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thank you
hey everyone it's your boy Coy I hope
you had an awesome Super Bowl Sunday
filled with football friends family and
food man I love my wings this is CNN 10
and we have a great show for you today
so let's get started February is Black
History Month it was chosen because it's
the second week of the month and
coincides with the birthdays of
Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
today we're going to highlight a group
of African-American female war heroes
specifically an all black women's Army
Corps that sorted millions of pieces of
mail in unheated warehouses during World
War II last year in 2022 they were
awarded a congressional gold medal
decades after the fact they were called
the
688th central postal directory Battalion
nicknamed the six Triple Eight the unit
was made up of about 850 black women who
were tasked with overcoming a massive
backlog of mail the unit traveled to
Great Britain in 1945 surviving
encounters with Nazi U-boats in a German
rocket explosion before spending months
sorting through mail and packages they
adopted a mod know and it said no mail
low morale so they cleared the six-month
backlog of mail in just three months now
by the end of the war the unit processed
about 17 million pieces of mail CNN
spoke to three of the living service
women and we're blessed to hear their
stories next
people may not realize but during World
War II there are more than six thousand
African-American women in the Army 855
formed the six triple late Central
postal directory Battalion the only
African-American women's Army Corps unit
to serve in Europe during World War II
the six Triple Eight was formed to clear
the multi-year backlog of mail for the
seven million Americans in the European
theater of operations everybody expected
mail from home and that was our complete
job was to make sure that we get the
mail out to the different units they
didn't have
computers they didn't have
even television in those days so mail
was a very important thing as units of
white women were being deployed overseas
first lady Elder Roosevelt and Mary
McLeod Bethune rallied to have black
women included in the war effort
overseas the women needed meaningful
tasks a meaningful assignment to prove
that black women could support the Armed
Forces just as the white women did the
women first assignment was in Birmingham
England they arrived in February of 1945
working three shifts a day they
processed approximately 65 000 pieces of
mail per shift for 90 days before they
moved on to Ruan and Paris France it was
hard
blackout conditions we had poor lighting
poor heating we couldn't let the
sunlight in because they were still
biting and bombing in that area
people of Birmingham England
treated us as Heroes it was very
different from
some of the behavior of by terrorism and
I should say
people segregated to the point where
when we wanted to go to the base
exchange would give a risk to one person
and they would go in and buy we were not
allowed to go in they even Post Exchange
we had our own quarters we had our own
unit
I'm sure that you have seen how service
people were heralded
Johnny Comes Marching Home parade
our dismissal was quiet and un
unpronounced it was at least we simply
came home we were just soldiers coming
home
we'd want to done a good job and come on
like the rest of the soldiers there was
nobody mentioned that nobody even said
nothing about for about 70 years later
that's when we started understanding
what a good job we did but otherwise
nobody mentioned about them
black or white wax do nothing I think
there's an opportunity now to correct
the wrong the highest award the six AAA
can receive and should receive is the
Congressional gold medal they deserve
their place in history to secure their
legacy along with the other recipients
of the ward the Tuskegee Airmen the moff
report Marines the women Air Service
pilots and many others whose service has
been recognized as making a significant
contribution to our nation
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thank you
we want to leave a legacy that we have
done something that is remarkable
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10 second trivia what is the state
nickname of California the Natural State
The Evergreen State the Golden State or
the Palmetto State
the 31st state in the Union is nicknamed
The Golden State
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up next a study released last week shows
the world is producing a record amount
of single-use plastic waste the material
which is convenient durable and cost
effective can present environmental
challenges when not managed properly in
July California became the first U.S
state to announce targets to reduce the
amount of single-use plastic trash in
all its forms is an ever-growing
challenge for major cities we'll hear
now from Richard Quest CNN anchor and
correspondent he's taking us to Los
Angeles where the city is using a barge
to capture floating trash in waterways
before it reaches the ocean
foreign
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the beautiful beaches of Los Angeles are
known around the world from their cameos
on the Silver Screen
in real life Hollywood's home base is
far from Picture Perfect the city faces
a major villain trash garbage rubbish
and the problem is it's getting worse
even though the waste management is
pretty good in the United States not a
lot of waste is is ending up in the
environment if you have 10 million
people living here even just a small
fraction of waste not being managed is
adds up to quite a significant amount of
trash coming down this River
now the city is turning to a new hero to
defend its rivers the Interceptor 007
it's all part of an organization called
the ocean cleanup this machine traps the
garbage that originates in places like
Beverly Hills and Hollywood the
Interceptor is an opportunity to have a
last line of defense on this Urban
Waterway it we try all kinds of measures
from public education to trash booms
further up the the creek but nothing can
be quite as effective as right here next
to the ocean and these beaches on Santa
Monica Bay are some of the most famous
beaches in America so we really want to
keep these clean for public health for
tourism for wildlife we have volunteers
that go to extraordinary efforts to do
their part in cleaning up the group
already has interceptors in places like
Malaysia and Vietnam each one takes half
a million dollars to build and deploy
what we do see is that there's the cost
of not intercepting plastic in a river
is many many times higher than if you
were to intercept it because it's
damaging
ecosystems it's damaging tourism it's
damaging Fisheries so it's just very
expensive to let this trash go into the
ocean so we are confident that
ultimately governments will step up and
will want to adopt these interceptors an
army of interceptors is the group's
long-term aim they're hoping to deploy
in a thousand rivers around the world
not like the robot armies of the big
screen this one is fighting for a
cleaner future
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[Applause]
in today's story getting a 10 out of 10
this event deserves a round of applause
I love it for real check out the annual
Golden's in Golden event it's a festival
celebrating golden retrievers that takes
place in Golden Colorado this year over
1 000 golden retrievers and their owners
filled the streets the celebration now
in its third year was held on the
Saturday closest to National golden
retrievers day which is February 3rd
now on to our favorite part of the day
shout out time we're getting a special
shout out to Central Middle School in
Omaha Nebraska we see you and we hope
you and everyone watching around the
world have a wonderful one I'm Coy wire
and we are CNN 10.
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