Azia: Hey Guys, It Is Thursday, October 12. I Am Azia Celestino, and Let's Get Started

Azia: Hey guys, it is Thursday, October 12. I am Azia Celestino, and let's get started.

For another day Northern California firefighters are battling more than a dozen wildfires, and the numbers are shocking: 122,000 acres have been burnt. That is three times larger than Washington, D.C. This newly released videoshows the intensity of one of the fires right from the start on Sunday.And once the fire sweptthrough, nothing but charred remains were left.Homes and lives were destroyed in a matter of minutes.

Ruben Lopez: It just looks like somebodyjust dropped a bomb on our lives.

Azia: This used to be Ruben Lopez' home.Now it looks like this. The family just moved in a month ago.

Lopez: Middle of the night, suddenly, with no power, police came, like SWAT. You’re waking your kids up, trying to make it out as you could see, you know, a scary glow of light coming just right over the hill.

Azia: The Lopez family is just one of hundreds who lost everything. And now because of the fires quickly spreading, more than 20,000 people have had to leave their homes. At least 21 people have been killed, and more than 3,500 homes and businesses destroyed.

Julayne Smithson: We looked out, and it was all engulfed in a matter of moments.

Azia: Nurse Julayne Smithson helped evacuate intensive-care patients as she watched her own home nearby burn to the ground. She bought it just three weeks ago.

Smithson: I’ve lost my home, but Ididn’t really think about my home at that point.

Azia: The flames are moving so fast through neighborhoodsthat firefighters can't reach homes in time to save them.Before-and-after photos show suburbs burned into wastelands.

Almost 80 cellphone sites were damaged or lost power, making it difficult for families to reconnect with their missing loved ones.In just one 12-hour window, the fire in Santa Rosa torethrough 20,000 acres. That is the equivalent of burning more than an entire football field every three seconds.

Deputy Fire Chief Scott McLean: That distance in just a matter of hours is phenomenal.

Lopez: There’s going to be alot of work to rebuild. It’s going to take a lot of community effort to really get this back to what it is.

Azia: And our thoughts are with all of those in California.

Okay, for the first time in history, more people around the world are getting sick from overeating than they are from hunger, with more people now obese than underweight. And a new study says the problem of childhood obesity is growing at an alarming ratebecause kids are making poor food choices and aren't getting enough exercise.Keith Kocinski caught up with some teens to check out their daily habits.

Keith: What do you do to stay healthy?

Teen: I tend to just eat very healthy; like, I try to cut out a lot of, like, processed foods.

Teen: Like, when I eat a gross meal, I don’t want to go and exercise. I want to exercise after I eat well, and then I want to eat well after I exercise. So it’s kind of like they go hand in hand.

Keith: The World Health Organization says the number of obese children and teens is now 10times higher than it was 40years ago.This means that nearly 8 percent of boys and nearly 6 percent of girls worldwide were obese in 2016. Compare that to less than 1 percent for both sexes back in 1975.

Researchers say it is because of poor nutrition and lack of exercise, but the problem is more than just physical.

Leanne Riley: Sociopsychological problems for the children themselves, more stigmatism, more bullying.

Keith: An online study in the journal "Lancet" finds that obese children tend to be overweight as adults.

Riley: It is also more likely to lead to earlier onset of conditions like heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Keith: Experts crunched numbers from 2,400 different studies that tracked the height and weight of 32 million children ages 5 to 19 years old.Obesity rates are still rising in poorer nations but have leveled in countries like the U.S. and in the United Kingdom.But still, among high-income countries, the United States had "the highest obesity rates for girls and boys," at about 1 in 5.

But don't worry — researchers say there is a solutionand it could be turned around. They say if there is more awareness about nutrition at home and at school and more exercise, it could turn back the clock.

Teen: It’s really sad. I think a lot of people are just not educated on how bad processed foods can be, and I think there’s not as many resources as there should be or knowledge.

