Students: We're from Rockridge Junior High in Edgington, Illinois — Mrs. Benac's sixth-grade class — and Channel One News starts right now.
Arielle: Thanks to Mrs. Benac's class for kicking us off today. Nice job, guys. Now let's jump right into what is making news.
And first up, more doping accusations are shaking up the Olympics.Yesterday the International Olympic Committee said that at least 31 Olympic athletesare setto be banned from this year's Summer Games in Brazil.
The athletes caught using drugs come from 12 different countries and six different sports, and the crackdown dates back eight years to the Beijing Games in 2008. The International Olympic Committee retested samples from athletes who competed in Beijing, China, and who were planning to compete in the Rio de Janeiro Games this August.
Four hundred fifty-four samples were retested using new, improved techniques. The countries and athletes found to be taking part in doping have not yet been notified, but Russian athletes are expected to be among the 31 banned individuals. Last year the World Anti-Doping Agency found the Russian government was sponsoring a doping program for its athletes.It is not known if any U.S. athletes are on the list.
Officials are also retesting 250 samples from the 2012 London Games. Those results will be released later this month.
Next up, a tiny satellite is now in orbit around the Earth, but what really makes it special is who built it — students. Students cheered as the tiny satellite was launched Monday by astronauts on the International Space Station. Thirteen-year-old Rebecca
El Choueiry helped build it.
Rebecca El Choueiry: Awesome! I'm really excited that it's finally up in space.
Arielle: And now St. Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington, Virginia, is the first elementary school in the nation to put a satellite in orbit. The tiny object, known as a CubeSat for its size and shape, is just big enough to hold a camera, which will beam photographs back to Earth.
Felix Pellegrino: We really don't control where it takes a picture, but it does take a picture every 30 seconds.
Arielle: Teacher Emily Stocker says it was supposed to be a one- to two-year project, but because of some setbacks, including the explosion of an unmanned space-station-bound rocket in 2014, it took a long four years.
All right, coming up, who do you think knows more about technology — boys or girls? We will tell you the answer, according to new research, after the break.
Arielle: Okay, now it's time to get your geek on, and Tom is here with the results of a new test that says that girls may be geeking out more than boys?
Tom: Yeah, well, Arielle, it is the first exam of its kind. In 2014 more than
20,000 eighth-graders in more than 800 schools were tested on technology and engineering. And overall, the girls did better than the boys. Forty-five percent of female students were proficient, compared to 42 percent of male students.
The results were also surprising because research shows female students are much less interested in pursuing jobs in engineering and technology. That is why one organization is trying to reprogram attitudes about girls in tech. Check it out.
High school senior Tai Cruz wants to smash the gender barriers in technology.
Tai Cruz: One change I want to see is having more girls and more women be in the field. We need all voices to be heard.
Tom: The technology industry is facing a major gender gap. Among the tech workers at Apple, 79 percent are male; Facebook 84 percent, Google 82 percent and Microsoft
83 percent. A spokesperson for the computer giant says Microsoft has a range of programs to bring in women and that it tries to be a leader in attracting women to careers in high tech.
Reshma Saujani has a different strategy. She started the organization Girls Who Code in 2012 to teach computer skills to young women like Tai. That means changing how people think about the typical computer programmer.
Reshma Saujani: They're normally, like, a dude in a hoodie, like, drinking a Red Bull somewhere. And he hasn't showered, and little girls look at him and say, “I don't want to do that.”
Tom: By the end of this year, Saujani expects to have reached 40,000 girls.
Saujani: Women are now 60 percent of our labor force. We're over 40 percent of the breadwinners. So if we're going into fields that are not high paying, where you can't get a decent wage, we're simply leaving our women behind.
Tom: Tai is determined to make her mark on the world. Now that she has learned to code, she is planning a career that combines both technology and art.
Tom Hanson, Channel One News.
Arielle: Nice to see a girl killing it in the tech industry — go ahead, Tai!
Okay, next up: one school changing up its menu.
Arielle: Okay, when you guys look at the school lunch menu, what are your options? A sandwich? Pizza? Fries? Chicken salad? Maybe a sugar-free, non-GMO apple? Okay, maybe that last one was a bit of a stretch for some of you, but one school has a whole new take on a healthy lunch. Keith Kocinski shows us more.
Keith: School lunches are being transformed from this to this: fresh ingredients freshly made.
Nicholas Morris: If there were jokes about, like, how bad it was, more kids always brought food to school. And now it just — it smells good; it looks good. There’s a lot of different colors of food on the plate.
Keith: Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Morris is an intern for The Conscious Kitchen, a pilot program at Bayside Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy in Sausalito, California. The goal is to get rid of all the packaging and processing that can be typical in school meals and instead hook students up with fresh, local, organic foods, meaning no chemicals, antibiotics or genetically modified ingredients.
Student: We actually know, like, where the food comes from and that it is, like, well treated.
Student: It feels good because knowing that it is not shot up with chemicals and sprayed and, like, raised in a laboratory.
Keith: In the past some of that school lunch food came from far, faraway places, sent to processing and packaging plants across the country. Then the fatty and sugar-filled foods were shipped to schools to be heated in warmers and slapped down on a tray for students.
Over the past few years, school lunches have been getting a major makeover across the nation, and first lady Michelle Obama has even made it one of her big talking points. But this school district in Northern California is taking it one step further. Students here can literally see where their food is coming from. It is right in their backyard.
Nicholas: As soon as it's ready to be picked off, it's taken, and then it goes straight into the kitchen, and it's only 20 feet from the school. Students become involved in the whole process, and it just leads to a healthier lifestyle.
Keith: Program leaders also work with local organic farmers at weekly markets like this to get the rest of the food they need to make the meals. But no matter how fresh and unprocessed it is, if it isn't tasty, it will go from farm to table to trash.
Nicholas: Nobody's happy after they eat bad food. It always kind of bums you out until the next meal. And it’s just — it's good, and it — everybody seems to be happy eating it.
Keith: Thanks to chef Shaun Dayton and his culinary crew, students are served meals full of flavor based on their requests. It is important because a lot of these students can't afford quality food; many come from low-income families.
Shaun Dayton: I'm giving them access to vegetables like purple carrots and yellow carrots or different types of melons or cucumbers. I'm literally watching them learn; I’m watching them, like, grab it for the first time and be like, “Wow, like, this is what it’s supposed to taste like?” So it's rewarding beyond belief.
Keith: And staff here says that The Conscious Kitchen has done more than just provide students with a healthy meal. It has also decreased disciplinary action by 67 percent and also has increased the attendance rate.
Whether or not organic food is that much healthier for you is still up for debate, but it is a success story here, showing that good grub can nourish our bodies and minds.
Do you think it is feasible that other schools around the country can adopt The Conscious Kitchen as well?
Judy Shills: It's literally an equation, so if you can find the balance, then I believe any school in the country can do this. The fact that we’ve done it, and we are going on three years, and that we are expanding is like a dream. My dream for the future is that every school everywhere sets the intention that their kids are that much of a priority, and food is where it begins.
Keith: Keith Kocinski, Channel One News.
Arielle: Okay, so whether going organic makes that much of a difference to your health is still not clear, but one study said that organic fruits expose you to fewer pesticides. So here is a quiz for you:
What fruits and veggies have been found to have raised levels of pesticides? Strawberries, apples, tomatoes or all of the above? The answer is on ChannelOne.com.
Okay guys, I say keep eating those veggies — organic or not — they are my faves. And we will see you right back here tomorrow.
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