Arielle: Hey guys, it is Tuesday, October 18. I am Arielle Hixson, and Channel One News starts right now.
First up today, we are checking in on the situation in Iraq, where the U.S. military is helping the Iraqi army try to take back an important city from the terror group ISIS.
Backed by U.S. ground and air support, convoys of Iraqi and Kurdish forces moved in on Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. Thousands of Iraqi troops face what could be their toughest battle since the withdrawal of U.S. military forces nearly five years ago. Mosul has been under the control of ISIS militants for two years. ISIS fighters have reduced much of the city to rubble.
Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Payant: Absolutely destroyed it — very methodically, very deliberately, from one end to the other, knocked down everything, destroyed everything possible.
Arielle: It is thought that there are between 3,000 to 5,000ISIS fighters inside Mosul, and it is believed that they have laid explosives to protect themselves.
The United Nations warned that as many as 1 million people in Mosul may be forced to flee the city.The Iraqi government has told civilians to stay inside their homes so they aren't caught in the crossfire, and humanitarian groups have set up emergency camps nearby.
Okay, next up, more students are graduating from high school than ever before. The high school graduation rate reached an all-time high of 83 percent in the 2014 to 2015 school year, marking the fifth straight record-setting year.
The president spoke about the new statistics released yesterday at a school in Washington,D.C., and urged students to set their goals even higher.
President Barack Obama: A high school education these days is not enough. By 2020two out of three job openings require some form of higher education.
Arielle: But overall, the U.S. lags behind several other countries in the world when it comes to high school graduation rates, and there is still a divide between white and minority students — white students have higher graduation rates.
Okay, nowthere is still one more day until the final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.But some are not even waiting for that moment to cast their vote. They have made up their mindand are in line casting their ballot.
Take a look at the long lines in Georgia as early voting began yesterday. Voting is also off to a good start in Ohio; about a hundred people an hour are rolling through at this polling station. Students at Ohio State University camped out in tents overnight to make sure they were No. 1 in line.
Mikayla Lee: We are, like, just emerging as adults, like, we are able to vote, and these are policies that are going to follow us, basically, the rest of our lives, so we might as well, like, get our say in it early so that we can kind of dictate how we want, you know, the next upcoming years to play out.
Arielle: Donald Trump says he expects to win the election next month, but if he loses, he said it won't be his fault.
Donald Trump: Hillary is running for president in what looks like, to many people, a totally rigged election.
Arielle: But lawmakers say Trump’s claims are dangerous.
Chris Ashby: People are going to realize this was a freeand a fair and openand honest election notwithstanding what Donald Trump might say. And I think it's actually going to give people great faith and confidence in the outcome.
Arielle: Hillary Clinton has been off the campaign trail preparing for the debate, but she has her own troubles with the use of a private email serverwhile she was secretary of state.
Republican congressional leaders say FBI documents show a State Department undersecretary, Patrick Kennedy, contacted an FBI official in 2015 to dispute the classification of a Clinton email about Benghazi, which was reclassified to "secret."The Bureau official then asked Kennedy about requests for more FBI slots overseas at U.S. missions.
The FBI says the classification was not changed and denied Republican claims that this was evidence of quid pro quo, meaning trading one favor for another.
Things are definitely heating up, and Election Day on November 8 is fast approaching,
but you guys can vote right now in our OneVote Mock Election. So make your voice heard, like these guys did atHarlan County High School in Baxter, Kentucky.It is just one of the schools gearing up.Very cool, guys!And don’t forget to cast your ballot atOneVote.com.
Okay, coming up, one school eliminates a century-old tradition.
Arielle: So,Keith, I absolutely love school dances — getting to hang out with your friends while rocking it out to some good music is clutch.
Keith: Yeah, I definitely agree, Arielle, but imagine if school dances didn't exist, and you didn't even get to go to homecoming? Well, some schools are cutting out school dances completely as a form of punishment for underage drinking and other bad behaviors. Take a look.
