Transcript: January 10, 2023

Introduction

Jonathan: There’s a growing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where millions of migrants have been trying to get in… and President Biden just visited. Angie has the details. 

Plus – could cancer be used – to cure cancer? There’s promising new research. Those stories and more today on… Notice News. 

Biden Visits the Southern Border

Jonathan: Happy Tuesday everybody – I’m Jonathan here at Notice HQ in Brooklyn. You may have heard about the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where millions of migrants, mostly from South America, have been trying to get into the United States. 

It’s a problem without a solution people can agree on. President Biden has his own ideas, and he visited the border over the weekend. Our Washington correspondent Angie has the latest. 

Angie: That’s President Biden in El Paso, Texas, over the weekend, on his first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border as president. There’s an ongoing crisis on our country’s southern border, where millions of people are trying to enter the country. 

Called migrants, they’re people who have left their home countries to escape violence or seek better working or living conditions here in the U.S. And they’re coming in record numbers.  

From October 2021 to October 2022, the U.S. border patrol says they’ve encountered 1.7 million people trying to enter the country illegally. 

That’s the highest number since 1960. 

El Paso has one of the country’s biggest border crossings, and last month, its mayor even declared a state of emergency over the high number of migrants being taken in and sleeping on  cold streets. 

Here’s the thing: nobody can agree on how to fix the problem. Should the U.S. accept these migrants? Send them home? Put them in detention centers? Or something else? 

President Biden announced a plan last week that would do a little of each – cracking down on some who cross the border illegally, while opening up some new paths for others

Sound – Biden: “this new process is orderly, it’s safe, and it’s humane. and it works.”

Angie:  But his plan has encountered criticism—from all sides. Democrats say it will make the humanitarian crisis at the border worse, Republicans say it doesn’t go far enough, and the Mexican government says Biden’s proposals “cross a red line” for them. 

The only thing that can be said for sure: there are no easy answers to solve this ongoing crisis. 

Headlines

Jonathan: Here’s what else is making news right now… 

90 percent of people in California – some 34 million people –  are under flood watch as more dangerous storms threaten to ravage the state – and leaders there are preparing for the worst. 

President Biden declared a state of emergency, which means FEMA will provide disaster relief. 

In Brazil, thousands of people stormed government buildings in the capital to protest what they falsely believe was a stolen election. more than one thousand protestors were taken into custody. Many say it mirrors what happened here two years ago on january 6th. 

And – this is what a ten-thousand dollar toilet looks like. The “smart toilet” is  fully touchless and has built-in Amazon Alexa and mood lighting. It was unveiled in Las Vegas at CES, the largest annual tech show in the world. 

New Breakthrough in Cancer Research

Every day, almost 1,700 Americans die from cancer. Last year, over 600,000 people died from it, making cancer the second most common cause of death in our country, after heart disease. 

For decades, scientists have been working around the clock to develop ways to treat and prevent cancer. Now scientists in Massachusetts have possibly made a breakthrough in the fight against brain cancer, which kills virtually all of its patients within five years.  They’ve developed a prototype vaccine that actually uses cancer—to kill cancer. 

First, tissue from a living brian tumor is removed from a patient and put through a DNA-editing tool called Crispr. Using Crispr, scientists add a tumor-killing agent to the cancer, and then re-inject it back into the patient. Brain cancer is unique in that living cancer tissue will travel long distances in the body to be with their fellow tumor cells. 

Once there, the tumor killing agent then attacks the cancer, and primes the patient’s body to recognize cancer in the future, making them immune to reinfection. 

There are actually a number of cancer vaccines being developed right now, including one from Moderna using the same mRNA technology as its Covid vaccine that could effectively teach the body to fight off cancer. 

This vaccine is different than others because it uses living cancer tissue instead of non-living cells. 

So far, the vaccine has only been tested on lab mice, but scientists believe this is a promising step forward in humanity’s war against cancer. 

Conclusion

That’s it for today but you can learn more about what’s driving so many migrants to our southern border on our website, noticenews.com. 

Maeve will be back tomorrow with more from us, Notice News.