Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Hello, lovely people; good day and good vibes to you from magnificent Miami.

  • We're here ahead of the huge Formula 1 race this weekend, and that guy right there? Well, that's the legend.

  • Seven-time world champ Lewis Hamilton, he'll be one of the fastest drivers on the planet, zooming at top speeds of about 200 miles per hour.

  • We hope you're off and zooming today as well.

  • It's Wednesday, May 3rd, also, #yourwordwednesday.

  • Follow me @CoyWire on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok and put your unique vocabulary word in the comments section of my most recent post,

  • and we're gonna choose one good one to work in tomorrow's show.

  • Let's go.

  • I'm Coy Wire, this is CNN10, and we start in Spain today, where they are seeing a major drought.

  • The Spanish National Weather Service says the country has been in a long-term drought since the end of last year.

  • In March, the country only received 36% of its average monthly rainfall, which made it the second driest March this century, but it didn't stop there.

  • That trend continued into last month, and we may see it, now, end up being the driest on record.

  • These conditions have been caused by soaring temperatures that make it feel like it's mid-summer instead of spring time.

  • The lack of water, well, it's having a catastrophic impact on farms across the region.

  • According to the coordinator of farmers and ranchers organizations, the drought has affected about 60% of Spain's countryside, and it's destroyed crops across more than eight million acres.

  • That's an area bigger than the entire state of Maryland.

  • Also, Spaniards have been asked to conserve water by taking quick showers, being mindful when washing dishes, and not filling their swimming pools.

  • Our senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen has more on the very dry conditions in Spain.

  • From afar, even a natural disaster can look majestic.

  • But, up close, the full impact of the global climate emergency is clear to see.

  • This is the Sau Reservoir near Barcelona, normally one of the largest bodies of fresh water in this part of Spain.

  • But months of drought and the water levels are so low, an entire medieval village usually underwater has come to light.

  • The folks here say normally, you'd barely be able to see even the tip of the medieval church because it would be almost fully submerged.

  • But now, as you can see, the church is very much on land, and the authorities here fear things will get much worse once the summer's heat really sets in.

  • The Sau Reservoir is already at less than 10% capacity, and that's causing hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland to dry up.

  • All of this wheat is probably lost.

  • Farmer Santi Caudevilla shows me why.

  • "The grain should be milky," he said. "We're in a critical moment."

  • "If it doesn't rain, this will end up empty."

  • "We should be seeing the grain come up to here, but it's only like this."

  • "If it doesn't rain in the coming week, the crop will be zero."

  • But there is no rain in sight, and temperatures in Spain have skyrocketed.

  • Scientists at the Institute of Agri-Food Research and Technology are trying to find ways to make very little water go a longer way.

  • Chief scientist Joan Girona says efficiency needs to be maximized.

  • It's our goal; howtaking the most of every drop of water.

  • Just like the crops, the people in this area are also in survival mode.

  • Dozens of towns are without water and need to get it trucked in

  • The village Castellcir hasn't had any for about a year, and residents say they can't even remember the last time it rained.

  • "I don't recall," Juan tells me. "It's been a long time, a year or more, without proper rain. Nothing."

  • Back at the Sau Reservoir, authorities are actually draining most of the remaining water

  • to prevent this precious and ever-scarcer resource from getting contaminated by the sludge at the bottom of this once mighty lake.

  • All right, summer is just around the corner, and if you and your family are thinking about heading to any of the South Florida or Caribbean beaches,

  • you might need to know that you could encounter some seaweed, and by "some", I mean a whole lot of it.

  • That's because a record-breaking amount of seaweed known as "Sargassum", which can smell like rotten eggs or sulfur when it washes up on shore,

  • is starting to pile up on popular beaches, threatening tourism in certain areas.

  • Check out this NASA image, which shows just how enormous this massive blob of floating seaweed is.

  • 13 million tons of it just drifting ominously throughout the Caribbean, stretching all the way to the west coast of Africa.

  • CNN's Leyla Santiago reports from a beach in Key West, Florida, and tells us how this seaweed phenomenon is just the tip of the iceberg, with the peak expected to come later this summer.

