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hello lovely people feel like we haven't
seen each other since last year happy
New Year hope your 2024 is off to an
epic start I'm Koy wire this is cnn1 and
we are so grateful that you choose to
spend part of your day with us this is
going to be a big year we have the US
presidential election in November we
have the summer Olympics in Paris we
have a solar eclipse taking place in
April and it's a leap year we get an
extra day in February so that means we
get 366 days to make this year great
let's get this show on the road Mother
Nature starting 2024 in full force a
powerful winter storm is making its
presence felt throughout the nation
bringing all sorts of wintry mix
including heavy snowf fall freezing rain
and Gusty winds the size of this storm
ranges from the southwestern part of the
us to the Northeast where more than 30
states are impacted more than 35 million
people were under winter storm alerts
over the weekend and traveling was
treacherous especially in the Northeast
as state officials advised commuters to
avoid unnecessary travel the Plains
region of the US is expected to see
strong winds that could bring wind chill
values below 0 degrees flooding even
tornadoes may be a concern for the Gulf
Coast
Area 4 3 2
1 the Time Square ball drop is a
Hallmark of New Year's
Eve 1 minute before January 1st the
sparkling ball begins its descent the
ball drop has taken place annually since
1907 it was halted for 2 years during
World War II but crowds still flocked to
Time Square until 1995 the ball drop was
managed by the family company of its
first Creator Jak Jacob star since then
there have been many makeovers of the
famous ball including crystals
rhinestones and strobe lighting whether
this enduring ritual has the audience of
few or many it always marks the end of
the old and beginning of the
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new 10-second trivia scientist named
Antarctic icebergs based on what their
size above the surface size below the
surface their shape or location of first
sighting the US National Ice Center
assigns names to these icebergs based on
where they are first cited and then the
order in which they are
cited the world's largest iceberg is
named a23a it was the 23rd Iceberg cited
in the a quadrant of Antarctica the
continent is divided into a b c and d
quadrants did you know recently
scientists studied a23a
as it recently started drifting around
the Antarctic Peninsula again this
iceberg is about three times the size of
New York City weighing nearly a trillion
tons CNN spoke with the Antarctic Survey
team about this force of Nature and
where it might be headed next Antarctic
scientists had a quote unique
opportunity to observe the world's
largest iceberg three times the size of
New York City the iceberg broke away
from the filchner Ron ice shelf more
than 30 years ago but it stayed grounded
on the Antarctic wet sea and only
started moving recently now it's
drifting around the Antarctic Peninsula
the research team on the RRS sir David
atenor Cross path with the iceberg early
December I was just incredibly excited
to see it it's it's really quite
staggering uh in scale if you're up
against it it almost just looks like
land it has these big towering ice
Cliffs you know you're stretching sort
of as far as the eye can see in both
directions as the iceberg moves North
into warmer Waters it's gradually
melting and producing melt water into
the ocean scientists took water samples
around the iceberg to try to understand
the impacts it may have on the physical
circulation and nutrients of the ocean
we know that large icebergs like this
have the potential to to bring a large
amount of mineral dust from the
continent into the upper ocean and many
of the the ecosystems in the operation
are limited by the amount of nutrients
that are available so the cects as big
sources of of nutrients and you know
impacts near surface productivity that
ultimately sustains the the ecosystems
of the of the southern Nation experts
believe the iceberg will likely
discharge into the Scotia sea and end up
close to the South Georgia
Island American Shoppers spent a record
$222 billion online this past holiday
season but let's be honest not all those
purchases are Keepers if you know what I
mean maybe that sweater that your auntie
got you doesn't quite make the cut so
you send it back now many companies
offer free returns right but those
returns might not go where you may think
they'd go CNN's Peter Valdez depa
explains free returns their customers
insurance policy for shopping online but
what happens to those returns after you
give them back might surprise you so
customers really believe that the
product just goes into the black hole or
ends up being resold to another customer
in many instances that's not the case in
reality many of these products never
return anywhere instead they may end up
here or even here
you know easily 25% of all these returns
get destroyed in fact returns have
become such a headache for retailers
that in some cases they're just
refunding customers and letting them
keep or donate the unwanted items the
cost of getting the product back from
the customer is much higher than
traditional Logistics getting the
product to the customer turns out free
returns are far from
it there's a very large disparity
between the amount of returns that
happen from consumers that buy products
online versus in the store in a brick
and morar store we typically get
somewhere between 5 and 10% returns but
online we get north of 30% returns
accepting a return isn't always easy
either a warehouse optimized for
fulfilling orders now has to receive a
product and inspect it then someone
needs to decide whether it can be resold
or not in the end an online return can
require up to 20% more SP and labor than
one made in store those costs are part
of why optoro a return solution company
estimates that returning a $50 item can
cost a retailer 59% of its sale price
often the math just doesn't add up so
this is a product that came in one of
these pallets Liquidators like this one
are the middlemen between retailers and
resellers we sort organize process and
figure out methods to get them to the
right home and that's that's really what
we do here they buy returned merchandise
then sort and evaluate it before
auctioning it to Discount stores and
authorized resellers you'd be able to
resell them at a profit because you
would be purchasing them at a real
fraction of what the actual cost is but
some returns never make it to a
liquidator products ending up in
landfills customers don't really even
think of that as part of the purchase
process every year returns produce an
estimated 5 billion pounds of waste in
landfills
it's generally risky to remind consumers
how potentially wasteful their
consumerism is so in general retailers
are hesitant to lean too heavily into
those kind of awareness campaigns in an
odd way this is a partially
self-correcting problem as the return
problem gets bigger for all these
retailers there's more financial
resources available to fix the problem
so there's a happy outcome where less of
this stuff ends up in a landfill just
because there's more money to to be made
by keeping it out of the
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landfill for today's story getting a 10
out of 10 the 13-year-old from
Stillwater Oklahoma who beat the game of
Tetris into
submission oh my
God that's Willis Gibson in total
disbelief as he pulled off the nearly
impossible beating so to speak the
iconic video game Tetris it took him
about 38 minutes the tetris Titan is the
first human gamer ever to reach level
157 the other player to reach at least
this level was artificial intelligence
after reaching this rare threshold the
game glitched and hit its kill screen
here's the tetris company chairman
explaining why you can tell by you know
this kid that broke the game that he
went into an area of of memory of the
computer memory that the the programmer
never envisioned they would end up in
and that's why the program crashed shout
out to Willis for accomplishing the
nearly Unthinkable it's also time to
shout out you our first of the year this
one goes to Winter Middle School in
Winter South Dakota I see you Warriors
and this one goes to the Lions the
mighty Lions of Brindley Mountain High
School in Guntersville Alabama rise up
thank you for subscribing and commenting
on our cnn1 YouTube channel I'm headed
to Houston y'all we're going to be there
for the college football championship
game and we're taking you to NASA Space
Center to get a tour from an astronaut
so send us any questions you may have
for them I'm kywi on social and we are
CNN
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