Who doesn't like to break it down every once in a while? Yeah, even the prez likes to get his groove on.But what happens when the music gets shut down?Well, that is exactly what happened at Corona del Mar High School in Los Angeles, where homecoming was cancelled.
The reason? Well, school administrators say some of their students were drinking and acting out at a high school football game recently, so officials shut down Corona del Mar's homecoming dance. Principal Kathy Scott had a message for her students on Facebook.
Kathy Scott: As a consequence to the extremely inappropriate and totally inexcusable behavior, the homecoming activities have been cancelled.
Keith: Some thought it wasn't fair to punish all the students because of the actions of a few, but other students say it sent the right message.
Sammy: I think sometimes actions as big as that are necessary, even though it's a real bummer for, you know, the students who weren't participating.
Keith: California isn't the only place where the dance was dashed. At Walpole High School, south of Boston, student drinking at school dances forced the principal to cancel all dances except for prom.
Christopher Reilly: It kind of takes away from the other kidsbecause they want to have fun at the dance, too.
Keith: In a statement, Walpole's principal said, "We are working together to move forward and address this age-old, but increasingly pervasive, issue head on."
The National Institute of Health says the percentage of high school students engaging in binge drinking — when someone drinks at least four alcoholic drinks in two hours — has actually declined over the past decade, but the percentage of students drinking at levels far beyond the binge threshold is a growing concern.
Rob: If it actually facilitates something positive, then it was the right decision. And if that doesn't happen, then, yeah, you certainly could question whether it was the right call.
Keith: Now, what do you guys think? Should schools cancel dances to punish students? Head over to ChannelOne.com to vote and weigh in.
Arielle: Thanks,Keith. We will have the results in our show later this week, so make sure you leave a comment letting us know why.
Okay, up next, one woman takes a few swans on the flight of a lifetime.
Arielle: Every year, lots of different kinds of birds migrate south to get away from the harsh winter and find food. Well, one conservationist is taking a pretty unique approach to help a group of rare swans make the trip safely. Tom Hanson has the story.
Tom: Europe's majestic Bewick’s swans have an unlikely new copilot. Forty-one-year-old Sacha Dench, with the help of a motorized paraglider, is joining their seasonal migration south.It is a 4,000-mile journey that begins in Russia's arctic north and ends in England.
Her mechanical wings are part of a bold effort to save the endangered species from the growing threat below. Hundreds are illegally shot out of the sky each year, and the land they breed in is being built on.
“CBS News” spoke with Sacha via Skype during the first leg of her expedition in the Russian tundra.
Sacha Dench: The only people up there are reindeer breeders who use sleds and reindeer.
Tom: And it is those reindeer breeders, along with fishermen and farmers, she has come all this way to share the story of the swans’ decline.
Dench: They want to know, and so I'm able to tell them all of the data, why we know the swans are declining, how much research we've done, and they are really interested in that.
Tom: At 35 miles an hour, Sacha can fly just as fast as her feathered subjects. At that rate, the trip will take three months. When the birds rest, so does she, often staying with locals along the way.
Dench: And I’d have to sleep on reindeer skins. And I woke up, and I don’t know if it was a reaction or dehydration or just exhaustion, but I woke up with a massive, massive puffy face.
Tom: If her flight sounds familiar, that is because it is. In the 90s a similar concept was the inspiration for a major movie production. Dench's flight is not based on the movie, but in a way, she is the Bewick’s swans’Mother Goose.
Dench: This is just a conservation problem we are causing, and we can fix it. And I think if you share the right information with the right people and ask the right questions, then we have a really good chance of solving it.
Tom: A manmade problem one woman is taking to the skies to end. Tom Hanson, Channel One News.
Arielle: What an incredible journey! Thanks,Tom.
All right, guys, it is time to wrap it up, but we will catch you right back here tomorrow.
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