The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are two nations with an alliance dating back decades, and their relationship is our first topic today on CNN 10. The magnetic north pole is moving at an accelerated pace, so we're explaining some of the effects that's having. And a South Pacific island's mysterious mud baffles scientists.
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TRANSCRIPT
CNN 10
Civil War in Yemen and Decades Alliance Between the United States and Saudi Arabia; Effects of Accelerating Movement of the Magnetic North Pole; New BolaWrap Introduced by Law Enforcement
Aired February 7, 2019 - 04:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Welcome to CNN 10. I`m Carl Azuz. It`s great to see you this Thursday. International relations are the key factor in today`s first story, concerns the civil war in Yemen that ramped up four years ago. It`s torn apart the Middle Eastern country. This isn`t a simple battle between Yemeni government forces and a rebel group that wants a new government. That might have been how it started but terrorists groups like ISIS and Al-Qaida are believed to be operating in Yemen. A famine has struck the country. Civilians are starving and the war has become international.
Saudi Arabia is leading a group of nations that are attacking the rebels in Yemen and Iran is believed to be supporting those rebels. The United States is not directly involved in Yemen but it has given military support to Saudi Arabia and it`s allies. A recent CNN investigation accused Saudi Arabia of providing some American weapons and equipment to militias in Yemen. This would break the rules of America`s arm sales to Saudi Arabia according to the U.S. Department of Defense but the top U.S. commander in the Middle East says it wouldn`t be a good idea for America to stop supporting the Saudi led group. There`s a close relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and it goes back more than half a century.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible) Saudi Arabia and the United States are two unexpected allies. One`s an autocracy, the other a democracy. There are many difference between the two but one thing they have in common is that each country has what the other wants. Saudi Arabia has oil and the United States has arms. To understand how reciprocal the relationship is, we need to go back to how it started. Saudi Arabia as we know it was founded in 1932 by King Abdulaziz. A few years later, oil was struck and American companies sensing an opportunity moved in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a relationship which was based on a company Standard Oil and in the name of the U.S. government trying to look for access to all resources.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This picture shows where the relationship crystallized. This was Saudi Arabia`s founder King Abdulaziz meeting U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt on the USS Quincy on the Suez Canal in 1945.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The United States wanted to have a secure access to - - to the oil resources and at the same time they would provide the Saudi Kingdom with access to arms and obviously provide protection.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As the years passed, the relationship strengthened. Standard Oil founded Aramco, the Arabian-American Oil Company which controls every oil well and barrel in the country. And as the oil flowed into the U.S., American made arms flowed into the kingdom. Between 1950 and 2017 Saudi Arabia bought more than $100 billion worth of arms from the U.S. making the kingdom the country`s biggest customer. It`s a relationship so strong that even when Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are on opposite sides of an issue, arms continue to flow.
For example in 1973 and the start of the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise offensive against Israel. The U.S. responded supporting Israel which Saudi opposed. The kingdom and it`s OPEC allies responded by setting an oil embargo reducing production and significantly impacting the U.S. economy, but there was no slow down in the arms sales.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we look at the actual figures of arms supplied to Saudi Arabia from the U.S., we can see that - - that was a time but we really see it very significant increased in those arms supplies. Which then continued over the decades and part of this may also be related to the (inaudible). That really was the moment that oil crisis really increased (inaudible) rapidly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even 9/11 where 15 out of the 19 attackers were Saudi did little to rattle the arms relationship with the kingdom which has denied any involvement in the attacks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible) 2005 the war that gave the volume of deliveries of weapons from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia which I think that didn`t necessarily have to do with 9/11. I think it had more to do with the fact that Saudi Arabia didn`t have the (inaudible) financial conditions at that time and that it had already stocked up on a very large quantity of advanced arms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump`s first foreign visit was to Saudi Arabia where he signed an arms deal said to be worth $110 billion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For a long time Saudi Arabia hasn`t been using it`s equipment very much but that (inaudible) started to change in 2015 we see the - - the (inaudible) military intervention by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Yemen conflict has become the world`s worst humanitarian crisis with 10`s of thousands killed. It`s also widely seen as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia with Houthi rebels supported by Iran and pro-government forces supported by the Saudi led coalition. The world has changed a lot since the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.A. began. Imports of oil from the kingdom to the U.S. have dropped by 47 percent since a high in 1991. Since that first accord in 1932, Saudi Arabia has had seven kings. The U.S. has had 14 presidents but through it all the bond between these two nations has remained unbreakable.
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CARL AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. Which of these places is located the farthest north? Anchorage, Alaska, USA; St. Petersburg, Russia; Reykjavik, Iceland; or Oslo, Norway. The northern most city on this list that`s 64 degrees north latitude is the capital of Iceland.
But they`re all in latitudes north of 55 degrees which means they`re smart phone maps could be effected by a shift in the magnetic north pole. There`s the true North Pole and the magnetic north. The true North Pole is geographic. It`s the northern most point on the planet. The magnetic north pole is where compass needles point. Historically it`s been located in the Canadian artic. Several hundred miles away from the true north and it`s moving. Scientists say it`s always done that slowly but in recent years, the magnetic north pole has been speeding up. Traveling about 34 miles per year in the direction of Russia.
Why is this happening? No one knows for sure. Many scientists think it`s because the earth`s magnetic field is tied to a liquid outer core deep inside the planet. When the liquid flows, it could pull the magnetic north with it. Will compasses still point north? For the most part they will but this could cause some navigational trouble above 55 degrees north latitude. So for people who live in the cities mentioned in the 10 Second Trivia. What can be done about it? Well there`s something called the world magnetic model.
It keeps track of the earth`s magnetic pulls and it`s used by militaries, North American and European countries and civilian navigation systems. Officials usually update it every five years so it can stay accurate but they just took steps to update it sooner than that so it can keep up with the faster moving magnetic north.
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CARL AZUZ: Super hero crime fighters have always had a way to shoot a rope or a web around people who are trying to get away. Now, that kind of technology is becoming available to real life crime fighters. This thing is called the BolaWrap. It`s not considered a deadly weapon but it uses a blank charge to fire an eight foot rope toward a suspect and it`s makers say it`s effective as long as that suspect is between 10 and 25 feet away from the officer.
Suspects would then get "tied up", "roped in", "wrapped up", "tethered tight", "fastened down", "knotted up", "cinched in", "bound together", "hand strung" or "leashed up". They probably wouldn`t get away. I`m Carl Azuz totally untied for CNN.
