[Music]
What's up superstars? What's up Wolf
Blitzer? I'm here with your news for
Wednesday, September 17th. What's up
Sanjay Gupta? Today is your word
Wednesday. That means one of you helped
us write today's show. Lot to get to,
not a lot of time to do it. So let's get
to it. We begin with a big development
for one of the world's biggest social
media apps, Tik Tok. A deal has been
reached with China to keep it
operational in the United States.
Officials in US President Donald Trump's
administration say the deal will be
finalized Friday. Our Omar Jimenez
examines what this might mean for Tik
Tok's Chinese parent company, Bite
Dance, and Tik Tok's prized algorithm.
There's a deal for Tik Tok, so let's
talk about it. The Trump administration
says they've reached an agreement with
China to keep the social media platform
operational in the United States.
Remember, even if you've probably been
using it the whole time, Tik Tok has
technically been in limbo for more than
a year after then President Joe Biden
signed legislation mandating the
platform be sold to a US company over
national security concerns. Now with
this announcement, US Treasury Secretary
Scott Besson spoke from Madrid where
he's been meeting with Chinese
counterparts to discuss trade and social
media platforms. US diplomats say
they've come to an agreement that
includes concerns over national
security. We're very focused on Tik Tok
and making sure that uh it was a deal
that is is fair from the Chinese and
completely respects US national security
concerns and and that's the deal we
reached. But a big question you might be
asking, will the algorithm change? That
remains to be seen. A formal
announcement from President Trump is
expected Friday. In personal finance
news, a concerning trend regarding one
of the most important parts of your
finances, credit scores. Credit scores
are the three-digit number used to
predict how likely you are to pay back
money on time when you borrow it.
They're a crucial step in getting
approved for anything from a car loan,
student loans, a new credit card, even a
mortgage. New data shows that Gen Z
folks ages 13 to 28 are notching some
really low scores, falling at the
fastest pace since the Great Recession
nearly 20 years ago. Here to help us
ameliorate any potential concerns is our
Matt Eaggan with tips. Hey Matt. Hey
Coy. I wish I were here with better news
to share, but unfortunately we're
learning that credit scores are falling
and that's never a good sign. And credit
scores are super important for everyone
who eventually wants to buy a house or
borrow money to purchase a car. These
credit scores, they're three-digit
numbers that measure how reliable you
are at paying back money that you owe.
It's kind of like a report card, but for
borrowers. And there's realworld
consequences here because the higher the
credit score, the cheaper it is to
borrow. and vice versa. Lower credit
scores make it more expensive to borrow.
Now, unfortunately, credit scores have
been coming down because more and more
Americans, they're falling behind on
their bills. Some people are struggling
with high prices and others are dealing
with too much student debt. Now, this is
a particular problem for younger
Americans. Gen Z borrowers have had
their credit scores fall this year by
more than any age group since 2020. And
not only are they dealing with student
debt, but some of them are struggling to
find a job even after graduating from
college. Now, the good news is experts
say there are ways to boost your credit
score and to keep debt under control.
First, and this is most important,
always make your payments on time
because missed payments will ding your
credit score. Second, don't borrow too
much money. That's always a red flag.
That's also going to hurt your credit
score. And lastly, check your credit
reports. If there's any inaccuracies,
you can fight to fix them. Bottom line,
Koi, it is extremely important to build
a track record as a reliable borrower.
It's going to help you later in life
when you want to buy a car or even a
house. All right, for our next story of
the day, we're going to go
pop quiz, hot shot. I knew that was you.
Got a pop quiz. What is the most active
muscle in the human body? Heart, tongue,
eye muscles, or jaw.
[Music]
Heart.
Ah, sorry. If you said eye muscles,
though, I see you. You are focused
pupils. The muscles that control your
eyes move an estimated 100,000 times per
day, even when you're sleeping. I
actually thought it was going to be jaw
for you, Coy. Sorry, got to go perform
some brain surgery.
Smartest man at CNN. That actually does
remind me of our top story from the
world of medicine today. It's quite
literally an eyeopener. A man who was
pushed to the brink of blindness by a
rare disease has been saved by an
incredibly unusual procedure.
