The rich history behind Asia's largest water fight | April 15, 2026

0:11 Hello and rise up.

0:12 I'm Coy Wire here with your 10 minutes of news on this, your word Wednesday.

0:16 One of you helped us write today's show

0:18 with a vocab word you submitted on the socials.

0:21 We had so many compelling words, tough to choose just one.

0:24 I'd like to defenestrate myself from the position of picker.

0:27 Shout out to Mr.

0:28 Westbrook's class, Lakeridge Junior High in Orem, Utah.

0:30 A little bonus word to start our day.

0:33 Go Leopards.

0:34 We begin with an update on some wicked

0:36 weather that is battering much of the central US.

0:40 The week of severe storms started on Monday

0:42 with multiple tornadoes demolishing buildings in Kansas,

0:46 heavy rain stranding vehicles on flooded streets in Wisconsin,

0:50 and baseball-sized hail slamming into parts of three states.

0:54 In total, at least a dozen tornadoes were

0:56 reported across the central region of the country,

0:58 three of them touching down in Minnesota,

1:01 including this one that was caught on video.

1:03 Parts of the Midwest are dealing with severe flooding spurred by heavy rainfall.

1:09 Our water treatment guy told us we had 4

1:11 and 1/2 inches in roughly 3 hours or something like that.

1:14 Have you ever seen the water this high like this before?

1:17 No.

1:17 I've talked to people that have lived here their whole

1:18 lives and we've never seen the water this high.

1:21 Forecasters fear the worst could still be on the way with heavy rains,

1:24 strong winds, hail, and flooding that could last through Friday.

1:28 The storms could impact a huge area stretching

1:31 from the Texas-Mexico border to the Great Lakes region,

1:34 so make sure to listen to your local weather officials for the latest updates.

1:39 Next up, the WNBA draft earlier this week was historic.

1:43 Thanks to the new collective bargaining

1:45 agreement between the league and the players, this draft class is cashing in.

1:49 The top pick pulling in half a million dollars in year one alone.

1:53 That's seven times what last year's number one pick, Paige Bueckers, earned.

1:57 Same dream, same spotlight, very different paycheck, a sign of progress.

2:02 Aaliyah Boston, UConn's sharpshooter,

2:05 taken number one overall by the Dallas Wings.

2:07 Boston reunited with her former UConn teammate,

2:10 last year's top pick, Paige Bueckers, in Dallas.

2:14 Our time at UConn felt like I mean it was just full of injury,

2:20 full of like either I was playing, she wasn't, she was playing, I wasn't.

2:22 It wasn't until last year um that we

2:25 really got a chance to actually play together.

2:27 Just so much potential um with not just

2:30 her, but the entire uh Dallas Wings roster.

2:32 So, I I can't wait obviously to play with her again,

2:34 but to play with every single one of them.

2:37 Now, record books.

2:38 A $2.2 million deal, richest rookie contract in WNBA history.

2:44 An update now for one of the most

2:45 popular gaming platforms for youngsters, Roblox.

2:49 After months of discussions and research,

2:51 the app is changing how players access it.

2:54 Starting in June, accounts will be divided by age using age check technology.

2:59 To complete the process,

3:01 users have to follow a series of on-screen instructions for facial verification.

3:06 Kids ages 5 to 8 will have chat turned off

3:09 and access to games will be strictly limited by the content's rating.

3:13 The company says older kids will have a bit more access,

3:16 but they say safety controls will still be in place,

3:20 allowing them only to chat with age-checked users in similar age groups.

3:25 Why?

3:25 Roblox has faced pressure to better protect children from inappropriate

3:29 content and prevent interactions with others that are not age-appropriate.

3:34 Now to a moment caught on camera that has conservationists saying,

3:38 "Was it a cat I saw?" That phrase, by the way, is a palindrome.

3:41 Camera traps photographed a rare cloud jaguar high

3:44 up in the Merendon mountain range of Honduras.

3:47 First time it's been detected there in a decade, a positive sign for the Central

3:51 American nation attempting an environmental turnaround.

3:54 The The elusive feline is struggling to thrive due

3:57 to poaching and habitat loss from deforestation and human development.

4:03 Pop quiz, hot shot.

4:05 Which US state has the highest number of recorded fossil finds?

4:08 Texas, California, Colorado, or Montana?

4:17 If you said California, put your hands up and show those pits.

4:20 Home to the La Brea Tar Pits, California clocked the most fossils.

4:24 Montana, though, shows the highest diversity of discoveries,

4:27 including more T-Rex bones than any other state.

4:31 A pair of snorkeling scientists found an underground fossil-filled

4:34 cave leading to unprecedented paleontological discoveries in Central Texas.

4:40 According to the University of Texas at Austin,

4:43 the scientists gained access to a previously unmapped cave on private property

4:47 and snorkeled through underwater streams leading

4:50 to an area brimming with undisturbed fossils.

4:53 It was there, according to a study published in the journal Quaternary Research,

4:57 that co-authors John Moretti and John Young discovered, among dozens of fossils,

5:01 the remains of a giant tortoise and a relative

5:04 of the armadillo the size of a lion.