  • This is Sargassum, mixed in with a few other things, and this is what is inundating Florida's coastspecifically, they're expecting, the east coast.

  • And, remember, last month, we talked about this, but now, we're actually starting to see it come in in those record numbers that scientists predicted.

  • So much so that, take a look over here, the beach rakers here on this beach in Key West have already arrived and have already done one run-through on what's hitting the Florida coast right now.

  • Let's go for a walk so I can, kind of, show you how all of this stuff just piles up, and, again, gets pretty smelly because it decays out here.

  • And, as we mentioned, this is what one scientist told me, is just the tip of the iceberg; more expected.

  • Because when this is out there, it is not only, right now, a 5,000-mile-long body of seaweed; it is still growing while it's out there.

  • So, it is increasing in the amount that will be headed this way.

  • 10-second Trivia

  • What country has the southernmost capital in the world?

  • Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.

  • When it comes to capital cities, Wellington, New Zealand is as low as you can go, sitting at 41 degrees south.

  • Now, when you think of New Zealand, you might think of kiwis, which is the country's iconic national bird.

  • But the population of these flightless birds has plummeted.

  • Conservationists say that most people have never seen a kiwi in the wild and estimate that there are only about 70,000 of them left in the country.

  • But, as our Michael Holmes tells us, there are now efforts to keep this species alive and thriving in New Zealand.

  • The fight to save the kiwi, the iconic flightless bird, is taking off in New Zealand.

  • Ever since people came here, we've had a special connection with the animal known as the kiwi.

  • Central to Maori myth, our sports teams, our rugby league team, our defense force, you know; even when we go overseas, we're known as Kiwis.

  • So, it's our duty, really, to look after the animal that's gifted us its name.

  • There are about 90 initiatives to save the kiwis in New Zealand, many of them focusing on removing threats which have reduced the population,

  • by educating dog owners and culling predator species like stoats.

  • Kiwis are surprisingly tough and resilient; they've got these big fighting claws.

  • So, an adult kiwi can fight off a whole heap of pests, from possums and stoats.

  • The, really, only issue for an adult kiwi is roaming dogs.

  • Where they get hammered is stoats eating the chicks before they get up to that fighting weight.

  • A group of kiwis raised in a breeding program was released near Wellington last November.

  • Experts say that could be the first time wild kiwis lived in the area in about a century, and so far, they seem to be thriving.

  • We did the first health check a couple of months later, and we're expecting them to, kind of, you know, hold weight or lose a bit of weight.

  • But the really pleasing result was that half of those birds had put on weight, includingone bird put on a whopping 400 grams.

  • So, it's like there's, yeah, plenty of food in the ladder out on these hills.

  • That's hopefully room to grow for New Zealand's national treasure and the national effort to save it.

  • Michael Holmes, CNN.

  • All right, our final story takes us to America's Heartland,

  • where a fur baby is getting today's 10 out of 10 for winning this year's B.A.R.K. Ranger Superintendent of the Gateway Arch Park in St. Louis.

  • Meet the adorable Betty Faith, the 12-year-old Basset Hound taking the crown, adopted back in 2020 after being rescued from a tough breeding and hoarding situation.

  • Betty has a new leash on life as the top dog at Gateway Arch Park.

  • B.A.R.K. Ranger is a program run by the National Park Service,

  • and B.A.R.K. stands for: Bag your pet's waste, Always leash your pet, Respect wildlife, and Know where you can go.

  • That's pretty doggone sweet; congrats, Betty Faith.

  • We're giving a special shout out to Delaware Valley High School in Milford, Pennsylvania today.

  • We see you, Warriors.

  • And one other special shout out to Alex at Renfroe and Harper at Talley who watched CNN10 every day from Decatur, Georgia.

  • Well, their dad, Glenn Levy is our guest producer today; rise up!

  • See you tomorrow, everyone.

  • You are more powerful than you know.

  • I'm Coy Wire, and we are CNN10.

Hello, lovely people; good day and good vibes to you from magnificent Miami.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it