Brent Chapman is able to see clearly for
the first time in 20 years with the help
of his tooth,
seeing the skyline. Um
yeah differentiating the billings.
He's one of just a few patients in the
world to undergo a procedure known as
tooth in eye surgery.
Tooth and eye is probably the simplest
way to describe it but the the full name
is an osteoonto keratto prostthesis or
OKP.
It's a procedure for when people have
damage to the front of their eye or the
cornea. And you may never have heard of
it because it's only used in very rare
circumstances when other options have
failed. much like replacing a a broken
windscreen on a car. That's is just to
restore a clear view into the back of
the eye.
Here's how it works. The patient's own
tooth, the canine or eye tooth
coincidentally, is extracted. It's then
formed into a rectangular shape and a
plastic lens is fitted into it. The
tooth is then sewn into the patient's
cheek for long enough that connective
tissue grows around it, which is then
used to help fix the tooth over the eye,
holding the new lens in place. The
result is this pink looking eye with a
small black circle in the middle. So why
a tooth?
As it turns out, the tooth is a really
ideal structure for holding a focusing
element in place. Um, it's hard, it's
rigid, it survives in poor environments
and the body accepts it because it's
part of its own because it's part of
you. I think at first I'm like like most
people it seems kind of
uh science fictiony and out there.
It may have sounded out there, but after
losing most of his sight when he was 13
years old and going through almost 50
surgeries trying to regain it, Chapman
was willing to give it a try.
This sort of opened a new new door for
me and a new chapter in my life. And the
results, well, seeing it is believing
it. For Chapman,
little things like eye contact are just
uh I think things that people take for
granted. It's very very powerful and
you have that human connection again
visually and you're like, "Wow, we we
actually pulled this off."
From civil rights icon to runway model,
at 71 years old, Ruby Bridges made her
runway debut in New York in a show
called Actively Black, honoring those
who fought for equality. At just 6 years
old, Miss Bridges was the first black
child to integrate at an all-white
elementary school in New Orleans on
November 14th of 1960. Her first day at
William France Elementary School came
four years after black parents in New
Orleans filed a lawsuit against the
Orleans Parish School Board for not
desegregating the school system in the
wake of the Brown versus Board of
Education decision, which determined in
1954 that state laws establishing
segregation in public schools were
unconstitutional. Once Bridges entered
the school and arrived at her classroom,
all the other students had withdrawn.
The rest of the school year, it was just
her and her teacher. But Bridges stayed
at the school despite retaliation
against her family. Eventually though,
Bridges made it to second grade. And
when she did, the school's incoming
first grade class had eight black
students. Ruby Bridges, a true
trailblazer for equality.
[Applause]
Today's story getting a 10 out of 10.
From rise up sunshine to rise up
sunflower. New Jersey farmer Brian Moore
just broke the Guinness World Record for
tallest sunflower ever. An unbudievable
35 feet 9 in tall, smashing the previous
record set in 2014 by 5 ft. This
behemoth was grown in Fort Wayne,
Indiana. A typical sunflower grows to
about 6 feet tall. Moore has spent 30
years perfecting his work. The secret to
his perennial source of joy, he
cross-pollinated large sunflowers from
the United Kingdom with some from a
roadside ditch in Nebraska. Turns out
single-headed sunflowers combined with
wild multi-headed ones create a genetic
freak of a sunflower. All right,
congrats to Meadowbridge Regional
School, Meadowbridge, West Virginia. We
see you, Principal Reddit and Mr.
Woodrum. You submitted our your word
Wednesday winner. Amelia, a verb meaning
to make better or more tolerable. Thank
you to everyone who submitted some
respplendant words on my Koiwire social
accounts and our brand new and improved
CNN10 on Instagram. You rock. And our
shout out of the day goes to Mr. Hatcher
at Rogers Herur Middle School in Durham,
North Carolina, home of the Durham
Bulls. Giddy up. Yee-haw. And you Howdy
Duty. You rock, too. Thank you for this
sensible yet um subtle headwear. Perfect
size for my big old head. Make it a
great one, everyone. I'll see you
tomorrow right back here on Cowboy Koi.
Then we are CNN 10.