What's up, sunshine? Happy Friday Eve. Time for your news for this Thursday, August 21st. Hope you're having an awesome day.

 

Keep your eyes on the stars. Act like one of them, because you are, but keep your feet on the ground. Keep it humble too.

 

I'm Coy Wire. This is CNN 10. Your 10 minutes of news starts now.

 

We start with some big changes that might prevent you from visiting parts of the world's second most visited website. Top visited site is Google. Any guesses what the second most visited is? If you say YouTube, you rock.

 

You may even be watching me on your CNN 10 YouTube channel right now. The video sharing platform has everything from TV shows to live streams, cat videos, dance tutorials.

 

tutorial [tjuˋtorɪəl] adj. 辅导的；指导的 n. 导师辅导课

 

It is home to more than 5 billion videos as we speak, but some changes are underway that could impact how and if you can view certain content.

 

The site is rolling out an AI powered age verification tool. It's part of a push to help younger users safe. But get this, the artificial intelligence technology will guess your age and automatically restrict any age inappropriate content.

 

verification [͵vɛrɪfɪˋkeʃən] n. 确认；证明；核实

 

Well, what happens if it gets your age wrong? Our Clare Duffy has a deeper look.

 

Hey, Coy. Yeah, if you are a YouTube user under the age of 18, this change could affect your experience on the platform.

 

What YouTube is trying to do here is address the criticisms as it's rolled out youth safety features that young people can pretty easily evade them by just signing up for YouTube with a fake birth date.

 

evade [ɪˋved] v. 躲避；逃避；回避

 

So YouTube is trying to address that with this new AI age verification system. How it's going to work is the AI is essentially going to be guessing if users are adults or minors, regardless of the birth date that they signed up with based on the videos that they're watching and searching for and the length of time that their account has been active.

 

If the AI guesses that user is a minor, they will be automatically opted into some of these teen safety features, things like restrictions on the types of videos that users can watch.

 

So preventing them from watching videos that are graphic or have nudity. They also will be getting these wellness reminders like take a break notifications and they won't receive personalized ads.

 

graphic [ˋgræfɪk] adj. 生动的，逼真的

nudity [ˋnjudətɪ] n. 裸露；裸体像

 

But if an adult user is wrongly identified as a teen, they will have to upload an ID, a credit card or a selfie in order to prove their age and keep using the adult version of the platform.

 

And that is starting to raise some privacy concerns. Users who say they don't want to turn over their personal information to the platform and security experts have also raised concerns about how YouTube parent company Google will be handling that sensitive information.

 

Now, I did ask YouTube about this and they said essentially that they have state-of-the-art security systems and they won't be using people's personal information, their IDs, their credit cards for advertising purposes.

 

state-of-the-art [ˋstetəvðiˋɑrt] adj.（科技、机电等产品）最先进的，最高级的

 

But it does sound like they will be hanging on to some of that information. And I will say Coy to that.

 

hang on to 依靠, 求助于

 

This is something that users might start to see more and more across various different platforms. In Mississippi, we just saw the Supreme Court uphold a state law that requires all social media platforms to verify the ages of all of their users, all in an effort to prevent young people from accessing harmful content. But it does raise these sort of tricky questions about privacy and security.

 

uphold [ʌpˋhold] v. 维持; 支持

 

Back to you.

 

Pop quiz, hot shot. Which of these capital cities boasts the highest elevation in the world?

 

Mexico City, Tehran, Pretoria or La Paz?

 

If you said La Paz, La Paz and give yourself a round of La Paz.

 

The administration capital of Bolivia checks in at a whopping 11,975 feet above sea level. It's actually one of Bolivia's two capitals, the other being the city of Sucre. I am really digging this next story.

 

Archaeologists say they've made an extraordinary discovery that could shed more light on a mysterious civilization that disappeared more than a thousand years ago.

 

They've discovered the ruins of what they believe are the boundaries of an ancient temple belonging to the Tiwanaku, a powerful empire that predates the Incan civilization.

 

boundary [ˋbaʊndrɪ] n. 边界，分界线

 

The team unearthed the immense complex in the highlands of what is now Bolivia, at a site southeast of the nation's largest lake.

 

The remarkable find is more than 100 miles from the site of the ancient empire's capital, also called Tiwanaku, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, often called the Stonehenge of the Americas.

 

Researchers hope this new find will help them better understand the extent of the Tiwanaku's territory and help further unravel the secrets of this lost society.

 

While we have seen many states and cities in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and beyond implement bans or restrictions on plastic straws in an effort to preserve the planet, we've also seen a boom in plastic straw alternatives.

 

Glass, metal, bamboo, paper. But which one's the best for our planet? We sent a crew of some sincere sippers to a lab for a taste test and strawed the data with an environmental expert. The results might make you rethink what you're sipping on.

 

Here's Vanessa Yurkevich and our Sip Squad with more.

 

We have seven straws here. One is best for the environment.

 

Can you guess which one?

