervene.

  • You also have to be ready to take over at any time.

  • Now, this is challenging.

  • Oh, uh, no, we're going on the wrong side of the road.

  • We're not trying to make this car screw up; we're not trying to have a laugh at Elon Musk's expense.

  • That's not the point.

  • We're really just trying to see how it handles driving in the city.

  • So far, it's... eh... going okay.

  • We're going down a prettyjust straight, normal road; there's not a lot of pedestrians here.

  • And when you're going down a straight road with not a lot of pedestrians, the car actually seems to be doing okay.

  • We're doing right around the speed limit, you know, um, we're not hitting anything.

  • The car can see cones, the car can see trucks, the car can see even pedestrians on the other side of the street; seeing might not be totally the issue here.

  • It's knowing what to do in challenging situations, stuff that experience teaches you.

  • We're driving down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, where thousands of drivers drive every day.

  • Human drivers, that is.

  • It's a main artery through Brooklyncommuters, trucks, people going to their jobs.

  • A lot of human drivers do this every day, so a car should be able to handle it just fine.

  • Oh, but we're stopping at the intersectionoh, now we're going again.

  • Hey, how about that?

  • And... now we've got a... we've got a green light and the car hesitated, 'cause it says no right turn, but we can go straight and that's where we wanna go.

  • We wanna go straight.

  • I stand at the ready to intervene.

  • Hopefully I can do it fast enough.

  • Now, this will be challenging; we've got a fence in front of us.

  • Whoa, whoa.

  • Car almost hit the fence just there.

  • It blocked off a turning lane.

  • But the car was supposed to move into the next lane anyway because we're going straight and it didn't; it was pretty much headed right for those fences.

  • - So I had to take over there. - Whoa, whoa.

  • This is officially not truly ready for public consumption.

  • A lot of people have issues with this being called full self-driving; first and foremost, it's not fully self-driving, I have to sit here.

  • If it was fully self-driving as promised, that would let you take a nap while you're driving along.

  • Whoa!

  • But we just slammed on the brakes there.

  • And now this big truck is gonna go, we're gonna see if we're gonna go around the big truck.

  • Oh! I'm just gonna give it a little... little gas, help itnope, nope, nope, it wanted to hit the truck.

  • Um, so we're gonna just use a human driver to go around the truck.

  • I don't drive a Tesla every day.

  • I am a little skittish; I'll fully admit that.

  • So I am taking over more than someone who's used to have the system perform, and because of that, maybe I'm skewing things a little bit.

  • But that is the observer effect, 'cause it's a little like teaching a teenager how to drive, and you're always watching, you're always waiting, you never know when it might try something new, and that's where the anxiety comes from.

  • You know, it does seem to be making other drivers upset.

  • It's the people behind us.

  • It's the people honking.

  • Now, I'm not saying a truly fully autonomous car will never happen, but I think, at this point, we're still years away.

  • On a small island in the Indian Ocean, an annual migration has residents seeing "red" and feeling "crabby".

  • It's the rainy season on Christmas Island, and so many crustaceans make their way from the forest to the sea this time of year that authorities built a special bridge so they don't become roadkill.

  • Each female crab can produce up to 100,000 eggs.

  • 'Twas 5 weeks before Christmas and all across that Island, red crabs were traversing the lowlands and highlands; with bridges to cross and barriers to breach, no thing could stop their sideways march to the beach.

  • It's a sea of red crawling the ground in slow motion, their goal, not the pole, but the distant crust ocean.

  • You don't have to tell us that others are "shelleous"; while they make grace plates, these crabs get the applause of trivia hoarders and media reporters, who root for them on their "route" to "Sandy Claws".

  • That wraps up our show for the week.

  • Wanna give a shout out to Furness High School; thanks to our viewers watching in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  • Our YouTube channel is the place to go to request a mention for your school.

  • We hope you have a wonderful thanksgiving; we look forward to seeing you again next Monday.

  • I'm Carl Azuz, and that's CNN.

Fridays are awesome.

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