5:07 The study says the remains of those Ice Age animals

5:09 dating back some 100,000 years had never previously been found

5:13 in Central Texas before and have raised new questions about

5:16 what is known about the region's geological and climatic past.

5:22 Ever wish you could dinosaur back into time?

5:24 Well, now we can.

5:25 No time machine required.

5:26 Actually, you do use a virtual time machine of sorts.

5:29 A new VR experience called Age of Dinosaurs just launched,

5:33 taking players 150 million years into the past.

5:37 Created in partnership with the Natural History Museum London,

5:41 dinosaur experts and California-based Sandbox VR,

5:45 it's not your average Jurassic joy ride.

5:47 It's science meets cinema.

5:49 It was wonderful, very educational, very cinematic.

5:52 I learned a lot and I really enjoyed it.

5:55 Dinosaurs are up in your face, they're all around you.

5:57 It's not like you're just walking through some kind of static thing.

6:00 It's a yeah, very immersive, very educational, a lot of fun.

6:03 We're talking razor-sharp teeth, ultra-detailed scales,

6:06 even muscle movement under the skin, all vetted by real-life dino experts.

6:11 I get to work with the team at Sandbox

6:13 and tell them what I know about, you know,

6:16 what we should make the animals look like, how they should behave,

6:20 what kind of interesting ideas we can put into the animation.

6:24 Are there are there particularly interesting pieces of behavior

6:28 that could involve interaction with people that we might build in?

6:31 And not just the animals themselves, but we had to build the environment.

6:34 We went to an awful lot of trouble to reconstruct the plants

6:40 and the environments quite accurately

6:41 to build this completely immersive prehistoric world.

6:46 With full-body tracking and haptic vests,

6:49 you won't just see a T-Rex, you might feel its footsteps.

6:53 Those of us who have a bank account might know that sometimes it can be

6:56 a pain in the keister to make time to go into the bank, wait in line.

7:00 Well, what if you had a bank right there in your school,

7:03 for the students, run by the students,

7:06 all while teaching them about managing finances?

7:08 That's exactly what's happening at Blackman

7:10 High School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

7:13 Check it out.

7:15 Inside Blackman High School in Murfreesboro, 70, 90, 110, 130.

7:21 you will find Here you go.

7:23 Thank you so much.

7:24 great day.

7:24 a Redstone Federal Credit Union branch.

7:27 It's a real bank in a real school.

7:30 Run entirely by students.

7:32 Like I'm actually handling people's money.

7:34 during lunch period.

7:36 We have members here within this school, teachers and students.

7:40 They can make deposits, withdrawals, get change,

7:44 pay certain loans if they have one through Redstone.

7:48 This is the first branch inside a Tennessee high school.

7:52 Since the partnership between the school

7:54 and the bank launched around 5 years ago,

7:56 more than 100 students have taken the capstone course.

8:00 A really good quality job as a teenager, and we're getting class credit for it.

8:05 So, it's like a golden opportunity for us almost.

8:07 Supervised by teachers, students also train and work with real bank employees.

8:13 The basic finances are really important.

8:16 Like when you swipe your debit card, they come out of your checking account.

8:19 And this is something they're learning, and then they get to help their peers.

8:23 Building their resumes while learning personal finance at the same time.

8:28 What does it look like for my own personal finance?

8:31 What does it look like for my own banking decisions?

8:34 How does it look for me to interact with a business and a company?

8:38 And I just think those are the real world kind

8:40 of experiences that we're wanting to make sure that our students have.

8:49 Today's story getting a 10 out of 10, water fight!

8:52 Asia's largest water fight as crowds across Thailand celebrated Songkran,

8:57 the Thai New Year festival on Sunday.

9:00 Also known as the water festival,

9:02 Songkran takes place every April with locals, tourists,

9:06 young and old flooding the neighborhood

9:08 squares to splash each other with buckets, hoses, water balloons, and more.

9:12 Why, you ask?

9:13 To symbolize the washing away of bad luck and a fresh start for the year ahead.

9:18 The word Songkran comes from a Sanskrit term

9:20 that roughly translates to astrological passage or movement,

9:24 symbolizing the sun moving into a new position in the zodiac.

9:27 But for most folks, clearly it also symbolizes fun.

9:32 Big congrats to our Year Word Wednesday winners, Mr.

9:35 Hoff and friends at Dixon Public School in Dixon,

9:37 Montana who submitted palindrome, a noun meaning a word or phrase

9:41 or sequence that reads the same backward as forward,

9:45 like nun, race car, uh rise to vote, sir.

9:49 Thanks for putting that on our radar, also a palindrome.

9:52 And shout out to Mr.

9:53 Watts' mathematicians at Lyme Old Lyme High School in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

9:58 This gift is for the birds, and I mean that in the best possible way.

10:02 I love birds.

10:03 You really nailed it.

10:04 Actually, these are legit wood screws.

10:06 Well done, and thank you.

10:07 Rise up, everyone.

10:08 Go out, be the spark of joy someone needs.

10:10 I'm Coy Wire, and we are CNN 10.