Good morning and welcome to Kid News.
I'm Kim. Today is Tuesday, November 5, 2024.
Election day in the US, finally.
And that's where we begin, with the polls open and a record number of Americans expected to show up and have their say on who should occupy the White House for the next four years.
After months of campaigning, former President Trump and current Vice President Harris can only sit on the sidelines and wait for the results to trickle in state by state.
According to most surveys, the race remains a dead heat.
And while most political observers believe the outcome will be close, those same observers admit that anything can happen, and it could be a landslide in either direction.
If it is, we'll know the results early on.
If not, it could take days because a huge number of voters have opted for mail -in ballots, which have to be opened and verified and take longer to count.
Back in 2020, because of similarly close races and high voter turnout, it took four days for the election to be decided.
Our Kid News team is working round -the -clock tonight following the results, and we will bring you the latest as we know it tomorrow morning.
Fewer of you are rolling up your sleeves.
A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that vaccination rates for school -aged kids dipped in 2023.
The report says only 11 states met the federal goal of 95 percent coverage for recommended shots last year.
And a Gallup poll recently found that fewer Americans view childhood vaccinations as important.
All students in the U .S.
must be vaccinated against certain diseases before starting school.
And while this has resulted in polio and measles being almost completely wiped out, in recent years measles has made a comeback, and polio has been detected in wastewater in New York.
Health officials believe misinformation from the internet is the biggest reason behind the vaccination declines.
Last year, basketball phenom Caitlin Clark made $76 ,000 playing for the Indiana fever in the WNBA.
Now, another league, the Unrivaled League, is offering 2024's Rookie of the Year more.
A whole lot more. Clark and Unrivaled have held talks about her participating in the three -on -three league that is set to tip off in January in Miami.
She would be paid a million dollars and have an equity stake, meaning she'd have partial ownership of the Unrivaled League.
Unrivaled was designed to complement rather than compete with the WNBA, however, so schedules would not conflict.
Clark hasn't decided if she's on board yet, but reports say she's leaning toward accepting the offer.
Fever teammates Lexi Hull, Aaliyah Boston, as well as Caitlin's teammate from Iowa, Kate Martin, have already reportedly signed on.
Talk about a discovery that will get you an A from your teacher.
A graduate student from Tulane University in New Orleans has found a Mayan city buried beneath dense jungle growth in Mexico.
And he did it just by looking at data on the internet gathered by drones.
Luke Auld Thomas says he was scrolling through the data when he realized it was revealing the remains of an ancient city in the state of Campeche on the Gulf of Mexico.
That city was one and a half times the size of Washington, D .C., and at its peak had a population of nearly 50 ,000.
Civil unrest, changes in climate, and overcrowding led to its collapse sometime around 1 ,000 A .D.
Archaeologists say the ruins were hiding in plain sight, just 15 minutes away from a major road.
Auld Thomas and his colleagues have named the lost city, Valeriana.
For sale, one space division barely used.
That's the ad Boeing might write for its division tasked with sending astronauts back to the moon.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting Boeing is in some early talks to sell off their aerospace business either partially or completely.
Boeing has met with especially bad luck in its collaborations with NASA.
Its Starliner vehicle was supposed to replace the space shuttle fleet, but SpaceX beat them by four years.
Starliner finally launched two astronauts to the International Space Station this past June, but suffered helium leaks and thruster malfunctions, forcing NASA's decision to delay bringing them back till next February on a SpaceX vehicle, no less.
Meanwhile, Boeing's heavy -lift rocket that's supposed to take crews to the moon was set to lift off in 2016, but didn't do so until 2022.
Still ahead, a music icon falls down on the job but gets right back up and finishes his act.
But first, today's Kid News Quiz.
Name the two diseases that were once nearly wiped out but are now making a comeback.
Polio and measles. What women's basketball superstar is being offered a million dollars to join another league.
Kaitlyn Clark. Where did a Tulane University graduate student find the data that led to a lost Mayan city?
What division of Boeing may be for sale?
The Space Division.
In today's Kid News Kicker, music superstar Chris Martin is just fine, but he took quite the tumble Sunday on stage in Melbourne, Australia.
The Coldplay frontman was walking backward on the platform when he fell through a trap door and nearly crash -landed on the hard floor below.
Fortunately, a crew member underneath caught him, and he had a soft landing.
He even thanked the crew member before climbing out of the pit and continuing as if nothing had happened.
In an odd coincidence, another superstar singer, Olivia Rodrigo, took a similar tumble also in Melbourne, but at a different arena just last month.
She too recovered quickly, and she too is okay.
Before we go, shout -outs for our teachers.
Mrs. Arthur and Woody and the Woodcrest Wolverines at Woodcrest in Midland, Michigan.
Mrs. Webster and her roadrunners at Forest Road School in LaGrange Park, Illinois.
And mom at Heart Lead Homeschool in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada.
Thanks for listening.
Encourage all your voting age family members to head to the polls and get their I Voted sticker.
And we'll see you back here for election results tomorrow morning.