Teen: Important to find something that you’re into, because now I really like rock climbing, so I go all the time, instead of, like, making yourself go to the gym and it’s not fun.

Keith: Keith Kocinski,Channel One News.

Azia: Thanks,Keith.

And wait till you see what happens when Channel One takes over a school lunchroom. You can check it out on ChannelOne.com.

Okay, after the break, one group of teens being sentenced to sonnets.

Azia: All right, now, onto a bit of lit here.William Shakespeare once wrote, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Well, one program in Massachusetts is taking notes from the famous playwright and rethinking the justice system for young people. Emily Reppert has the story.

Emily: To act or not to act, that is the question.But it could also be the answer to helping juveniles who have committed crimes in Pittsfield,Massachusetts, like this teen who plays Rosalind — we are using their stage names to protect their identities.

Rosalind: It is for kids who need to get away from the “trouble,” so they put them in this program.

Emily: It is a six-week program called Shakespeare in the Courts, an alternative in the Berkshire County Juvenile Court System to more traditional forms of punishment like probation or even prison.

Angela McLaughlin: Some are on misdemeanors — which could be disturbing a school assemblyor disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct — all the way up to some felonies. If there was some breaking and entering or something that’s a little more serious, we could possibly see a child here for that too.

Emily: What did you think when you received that sentence?

Rosalind: Oh,I hated it!

Kevin Coleman: Oftentimes they would rather do anything else:I mean, go to jail. Jail they kind of knew. Doing a play, especially Shakespeare, performing in public, memorizing lines, wearing, you know, silly costumes — they wanted no part of it. No part of it.

Emily: But in time, these teens do start playing the part.

Rosalind: I would say about like the second week, maybe even the first week,I was like, wow, this is really fun — why did I not like this?

Emily: Because after 17 years, the program, which is a collaboration with Shakespeare Company, is still being used, which means they must be doing something right.

Margaret: It’s just a better outlet to be here.

Puck: It gives you less of a chance of getting in trouble.

McLaughlin: It’s set up for them to be able to do something positive that they can do. They can learn this; they can get through it.And it takes up their time, so they're doing something positive.

Emily: From learning basic theater skills to working together as an ensemble, the hope is the skills they acquire here will play out in other aspects of their life.

Jennie Jadow: How do you walk into a room and greet people, how do you learn to make new friends, how do you work together to make somebody else look really good, and what happens when it’s not all about what I need in that moment, and what if it’s about what everybody needs, and we can work collectively together?

Emily: So why Shakespeare?

Margaret: Ididn’t really know Shakespeare at all, actually —I just only knew “Romeo and Juliet," but yeah, that’s about it.

Emily: Well, it turns out the 16th-century playwright and poet may have more in common with these teens than you think.

Jadow: We think that the language of Shakespeare is just as relevant today as it was when it was written, and I think we experience that time and time again where these kids find themselves really connecting to words that he has written.

Coleman: They’re kind of intimidated by it. But once they start working on it, they go, “Oh, I know what’s going on; I understand what this is. This is wild! I like what this is saying.”

Emily: And after six weeks of playing the part in front of family, friends and parole officers, the whole world's a stage.

Coleman: Over the course of it, they change. So I would never say that this project fixes them, but then going to jail doesn’t fix them, either. Picking up trash on the highway doesn’t fix them. What it does do is it gives them an experience of themselves that they've never had.

Margaret: I like acting because you’re stepping into somebody else's shoes.You get to know how they feel, and I think that's actually really cool.

Rosalind: I just really like how I got to meet new people, how I got to express myself more, how I got to be, like, me.

Emily: Emily Reppert, Channel One News.

Azia: Pretty cool story. Thanks, Emily. And that brings us to Words in the News. Today's word is probation: a period of time when a criminal needs to be on their best behavior; they are not in jail but under supervision of the court.

All right, guys, parting is such sweet sorrow. Have a great day, and we will see you back here tomorrow.

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