Maggie: Happy Friday everyone. It is May 22. I am Maggie Rulli and Channel One News starts right now.
Let's start off with headlines, and first up, the terror group ISIS is gaining more control in the countries of Iraq and Syria, capturing two major cities in just the last few days.
This is the 2,000 year old city of Palmyra, one of the most important wonders of the ancient world. Now it is a battlefield.
ISIS overpowered Syrian troops, who reportedly pulled out. The city is home to valued artifacts. Officials say some relics were taken out before ISIS moved in, but many fear ISIS will destroy the ancient sites.
Activists say ISIS now controls half of Syria's territory.
In the neighboring country of Iraq, thousands of people are still trying to escape the key city of Ramadi after ISIS fighters captured it earlier this week. Video show Iraqi forces, trained by the U.S., fleeing, leaving behind American supplied weapons and equipment.
These takeovers come in spite of intensified U.S. efforts against ISIS, withat least 180 airstrikes over the last month. The U.S. is sending more weapons, but experts say it shows just how strong ISIS is and that the U.S. strategy may not be working.
Now to another military fight, this one between the U.S. and China over disputed islands in Southeast Asia.
The islands are man-made, hundreds of miles from the China coastline. The U.S. claims China is using them to build up their military, hosting air strips and military equipment.
A U.S. plane flying over the islands was ordered a number of times to go away. CNN was on board.
Male: Foreign military aircraft, this is Chinese navy, you are approaching our military alert zone. Leave immediately.
Maggie: China has been reclaiming land and filling in the reefs. In just two years, China has expanded these islands by 2,000 acres, the equivalent of 1500 football fields.
The U.S. does not recognize these artificial islands. China had no official reaction.
Alright coming up, we check out the latest Twitter sensation who isn't afraid to bite back.
Tweeting all the way from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Twitter's latest celeb is certainly making a splash. But as ScottEvans explains, Mary Lee the shark is doing more than just making people laugh, she is also raising awareness.
Scott: Up and down the eastern coast, the shark world's newest celebrity is on the move. Mary Lee, a great white shark, weighs nearly 3,500 pounds. And in the past three years, she has traveled more than 20,000 miles.
Her movements or 'pings' can be tracked online. And thanks to a Twitter account, Mary Lee the shark,over 50,000 people follow along.
“There are sharks in the ocean all the time. Don't panic because I’m pinging,” she said to a worried vacationer. “People do seem to swim faster when I appear," she replied to another.
But Mary Lee the shark does more than just chat with fans and locals awaiting her arrival. Researchers say she is raising awareness about the great white shark, a shy species that researchers know very little about.
Chris Fischer: Someone started tweeting on behalf of Mary Lee the shark, and at Ocearch we are all about including everyone and trying to solve this puzzle. And so we just started amplifying that, and it’s really taken on a life of its own.
Scott: Mary Lee was among a group of sharks tagged by Chris Fischer and a team of researchers in 2012.
The white shark named Genie became the first of her species tagged in North Atlantic waters. A few days later, Mary Lee was caught and a satellite-enabled tag was fixed to her dorsal fin. Researchers are sent to ping each time her fin breaks the water's surface anywhere in the world.
As Mary Lee the shark keeps tweeting, researchers hope the attention will help people overcome their fears about one of the world's most powerful and vulnerable predators.
Fischer: We’re not only solving the puzzle of her life to protect her, but we're giving her a voice to shift the tone in conversation around her and other white sharks like her.
Scott: Scott Evans, Channel One News.
Maggie: And just like the rest of us,Mary Lee decided she wanted to go to the beach for her for Memorial Day weekend. Her GPS pings put her off the coast of Virginia.
Alright next up, we are wrapping up our series on American history myths. Here is Chris Browne.
Chris: History can’t seem to make up its mind about Christopher Columbus. At best, he was a brilliant navigator whose quest to find the riches of the Far East landed him in a new world.
At worst, he was a bumbling sailor, whose miscalculations allowed him to stumble across the West Indies. Well, no matter which version you learned in school, chances are you have heard Columbus was the first to discover the Earth is round.
As the story goes, in 1492, Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue, setting out to disprove the old superstition that the Earth is flat. But as it turns out that story is bogus. Columbus was hardly the first to believe the Earth is round.
Richard Shenkman: Everybody was educated and of course, that was the minority of the population at that point. But everybody was educated knew that the world was round.
This idea that the world was flat, well, it’s an insane idea. Nobody believed it at the time.
Chris: So, if Columbus didn’t prove the Earth was round, who did?
Shenkman: Well, we have to go all the way back to Aristotle. Aristotle proved that the world is round. And what Aristotle had done was he looked at the moon and he said look, we’re casting a spherical image shadow on the moon; so that must mean that we’re a sphere.
Chris: So the question in Columbus’day wasn’t about shape, it was about size.
Shenkman: They already knew the world was round, the question was how big around and would your supplies run out before you went all the way around? Columbus underestimated the size of the planet and the scholars, they said no, no the planet’s a lot bigger than you think. You’re going to run out of supplies. And he would have run out of supplies, except that he bumped into America.
Chris: So, Columbus didn’t prove the Earth is round. And as you probably learned, he wasn’t the first European to discover the new world either. The Vikings did that almost five centuries earlier.
So why are these myths still around today?
Shenkman: Myths are compelling stories. They have a beginning, middle and end. They oversimplify the past so that we can find it interesting, dramatic and that’s where the Columbus story fits. So we’re never going to get rid of it. It is a part of America.
Maggie: Well, this series has made me totally question everything that I thought I knew about history.
Alright guys, coming up, we check out the greener side of graduation.
It is anultra-green cap and gown. But before we toss our caps into the air, let's see what you guys thought about last week's Next Big Thing.
We told you about cereal cafes, restaurants that serve up bowls of the breakfast foodall day and all night with a selection of hundreds from around the world.
So is it the Next Big Thing? Seventy-four percent said yes, I am serious about cereal. Twenty-six percent said no, cereal is for breakfast only.
You know that plastic bottle you just threw out in the recycling bin? Well, it could just come back to be your graduation outfit.
Some students are ditching this black gown and instead opting for a greener one, onethat’s made from recycled plastic bottles. It takes on average 23 plastic bottles to make each gown.
So just think, for every 100 students who go green for graduation that means 2,300 plastic bottles are being kept out of landfills.
So how does it feel?
GirI: I would love to wear it. And I even feel like it’s better quality than just the simple nylon. If it was just water bottles, it’ll be a cool dress too.
Maggie: So what do you think?Are recycled caps and gowns the Next Big Thing?
Vote over at Channelone.com.
Alright, before we say goodbye and head out into the long weekend, we wanted to show you the eighth grade class of Stanbridge Academy in San Mateo, California who organized a clothing drive for foster children and sent us this video.
Girl: Channel One News, We made an impact. We donated clothes for the foster kids in the Bay Area. These clothes went to Sleep Train San Mateo. These clothes will make the foster kids happy.
Boy: Sleep Train does this year round. We just like donating. So, we put up posters around ourentire school and we asked them for any clothing that they had; T-shirts, jackets, shoes, underpants or socks.
Boy #2: Anyone can make an impact. We did.
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