CNN Student News - November 6, 2017

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A Shooting at a Church in Texas; A Sign of Resilience in New York; Use of Modern Technology to study Ancient History

Aired November 6, 2017 - 04:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CARL AZUZ, cnn 10 ANCHOR: I`m Carl Azuz for cnn 10.

Our coverage this week starts with a tragedy at a small church in a small American community. About 30 miles outside of San Antonio, Texas, is a place named Sutherland Springs.

Yesterday, during service at the First Baptist Church, police say a man entered the building and started shooting. A county sheriff says more than 20 people were killed, numerous others were injured, though we didn`t know the exact the number when we produced today`s show. At least two medical facilities were treating victims of the shooting.

There was a chase after the attack. The suspect apparently fled into a neighboring county where he also died. Officials were trying to find out if he took his own life or if he was killed by police, in addition to what his motive might have been.

A business owner in Sutherland Springs says it`s a very small but very tightly knit community. And U.S. leaders from President Donald Trump to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to Senator John Cornyn who serves Texas indicated they were praying for the people affected.

Five days after a terroristic attack in New York City, there was a sign of resilience yesterday when 50,000 runners were expected to hit the road in the TCS New York City Marathon. City and state officials had promised the event would be safe, following an attack on October 31st that killed eight people in the borough of Manhattan. That was the worst terrorist act in New York City since it was a target on September 11th, 2001.

For Sunday`s race, the city lined the roadways with sand trucks and police vehicles to protect pedestrians. Two and a half million spectators were expected and of those who took on the 26-mile challenge, one said she couldn`t live her live afraid that something like a terrorist attack could happen. The threat couldn`t stop her from accomplishing her goal to run. Some other runners that cnn spoke to gave a similar message.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the oldest?

Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Colossus of Rhodes, State of Zeus at Olympia, Great Pyramid of Giza?

The Great Pyramid isn`t only the oldest, it`s the only Wonder in the Ancient World that still mostly intact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AZUZ: Researchers recently discovered a void in the Great Pyramid they hadn`t known about before. By void, we mean a space that`s almost 100 feet long. The journal "Nature" which details the finding says this is the first time since the 1800s that a space this significant has been identified in the pyramid. But whether it adds to the structure`s mysteries or answers ancient secrets is up for debate.

A spokesman for Egypt`s government says there`s no evidence that suggest this space lives to an undiscovered gallery or burial chamber. And archeologists point out that the pyramid has other voids, so this could just be one that hadn`t been found yet. Still, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the Great Pyramid, and researchers hope this discovery will help them learn how it was built.

They`re not allowed to drill holes or use cameras. To identify this void, they used equipment to track cosmic ray particles inside the structure.

But that`s not the only way in which modern technology is helping archeologists study ancient history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNDIENTIFIED MALE: The magic is seeing this with candlelight.

REPORTER: Adam Lowe (ph) freely admits he is a man with an obsession -- to document the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Seti I.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tomb actually tells how the people from 3,500 years ago think different things, have different philosophies, value different things, the way they thought can be read through the very articulate evidence that`s on the walls of these tombs.

And if we can really build a dialogue that crosses time and use technology to help that, I think we`re at incredibly exciting moment.

REPORTER: Just a room you think, but what a room known among Egyptologists as "Hall of Beauties". What`s just as astonishing is that this is in fact a facsimile, a precise recreation in the museum in Switzerland of how the room look exactly 200 years ago when the tomb was discovered.

Adam Lowe`s specialist art company Factum Arte has made tomb facsimiles before. They scanned the tomb of Tutankhamun in 2009 and made a replica now installed as a tourist attraction in Egypt. The same methods were used for Seti`s tomb.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re now making high resolutions molds using 3D printing technologies, from laser scan datas that have never involved any contact with wall.

REPORTER: No contact at all?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Zero contact at any point in any of the operation.

REPORTER: The Seti replica was meld in the Factum Arte workshop in Madrid and a fine flexible skin added with the print after the frescos. The facsimile was assembled in panel.

Seti`s tomb was discovered in 1817 by an Italian circus strongman, an adventure known as the Great Belzoni. The vivid decoration entranced him.

And as record, a series of watercolors was painted. But soon, whole sections of the wall were hacked off as trophies. This fragment ended up in the British museum.

This original relief of the Goddess Maat with a feather headdress is from a museum in Florence. The only way you can tell that she`s a real thing is because she`s under protected glass. The copies aren`t.

This is what Seti`s tomb looks like now with virtual reality. It`s still absolutely extraordinary, multiple rooms, and a descent of over 130 meters into the rock, still the longest and deepest tomb in the Valley of the Kings. But now irreparable damaged, once gloriously decorated, but now patchy and in places almost entirely bleached of color.

For this exhibition in Basel, they made facsimiles of several rooms from Seti`s tomb as they are now.

Aliyah Ishmael (ph) is the first Egyptian trained in the new digital technology used for making the facsimiles. She spent four months scanning the tombs last year.

What was it like?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Being in the tomb. The first time was insane. It was just magical, because, you know, the tomb of Seti I was closed and nobody could have seen it for about 40 years.

And then, all of a sudden, I get to go inside it. It was like, what? You know? It was one of those like dreams come true sort of, for an Egyptologist.

When I entered her like the first time where I got to Basel and I was like, I feel like I`m in tomb. The only difference is that there`s not enough dust. But apart from that, it`s just the same feeling.

REPORTER: But arguably, the high point of this exhibition is the regeneration of the "Hall of Beauties", Seti with color back in his cheeks, just as he was found way back in 1817.

This is resurrection.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In a way, it is resurrection. Yes, absolutely. And this is where without becoming Disneyland or Kish (ph) or whatever, in a scientific and well-informed way, the facsimile can prove this, what we say at this added value can show more than what you can see in the tomb.

REPORTER: Adam Lowe will resume scanning other rooms in Seti`s tomb earlier next year. The long term aim is to make a facsimile of it all, and place it in the Valley of the Kings.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we have to remember, the Egyptians didn`t want these tombs to change. They made them to last for eternity, but never to be visited.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: Guinness World Record you probably didn`t know about, most people dressed as penguins. It was set in the United Kingdom in 2015. At that time, 624 people did this. But this isn`t that event. This one is bigger. It was held recently at Ohio`s Youngstown State University, whose mascot is the Penguin. Nine hundred seventy-two students and alumni somehow found 972 penguin costumes and hopped inside them.

They`re waiting for the official certification from Guinness, but if you ask us, they`re already penguinners. Now, if that sounds fishy, it`s because I`ve used it before and I wasn`t flighten (ph) to use it aguin.

We`re creeling (ph) the punguin game on cnn 10. Some might call us the kings of it, even if others think they`re for the birds. I`m Carl Azuz.

END