 

The straw. Just one of hundreds of plastic items that we use that companies say they've now made eco-friendly. So we invited the most honest and impartial straw experts to CNN.

 

Now we're on TV.

 

Let's all start with the glass. What do you think about it? That felt satisfying to put in.

 

Well, I already bumped my tooth, so. Glass straws are reusable and could last a long time.

 

It wouldn't be a straw that I would use all the time.

 

I might use it a few times, but like not all the time.

 

But glass straws have a big problem, and it's similar to the issue posed in our next test. Stainless steel.

 

I like the feeling of the cold metal in my mouth. I think I tasted a different flavor. Yeah, like the first sip, it tastes almost kind of like different, but actually after drinking it, it tastes like water.

 

Here's our professional straw expert. The kids will hear from him after their final vote.

 

The pros for the metal straws are obviously it lasts a long time.

 

The cons come in the raw material extraction to the energy needed to produce that metal. If you're washing that straw every day, that takes water, that takes soap, etc. And all of that requires energy.

 

Let's try the bamboo. This tastes like bamboo. Yeah, it does, but that's what I thought too.

 

Bamboo itself is a pretty sustainable material with regards to water usage, but you still have to grow those plants, and then you have to manufacture them into the straw, and that also requires a lot of energy.

 

Many straws are meant to be biodegradable or composted, like paper or pasta. This one is made from a biodegradable plant-based plastic called PLA.

 

I don't want it to turn back into a plant in my drink.

 

Nearly 60% of this type of plastic, like the straw we tested, won't fully break down in home compost, according to a UK study in Frontier.

 

When I started to research this topic, the most surprising thing to me was that single-use plastics were the most environmentally friendly option.

 

Yeah, I think I'm a little more confused.

 

If you can't get it right with something as simple as a straw, what about bigger things in the world?

 

Oh, oh. This next story is a really big deal.

 

Instacart, the grocery delivery service, released a sales report for pickles for 2024. The results are jarring. Drum roll, it is Mount Olive topping the list as the pinnacle of pickle sales in America.

 

pickle [ˋpɪk!] n. 腌渍食品；腌菜，泡菜

jarring [ˈdʒɑrɪŋ] adj. 令人感到不快的；刺激（神经等）的

drum roll 一连串击鼓；一连串击鼓声

 

Vlassic, Clausen, Oh Snap, and Grillo's round out the top five. They even mapped out who's buying the most pickles, too. You Midwesterners relish in your beloved brined cucumbers, I see.

 

relish [ˋrɛlɪʃ] v. 喜爱，爱好

brine [braɪn] v. 用浓盐水处理（或浸泡）

 

Instacart says part of what's fueling the boom are some delightful pickle collabs with influencers on social media, like Pickle Lemonade.

 

delightful [dɪˋlaɪtfəl] adj. 令人愉快的，令人高兴的；可爱的

collab: collaborate (合作)

 

Some brands are even putting the recipes for such mashups on their websites.

 

Instacart also reports that Lay's Dill Pickle Flavor Chips are the most popular crossover item, did you know?

 

Today's story getting a 10 out of 10, a rad ride from coast to coast collecting colossal quantities of cash for a cause.

 

rad: radical

 

Brooke Johnson just became the first woman ever to skateboard across the USA, completing a grueling shred session from California to Virginia Beach.

 

shred session 长时间、密集且充满技巧性的练习或表演

shred [ʃrɛd] v. to make a series of quick turns on a wave or snow, for example, when riding a board such as a surfboard or snowboard

 

There's times it's so hard, oh my god, I've cried so many times. I'm just a girl, you know, I'm just a girl.

 

But she's not just any girl. Brooke stayed on her grind for 118 days, carving her way cross-country and rolling with any and all challenges coming her way. She was able to raise more than 50,000 bucks for spinal cord research in honor of her late stepfather who recently died after sustaining a spinal cord injury.

 

Brooke hopes the record setting ride will help inspire others to realize that they are more powerful than they know.

 

You can do anything, absolutely anything you put your mind to, and also you have to do it for a very long time. You're going to fall a lot, you're going to hit a lot of walls, it's going to be really difficult, but you can do anything you put your mind to.

 

Like, why not?

 

Go get them, superstars. I have three shout outs today for this third Thursday of the month. The first one, Miss Woss at Bickle Public School, Grand Prairie, Alberta, Canada.

 

Thank you for this super cool 3D printed model. This will be going on our wall of friends for sure. And from our YouTube channel, my fellow K-pop Demon Hunter fans, Miss Park's class at the Sungnam Jungja School in Gyeonggi, South Korea.

 

Gyeonggi 京畿道

 

You are getting a Hanadul set net, dasa yasa ilgo pyoro up, yo, for the day. We appreciate you. And Miss Sivaletti at Rivermont College in Bettendorf, Iowa.

 

Thank you for subscribing and spending part of your day with us. Go out and make someone smile today. You're more powerful than you know.

 

I'm Coy Wire and we are CNN 10.