Www.channelone.com



Azia: Hey guys, it is Azia Celestino, and today I am at Washington Latin Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., and Channel One News starts…

Students: …right now!

Tom: Nice start to the show, guys. I am Tom Hanson, and let's jump right into it.

So, how much would it take in the form of cold hard cash to pry your phone from your hands? I am thinking it would take a lot for most of you — and, honestly, for me as well. Well, one school in D.C. put its students to the test to see if they could make it through the summer completely unplugged. Time to check back in with Azia to see who made it and who didn't in this tech detox challenge.

Azia: Luca Camponovo is a gamer.

Luca Camponovo: Sometimes I just get on, like, my computer, Xbox, and I just, like, completely forget about the real world.

Azia: But Luca is officially offline — for today, at least.

Luca: We have to drop all of our technology, all of our games and virtual stuff and basically find other things to do, so we're not allowed to play Xbox, go on Instagram, text anybody, for a whole Tuesday.

Goodbye, my love.

Azia: It is all part of the No-Tech Tuesday Challenge. Luca and other students from Washington Latin Public Charter School took on a digital dare this summer: ditching all technology for 11 Tuesdays in a row. Translation? No phones, computers or TV.

Luca: It's been sort of painful. Like, I'll read down here after eating dinner or something, and my sister will be watching a show on Netflix.

Aitana Camponovo: When he’s on No-Tech Tuesday, he’s kind of nicer to everybody. On other days, he’s still nice but a little bit grumpier because he’s on his Xbox for like, three hours.

Azia: Would you consider yourself addicted to technology?

Luca: Yes.

Azia: And Luca is not alone. It is estimated that the average teen spends about nine hours on tech.

Diana Smith: We all worry about the amount of time that they spend looking at screens.

Azia: Washington Latin's principal, Diana Smith, came up with the No-Tech Tuesday Challenge.  

Smith: I do want kids to be aware of breaking the habit. And the only way I am going to get them to do that is by taking them away.

Azia: To sweeten the deal, she saved up her own money and offered a cash prize with the challenge.

So if the students complete this unplugged challenge, how much money do each of them get?

Smith: So each of them will get a $100 bill if they produce two letters from adults saying that they did this. I think one of the things that mattered about this is that it was my own money, right? All of a sudden, they started to realize maybe this really matters.

Luca: I was like, “Wow, really? Just for dropping technology?” But then I realized, like, how much of an impact, like, dropping technology can have on, like, someone's regular day-to-day life.

Azia: In the end 38 students made it through the challenge, each one $100 richer and a lot wiser.

What were some of the other things that you got to focus on because you weren’t distracted by your devices?

Niko: I got to focus on my family, and like, how much I actually, like, appreciate them, because constantly we're always, like, on our phones, and this challenge was a great break for us.

Lydia: And it really changes the way you look at the world and technology because you see everyone on their phones, and your instinct is to be on your phone too, but then you're like, “Is that really necessary? Probably not."

Azia: For Luca, the challenge changed up his habits for the better.

Luca: I just generally play less video games now, so I started involving myself in other things, like, so, soccer and skateboarding. Originally, I said that I would probably buy a video game, but I think I might buy, like, a new soccer ball or maybe some soccer cleats.

Azia: Azia Celestino, Channel One News.

Tom: Yeah, very interesting. 

Now we want to know what you think. Would you give up your phone for cash? Head to to weigh in, and make sure you sound off in the comments. We will be watching.

All right, coming up, a look back in history on the day nuclear war came within firing distance of the United States.

Tom: Okay, so as you know, the U.S. and North Korea have been talking tough about nuclear war lately, and it has got some people on edge. But it is not the first time that nuclear war seemed like a possibility. Today Maggie Rulli takes us back in time to when Americans were really feeling the threat of war in their everyday lives.

Maggie: On August 14, 1945, the U.S. and its allies were celebrating the end of World War II. The Japanese army had surrendered just days after the U.S. dropped a second nuclear bomb on Japan, ending the deadliest military conflict in history.

Yet historians remain divided. Some argue that the atomic weapon was necessary to end World War II. Others say the U.S. only dropped a nuclear weapon so that it could prove its strength to the rest of the world. In a show of force, the U.S. used these new, catastrophic weapons to create unthinkable destruction, wiping out the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Eric Schlosser: Almost 70 years later, historians are still debating: Did we need to use nuclear weapons to end the war? Was Truman's decision to use them based on a sincere desire to end the war, or was he using them to show the Soviet Union how powerful we were?

Maggie: By 1949 the Soviet Union, which today is Russia and 14 other countries, had also developed nuclear weapons. And the U.S. and Soviets began a dangerous race, scrambling to make more and more powerful nuclear weapons than the other country in an attempt to get so strong that no one would mess with them. This race became known as the Cold War.

Major General Garrett Harencak: You are never going to be able to threaten America. You’re never going to be able to destroy our way of life without us destroying you.

Maggie: At the height of the Cold War, it is believed each country had more than 30,000 nuclear weapons.

Alan Carr: The Soviet Union and the United States both had hundreds of megatons worth of firepower pointed at each other. The world had never been that dangerous before — weapons that are literally hundreds of times more powerful than the weapons that we used in World War II.

Schlosser: During the nuclear arms race, each step seemed perfectly logical at the time and, step by step, led to a place of total madness.

Maggie: For nearly two decades, the U.S. and Soviets stockpiled their weapons, and other nations also developed nuclear bombs. As tensions mounted, the fear of a nuclear war became part of everyday American life.

Students were taught to duck and cover in classrooms. Families built bomb shelters to protect themselves from radiation. Fallout shelters were selected as places to go in case of attack. Then, in October 1962, the threat of nuclear war came to the edge of U.S. shores. 

Cuba had allowed its ally, the Soviet Union, to bring nuclear bombs here to the island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. It started what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war.

The world held its breath as President John F. Kennedy faced Nikita Khrushchev — the leader of the Soviet Union — in a tense, potentially world-ending, standoff.

President John F. Kennedy: It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

Maggie: After 13 stressful days, the two countries came to an agreement, and the missiles were removed, but that wasn't the end of the Cold War. Relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union remained tense…

President Ronald Reagan: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Maggie: …all the way until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, officially ending the Cold War.

Today Russia, the former power of the Soviet Union, still has some nukes. But, of course, so do we. Both countries, along with three others, have agreed to destroy some of those nuclear weapons, but the concept of deterrence — keeping nukes to scare off your enemies — still shapes our country’s national defense.

Harencak: Our main focus in America is to prevent nuclear war. And we feel the best way to do that is to be prepared with a credible, safe and effective nuclear deterrent.

Maggie: A dependence on nuclear weapons that some say is dangerous.

Are you surprised that another city hasn't been destroyed?

Schlosser: I kind of am surprised. You don't want to be dependent on luck to prevent something bad from happening, because luck runs out.

Maggie: Maggie Rulli, Channel One News.

Tom: Definitely interesting stuff.

And you just heard today's Word in the News — ally, which is a person or group or nation that is associated with another for a common purpose. 

Okay, guys, we are out of time, but we will be right back here tomorrow. 

 

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download