it`s tuesday, january 5th, and you are 10minutes away from being up to speed on international current events. i`m carl azuz for cnn student news. we`re starting in the middle east where diplomatictrouble is brewing between saudi arabia and iran. the two countries want to have greaterinfluence in the middle east. they`re both officially muslim countries, but the vastmajority of saudi arabians are sunni muslims and the vast majority of iranians are shiamuslims. saudi arabia executed a shia muslim religiousleader last weekend. he had criticized the saudi government and iran supported him. afterthe execution, protesters in the iranian capital
attacked the saudi embassy there. so, saudiarabia formally ended its diplomatic relations with iran. yesterday, it cancelled all flights to andfrom iran. and the nations of bahrain and sudan also cut diplomatic ties with iran. experts on international politics are concernedthat all this could lead to deeper problems in the middle east. tensions in the regionbetween sunni and shia muslims go back centuries. when islam`s founder, the prophet muhammaddied in the seventh century, his followers were split over who should take over, abubakr was one follower. they wanted to choose. others wanted his cousin and son in law, ali.ali became the leader for all muslims for
five years before he was killed. his son husaynwas killed in battle by what were to become the sunnis. since then, the followers of alihave been known as shia. sunnis vary from the very conservative andorthodox, life the salafists of isis and al qaeda, through the wahhabis, all the way throughthe sufis who have a sort of mystical interpretation of their faith. shia also very in the way they interpret andfollow their faith. there are different sects like the alawites of president bashar al assadof syria. also, like the houthi saadis (ph), they arequite close in their faith to the sunnis but still a sect of shia.
across the world, the vast majority of muslimsare sunnis. what makes the middle east so complicated are the maps that were drawn andthe national boundaries that were put down about a century ago when british and the empireswere pulling back from the region and the struggle for power today has its roots inhow the region was divided, how those maps were drawn. the caribbean island of puerto rico, a territoryof the u.s., has confirmed its first case of a virus called zika. puerto rican officialssay there`s no cause for alarm. zika is transmitted by mosquitoes, so authorities are tellingpeople to do what they can do to avoid mosquito bites. wear long sleeves, use insect repellant,stay in rooms with air-conditioning and screen
in windows. zika fever was discovered in the african countryof uganda in the 1940s. global travel has helped spread it around the world. while of zika`s effect are debated, pregnantwomen may want to heed the cdc`s travel warning to puerto rico. you`ve probably never even heard of it. thezika virus, it`s transmitted by mosquitoes and relatively new to this part of the world,but now, brazil has linked it to the huge increase in birth defects. in fact, it`s carriedby the same mosquito, aeded aegypti, that also transmits dengue fever and yellow fever.
but because of the relatively mild systems,we`re talking about a low fever, maybe a rash, maybe a headache. it really didn`t set offalarm bells when it first appeared her in brazil. but then doctors started to notice a big spikein the number of cases of microcephaly in newborns. that`s a neurological disorder thatmeans these babies are born with very small craniums, with limited brain development,and that over the course of their life, they`re likely to need constant care. now, as doctors are researching this big surgein birth defects, what they found is that most mothers reported having had some kindof zika-like symptom in the first stage of
their pregnancy. then, on november 28, thebrazilian health ministry took a very significant step. they announced a link between the zikavirus and microcephaly. brazilian officials are advising women todelay getting pregnant, if at all possible, especially women in the northeast of the countrywhere microcephaly has been more prevalent and where six states have declared a stateof emergency. it`s hard to know exactly how widespread itis because it`s hard to detect, because many people don`t even have symptoms. so, the healthministry here in brazil estimates that up to 1.5 million people may have been infectedwith the virus this year. checking in now with three of the schoolswatching today and requesting a "roll call"
mention at cnnstudentnews.com. rio tierra junior high is the golden stateof the california. the pioneers are there in the capital city of sacramento. to the hoosier state, that`s indiana. that`swhere we heard from concord community high school and the minutemen of elkhart. and in ontario, canada, we`re visiting st.mary`s today, and the students of st. mary`s district collegiate and vocational institute. china`s stock market took a beating on monday.it came after a report that showed chinese manufacturing had decreased at the end oflast year. stocks there fell so hard so fast
that trading was stopped for the first timeever. world markets are connected. what happensin one major economy often affects another. and the u.s. market followed suit, with thedow jones industrial average dropping 276 points yesterday. the dow is a group of 30 significant stocks.it gives a sense of how the overall market is doing. yesterday was not its worst dayever -- far from it. and u.s. stocks could still rebound today. but monday was the market`s first day of tradingin 2016 and its worst opening day of the year since 2008.
this next segment is going to trigger someserious deja vu. it`s not because we`ve covered it before, but if some reason you think wehave, you`re probably in the age range when people experience deja vu the most often. dr. sanjay gupta explores what it is exactlyand the latest ideas from the medical community about why we experience it. you know, i suddenly have this feeling thati`ve told you this before. you know, it happens without warning, thestrange feeling that you`ve been there, done that, even though you know you never have. the french have a word for it deja vu, meaningalready seen.
now, while some claimed deja vu is a evidenceof the paranormal such as past lives or alien abductions, other says we partially absorbscenes from television or movies to feel a sense of familiarity. it could be that ourvisual cortex is so fast at sending signals to our memory center, the hippocampus, thatsome believe the feeling of having seen it before is true, and it is true, but we sawit just a split second earlier. about two-thirds of us experience deja vu,and oddly enough, it seems to happen most often between the ages of 15 and 25. so, itcould be linked to the ongoing development of the brain. scientists aren`t really sure.because deja vu occurs randomly among healthy people, it`s been hard to study.
now, we do know deja vu occurs in the medialtemporal lobe, that`s this area of the brain over here. that`s where the rhinal cortex,the part of the brain that helps us recognize familiar, interacts with the hippocampus,that`s the part of the brain that stores details of specific memories. perhaps signals there get crossed, could bethat brain circuits convulsed in an almost sort of seizure. and actually, you know what?that makes sense, because people with epilepsy do experience deja vu at the onset of theseizure. so, it`s now on epilepsy where most of today`s research is underway. in fact,neurologists have been able to trigger deja vu and people with epilepsy by stimulating,you guessed it, their medial temporal lobes.
you know, you can tell some people that somethingtastes disgusting and they just got to try it anyway for themselves. this plant is kindof like that. it`s called titan arum, aka, the corpse flower. it blooms for less than 48 hours, giving offan unparallel stink and then it collapses. for some reason, folks lined up in drovesto get a whiff, the natural nose-assaulting nastiness notwithstanding. this happened recentlywhen a titan arum blossomed in south australia. you couldn`t be bloomed to say the arum`saroma was titanically rotten. but there are times not to follow the flow-er of the crowd,if no one knows when to hold their nose when sniffing whiffs that reek, perhaps the proboscissuffers no losses when plugging its probing
beak. cnn student news is planting more for tomorrow.don`t miss it.
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