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Explanation Of The Controversy Surrounding Russian Activist Alexey Navalny; New Type Of Dinosaur; New Photographic Technology
Aired March 04, 2021 - 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: Thank you for taking 10 for this Thursday edition of CNN 10. My name is Carl Azuz. It`s always good to see you. Our first
story this March 4th concerns the United States, the European Union and the nation of Russia. The U.S. and the E.U. have announced sanctions,
penalties, on people in groups in Russia.
Sanctions are used to pressure or punish other countries for controversial actions and Russia`s alleged actions concern a political activist named
Alexey Navalny. He opposes Russia`s current leadership under President Vladimir Putin. Navalny was poisoned last summer with a chemical weapon and
American intelligence officials believe a security agency of the Russian government was behind it.
By imposing sanctions on Russia, the Biden Administration says the international community is standing up to show that chemical weapons
shouldn`t ever be used by anyone at any time. But the spokesman for the Russian government called the accusation outrageous, saying the sanctions
were nothing more than interference in Russia`s internal affairs and suggesting they`d only worsen international relations with Russia.
The U.S. government says it plans to take more actions against Russia in the days ahead. American officials say hackers from the Asian country were
involved in a cyber attack carried out last year that spied on U.S. government agencies and private companies.
U.S. officials have also accused Russia of interfering in American elections. Russia`s government has publicly denied being involved in any of
this. The nation is holding Alexey Navalny in a detention center though according to Navalny`s lawyer and Russia is apparently planning to transfer
him to a penal colony, a remote settlement for prisoners.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s the most prominent face of opposition in Vladimir Putin`s Russia.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNTRANSLATED)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lawyer, politician and anti-corruption activist, Alexey Navalny led street protests against the Kremlin for years but never managed
to challenge Putin in the ballot box. (inaudible) United Russia Party is the party of crooks and thieves.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNTRANSLATED)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Navalny rose to prominence in 2008 but he began blogging about the alleged corruption within Russian state-run companies. In 2011,
he emerged as one of the leaders of the massive protests that broke out after allegations of massive fraud in parliamentary elections.
Navalny was arrested numerous times and was convicted on embezzlement charges. His first embezzlement conviction came in 2013, as the anti-
corruption activist was preparing to run for mayor of Moscow. Navalny was found guilty of misappropriating about half a million dollars` worth of
lumber from a state-owned company.
The activist denied the accusations saying that the charges were politically motivated. The day after the conviction however, the state
prosecutor stunned observers by requesting that Navalny be freed on bail so he could continue campaigning for mayor of Moscow.
But Navalny lost to former presidential aid and interim Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin. In 2017 during the retrial of the same case, Navalny was found
guilty and received a five year suspended prison sentence. This time the conviction prevented him from running against Putin in the 2018
presidential elections.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNTRANSLATED)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Russian state media has often silenced the anti- corruption activist but that didn`t stop Navalny who took his anti-Putin message to You Tube where he frequently broadcast to hundreds of thousands
of viewers. Navalny said he received regular visits from the authorities and has been harassed and surveilled.
In 2017 he was attacked with an antiseptic green dye that damaged vision in one of his eyes. Two years later Navalny suggested he might have been
poisoned while in police custody after being hospitalized with an acute allergic reaction. In August 2020, the Russian opposition politician nearly
died after he was poisoned with the toxic chemical nerve agent Novichok.
Navalny was transported to Germany where he received medical treatments. The Kremlin`s repeatedly denied any involvement in the poisoning but Putin
said in December 2020 that if Russian security services wanted to kill Navalny they would have finished the job.
CNN (inaudible) investigation implicated Russia`s federal security service, FSB, and the plot to poison Navalny. In January, police detained Navalny
moments after he arrived back in Moscow. Russia`s federal penitentiary service, the FSIN, accused the opposition leader of violating the terms of
his probation in a 2014 fraud case.
After a heated hearing in February, a Moscow court ruled to replace Navalny`s 2014 suspended sentence with a jail sentence sending him to
prison for more than two and a half years. The Kremlin has often condemned Navalny as a dangerous threat to the country`s stability and has rejected
his allegations of widespread, high level corruption. But outside Russia, many see Navalny as an alternative to hard line Putin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNTRANSLATED)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. What region is bordered by the Andes Mountains, the Colorado River and the Atlantic Ocean? Balkan Peninsula, Amazon Basin,
Patagonia or Western Plateau. The only option here that`s surrounded by all these features is Patagonia, a region in Argentina.
If you thought dinosaur names peaked with Titanasaurs. Let`s talk about ninjatitan. It sounds so big and stealthy at the same time. Ninjatitan
zapatai is what researchers are calling some fossils recently found in Argentina. The skeleton is incomplete and there`s a lot that`s still
unknown about this animal.
But paleontologists believe that ninjatitans were sauropods with bodies like brontosaurus. Think long necks, thick legs and the length of about 65
feet. They`re not the titanosaurs. One of them named argentinasaurs is thought to have been as long as 115 feet.
But scientists say the recently discovered fossils are older than those of other types of titanosaurs and that suggests that ninjatitans might have
pre-dated other dinosaurs that looked like them. The region of Patagonia in southern Argentina has been an epicenter of dino discoveries.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
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AZUZ: A lot of folks like me have poured over old family photographs looking at faces that we remember from our childhood. Maybe some who left
this world long ago. A genealogy website is breathing new life into old pictures. It has a program called Deep Nostalgia that uses artificial
intelligence technology to subtly animate still pictures. It`s not perfect.
The likeness depends on the quality, the angles and the lighting of the photos you have and you can only do this for a limited time before you have
to pay for the service. But the company My Heritage is taking still snapshots from the past, ones that could have been captured before motion
pictures existed and giving them movement and the appearance of life.
You can`t put it "past" people to utilize present tools to bring history back to the future. Doing that fits into our "genealogic". It helps you
picture things as they might have been to "thaw" frozen expressions into "animotion" and to "photograb" hold onto a simpler time. I`m Carl Azuz for
CNN 10. Shout out goes out to our viewers in Naples, Italy, particularly those at Naples Middle High School. We`ll see you Friday.
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